And that brought me back to the power of story.

The Missive Maven shared the “History has set the record a little too straight” postcard for National Coming Out Day on 11 October. It’s a postcard that details people in history that history remembers, but rarely tells the stories of their sexuality. The “records” of these people left out a very important part of them. The words “record”, “history”, and “narrative” have all been swirling in my head lately. Joseph Campbell wrote reams and books on the subject of archetypes and myth. Reading The Hero With A Thousand Faces awoke in me the realization that story-telling truly is a powerful tool, despite its lessening importance in today’s society.

We tell stories about ourselves all the time. Not only do we describe ourselves with adjectives, but the things we talk about contribute to our stories. Do we blog to talk about crafts only? Then crafts are a large part of our story. Do we blog to talk about our opinions? Then having our opinions heard is a large part of our story. Do we talk about the weather? Our families? Cosiness and comfort? How we tell our stories says a lot about who we are.

You can’t say to someone, “Stephanie is a 22-year-old California transplant into the Midwest who likes to read and knit,” and expect that person to know everything about me. That person has to hear more of my stories: why do I live in the Midwest? Why do I knit? What’s so special about reading? Why do I want to learn so many languages? Why am I so against changing my name? These are all stories that I share with the important people in my life, so that they know where I’m coming from and where I am in the path of my life story. Your stories tell me where I fit into your life. Sometimes we have to re-frame our narratives to fit our experiences, but we will never stop thinking in stories.

What kind of stories do you tell people to get to know you better?

I’m not entirely sure why traditions feel so comfortable, but that comfort and cosiness has me thinking. Breakfast tacos take a little more preparation, a little more time to enjoy, and signal to me that today I’m going to be easy on myself. It’s the end of the weekend, my chores are done, I rarely give myself a break. Starting off the day with quiet music and a quiet mood, spending extra time on breakfast, it helps add to that mood which in turn builds up energy for the coming week. It makes sense why the Bible chooses Sunday as the day of rest: as humans we need to give ourselves a break before we start a full week of grinding work.

Examining these quiet feelings, feelings which I don’t experience much, makes me wonder how I can perpetuate this idea of quiet and rest in an instant world. Do you have any traditions that help you calm down and gather strength? Any suggestions for someone on her own?

The other day I read a comment wondering, “Snow? Isn’t that that white stuff you spray on windows for Christmas?” That – and so much more. Friday the moon was half full and the sun was still setting at 5:30, and I went out to document Snow for you all to see.

Here you see a sidewalk corner. A creative soul built steps into the snowbank for pedestrians to step up and over into the street to cross.

Another corner, but street side. A close up:

Dirt? Where does dirt come from in a place like this? This is more likely to be things like engine oil and car exhaust than actual dirt. Ew, you can actually see pollution in snowbound cities. Yuck.

An interlude for the sunset.

This is ice. Unfortunately it snowed a tiny bit today, which you would think would be a good thing, it would cover up ice and make it not slippery; however, there’s a certain amount of snow necessary to cover ice, and what we got today wasn’t enough. This snow just hides the ice and makes it tricky to walk. When you encounter little patches of snow like this, slow down and tread carefully. Avoid the thicker patches of snow; they are probably hiding slippery ice.

An actual nice-looking snow bank, and intersection for pedestrians.

Another street-side snowbank. Notice how the older layers of snow are packed in and the pressure caused it to condense into ice. Lesson: Don’t push people onto snowbanks. They’re not soft and fluffy. They’re not even snocone density.

Here’s another sidewalk filled with ice, but because this one is obviously not taken care of, there’s a catch. On a day like today, where it snowed a little bit and then the temperature got up to near the freezing point, this sheet of ice, normally completely dangerous and your adventurer would usually head back upon encountering this, was grippy (from recent snowfall) and cracked (from warming up). It wasn’t ice-skating ice! Advice to other adventurers: in this environment, tread carefully, but don’t worry too much about slipping. Instead, enjoy the cracking of ice underneath and stride firmly ahead.

This is a baseball field which hasn’t been used since November at least.

Tobacco use may not be allowed, but it’s not like people go there in winter anyway.

Instead of baseball, neighborhood kids gather to play hockey at the park in the winter. Yes, outside. Even with the temperature near-freezing today, although your adventurer had guessed the rink would have melted a bit, there were two kids gliding around.

Snow banks on their way to becoming snow caves.

Yes, there’s all this snow and dogs still have to go outside to pee. The injustice.

That’s all, folks. I hope you learned a little more about snow in this primer. For the sequel, Shoveling Snow, please check back here in four years.

I may have tried to pack too much into a day of rest. I really wanted to spend some time knitting today but maybe that will have to be something for tomorrow, as I really want to go back to catching up on my letters (otherwise, my pile will eat me).

A highlight from this week: every knitter’s dream birthday gift!

Two different people sent me sock yarn for my birthday. A dream come true. :) I had a pretty great birthday week.

These are my yin and yang buddies, finally getting along enough to share the warmest spot in the house: my bed. (I’m a cat inside. My bed must be situated next to a big window. Except when I don’t have a choice, aka in my apartment.)

It feels wonderful to be home amid the rainstorms.

I took today as a quiet, almost meditative day to catch up on some reading, some thinking, and above all I sat with my brother offering quiet support while he worked on his homework. Now I believe is a good time to get to a meme I was tagged for in the middle of November. (!!) Josie tagged me to list fifteen authors who have influenced me.

Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen writers who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag at least fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.

So, very quickly, a list, and hopefully I will get up to 15:

1. Madeleine L’Engle
2. Ursula K. LeGuin
3. Barbara Kingsolver
4. Louise Glück
5. E.E. Cummings
6. Franz Kafka
7. Friedrich Schiller
8. The Brothers Grimm
9. Diana Wynne Jones
10. Laurie Halse Anderson
11. Terry Pratchett
12. Saki Hiwatari
13. Isaac Asimov
14. William Shakespeare
15. Virginia Woolfe

Now I have to admit that I ‘cheated’ and checked out my bookshelves as I wrote this list. ;) All of these authors have written stories and poems and plays that have stuck with me in some form or another. It took me a long time to realize that my favorite Fever 1793 was written by the same author as the award-winning and fantastic book Speak. So, despite not having read most of Laurie Halse Anderson’s works until recently, she gets a spot on this list for writing one of the books I read over and over as a child.

Any recommendations for new authors for me to check out?

And now, to tag a few friends.

Back to Josie @ safetycomfort
Becky @ City of Mania
Julie @ Whatever
Sara @ Miscellaneous Ramblings of a Thirty-Something DIYer
Phoe @ a life of photographoe
Clare B @ Pampelmuse and Me
Patji @ Patjissi.net
Ruth @ I knit, I tink, I think

I hope you all have as fun listing writers as I have! Happy New Year.

Most people of my generation think of bedbugs as a fairy tale. More than once I’ve launched into my story, only to have to go back when someone says, “Wait, what kind of bugs are you talking about again?” News sources are calling their rise an “epidemic”, though I’m not sure they technically qualify for an epidemic.

On Sunday evening, November 7, after a long and stressful weekend, I started changing my sheets with the intent to collapse into bed a short while later. I noticed many strange stains on the sheets, but tried my hardest to rationalize them away. “It could be blood spots from cuts from my skin. It could be something else. It doesn’t have to be anything bad.” Then I stripped off my quilt and found, not just evidence of something, but little bugs themselves. I moaned. I whined. And then I went out into the living room to tell my roommate that I feared for the worst, and I very nearly cried.

My roommate was a wonderful help during all this, and a superb friend. I’m working on ways to keep her around longer. ;) As a science person, she’s not afraid or squeamish around bugs and spiders and she went in and picked up two bug samples. As a person who isn’t afraid of telephones, she offered to call the management in the morning to let them know our fears and call for an exterminator.

Two days later, an exterminator came, verified, gave an estimate, left.

I had bedbugs.

Meanwhile, I began sleeping in the living room, thinking (wrongly) that they won’t spread so much if there’s no one for them to feed on. As it turns out, if they can’t find a food source they’ll crawl around until they do. If you stay in your room and your bed they’ll bite you, yes, but they don’t carry diseases, so their bites are “safe”. They won’t spread as quickly if they have a living blood donor to snack on.

I didn’t know that, and the bedbugs got worse before they got better.

On the Monday a week after I first discovered them, I finally got the call saying the landlords don’t want to pay for the extermination. I was utterly in shock. I imagined they would want to take care of it immediately so the bugs wouldn’t have a chance to spread. Obviously, I’m naive. After all, what were they going to do if we didn’t pay for it? What would it say for their apartments if we let the bedbugs spread?

After that call, I got online and started some research. Every single person I had talked to assumed immediately that the landlord should take care of it. It turns out, the landlord must, under Minnesota law, pay for exterminations, except in very rare cases in which they can prove without a doubt that the tenant brought them in. So we fought them.

First we negotiated: can’t we split the cost? Then we sought free legal counsel. My roommate talked to a city inspector, who said he’d send a letter and usually landlords take care of it once he does.

Meanwhile, I’m sleeping in the living room, enduring pretty stressful and long days at school, and my roommate is doing the amazing job of calling different people every day and trying to get this all resolved.

The higher-ups in the company that owns the apartments won’t budge.

We had to change the venue of our Thanksgiving celebration from our apartment to a dormitory, because we didn’t want anyone else affected. My roommate started drying her clothes before putting them on in the morning. A dryer’s heat for 30 minutes kills the bedbugs in your clothes. I wore too many handknit wool items to want to put my clothes in the dryer. I still hope I didn’t spread anything.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we caved. We couldn’t live like this anymore. I needed my room back. My roommate needed to stop being bitten. We needed to be able to vacuum without also having to throw away the filter and wash it the canister with hot water. We called a third extermination company and got a lower estimate, and also a promise to come in on the Friday after Thanksgiving. We were getting the heat treatment, the one that kills them all: the bugs and the eggs. We even came back in an hour before they finished and stood in 130˚F heat for ten minutes to get whatever eggs could be on our clothes and in our backpacks killed.

It had been such an uncomfortable, tense experience. I still don’t understand why they wouldn’t want it taken care of quickly. My roommate and I could only talk about that for two and a half weeks. On top of all the other things we had going on! It was such a stressful, trying time, and I’m not even sure we’re finished with it yet: we might yet decide to take legal action against the landlord company.

But for now, I have two and a half hugely busy weeks, and I’m just glad to be able to sleep in my bed again.

If you buy any new clothes, especially from a thrift store, put them in the dryer for thirty minutes as soon as you bring them home. If you buy a used mattress, inspect it for stains first. Put a sturdy vinyl cover on it before bringing it into your home. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.