A great message for a rough day. Yes, that’s a teabag tag! 🙂 Here’s hoping for growth for you, too, dear reader.
I didn’t manage to catch up on the social side of social media this weekend, but it’s still high on the To Do list.
Please stay tuned for a special Hallowe’en treat tomorrow!
Edited according to corrections from my Lang-8 friends:
今週は投稿が遅くなりました。 クロスステッチプロジェクトに気をとられていたので。もう少しで終わるので、中断することはとても難しかったです！後バックステッチだけが残っています。私は、このプロジェクトを約7年前に始めました。もう少しで出来上がるので、とても幸せです！ドラゴンを召喚する浮遊キャンドルに囲まれた魔法使いの写真です。あなたは私のブログ、honeycombsbeehive.wordpress.com、で進行中のいくつかの写真を見ることができます。先週私が書いたカボチャパイの写真も見ることができます。完成したら私のプロジェクトの写真を掲載します。そして、私の親友ジュリーの結婚式のクロスステッチプロジェクトを始始めるつもりです。
I am late writing a post this week because I was distracted by my cross-stitch project. It is almost finished, so it has been very hard to stop! I only have the backstitching to do now. I started this project about seven years ago, so I’m very excited I’m almost done! It is a picture of a wizard surrounded by floating candles summoning a dragon. You can see some photos of it in progress on my blog, honeycombsbeehive.wordpress.com. You can also see a picture of the pumpkin pie I wrote about last week. I will post a picture of my project when it’s finished. Then I will start on a cross stitch project for my best friend Julie’s wedding.
I couldn’t stop stitching today since I was so close to the end. And now I’m on to the backstitching and couching! Woohoo!
I plan to catch up on studying Japanese and the social side of social media this weekend. 🙂
Please enjoy my first vlog, in which I talk about National Fire Prevention Month, my own burn survival story, safety tips, and share some information about living with the unique properties of burn scars. This video includes a black and white photo of my scars taken by my dear friend Alice Morrison. The photo is intended to show the extent of my scars and their beautiful patterns, but does show a nipple.
I’ve been catching up on Project Runway, and I finally noticed that Volvo’s logo is the symbol for male.
Really?! In 2017?!!
The Volvo Owners’ Club website’s account of the logo’s history reads:
At the same time as VOLVO was reactivated, the ancient chemical symbol for iron, a circle with an arrow pointing diagonally upwards to the right, was adopted as a logotype.
This is one of the oldest and most common ideograms in Western culture and originally stood for the planet Mars in the Roman Empire. Because it also symbolised the Roman god of warfare, Mars, and the masculine gender (as every bird-watcher can tell), an early relationship was established between the Mars symbol and the metal from which most weapons were made at the time, iron.
…. The iron badge on the car was supposed to take up this symbolism and create associations with the honoured traditions of the Swedish iron industry: steel and strength with properties such as safety, quality and durability.
The Volvo logo’s association with masculinity is not an accident. The company intentionally linked its brand with “the Roman god of warfare, Mars, and the masculine gender.” In doing so, they imply that cars, steel manufacturing, and everything associated with them are only for cisgender men.
And yet the company claims otherwise. A consumer emailed asking about the symbolism in the wake of the logo’s redesign. (The redesign minimized the arrow portion, making it easier to overlook the association with masculinity. It remained essentially the same.) A representative for Volvo responded:
We don´t associate the symbol with the male symbol – we associate the iron mark with the symbol for iron.
This is disingenuous. Volvo insists that you look at its logo and only see “iron”, not the much more common meanings “male” and “Mars”. Brands draw their power from all the associations their trademarks invoke. Instructing concerned consumers to ignore very valid readings of their logo’s symbolism compounds the insult to most genders and is bad business.
Put simply, Volvo’s logo is demeaning to everyone who is not a cisgender man. Their logo supports the patriarchy and defines car ownership and driving as male pursuits. Car culture is clearly male-dominated, but other genders have been making headway in transforming the love of cars into a passion for all. Examples include female NASCAR drivers like Danica Patrick and VW/Volvo mechanic Mercedes Thompson (zing!) of Patricia Brigg’s paranormal romance series (sidebar: if you like werewolves and strong female characters, you’ll enjoy this excellent series. Don’t let the romance angle turn you off; they’re mostly action). Unfortunately I’m not aware of non-cisgender folks making a name for themselves in this arena, but I’d love to learn about them!
In this day and age it’s inexcusable for Volvo to reject gender diversity. If they wish consumers to view them as a modern, cutting-edge company, they must redesign their logo. And when they do, they should keep gender out of it.
Wednesday’s mega-post was emotionally exhausting to write and scary to publish. I couldn’t sleep due to PTSD and being subconsciously braced for trolling and a deluge of victim-blaming and -shaming in the guise of support. I expected my followers to drop like flies. (This speaks to the trauma of my experiences, not to the actuality of my readers.) I’m thrilled that none of that happened. It’s very healing to have posted my #MeToo stories and for it to be okay.
Thank you to all of my readers for being awesome. Special thanks goes to Steve, Lebana, and Alyssa for their support and for encouraging me to keep it real, warts and all, by their courageous examples. Please check out their blogs!
I’m also happy it’s raining here. So to thank you, dear readers, I’m sharing a recording I made of a recent thunderstorm. I hope you enjoy it and that it can soothe you during stressful times. You can download a copy here, or play using the SoundCloud player below.
If you like my rain recording, you may enjoy the Soothing Sleep Sounds app (link directs to iTunes Store). It features a large variety of soothing, looping sounds which can be combined to make your own. You can also continue to play Sleep Sounds in the background while listening to other audio, such as an audiobook. I receive no compensation for recommending this app.
TGIF and have a great weekend! 🙂
Edited to reflect corrections from Lang-8. Special thanks to my friends onkoro jp and Tetsu for their help!
今週、私は母とパンプキンパイを焼きました。スーパーマーケットからかぼちゃを購入し、種子を取り除き、薄切りにしました。それから、皮をむきやすくするため、蒸し器で蒸しました。次に、皮を外してピューレ状にしました。最後に、そのピューレを少し使って、パンプキンパイをゼロから作りました。残りのピューレは冷凍しました。
私はカボチャパイが大好きです。アメリカではカボチャパイ風味の食べ物や飲み物がたくさんあります。私のお気に入りはカボチャパイアイスクリームです。
今年は日本人がカボチャに何か特別なことをしていますか？日本人はハロウイーンに何か特別なことをしていますか？
This week my mother and I baked homemade pumpkin pie. We bought pumpkins from the supermarket, removed the seeds, and cut them into slices. Then we steamed them in the steamer until they were soft and the skin came off easily. Next we removed the skin and pureed them by hand. Finally we used some of the puree to make pumpkin pie from scratch. I froze the remaining puree for later.
I love pumpkin pie. In America there are a lot of pumpkin-pie-flavored foods and beverages. My favorite is pumpkin pie ice cream.
Do Japanese do anything special with pumpkins at this time of year? Are pumpkins and pumpkin pie popular in Japan?
Last night I started to clean up after a cross-stitch session and discovered some of my thread had made an R for Rosemerry! I absolutely love serendipity like this.
It’s Friday, October the thirteenth today! (Pro tip: not the day to schedule your secret society meeting. 😉) That makes this the perfect day to blog about vampires.
Why vampires? For one thing, they’re at the core of the novel I’m writing, House Ibsen. There are lots of other classic monsters, too, like werewolves and witches and trolls (oh my! 😉), though the focus is on vampires.
But the real reason is that vampires are my monsters.
You see, every Fall I’d dread October’s arrival. The horror genre took over the airwaves. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing some sort of monster. I have always been prone to night terrors, the kind of nightmares where you thrash about and scream in your sleep. One time I backhanded my babysitter in the face mid-nightmare, but that’s another story.
Every October for years I’d have a nightmare that I was trapped in a treehouse and vampires were coming to get me. Every year like clockwork. It scared the bejeezus out of me. I can’t remember if it started before the The Simpsons’ “Treehouse of Horror” episode or not.
It finally stopped recurring sometime in junior high when I realized why I was particularly terrified of vampires; vampires are real and I was surrounded by them in my daily life.
I don’t mean that I was literally surrounded by the bloodsucking undead. I mean that many of the people in my life were like vampires. These people drained their victims of energy, money, and power. In psychology terms, they were toxic people high on the malignant narcissism scale. I believe that vampires function as a metaphor for humans who abuse power and prey on others.
I’ve read a lot of scholarly twaffle about vampires representing fears of blood borne disease and promiscuity. I don’t buy it. It makes much more sense to me that werewolves represent fears of infection (and being preyed upon by animals). The promiscuity angle comes from vampires and toxic people both using seduction to lure prey.
I have come to have a greater appreciation for vampires and worked on desensitizing myself. My best friend Matt helped. We’d rent vampire films and mock them mercilessly.
But I’m still afraid of vampires. They’re my monster because they continue to pop up in real life. They also continue to be the number one boogie man in my dreams. In fact, I was inspired to start writing HouseIbsen by a terrible nightmare involving vampires.
Which monster is your monster?
Bonus tidbit: one of my grandfathers believed Friday the 13th was his lucky day because good things always happened to him on that date. Specifically, he disembarked safely in Europe in World War II, returned home from the war, and died having a great day on the golf course, all on Friday the 13th.
Cross-posted from Lang-8.com.
Thank you to my Lang-8 friends for correcting this post! Here is the correct version:
こんにちはみんな！私は約二年間もこのウェブサイトから離れていました。体調がとても悪かったです。今は少しよくなりました。毎週ここに書きたいです。かなり実践から離れていました。だから、我慢してください。下手でもがまんしてください
English version:
Hi everyone! I have been away for about two years [from Lang-8]. I was very sick. Now I’m a little better. Every week I want to write an entry. I’m very out of practice. Therefore, please be patient with me!
Honeycomb's Hive 