A doll I didn’t buy / Purpose of this subdomain

ByJanel

Boy, sometimes I just need to talk! Oh yes, I talk to my darling and I’m so grateful we still have things to talk about. We’re not bored of each other after three years! If there’s nothing to do, we can sit and talk about things and we are entertained.

Sometimes I need to write. I gotta share with the world at large. But then, there’s this awful writer’s block lately, like I don’t know where to start, and there’s so much to say it feels like a six foot water balloon and I’m holding a pin.

The beauty of the internet is that I don’t have to worry about boring anyone. If they’re bored, the page impression will be 4 seconds.

I used to write looong letters to random friends/relatives who hadn’t necessarily indicated any interest in receiving such, and then I’d have to hear, “Wow, you really write a lot!”

If anybody gets through the blog, it must be because they read a lot 🙂

Facebook was so cool, with those overlapping circles. Since people can hide each other and the other never knows the difference, I can rest assured that if anybody sees what I post, it’s because they still want to.

Maybe an emotionally healthy person would feel the way I used to feel, that writing letters to people is a gift. But by now I’ve heard “wow, you sure do write a lot” enough times that I’m hesitant to share. I don’t like bugging people.

Realizing I am autistic helps that make more sense. I’ve read several places that this habit of sending “too-long” letters is indeed an Aspie trait.

I guess the typicals write cute little one page missives with nothing in them, kinda like when they get together and talk to each other about nothing for hours – and have the crazy idea that they’re “getting to know” each other even though they can talk for years without really getting to anything that matters.

They say “we weren’t at the stage yet” to talk about the good stuff. Are we ever? So we waste time with sports / cooking / weather / travel for years, then one day the truth comes out and find out that “friend” is on the other side. So all that time was just passing entertainment, or a maybe at least useful connections for when it comes time to need help moving, or populating special occasions.

And some people, when they find out their friends are completely different on the big ideas, will change to suit the group! I find that baffling. I say, might as well drop the big stuff earlier and not waste time.

I’ve had a couple opportunities lately to be put in a position to “get to know someone better” by enduring a period of interchange with good manners and small talk.

In case they can be useful in the future? Hmph. I tend to clam up around people easily enough anyway, now make schmoozing an obligation because I want something you have, and there’s a recipe for stubborn silence. Just go home. (Hooray! Now I have a home to go to!)

On the contrary, if someone stays in my presence for a while and doesn’t pick at me, I’ll probably divulge my entire life story and enjoy doing it. In person at least you can tell by the body language whether they are still interested or not. How do you do that by email?

I miss Facebook, I really do. I want to be HIDDEN by all of those who are bored.

Well, here I am. Here, I can go on without self-consciousness. Like Facebook, if they see me, it’s because they made the choice.

Look what my darling found on the road the other day, and brought home to me!

She may have been run over. She’s a lil bit squashed and battered. Just like me.

I was delighted to receive her, but concerned about who may have lost her.

My husband happened to have a friend with him at that moment, and the friend, seeing my worry, suggested, “Maybe you should put up a lost and found poster?”

Oh, that’s a great idea!

My son interpreted – “I think he was kidding.”

Maybe he was.

I wasn’t.

Oh yeah. The premise. “What are we all doing here?”

If you’re still here, you know what I mean about going on and on XD

This is a place for me to go on and on without self-consciousness.

I put that Barbie pattern up aeons ago, and people liked it, to the point janelwashere.com is found, and feels ever so slightly like a storefront. I only want to put useful, public-oriented stuff there. So that’s less like “my play room” now.

Seven years and up. That means me. I’m older than seven!

I made a post called “A Doll I Didn’t Buy / Purpose of This Subdomain” to talk about her, but then I bought her.

She was ten bucks. I’m an adult. I can buy whatever I want to XD

I want to be one of those old ladies who sits among piles of lace and ribbons, dressing dolls!

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  • Wisdom of the West

    ByJanel

    Last time I walked down to that Little Free Library, I had a pile to donate and I wasn’t intending to pick anything up. But then there was this. “The Wisdom of the West” compiled by Criswell Freeman. I opened it and found several pertinent sayings that I ought to try to remember. I walked away, then walked back and picked up the book.

    “I would rather live as we do, in a sod house we own, than to rent and have someone boss us around.”

    This is the heart of the matter. I’ve dreamed my whole life of a place where I could feel like I belong there. I belong with the darling of course and would live with him under a bridge if necessary; but it would also be peachy to have a home assigned on earth. This is where Janel goes. When we are done playing with Janel, we put her back here.

    We finally have a chance to own our own place without obligation. That’s the big dream and doesn’t have to include the creature comforts, hehe, it’s all about surviving that first winter, and if you’re lucky, write a book about it later. Now I get to do that, too.

    “Where would you go? Back to the place where you were dissatisfied before you came out here?”

    This is a concept that might help me at the new place when I begin to get cold. In fact, I think it already has. We were out there camping for two weeks when it was 24 degrees. I sometimes wished I could go– well, not home, this is home!

    Not back. Anything but that.

    After only a couple weeks, I did begin to wish I could go inside. We’ll have an “inside” soon enough. In the meantime, ONWARD.

    “People on the Pacific Coast think of themselves as belonging to the “coast”; the “West” is quite something else again.”

    We have been marveling and giggling over the concept of heading east to get to the West.

    I spent my early years deep in the heart of the old West, far south of here in gold country, where except for the cars and telephones it was still 1849. That place was excellent in all ways except that it was, unfortunately, politically situated in Cali (cough) Forn (cough) – sorry, I can’t say it. If the State of Jefferson ever became reality, I’d move back there instantly, but for now, no.

    Anyhoo the West was alive there and I loved it. But right now we’re heading eastwards inside our good old birthplace WA, to get back to something a bit more West.

    “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

    Right. There are so many limitations, but we have “a lot” and we can do “all kinds of things” and it is deeply satisfying to do as much as possible with what we have, rather than to just stay stuck. Knowing you’re doing everything you can do is all that’s necessary to be able to sleep at night.

    “We have learned to follow the customs of the country, and get along as best we can with what we have.”

    Exactly. I dunno about the customs, I’ve never been good at that. But I’m def making do with the things that I have. Funny, but I think I’ve been preparing for this my whole life. I’ve scoffed at spoiled American women, and yet when it came time to leave “civilization”, it turned out I’d been comfortable there so long, I had started to get a bit dependent. Well, I’ve scoffed too much to deserve any sympathy. Toughen up.

    Can’t we live without hot running water? Can’t we wake up cold and make a fire like our ancestors did, who craved freedom? Yes! If that’s the price of freedom, then absolutely yes, and that’s a cheap price.

    Can’t we do without the internet? ::cries::

    I’ve collected candles all my life. Whenever I saw someone’s used wedding tapers on the giveaway table, I picked them up. Now I finally get to need them. And the wool blankets, I’m gonna need those, and warm quilted clothing, for real. I have a self-constructed hand crank sewing machine for exactly this exigency! In case there’s no more electricity. There’s no more electricity, so yay.

    I was one of many who was a bit crestfallen when Y2K didn’t happen. I was hoping for TEOTWAWKI while I was still young. And now, here it is! Because I brought it on myself.

    “A dose of adversity is often as needful as a dose of medicine.”

    It’s true. I can feel it coming. A bit of actual discomfort might just do wonders for my seething. There’s no time to be nuts when you need to carry some water to wash dishes and get the firewood in before dark.

    “The cowards never started.”

    That means I’m already a winner.

  • The Mountain Man in the Fur Coat

    ByJanel

    I remember ripping an ad out of an old magazine when I was a kid. I don’t know where the picture went. When the internet became a thing, I started looking for it online but never with any luck, until I just today thought of asking the AI.

    Me:
    Can you find a picture for me? It was in a magazine I saw back in the 80s (but could have been from an older magazine) I think it was an ad for some kind of whiskey. It had a mountain man out in the woods wearing a long fur coat.

    ChatGPT:
    I’m pretty sure you’re remembering the Yukon Jack campaign—tagline “The Black Sheep of Canadian Liquors.” Late-70s/early-80s print ads often showed a fur-clad trapper/mountain man by a snowy lake or forest, sometimes quoting Robert Service. Here are examples of the exact layout and imagery from that series.

    Me:
    YES THAT’S IT!!!! That’s wonderful, thank you, I always thought that looked so romantic.

    ChatGPT said:
    I’m glad I could track it down for you! ✨ Those old Yukon Jack ads really leaned into that rugged, romantic frontier vibe—half whiskey promotion, half daydream of living out in the wild with a fur coat and a campfire.

    HA. The machine gets it!

    Yes indeed. I remember looking at that ad as a teenage girl and thinking that there is a real man, who no doubt sewed that coat together himself, out of the skins of things that tried, and failed, to eat him.

    I’ve been looking for that ad since my darling started talking about Alaska. He was going to go up to Alaska in an old wood boat to see if he could survive the winter.

    I didn’t miss that “IF”.

    Well, the boat part didn’t work out.

    And I’m just as glad we didn’t go to Alaska after he told me it rains more than western Washington! I’ve been trying to escape the consarned rain for thirty years now.

    We went east and got just the good parts instead, the snow and trees and the c-c-c-cold. Break out the fur.

    (I didn’t kill that poor little furry dude. He’s a third-hand donation.)

  • Bear Croon and Bear Drool

    ByJanel

    What on earth caused this? Who could have poked these holes in our water jug? Maybe a woodpecker? 
    I couldn’t imagine any dog that could reach up that high and make just those two distinct holes without any damage from the other teeth. 

    We puzzled over it for a while, then looked at the other side of the table. Our visitor left tracks.

    With bears in mind, here’s a video I’ve been thinking of making for a while, about a poor bear that sang on the day it died.

    I’ve looked a bit on the internet but I don’t see much about bear song. Only “singing bears” in variety shows.

    I looked it up later and found that bears croon to comfort themselves when they are stressed. Wouldn’t they do it in a zoo, then, and someone could capture it on video? If you know where there might be a recording of bear croon, do tell me about it. I couldn’t find anything.

    Well, I’ve heard it, and if that’s really such a rare thing, then it seems like I should share what it sounded like. I can’t mimic it exactly. The intervals were not like ours. It was four notes over and over, high down somewhere between a fourth and fifth lower, then up a bit then again, even lower.

    I want to add a funny detail. It was after the bear was dead and its body being winched up onto a trailer. My goodness but it stank!

    Only little Cindy had been free earlier in the night and treed the bear by herself. Now all three dogs were loose and they danced around the dead bear, growling fearsomely. You should have seen the silly things, with their hair standing up all over their bodies; not just their hackles but all over, so they looked like one of those “Here’s a cow that’s been washed and blow dried” pictures.

    I would also like to mention fear of bears. Somehow my darling is under the impression that I am scared of bears. I’ve heard him say it a few times, for instance when neighbors talk about a bear coming through their backyard, and he’ll say, “Don’t let her hear that!”

    I eventually addressed it. “Do you mean ME?”

    Then he tried to use logic to prove to me that I am afraid of bears.

    Am I afraid of bears? Have I said so?

    He says I have.

    Hmmm. Well I do say things sometimes and not remember it later.

    Apparently in Washington our chances are one in two million of being killed by a bear. Our chances are one in one hundred of being killed in a car accident, that is ONE PERCENT which is terrible, and yet we all hit the road without a second thought. If we ever saw a bear munching on a person we’d call ourselves traumatized, but we’re used to seeing ambulances driving away from car crashes.

    The video shows me jump when a branch snaps behind me. But I am sitting where there was a bear less than 12 hours earlier. I think some caution is reasonable. At least as much caution as if I was filming on a lawn chair in the middle of a county road. Is there a car coming?

    At the end of the video I said I’m CHECKIN’, with an apostrophe rather than a G. I didn’t say “I’m chicken.”

    After all, there might have been a person behind me. The chances of being killed by a male human age 18 to 24 whom you randomly encounter in the woods are far greater than when meeting a bear under similar circumstances. Hundreds of people are shot every year by hunters in this country, and a dozen or so killed, while bears average three. That last statistic seems the most relevant since there, at least, we’re limiting by people who were out in the woods.

    But I have fewer stone hard opinions than I used to. I might be wrong. I might be afraid of bears.

    Wolves, now. I tell ya what, the idea of wolfies kinda creeps me out. I don’t like the thought of the whole pack of bad doggies circling around with their hungry, glowing eyes, waiting for the fire to die down so they can crunch up my amazing hands for the calorie value. I read about that in Jack London when I was too young.

    What did I do with the water that was in that container? Water is a precious commodity, so I didn’t waste it, although I did set it apart, labeled appropriately.

    P.S.

    There. Just came across what happened to the poor creature all those years ago.

    Nothing says “ancient times” like a bear skin on your bed, and I wanted that. But I was fourteen. Some adult paid a bunch of money to have that poor creature made into this. It’s only a poor joke, if you ask me, as the bear didn’t look like that at any point, only hummed sadly all night and then died. A waste of money and a waste of a bear. What use is making its skull into a trip hazard? It was on the floor very briefly, then went into a box, and eventually was sold.

  • Half a Heart Waffle Iron

    ByJanel

    Craving for heart waffles. Darling says we can run a 700 watt appliance – in the summer – and not for very long.

    What’s the alternative?

    Only half a waffle iron. For only a few dollars more

    I could have had the real thing with both halves and the trivet that used to come with it. But I don’t want those, so it would have been a few dollars wasted.

    I had a cast iron waffle maker back at that other place I used to live. It was left behind of course. And we say no more about that.

    It was the typical round style. Oh, here, Walmart still has them.

    When I first got it, I fiddled and fumed, and made a mess, and made another mess, was hot and bothered, frustrated, etc. Then figured out you only need one half. After that, it’s a snap. It works like this.

    Easy. Use two burners. Have half a waffle iron and a frypan on the heat at the same time. Pour the batter on the waffle iron, and it ISN’T going to make a mess, because nothing’s going to come down and squish it out all over the landscape. It’s not going to rip apart, because you don’t have to lift anything to check if it’s done enough. When it’s done enough, lift the corners with a fork to loosen them, and flip the whole thing over onto the griddle to cook the back.

    Srsly nobody’s going to lift their waffle from the plate to see if both sides are the same.

    My darling says (of my infernal honesty), “You’ll have to tell them!”

    No, I won’t. This is technically and truthfully a waffle. It’s crispy and made of hearts.

    I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hearts despite some of the theories of their origins. No shapes are inherently bad. Not gonna digress here (although would love to) but geometry isn’t bad, any more than guns are bad. It’s people who are evil.

    I also bought one of these.

    It was just so very beautiful. So very swirly, and made my heart sing. My darling is mostly Nordic and has never eaten krumkake, and I felt the need to remedy that.

    He still hasn’t eaten krumkake. I made a fantastic mess, and cleaned it up, and made another one, and later tried another method, and grumbled and groaned and lost my temper. The fails weren’t even edible, just scrapings of mess. He may be Norwegian but I’m not, so I couldn’t manage. I’m German and this thing is NOT efficient which means it’s out the door. It’s for sale again. Let me know if you want it.

    Oh, he kinda had krumkake because I made him heart-shaped half-waffles with the rest of the batter, with whipped cream and blueberries, and he said three times that it was DELICIOUS!!!

    The krumkake recipe called for cardamom. I’ve never even heard of it, and had to look up what to use instead. The internet says to substitute cinnamon and nutmeg, or allspice and cloves. Christmas, basically. Make it smell like Christmas, with whipped cream.

    I saw the darling whittling something. He was turning a piece of dowel into a beautiful replacement handle! He oiled it up and, “Now I just have to find the perfect screw!”

    Notice the website change?

    Messing around again. Tried to adjust the margins on twentytwentyfive mobile view, and ended up mired in similar frustration level as a two-halved krumkake iron. Do I really have to sit in front of this computer when it’s ninety and things aren’t working? I put Kadence back, which is the perfect FOOL proof theme. Fools can make it look personalized, but can’t fiddle with the settings until they make their websites into a pile of mess, as I had done to mine. So here we go again, with a fabbdalous background and not even a header. That’s okay.

    Hey, I might have solved the posting thing! And I can break out of my posting doldrum. All the regular chitchat can go here, and the family stuff on MeWe. I had to wrestle with MeWe for a bit (in my overparticular, stubborn noggin) but I’m past it and emerged into the sun on the other side, with a sense of peace (ish) about using it. It’s funded by the users, not the enemy; it’s nothing the same level of objectionable / controlled / controlling as Facebook and simply is not over my boundaries, so, say thanks, Weinstein / Berners-Lee, and here we go.

    More nonsense to come!

  • Decorating with butterflies!

    ByJanel

    I had a butterfly apron I couldn’t use for an apron because I don’t like the shape. I was waiting for some use for the butterflies as motifs. Finally, the first use! Patching a hole in a screen. I zigzagged around the butterfly, then tacked it to the screen by hand. When the sun comes through, it looks intentional!

  • It’s A Sheet But In Progress

    ByJanel

    It’s the thickest heaviest flannel I’ve ever come across. It’s a queen size flat sheet and it is absolutely going to end up as a dress with long sleeves.

    ChatGPT takes a crack at it –

    Ummmmm wut? That’s pretty, but I want the stripes going vertically.

    Okay!

    Oh, boy, ChatGPT.

    There was lots of attempts to explain in words.

    How about another AI? “thenewblack” gives a free sample.

    THAT’S what I had in mind!

    Then I realized I gave that AI an advantage because I rotated and cropped the image of the fabric first. I explained to ChatGPT that it was an image of a folded sheet, buuuut… baby steps.

    Given the same advantage to start with, ChatGPT does better. But unfortunately I said “illustration” and I didn’t say “a girl wearing…” and that’s the end of my free images for today.

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