Amal Nahurriyeh

Thing I just said in a fb chat with a friend who is deal with extended family drama:

it is REALLY FUCKING HARD to interact with people who are being heinous towards you with a clear rememberance that they have that of god within them.

because they are working VERY HARD to cover that shit up

Quakerism for people who swear a lot.

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.