And other Things
Sep. 28th, 2007 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanarillSo. Yesterday, my blooooooooodwork came back from the medical lab. They say: I’m mostly normal, but my LDL levels are too high (I knew this) and that I need to lose weight (I knew this also). The treatments would be to exercise for half an hour every day, which I refuse to do. I am, on the other hand, eating less these days, and what I am eating is healthier. For the most part.
My iron count is still low. Treatment is to continue taking one iron pill each day until the bottle runs out.
Sukkot started Wednesday.
I said to my mother, I said: I do not care if it’s not cold enough yet. I want brisket. Stop feeding me meat that was cooked on the bone. The smell of cooked animal bone makes me sick, you know this. Give me some real beef.
So she went out and bought a brisketzilla.
Our butcher occasionally, for holidays like Sukkot and Passover, produces brisketzillas. These large slabs of meat are so huge that they do not physically fit in the oven at one time. Cooking them is pretty much an all day thing, because depending on how huge they are, you have to cook them either twice or even three times, in shifts. And then you have leftover brisket for months. I said I wanted beef. I had a whole cow. I am a happy tan :D
We have our lulav and our etrog. These are plants. The etrog (pronounced et-rogue) is a lemon-like fruit of the citrus family, called citron in English. They are edible and they smell nice. The lulav (lou-lahv) is a thing made of three plants wrapped up together. The plants are palm, willow, and myrtle.
To do the observation, you hold them together and shake them in all the directions: North, South, East, West, up, down, and towards Israel. This last changes depending on where in the world you are, but here in MI, we generally turn East for it. Once your shakering is done, you go do a Hoshana (hoe-shah-nah) which basically means you and anyone else in the Shul with a lulav an etrog take a walk around while chanting prayers.
There’s all sorts of symbolism in the lulav and etrog, but I think we all agree that you don’t have this entire ceremony praying for winter rain (which is one of the things that happens over Sukkot) without a phallic symbol. Go find a picture of one, I dare you to tell me it isn’t.
In theory, you either have a guest or are one each of the eight days. But since no one in their right mind is crazy enough to try pulling that off–
[feels tug at sleeve] [looks down]
“Yes, small child?”
“What about the orthodox?”
“I said ‘anyone in their right mind.”
“Oh.”
–and in the old country often the people were too poor to do so even if they wanted to, the tradition of the seven guests was invented, one for each night if you don’t have to muck about with extra uncertainty days. Apparently, even if you don’t have any guests at all, seven significant dead people show up to your meal. They are: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David. They show up in a different order each night, so on night two it would go Isaac, Jacob . . . and Abraham would be last. The next day, Jacob would come first. And so on. His is so that you can fulfill the mitzvah of having guests, even if you have no guests.
Does this remind anyone else of tea party with imaginary friends? Not to mention that unless they can be in more than one place at once, all of these dead people are going to spend most of the evening traveling from place to place . . . at least Elijah gets to get smashed along the way.
But anyway, there you go. Another backwards Jewish custom for you to laugh at.
So that was my Thursday and today. Tomorrow I plan to sleeeeeeep, maybe do some exercise, and take a shower.
Now, a story which I have bee sitting on for weeks and really ought to post.
Title: Motive
Fandom: None! I own this universe entirely. Watch me glee.
Rating: G
Warnings: Did you read the rating? Oh, fine. Loki’s female here.
Odin lived in Chicago.
Odin did not want to invite Loki and Baldr and little Ymira. The fact that (due to the machinations of interested third parties) the two had even been married was a thorn in his side to begin with. Baldr had always been the best of his sons, and he disapproved that Loki should be the one to capture his heart. Frigg had more sense; although she was not as skilled as the ever-elusive Laufey, she could see what was coming just as clearly. A future in which Loki hated the Aesr still and Baldr was estranged was not a nice future.
So Odin had invited the three of them to dinner.
Loki was female. This angered Odin for about two seconds, until Ymira cried and Loki shot a pained look to Frigg and Frigg said “Teething?” and Loki nodded and Odin realized she was female because Ymira wasn’t on solids yet. Frigg took Loki off somewhere, to feed Ymira. Loki made a disturbingly pretty woman. Although she wasn’t exactly beautiful, she was made to be a mother.
He looked at Bladr, who looked him back straight in the eyes. On Baldr, who had a habit of looking shyly away, it was disconcerting. “Hello, father,” he said.
They hadn’t seen, talked to, or had any contact with each other since the baby naming.
“Hello, Baldr.”
(The baby naming itself had been eminently memorable. Ymira, eight days old, had slept through most of it; but when the time had come to name her, she’d opened up blue, blue eyes and said, quite clearly, “I am Ymira.” She hadn’t spoken since. No one, except maybe Thokk, knew if this was because her naming had been a fluke or merely because she simply didn’t feel like speaking.)
The silence broadened, thickened, grew deeper and more dangerous until it flowed between them like a whitewater river. Baldr didn’t say anything, and anything that Odin might have said was strictly forbidden by Frigg.
In the background, a clock (it was a horrible clock, one of the smiling cat ones where the tail moved back and forth and the eyes followed you about the room) counted off the seconds. Eventually, knowing that Baldr would know a lie if he heard it, Odin said, “Loki looks well.”
“Yes. She won’t admit it, but I think she likes being a mother. Although given how much she hates being a female, I’m wondering how long that will last after Ymira finishes growing her teeth.”
That seemed to break the ice. “Well, I remember what you were like. Even after you were on solids, you stuck close to Frigg. But somehow, I doubt she’ll stay still that long.”
“She hasn’t yet,” said Baldr. “Thokk’s a blessing. I don’t know how humans do it, given that there are three of us and we’re still barely enough to keep up with her.”
Odin looked at his son in shock. “Three of you? And you’re still alive? Your mother and I never attempted it with less than twelve women around to keep watch in shifts and an equal number of men around to boil the water.”
Baldr gave him another of those clear-eyes gazes. “Yes, well, Thokk is . . . unconventional.”
Odin thought about the kind of woman it would have taken to raise Loki, and said, “I’ll bet.”
It was about this point that Frigg and Loki reappeared. Frigg was holding Ymira, who was to all appearances sleeping soundly. Loki was glowing, and that wasn’t a figure of speech. The light was soft and ruddy and, much like Loki’s eyes, it flickered like fire. She walked over to Baldr and didn’t exactly embrace him, but curled an arm about him and set her head in the crook of his shoulder. “Your mother is a wonder, love.”
He knew, of course, what Baldr and Loki did together. It would have been hard not to know, after they’d shown up with Hel in tow and demanded a wedding (or rather, Loki had demanded a wedding and Baldr had just kind of stood there exuding happiness). The fact that Loki was currently a woman only made the entire thing more profoundly weird. But that single motion, a short sentence, somehow spoke louder than the millennium Baldr had spent dead at Loki’s scheming.
He wondered why he’d never noticed it before.
And then he wondered why, if Loki had always felt that way, he’d killed Baldr.
He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until their incredulous looks stopped him.
There was a very still moment, as Frigg’s glare shot him daggers and Baldr’s pained glance told him quite clearly what would happen if he’d upset Loki. Then it shattered and Loki said, simply and without preamble, without any kind of shame at all, “So that no one else could. Frigg, when’s dinner? I’m famished.”
“When it’s ready, dear. Unless you’d like to come check with me?” She clearly did not expect both Loki and Baldr to take her up on the offer. The three of them wandered off toward the kitchen, leaving Odin to puzzle through his (currently) daughter-in-law’s words.
“So that nobody else could,” he repeated out loud. “A better reason than I had for killing Ymir.” He shook his head. “Loki, you remain a mystery.”
And before you ask, the reason that Odin killed Ymir was so that he could be famous for having done so. Not a very good reason, but there it is.
Yes, Ymira and her vast number of siblings have taken up residence in my brain. I’m not sure how many there are yet, but as Loki’s not going to stop being fertile within the next few hundred years, and is going to pop out at least one kid every decade . . .
There. Now I can stop feeling guilty for not posting.
My iron count is still low. Treatment is to continue taking one iron pill each day until the bottle runs out.
Sukkot started Wednesday.
I said to my mother, I said: I do not care if it’s not cold enough yet. I want brisket. Stop feeding me meat that was cooked on the bone. The smell of cooked animal bone makes me sick, you know this. Give me some real beef.
So she went out and bought a brisketzilla.
Our butcher occasionally, for holidays like Sukkot and Passover, produces brisketzillas. These large slabs of meat are so huge that they do not physically fit in the oven at one time. Cooking them is pretty much an all day thing, because depending on how huge they are, you have to cook them either twice or even three times, in shifts. And then you have leftover brisket for months. I said I wanted beef. I had a whole cow. I am a happy tan :D
We have our lulav and our etrog. These are plants. The etrog (pronounced et-rogue) is a lemon-like fruit of the citrus family, called citron in English. They are edible and they smell nice. The lulav (lou-lahv) is a thing made of three plants wrapped up together. The plants are palm, willow, and myrtle.
To do the observation, you hold them together and shake them in all the directions: North, South, East, West, up, down, and towards Israel. This last changes depending on where in the world you are, but here in MI, we generally turn East for it. Once your shakering is done, you go do a Hoshana (hoe-shah-nah) which basically means you and anyone else in the Shul with a lulav an etrog take a walk around while chanting prayers.
There’s all sorts of symbolism in the lulav and etrog, but I think we all agree that you don’t have this entire ceremony praying for winter rain (which is one of the things that happens over Sukkot) without a phallic symbol. Go find a picture of one, I dare you to tell me it isn’t.
In theory, you either have a guest or are one each of the eight days. But since no one in their right mind is crazy enough to try pulling that off–
[feels tug at sleeve] [looks down]
“Yes, small child?”
“What about the orthodox?”
“I said ‘anyone in their right mind.”
“Oh.”
–and in the old country often the people were too poor to do so even if they wanted to, the tradition of the seven guests was invented, one for each night if you don’t have to muck about with extra uncertainty days. Apparently, even if you don’t have any guests at all, seven significant dead people show up to your meal. They are: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David. They show up in a different order each night, so on night two it would go Isaac, Jacob . . . and Abraham would be last. The next day, Jacob would come first. And so on. His is so that you can fulfill the mitzvah of having guests, even if you have no guests.
Does this remind anyone else of tea party with imaginary friends? Not to mention that unless they can be in more than one place at once, all of these dead people are going to spend most of the evening traveling from place to place . . . at least Elijah gets to get smashed along the way.
But anyway, there you go. Another backwards Jewish custom for you to laugh at.
So that was my Thursday and today. Tomorrow I plan to sleeeeeeep, maybe do some exercise, and take a shower.
Now, a story which I have bee sitting on for weeks and really ought to post.
Title: Motive
Fandom: None! I own this universe entirely. Watch me glee.
Rating: G
Warnings: Did you read the rating? Oh, fine. Loki’s female here.
Odin lived in Chicago.
Odin did not want to invite Loki and Baldr and little Ymira. The fact that (due to the machinations of interested third parties) the two had even been married was a thorn in his side to begin with. Baldr had always been the best of his sons, and he disapproved that Loki should be the one to capture his heart. Frigg had more sense; although she was not as skilled as the ever-elusive Laufey, she could see what was coming just as clearly. A future in which Loki hated the Aesr still and Baldr was estranged was not a nice future.
So Odin had invited the three of them to dinner.
Loki was female. This angered Odin for about two seconds, until Ymira cried and Loki shot a pained look to Frigg and Frigg said “Teething?” and Loki nodded and Odin realized she was female because Ymira wasn’t on solids yet. Frigg took Loki off somewhere, to feed Ymira. Loki made a disturbingly pretty woman. Although she wasn’t exactly beautiful, she was made to be a mother.
He looked at Bladr, who looked him back straight in the eyes. On Baldr, who had a habit of looking shyly away, it was disconcerting. “Hello, father,” he said.
They hadn’t seen, talked to, or had any contact with each other since the baby naming.
“Hello, Baldr.”
(The baby naming itself had been eminently memorable. Ymira, eight days old, had slept through most of it; but when the time had come to name her, she’d opened up blue, blue eyes and said, quite clearly, “I am Ymira.” She hadn’t spoken since. No one, except maybe Thokk, knew if this was because her naming had been a fluke or merely because she simply didn’t feel like speaking.)
The silence broadened, thickened, grew deeper and more dangerous until it flowed between them like a whitewater river. Baldr didn’t say anything, and anything that Odin might have said was strictly forbidden by Frigg.
In the background, a clock (it was a horrible clock, one of the smiling cat ones where the tail moved back and forth and the eyes followed you about the room) counted off the seconds. Eventually, knowing that Baldr would know a lie if he heard it, Odin said, “Loki looks well.”
“Yes. She won’t admit it, but I think she likes being a mother. Although given how much she hates being a female, I’m wondering how long that will last after Ymira finishes growing her teeth.”
That seemed to break the ice. “Well, I remember what you were like. Even after you were on solids, you stuck close to Frigg. But somehow, I doubt she’ll stay still that long.”
“She hasn’t yet,” said Baldr. “Thokk’s a blessing. I don’t know how humans do it, given that there are three of us and we’re still barely enough to keep up with her.”
Odin looked at his son in shock. “Three of you? And you’re still alive? Your mother and I never attempted it with less than twelve women around to keep watch in shifts and an equal number of men around to boil the water.”
Baldr gave him another of those clear-eyes gazes. “Yes, well, Thokk is . . . unconventional.”
Odin thought about the kind of woman it would have taken to raise Loki, and said, “I’ll bet.”
It was about this point that Frigg and Loki reappeared. Frigg was holding Ymira, who was to all appearances sleeping soundly. Loki was glowing, and that wasn’t a figure of speech. The light was soft and ruddy and, much like Loki’s eyes, it flickered like fire. She walked over to Baldr and didn’t exactly embrace him, but curled an arm about him and set her head in the crook of his shoulder. “Your mother is a wonder, love.”
He knew, of course, what Baldr and Loki did together. It would have been hard not to know, after they’d shown up with Hel in tow and demanded a wedding (or rather, Loki had demanded a wedding and Baldr had just kind of stood there exuding happiness). The fact that Loki was currently a woman only made the entire thing more profoundly weird. But that single motion, a short sentence, somehow spoke louder than the millennium Baldr had spent dead at Loki’s scheming.
He wondered why he’d never noticed it before.
And then he wondered why, if Loki had always felt that way, he’d killed Baldr.
He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until their incredulous looks stopped him.
There was a very still moment, as Frigg’s glare shot him daggers and Baldr’s pained glance told him quite clearly what would happen if he’d upset Loki. Then it shattered and Loki said, simply and without preamble, without any kind of shame at all, “So that no one else could. Frigg, when’s dinner? I’m famished.”
“When it’s ready, dear. Unless you’d like to come check with me?” She clearly did not expect both Loki and Baldr to take her up on the offer. The three of them wandered off toward the kitchen, leaving Odin to puzzle through his (currently) daughter-in-law’s words.
“So that nobody else could,” he repeated out loud. “A better reason than I had for killing Ymir.” He shook his head. “Loki, you remain a mystery.”
And before you ask, the reason that Odin killed Ymir was so that he could be famous for having done so. Not a very good reason, but there it is.
Yes, Ymira and her vast number of siblings have taken up residence in my brain. I’m not sure how many there are yet, but as Loki’s not going to stop being fertile within the next few hundred years, and is going to pop out at least one kid every decade . . .
There. Now I can stop feeling guilty for not posting.
