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Last year: I contemplated skipping work and staying home so I could sleep in. But Matt guilted me into coming to work. |
Well, Kris would've been there if she hadn't been out until 4 am that morning on call. Braz said when he left to come to Ultimate, Kris was soundly unconscious. Good choice. But Elizabeth was there. Once the game started up, she and I moved over to one side and just threw the frisbee to each other. After a bit, we sat and watched the game, while I tried to explain to her the things they were yelling on the field. Not too much later, she stood up. "I want to play!" The teams were unevenly numbered, so she headed over to fill out the short-manned team.
A few points later, I decided I wanted to play, too. About the same time, someone else decided to sit out, so the numbers stayed even. For reasons I don't understand, the other team decided to have Braz cover me.
I take that back - I understand perfectly. Braz is almost a full foot taller than me, faster, and with better endurance. There was no way I could keep up with him, or actually block him if I could. They knew exactly what they were doing. The bastards.
For all that this is a no-contact sport, and that this group is very non-competitive, there were a lot of near-injuries. Lots of people slipped on the grass and fell over. I got hit in the face with the frisbee. (Thank heavens for titanium frames.) Part of the field included a large drainage grill, and several people almost tripped on that. I tripped trying to block one of Braz's throws and slammed into the arm he broke and which is still not fully recovered. And in what I thought was actually kind of cool, in a happened-in-slow-motion kind of way: one of my teammates missed a thrown frisbee, and I thought I might be able to duck around him and grab it before it hit the ground. It would've been a great save, but I didn't reckon with him falling over. My knee slammed into his head as I tried to dodge behind him, and we both wound up on the ground. I have a bone-bruise from that this morning; I hope his head is okay.
I won't be playing tomorrow, though - the William and Mary girls' Ultimate team has asked to scrimmage with us in order to give themselves a chance to play as a team before going to tournaments. I don't think I'm quite up to competition just yet. I'm trying to decide whether to go to cheer our group on (how do you cheer for a group with no name?) or stay home and carve a new jack-o-lantern.
Yeah, I've pretty much decided to do another jack-o-lantern. Matt's is great, but I can't stand the idea of only having one. Plus, more seeds is a Good Thing. But I have a concept I want to work with, so I have to find just the right pumpkin for it. We'll see. Maybe I'll shop for pumpkins tonight, and then what I do Friday will depend on what I find. I need to go out and get a few finishing touches for my costume, anyway.
Two weeks!
I'll be glad when election day has come and gone. Really. I don't trust any politician any further than I could throw him most of the time anyway, and while I'm generally a fairly optimistic person, my cynicism for the political system in this country has been well-established for years.
But worse than any political maneuvering, I hate the newspeak of election ads. I caught this one on the radio this morning: "During
The presidential race is the tightest I've seen this year, and I'm watching it carefully. But to be honest, I couldn't tell you what my reaction will be for either candidate. If I had to pick one of the two primary candidates, I'd probably pick Gore. But not without some heavy reservations - in particular, I disapprove strongly of the censorious leanings of his two closest advisors (that is, his wife and his vice presidential candidate). I have a lot of opinions on a lot of topics, but the political issue that's most likely to sew me up is censorship.
Unfortunately, this is a lose-lose situation for me this year. Bush himself and his very close advisors are playing the whole censorship issue pretty close to the chest, which could mean just about anything. But when I imagine Bush in the White House and then a Republican majority Congress... I shudder to think about the Religious Right getting that much of a foothold in the government.
I still haven't decided who to vote for. It won't be Bush. I might vote for Gore, since he's actually got a chance to get elected - but then, Virginia's majority vote, and therefore the electoral college, will go Republican. I can't recall a time when it hasn't. Virginia is pretty conservative. (Though Buchannon's bid might shift those numbers somewhat. I'd like to see a state-specific poll. Anyone know where I can find one?) Anyway, if I assume Virginia's electoral vote is going to be Republican, then I might vote for Nader instead - not because I necessarily approve of all of his lines, but because I'd like to see a third party get those government campaign funds for the next election. The two-party system is as stale as a petrified bagel, and it needs badly to be stirred up.
So yeah, count me as one of those "undecided" voters, still, whose only real desire is to get to the other side of Election Day with all of my rights, responsibilities, and priveleges intact.
A bit of fiction that climbed laboriously into my head last night while I was knitting:
You might think it would give me an advantage, being the daughter of Lachesis. But the sad truth of the matter is that it didn't gain me as much as you might think, and I lost out on a lot of other things that other kids grow up with as a matter of course.
I never learned to lie, for instance. There was simply no point. Nother would just look at me through her knitting and snap, "Cassandra, stop that!" She just knew what I was doing, and there was no sense in trying to convince her otherwise. She'd woven that thread already. She knew.
When I was young, Aunt Clotho was my favorite. I played at her feet, and begged for just a touch of the shimmering thread she spun. Once or twice, if I'd been especially good, she'd even let me. "No one goes through life without being touched by a few others," she'd say meekly when Mother scolded her for it. "She's got to touch someone sometime."
In my rebellious years, I favored Aunt Atropos, though I knew better than to ask to even touch her shears. Most of our rare visitors are quite terrified of her, which is absurd. She's got the shears, and she could make a right mess if she wanted to - but then so could Clotho, if she spun the threads rough or too thin. Mostly they sit in their chairs and do what they do, and Atropos' shears are bright and sharp and only hurt for a moment.
No, Mother was the one to fear. I felt it in my bones the way other children can sense the sun rising and setting. She sat in the middle, after all. She was the one who knit, or crocheted, or wove unceasingly while I played with my dolls in front of the hearth. She kept up an unceasing stream of chatter laced with directions and orders so you couldn't ever just tune her out.
"Oh, look at this bonny fellow - a warrior and a hero, I'll warrant, but they're so thick you can only use them for a loop or two or they'll distort the fabric. Give us a snip, here, Atropos, and there... That's right. Oh, you got this poor dear tangled up and cut, too... Well, it wasn't a major thread in the tapestry, so that's all right, dear, but try to be more careful next time. Now what am I going to do with this...? Clotho, dearest, give us a few of those nice thin threads so I can wrap up this fellow who was cut before I could finish the warp. And did you have any left of the blue? It was such a lovely shade... Do you remember that pretty girl who- Cassandra, not so close to the fire! Where was I? Oh, yes, that very pretty girl who..."
On and on and on like that. She was the one who directed Clotho's spinning, and largely the one who aimed Atropos' shears. But visitors found her the least threatening of the three. They shrank from Atropos' shrivelled frame, and were wary of Clothos' beauty, but they were drawn inexorably toward Mother's kindly face. The fools.
Our most frequent visitors were gods, of course. I can recall a young and handsome god smiling down at my childish face and asking who I was.
"That's Cassandra, my daughter," Mother would answer placidly.
"Your daughter?" the god asked, seemingly surprised.
He must have been an important god, for all his youthful appearance. Mother actually put down her knitting to pierce him with her gaze direct. "Maiden, Mother, and Crone," she chanted. "If I am to be Mother, then I must have a child, must I not?"
You would think that being Lachesis' child would have some advantage, but the truth is that I was really just a symbol of her Motherhood, and that gained me far less than most might think. All I have from her, really, is a whisper of advice, given when my womanhood was upon me, just as I was about to set foot for the first time outside the Ladies' cottage.
"The magic," she whispered as she hugged me in farewell, "has never really been in the threads, Cassandra." She pulled back and her eyes speared mine. "The magic is in the space between the threads. Draw your threads tight, child."
Word of the Day: newspeak - propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings; double-talk (coined by George Orwell in his book 1984)
- nothing
Current Projects:
- Christmas stockings
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