More Excuses

For the past week or so, my Dad has been leading the charge in getting our house here (finally) fixed up. As in, all the painting, shelf adding, and furniture arranging (not to mention box emptying) have been the main activities for each day besides school, for the ones that still do school. Needless to say, my writing has suffered, including writing on my blog.

But I decided to post a few pictures here of my room! I'm so excited about my room. Since I've been a military brat my entire life, I've moved every two years with my family. This left little time to do anything permanent to the bedrooms I've had, and on top of that, we usually lived in rentals offbase rather than base housing on base. Even still, the on base housing department didn't like having a million things done to their houses, either.

Now that we own a house, I have the chance to make over my room just the way I want it. It's quite a project, but it's fun, and the results are proving quite satisfactory.

First, we painted. That involved me dragging everything out of my room and piling into the hallway so we could get at the walls. Even though my favorite color is pink, I'm not really the pink room type. So I chose on of my second favorite colors: blue.

Me Doing the edging with Mum.

The paint color: Hawaiian Sky.

Percy doing the roller.

It took us two days to do the painting. One day to do three of the walls, then we ran out of paint, so the next day Dad ran out and got more so we could finish the last wall.

After it dried, Dad put up the special headboard for my bed. Mom and Dad actually purchased this bed from Ikea while we were still in Florida. They bought it for my room, but used it until we moved back up here, since they left their big Amish wood bed here for the two years.

Now I have it back and Dad has put it all together. They got this bed because of the headboard, actually; it is large and slatted so that little shelves can be fitted into it, and I can load it with all my bajillion knickknacks and collectable dolls.

There's a semi-good picture of it, just to give you the idea. I have some of my knickknacks on it right now, and I staggered the shelving more evenly, now.

So far the list for finishing my room looks like this:

• Paint cherry blossom tree in left corner
• Purchase curtains for windows
• Paint closet
• Turn closet into office space
• Buy mirrors for over and beside dresser
• Bounce on bed

Since I'll probably still be busy as we continue to whip not just my room, but the whole house, into a shape we like, I will try and take pictures to post here at intervals. Just so y'all don't think I've died or anything.

Dia duit,
~Penny

Overdue

So I've been sick. That's my excuse, yeah. This weekend was spent lying in bed doing little more than watching instant movies on Netflix and reading over old Skype histories. Nothing interesting or blog worthy. I was informed the other  by my cousin, and again today by one of Dana's younger brothers, that I haven't posted anything in a while.

So I'm posting this. I have no idea what I'm going to put here. Maybe I'll find a song.

It's not Christmas, but come on, the song is Scottish, and it has the tune to Loch Lomond in it. She's a good violinist, too.

Avengers. Quite the family classic in our house. I believe my father -- who read all the comics when he was growing up -- has seen it at least one hundred times. At least.

And now I will find a picture.

 

If you check my Pinterest boards with any regularity, you'll have already seen these pictures. If you don't, then I'll explain. I made those two pairs of earrings and the necklace last month using leftover beads in my beading basket. I'm quite pleased with the way they turned out. Which is good, because the purple pair of earrings were an absolute pain to try and connive together. I'm one of those people who wings her way through two thirds of any project, beading included. Did I look up how to make what I wanted to make? Of course not. I came up with my own, ridiculously tedious method, and used that for both earrings because I'm too stubborn to find a better way.

They look cute, though. I wore the purple set today with a green sweater. My silly nail polish is chipping, but the rest of me looked nice, at least.

Now something written...

The first thing that registered when my thoughts awoke was the dull ache in my muscles from having lain in the same position for so long. I winced, pushing myself up and opening my eyes. The lucid awareness of my mind surprised me.

  How long have I slept?

  It had to have been some time in order for me to feel so rested. And Dana had not woken me. He must have fallen asleep somewhere, as well. Crawling between the deftly twisted branches that hid me in my little den, I hoped he’d found somewhere out of sight in case someone showed up and—

  I lifted my gaze, and froze.

  Someone had showed up. A lot of someones.

That's your sneak peak for the next part of FtGG. Hopefully it'll get done at some point, though lately I've been focusing on the final edit for a short story of mine that I plan to publish. So y'all will just have to bear with me while I unskillfully juggle life and writing.

Well, hopefully this blog post will suffice for the time being. I have a few others in mind that I'll try to get out soon, too. Until then, if you get bored, go read a book. Rosie has a booklist on here somewhere, so search it, and get to it. I'll have her come up with another one soon. She's been doing a lot of reading lately.

Anyway.

Dia duit,
~Penny

 

Semi-Legend Post -- Unicorns

It's been quite some time since I've written anything remotely akin to a Legend Post, and while I don't think I'll be able to get back into the schedule of it again yet, I thought I'd try my hand at this sem-legend post. Just 'cause I miss writing them, and I think readers would appreciate a little variety from Imagination Game stuff.

So. Unicorns. I just looked through my Lore Board and randomly grabbed a picture that caught my eye. Which turned out to be the one on the left. Interestingly enough, the first site I found that talked about Unicorn legends, said this:

"Searching for unicorn myths is a bit like searching for unicorns themselves. Before you even begin the hunt, you don't expect to find anything.
The truth is, unlike almost every single other mythical creature, the unicorn does not appear anywhere in any culture's actual mythology. That is to say, plenty of Greek scholars believed that unicorns existed, but the unicorn itself does not come from Greek mythology. There are no tales of gods riding unicorns or legends of unicorns fighting monsters.
To put it simply, there is no such thing as 'unicorn mythology'."

That in itself is fairly fascinating. A mythological creature not featured in any myths? And in fact, on the next site I found, the only exerpt given that includes a unicorn in the actual story is one from Alice Through the Looking Glass. Not exactly the kind of unicorn we think of when we consider fairy tales and legends....

"Greek scholars actually believed that this creature was real, and that it made its home in India. At the time, India was a little known distant land that seemed magical and mysterious to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Fittingly, the unicorn was seen as a mystical and mysterious creature who commanded great respect and power.This is not unlike the griffin, who many ancient Greeks also believed came from India. And like the griffin, very few specific tales can be told about the unicorn, despite its popularity around the world.

The strangest part has to be the fact that ancient scholars believed that unicorns were real. While this is true of other mythical creatures, unicorns are unique in that they aren't from mythology. For example, ancient people might believe that a Pegasus, the winged horse of Bellerophon, was real because there was a specific myth that spoke of him. The unicorn, on the other hand, has no such myth, so where does the belief in unicorns come from?

Some historians speculate that ancient carvings depicting bulls or goats may have something to do with it. Those creatures both have horns, but obviously they have two horns while the unicorn only has one. The carvings in question, though, show the animals depicted from a perfect side-view, which makes it appear that the creature had a single horn coming from its forehead.
This theory is furthered by the early depictions of unicorns having goat-like cloven hooves and beards. This very well could be where the legends began."

Quite honestly, I would find it hard to believe that anyone would look at an ancient carving and say "OMGoldfish, look it's a unicorn!!" when that picture was actually meant to be a goat. I mean.... I guess it could happen, but really? Why would people back then be more inclined to make up a whole new animal based on a few carvings rather than attempt to accurately interperate the carving? Wouldn't they be intelligent enough to know when they're looking at the side view of a goat?

Maybe that's just me.

"One scholar pointed out another interesting fact about unicorns - they are possibly the only mythical creature that is not based on human fears. Unicorns are not monsters. Anytime they are spoken of in ancient texts they are revered and respected. They are strong, solitary animals who seek to do good for all around them. Never does a unicorn pose a threat to humans, or any other creature that does not seek first to harm them."
[taken from http://www.gods-and-monsters.com/unicorn-myths.html]

Interesting, eh? Now, obviously, this post is in no way expert. But y'all probably already knew that.

I think one of the most interesting things is that the ancient Greeks thought the unicorn lived in India. Now doesn't that do fun things with your imagination?

Dia duit,
~Penny