Amal Nahurriyeh

My son has become obsessed with knock-knock jokes. The problem is that he keeps trying to make them up, and they are AWFUL.

Him: Knock knock!
Me: Who's there?
Him: Belly button.
Me: Belly button who?
Him: BELLY BUTTON BEAR! *laughs uncontrollably*
Me: ...

Him: Knock knock!
Me: Who's there?
Him: Jelly.
Me: Jelly who?
Him: JELLY JAM! *laughs uncontrollably*
Me: *laughs politely*

Therefore, I need to suddenly know a lot of knock-knock jokes to tell him. Anybody got some?

(The only two I know are the banana/orange one and the olive one.)

Where would one go to buy nice makeup in London? Somewhere like Sephora, with salesclerks to help you pick the colors that suit you and high quality supplies. And, in addition, what's a likely place you might go to find make-up that's less high-end, but more ubiquitous? (In the US, this would likely be a pharmacy, or a large grocery store in the suburbs.)

Look, it's all amyhit's fault, OK?

Being as it is Yuletide reveal time, here's my story:


Five Times Maia Duvall Was Actually Glad To Have Been On The Away Mission (2743 words) by amalnahurriyeh
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Redshirts - John Scalzi
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Maia Duvall/Anatoly Kerensky
Characters: Maia Duvall, Andrew Dahl, Hester, Anatoly Kerensky, OFC
Summary:

Because sometimes it's funny, and sometimes it's beautiful, and sometimes it's not.

It does technically contain spoilers for the book, but if you aren't planning on reading the book it can be read as a stand-alone. I like all of the Redshirts fic on the archive, actually.

And thanks again to BowlerHatGirl for my delicious present.


***

Today was spent, in part, watching the Mummers Parade, because I'm a Philadelphian and I was in Philadelphia, and that's what you do. In any case, while watching it, I was struck by a crackfic bunny, which I posted on Tumblr: essentially, that Mycroft Holmes's distaste for "legwork" comes from that terrible period of time when he was assigned to infiltrate a wench brigade because members of it were involved in idk terrorism or something. But he is a young and quite junior analyst, and has to go where he is told, even if it involves having to drink frankly unpalatable beer and hang out with individuals who believe that English still has a viable plural second person pronoun. ("Youse" is not something he can bring himself to utter, no matter if it strains his membership in the community.) At some point into this tortuous experience Sherlock (then in university, because timelines) shows up to make fun of him, just in time to see the parade, which ends with Mycroft having to beat up the international criminals while wearing his braids and all. When he gets back to England, Sherlock buys him a nice new umbrella for a belated Christmas gift. Mycroft resents this mightily, but takes to bringing it with him everywhere.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

*this plotbunny brought to you by Leigh's Mycroft feels (which rub off after a while)

Leigh: I realized that I already read this one, but I liked it, so I'm going to read it again.

Amal: Welcome to fandom, honey.

It's Yuletide, everybody! Hooray! I think which story I wrote is painfully obvious if you stumble over it, but I don't know if any of you know the canon, so, maybe you won't discover it.

In any case, I received a fabulous story:

Padded Rooms and Stiletto Heels (1006 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Revenge (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Victoria Grayson, Emily Thorne
Summary:

It’s a trade she’s more than willing to make.

It's a brilliant bit of backstory for Victoria, and does exactly what I want a Victoria story to do: deal in an upfront and direct way with the immorality of many of her actions, while keeping her human. At her most interesting moments, Victoria recognizes how wrong she is, but consciously chooses to continue on the same path, because she prefers this route to others. This is a story where she stands in the face of her own wrongdoing, looks it in the eye, and then keeps going.

I haven't finished reading in some of the "larger" fandoms (SCANDAL FIIIIIIIIC), but here are my recs so far:


( first batch of recs )

I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in a week, because I keep staying up too late like a dumbfuck, but I don't think that's why I burst into tears reading this story tonight. I did it because it's just that good. Seeds by thesardine is the story of Sherlock and a box of Triscuits and the nature of depression, and it makes me cry because it is beautiful and because life is worth living and because sometimes green things poke through the dirt and are alive.

If you haven't read it, go now. If you have read it, feel free to join me weeping in the comments.

ETA: Made the mistake of going back and reading it again. "It felt to him as though all the banks had been robbed in one day, with no witnesses." WEEPING AGAIN.

Something really weird happened to me today.

I had a minor but significant medical procedure involving several of my triggers (all of which are medical, all of which date to cancer treatment/surgery in my teens).

And I'm not triggered.

This is freaking me out in the best kind of way.

I tried to write a full accounting of what happened, to record it, but it turned out that describing it, making conscious the associations between what happened today and my prior experiences, was actually really upsetting. So I'm going to skip it. But the bullet points are:

• Leigh is really amazing at being grounding for me during this shit.
• I do not know how to categorize what happened while I was starting to feel sedated other than by saying that a nurse held me. Maybe she was holding me in position for something? I don't know, the point is, human contact.
• I said I was nervous. I explained why. I don't know if these particular nurses were particularly good at being calming, or if I'm the difference here, but, um. This was good.

I think these are tears of gratitude, and maybe overwhelmedness? I don't know. But, despite yesterday having been awful because of prep for the procedure, and feeling not entirely well again after it, today is a really good day.

Shake It Out - Florence + The Machine



I actually feel kind of amazing.

I have spent the past two days HIDING from an email in my inbox. Even leaving my inbox open, with the little "Inbox (1) - [meatspace name@...]" tab sitting there at the top of the page, taunting me. It was interview question responses for work. I don't know WHY it was making me anxious to think about reading it, but lordy, it was.

I just opened it. The responses are fine. My interviewee made a request about how I use the data that is kind of a bummer (leads to no immediate CV line for me), but is totally within hir rights, and the long term potential for the data is still there. See, self? Nothing to be scared of!

Sigh. Oh, brains.

***

I honestly don't know if my Yuletide story is done. There's one scene from the outline not completed. I have no idea what goes in that scene. (Well, I know what goes in it *structurally.* I have no idea what the content is.) I can't tell if it's necessary. Sigh. I hate this stage of writing.

***

SCENE: Amal is sitting in the TV room, charging her phone and poking it.

Leigh enters from the living room, shuffling in wearing the bathrobe she is wearing around the house because it's cold, and which she has started referring to as her "dressing gown" because she thinks it sounds more civilized to wear a dressing gown around the house. (It is the bathrobe from this picture. It is not a dressing gown.)

Leigh: How come you didn't tell me we were moving into the den?
Amal: I said, "Oh, I have to go charge my phone," stood up, picked up my phone and computer, and left the room. Ten minutes ago.
Leigh: Really? I thought you were just going to the bathroom.
Amal: *narrows her eyes* I was in Dublin yesterday.
Leigh: Shut up.

***

Isk wrote a recipe today.

A Surprise Cake Funny

One Killed Cow
Two Eggs
One Live Chicken
A Person
A Piece of Paper
One Killed Chicken

Directions: EAT IT.

My boy. I'm so...proud?

Since I added/was added by a bunch of new people on kouredios's friending meme, I feel like I have a duty to post things. Here goes.

***

Isk invented a new food the other day. He explained, very carefully, that he wanted a bread quesadilla. You know, a quesadilla, but with bread instead of a tortilla.

I paused. "You mean a grilled cheese sandwich?"

"No," he said, in that tone of voice that children use when correcting stupid adults. "A. Bread. Quesadilla."

"Oh. OK." And I made him one.

Points for decolonizing the grilled cheese?

***

We are behind on getting reading for the December holidays. Today is the first night of Hanukkah, and we're going over a friend's house to do candlelighting and latkes with her and her daughter. I feel a little bad about it--I wanted to do Hanukkah with another family who celebrates it, because I wanted to show Isk that there are actual Jews in the world who celebrate it. (Long story short: Leigh's dad was raised Jewish by very Jewish family, but decided the path to success involved passing as a WASP from his teens on; Leigh was raised Quaker, not really aware of her Jewish roots, and I converted to Quakerism as a teenager after leaving the Catholic Church; we decided as parents to bring back some basic identity with Judaism as culture/tradition/spiritual practice in our family, while remaining Quakers.) But I kind of feel like I was all "hi Jewish friend! be Jewish for us!" I think it's fine, I just feel weird if I got tokenistic there by accident.

Isk and I made cookies to bring for dessert, because clearly the thing to do in this case is to bring Christmas cookies to Hanukkah dinner. (Mint chocolate chip cookies, made from this recipe. BTW, this is my favorite GF baking blog at the moment. I've also made one of her pies, and it was a hit. And the cookies are excellent.)

Tomorrow we'll probably go get our tree from the tree farm. Because we live in the country, and so can do that. We didn't buy an advent calendar this year, so probably I'll hold off on doing Advent/Jesus-y stuff until after Hanukkah is over. One holiday at a time, you know.

Also I should take down the Halloween decorations.

***

Odd thought: am I unusual in Sherlock fandom for *not* being a fan of the broader Sherlock Holmes canon? I mean, it's not like I'm opposed to it. I'm a highly educated and bookish Anglophone person, so I'm familiar with the ACD stories, though I haven't read many of them; we watched a lot of PBS when I was a kid, so I watched the Granada series on Mystery because it was there, and I remember liking it; I saw the first of the Ritchie movies because it looked fun, and I enjoyed it. But I'm not fannish about any of those. And then I did the whole fannish-imprinting thing I do on the BBC version, such that it has eaten my brain, and now not only can I not watch Elementary because of feelings (which sucks, because it seems like it is fun, esp. for a procedurals junkie like me), I don't want to consume any of the other iterations. Like, I am happy when I read fic that consciously draws from ACD canon, because I am into meta, but I don't feel any desire to write it, or to go read the ACD stories for inspiration. I'm glad all the rest of it is there, but I don't have feels for it. But it seems like the majority of the DW/LJ based fans I interact with seem to be fannish about the broader canon.

Maybe this is because I hang out with other bookish, highly-educated Anglophone folks? IDK.