tiny bit

 Did the postal route today, mostly normal bumping along and got done about three o'clock.  I started doing some more Czech again with the Japanese, because my grammar on that always starts to invert when I stay away from it too long.  Not much else.  I'm still pretty sure I have tomorrow off, but not sure what else I'll do.  Need to finish more laundry, and clean a few areas.  I'm pretty sure Mark wants to do some more grocery shopping - I grabbed a few things that can only be gotten at the one store in the post office town, in anticipation that we would get more at the other town tomorrow.

Made tacos for dinner, or at least - a semblage of them...  also want to go have a bath with the V05 coconut stuff I like and got some of today.

I've been having some pretty odd and very realistic dreams.  One of them the other night was drawing out 52.00 from a bank just before closing time, and trying to count up what I was given, which was a large array of very non-standard coins as well as some bills.  One of the coins looked like a silver walnut shell.  I was asking the bank teller, who wanted to go home, how I was supposed to add all this up and know I had the right amount?  There were also three dollar coins and even a 2.50 coin which I thought simply had to be complete fantasy - but no, there really were some three dollar and 2.50 dollar coins back in early America - although they were gold, and the ones in my dream were silver, with a face on the front and a bird on the back though, which was accurate and probably robbed from my brain actually knowing that quarters are like that (and the other coin types were modelled onto the quarter dollar, 'quarter eagle' is the 2.50 and the 'eagle' was a ten dollar coin!)

 

I doubt Esme will read the blog, but I did buy her one specialty coin for her birthday- a real coin from a foreign country, as a sort of souvenier.  I'm hoping it will come in time, it's not expensive at all but it looked cool and I saw something about it being a modern coin but resembling 'remarkably' the ancient variety of coin from the region in an archaeology article.   As in it was kind of lost knowledge that the ancient coin had a drawing on it so very similar to what they picked for the modern coin.. but people in 2024 are still pretty amused by the similarity.  

 I know that this is more for 'I would like her to have it' than her actually wanting it - but it's something that could last compared to a new stuffed animal (she has a thousand) etc etc..and it is harder to buy for a teenager, especially when they 'don't want anything' everytime you ask.  I've gotten her 'numismatist' things a few times over the years, some just because they were cool (the Dutch coins), one (the mercury dime) for nostalgia because my grandmother had given me one as a necklace,  the pennies I had saved as a young child that were wheat backs and then one year we even gave her several rolls of 50 cent pieces and a collector book for them just to prove to her that they were indeed real and still quite available.  Her grandmother gave her a few that she had brought back from Germany and Japan as well.  So, even though she's not really interested in coin collecting, she's mildly interested in the fact that I've made her a coin collection over the years *ha*  and we put it in a nice glass display case that she keeps, along with ticket stubs and other bits like iron patches or cards etc. from places we have went over the years.

 

 

 

I happened to still have these pictures on my desktop -- The 'dimes' I got her one year for Christmas, they are from the Netherlands and were just in the 'these are cool' dish at the local pawn shop.  I had went there to get an American 'very fine' graded mercury head dime because my grandmother had given me one of those and over time it was lost, so I wanted to give her one like it and tell her the story about how that one had been made into a necklace.

I also ordered her a book I DO think she will like, that I saw in a scientific article about foxes.   And she did pick out a game on the computer that she did want, and I got that for her.

bits

 It's almost the end of another week.  Went out and got the animal feeds today after work, but on the way back I stopped at a gas station and suddenly the car wouldn't start.  I called the mechanic and he tried to walk me through some checks - the battery had charge but the ignition in the Buick Century would not even click - no lights, nothing.  So, he asked me tighten the connectors to the battery but I didn't have the proper tools in the trunk (same as Mark originally didn't have the right things to change a tire with it the first time that happened).  So, he was good and came out to find me at the gas station and showed me that really was the problem - the negative connector had started to come loose every once in a while.  It's one of those new-fangled types, not the good old fashioned kind the other two trucks had that could be turned with a simple wrench - you have to have the right socket set for it and a small handled one at that because you have to reach down into the machine a little ways.  He told me that was an issue he saw with that car before - and ones like it, but showed me how to fix it and what tool I need to get to put in the trunk.  

 

Mark comments that the 'new fangled type' is on a 2001 car, and the types on the other 1998 and 2004 cars were adapted after-market back to the older style.  But the 'new fangled' I am talking about has been around nearly 25 years - and the new-fangled NOW is even worse for repair-ability by yourself.

 

So, got home, made dinner and fed animals, didn't do the laundry, and only did the minimum work on the monthly budget - like the car knew I got a paycheck *ha* no, not really, and the mechanic didn't charge a lot for the 'house call', but he definitely deserved something for coming out at 5 pm and helping me get home.  It's already been a long night, and tomorrow is coming at the same time as usual -- headed to bed.  I've borrowed Mark's socket set to put in it just until I buy one - but am not expecting to have the same issue with it tomorrow.  It was so strange to have it happen today with no warning - it might have been a little less power going up a hill between the feed store and the gas station that I looked at the temperature gauge and said 'its not overheating, why is it sluggish?' and that was the only thing that made me wonder what was going on - the radio played, the lights on the dash were on, and it didn't sound any stranger than usual except on that one hill.

Still doing Japanese on all platforms (two duolingo, clozemaster).  Getting a few more new words finally on the highest duolingo profile.  Listening to a channel called Anime.Mex? that is spoken Spanish commentary and also Spanish subtitles  over the spoken Japanese from the anime soundtrack.  The animes they are reviewing tend to be sort of more 'explicit' ones than I usually watch or read, but I know that is a very large portion of animes out there, as well.  And I am getting much better at following the slang and colloquial conversation.

bit of bits - When I come in from outside at work the empty darkness is 'green' in the building, but I found it much more interesting that the darkness of the cardboard boxes when the green overflare begins to go away is now red.  That happened to me twice, and I'm walking through that without a flashlight - the darkness is black, and the boxes look just faintly red, so I'm getting through it in the dark not just by memory or feel but by 'seeing'.  I'm not quite sure what that is - it goes away and everything becomes just black, but it was eerie the first time and the second time it was like 'there has to be some reason for this, infra-red, latent heat?   Mark and I have noticed many times I 'see' infra-red in full light (especially sunlight) as a mirage reaction.  I can tell when something is hot by looking at it, but it doesn't look red in the light.. it looks wavy or 'vibrate-y' is about the best word for it.  

 Also, I found a place today that you can stand and hear someone clear as a bell who is standing on the other side of the warehouse, some thirty feet away - but when you begin to walk towards that person the sound stops echoing like that and they get quieter, then of course louder as you get nearer to them again.  That was VERY strange - I turned the corner from my office and thought my boss was right there by the wall, or maybe just inside that office there - and looked down the hallway and she was on the other end of the building talking to someone else.  It's either vents or just plain perfectly-bouncing echoes as it is a metal building.

witterings and ramblings

 

A few things I wrote elsewhere I wanted to keep hold of: 

My brain is always going a million miles a minute, it feels like.. so this is just a taste of trying to put some of that down into text.

What is the concept of time?

"I've been thinking about this for years, since a dream I had in high school. Time is a fractured crystal/matrix on tangent point with the three dimensions of physical space, and -of itself the fractures in its own matrix become something like the Droste effect light going into infinite mirrors within mirrors - there is loss and duplication within the fractures of a magnitude we cannot quite grasp."

 I did have this dream - it was what, 1996, 1998?  somewhere around there, I remember looking at my computer in my mother's house and wondering how I could capture even a tiny bit of the idea to save it for later... I sat down and wrote 'The Crystal Matrix' and 'The Philosopher of Crystal Valleys' somewhere around that time.. and the type of dream still returns to me once in a while - and I can never quite grasp it - it falls apart the more I try to understand it.  I've written a bit about it in my book 'Time in December' in some ways, but had to mold the idea to fit the story in a way that was slightly more specific than the whole concept.  I do like the scene in the movie Interstellar (or, as I more commonly think of it, the movie with the girl named after Murphy's Law)... but I don't feel it quite hits the right 'umami' taste of the 'real thing' I experienced in the dream, very very close to the idea, but something was missing

 

Charlotte this morning : 

"Charlotte's blue heeler side was showing this morning - definitely herding dog there - I slept in today because it was Sunday and she was completely focused on getting me outside to feed the chickens, nose bump, alarm snooze, beleaguered sigh with chin on bed, nose bump, hard stare and excited eyebrows every time I move... okay you're FINALLY up....circle to door, sigh, head to stairs, ok.. yes human the coffee (but, chickens? you know about the chickens, right? *head twist and circle*), okay the cookie, I like cookie too.. but... chickens? Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, turns circles.. *I get the chicken feed in the container* OK oh boy! *nearly soar through air on the way to the door* we're finally feeding the chickens! If that dog could fly, she would have all the way to the coop with me."

Mark says I could make four panel cartoons of this sort of thing.. and that is the best I can do in description.

 

And, about the night before last : 

"I had this dream last night where my brain was trying everything to wake me up, zombies, extra limbs, fantastic glass objects with light streaming through them in a temple where the water was rising, going through books that don't actually exist, seeing people in an office that I knew were TV actors and saying hello to them as their characters, walking through mazes that defied gravity, crowds of unfamiliar people, a ghost, papers and signs in foreign language, vehicle issues where my key didn't want to work, logging into work terminals with the wrong password, trying to open combination locks from years ago - just one puzzle/problem thing after another and each thing I faced I was like 'ok'.. go through the motions, get through this thing and you just know something else will show up etc.. but none of it actually pushed me to awake - and then, I picked Esme up at the bus stop during the rain in my mail vehicle (instead of my normal one) which the mail vehicle doesn't actually have a seat there, and I never take it home in the first place ---- and THAT did it --- it was such a surreal mix of real and 'wait, what - that isn't how this goes, this is never how this goes' that it finally did wake me up. And I thought.. wow, zombies, extra limbs, Japanese and Escher-type mazes didn't do it, but being in the wrong vehicle at the bus stop does. *that's my brain, I guess*"

... "still what makes me almost/ (the most) amused is that all the far-beyond-reality stuff doesn't 'faze' my sleeping brain, it just tries to find the way around it as if I am already knowing it is a dream and 'meh, these things happen' etc.. but the actually almost real normal thing but still 'hey the details are wrong' task was what shook me awake. In the dream I was asking myself 'is the stripe on Esme's coat just like that, I don't think it is....' and enough of those mismatches made me question enough to kick me out of the dream entirely" 

 

I really wish I could explain the glass figures - they were absolutely ethereal delicate, breathtaking and luminous - like sundial-shaped shells - - I worried if I tried to pick them up they would shatter just from the pressure of the touch - they were sitting on a shelf in front of some clerestory windows, but the water was coming in from the stairs above, rising in the sunken temple area (blue-green stone, similar to the minecraft underwater temples) and I needed to get out of there and continue my 'quest' - I think at that point I was looking for a bookcase to put the books in my office that I was sharing with several characters from Fringe and Warehouse 13, but really in the dream, I understood that my brain was playing with me there with the actors/celebrities/characters and the books that didn't exist were foremost on my mind (if I can see them and they are books I can make them again etc.) that if I was going to have them for a while yes I did need a bookcase... and then of course other things happened, in the crowd there was a girl in a yellow dress, who was asking me questions and I suddenly decided I could phase us into a ghost mode and get through the crowd and bring them to where they needed to be and warn them and some other people about some things, give them some philosophy etc. which was fairly basic, and then continue on my quest, saw my mail van, delivered some mail, sorted out codes, had the combination lock question, 39, 11 and I don't remember the last one, maybe 5 or 45, I didn't get it open - it was from ten years ago, and then I saw my daughter and two other girls getting off their bus, but not at the bus stop, and picked her up, but her coat had the wrong stripe, and I didn't recognize the other girls, and that my van doesn't have that seat there is a shelf there (which has happened in dreams before, conflation with another vehicle) and then I was still right-hand driving and somebody on the side of the road wanted us to pick up furniture in the van and I was dubious that it would fit or that I could lift it, but I got out and loaded it up with superhuman strength, and realized the texture of it was all wrong and at that moment I was investigating why it didn't feel correctly under my hand and that kicked me fully awake

Grandma Irene's puppies

 We got the heating and air person over, and an electrician, today to fix Grandma's wall heater outlet, the heater, and the central unit.  I had called them from work and then went over there to meet the heating and air person, but they were just finishing up when I got there.  Now her heat is working for the upcoming winter.  Esme has been helping out with these two making sure they get some lap time, communication and checking on their food and water with Grandma.  Grandma has called the white one Patches, and the black one with a few white bits Tippy.  They are both girls, and we estimated about 8 weeks old at the most.  They came from a neighbor who was visiting the other day, and she said he had a lot of them he was trying to give away.

a month

I've been working as the logistics clerk for a month now - and I like it.  There is a lot of data to analyze.  There's mostly always something to do, and it is consistent.  Since it is a very small company, the job is a bit of a mosaic of things that at a bigger company might be done by several people - but in a small company it is enough to keep one person busy.  So besides arranging and scheduling transportation for how orders are received and the products are shipped (the logistics part), I am also doing cleaning duties, ordering supplies, answering the phone and keeping the utility bills and other things paid by scanning them and sending them to their billing department etc. etc.. It's a job that needs to be done and I'm taking an 'ikigai' approach to it, not as in MY reason for being, but there is a reason there is a job there and it needs someone to do it, and I needed a job that I could be a good fit for - so I am going to show up and do it to the best of my potential.  

 I'm still a bit worried about snow and ice this winter, and getting there so early in the morning before dawn... but taking it as it comes.  And I'm still doing the postal route on Saturdays (under the same sort of it needs someone to make sure it is done, and to do it well, and that person is me, umbrella).  That's a little stressful for the managers at the post office because now, finally, the carrier I was subbing for the last few years is just now taking her vacation days for the year after saving most of them, and I'm not available to cover for them during the weekdays because I'm now doing the other job.  If she might have taken her vacation a little earlier in the year I might not have been so broke that I went looking for a second job!  But, then, I wouldn't be here doing this, learning these new things and would still be getting really inconsistent pay checks through this winter that is coming up, scraping by or falling behind instead of getting the bills paid.  

I am glad these two jobs did fit together this way and I will continue trying to do them both.  It is covering our bills, and giving me a better feeling for this winter.  Maybe after another month, the office job told me when I interviewed, I can plan to cover a day here or there for the post office and use my own vacation or time off from the office job to do it.  We'll cross that road when we get there.

Laundry, - we need to pull the washing machine away from the wall this weekend and unscrew the wall panel and see if we can see where that bit of water is consistently leaking from.  It might be from the machine itself.. or the drain hose, we're just not sure.  We are pretty sure it isn't from the valves or it would be constant, and it is a small amount of water that only shows up when we run the machine.  Mark and Esme even asked me if maybe it is coming from that vanity sink on the other side of the wall that we rarely use - but I was using it for washing my face almost every night up to a few nights ago - and there was no water.  I just ran a load of laundry tonight and there is a bit of water visible at the base of the machine right by the wall.  

 We turned on the heater for the house.  Trying to get Grandma's heating on, as well - she has two new 6 to 8 week old female puppies and her house is cold.  Esme went up there to give them some socialization and hold them in her lap, and I've asked her to do the same tomorrow while she is on break.  I went up there today, too - and spent some time with Grandma and the pups while trying to get the thermostat to kick in - it didn't.  The person who gave her the pups told her they were older, so we had given her food for older dogs.  Then we all saw them with our own eyes (Esme, me, then Mark) and we knew they were younger and needed different food.  Mark and I ran to the store yesterday and got the puppies the right kind of food and I put down a water dish today which I thought Grandma had done yesterday -- and they will need some vetting in another few weeks.  I checked with Mark and they do not need worm medicine for another week or two, but then they will need it every two weeks for a little while, a very small amount each, as they are very small and will be small even as adults.

I'm still reading the manga Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You, studying mostly Japanese the past few days on three different accounts (two duolingo and one clozemaster) and doing the Tetris game on my phone.

taco tuesday

 They had some tacos at work, so I guess it's Taco Tuesday, somewhere, today heh.  And a trucking company sent us some stainless steel coffee mugs with lids, which that was cool to get 'swag'.  I did some Greek, Catalan, Japanese, French and Turkish in between different breaks, because my phone Duolingo had Super Duolingo free trial.  Now, I'm home after getting chicken feed and a few groceries, and going to do the language lessons on my PC account and read some more manga before bed.  Esme is having some leftovers, and because I had extra lunch today I don't feel like eating that much more for dinner.  There is a battered banana that was still in my bag that I might finish off later. 

manga

 Oh wow, I've read too much manga again today.  But, that is a good day off, perhaps.  I slept early last night, got up for an hour, and then slept all the way to five a.m. again - waking up without the alarm.  I also did laundry, and a bit of mopping, changed all the rugs, and looked at the garden this morning.  I almost took a nap, but then got up and cooked something.  But honestly, besides doing the normal amount of language lessons, I've read about six hours worth of manga today, at the least.  One of them was very good (Kimi ni Todoke 'Reaching You' in English)  in that it had a lot of Japanese culture concepts I then had to go look up, and find out what it meant - 'White Day' (like Valentine's Day), words for junior and senior and terms of respect for relatives and teachers, and a few words for foods I didn't know etc etc...  But I guess when I start seeing things half-manga drawing style in my mind's eye, and thinking of my cooking and cleaning being influenced by manga, I definitely have to stop *ha* right, eh?

but this was entirely influenced by the garden, before I began reading much manga this morning - shishito peppers, some bits of kale and a cucumber, chopped up, cooked in olive oil and biryani masala spices, eaten with rice and soy sauce and an egg for breakfast.  At least, it wasn't influenced by *today's* manga... I did wonder though, what is the reason most people don't cook cucumber?  It seems to do just fine in dishes like this for me.  I also cook radishes sometimes.

Mark had put the end of a pork roast in the oven early this morning and we had some of it shredded up for dinner, with canned apples for Esme and I.

bits

 Mark's nephew and his wife came through Hurricane Milton just fine, which is a relief.  It's been nearly a month at the new job, and they told me the amount of product we're shipping out is unprecedented.   After a few more weeks the warehouse will be nearly empty, except for what they are making now, and the materials they have to make it with (which are a lot, though).  The manager is selling it, and I'm setting up transportation, and the warehouse crew is loading it up.  The warehouse crew said it was more work than they wanted right now - but they were also having a really hard time finding things that had been squirreled away for months and months and hadn't been selling... so, it's going to be good in the future to have that old stuff gone and be able to organize putting the new stuff in ways they can get to it.. right?  They had already claimed it was ruining their sanity trying to figure out where to put the new stuff a few weeks ago...

 For spreadsheet practice at work I made a 'shipping price trend analysis chart' showing all of the prices they have paid for freight to every destination from the records they had kept (already on another screen that I update daily) since the company was bought out.  They had told me to play around with the spreadsheet program and see what I could make it do in whatever free time I wasn't cleaning etc.. and since I am calling and scheduling and taking bids on these freight trips - I thought it would be a useful tool as well.

I did Japanese and Turkish and French today at work, (before work clockin, at lunch and at afternoon break) although just a tiny bit of the last two.  Then I tried Spanish and failed badly on the verb cases and spellings.  Came home and punched out the next module on the much higher level PC Duolingo profile - but had a lot more time to work on it after dinner.  After work I had also put another cheap new tire on the mail truck and got a bit of groceries - not everything, but some.  Tired now, headed for bed.

I still think often : Why is a forty-five year old geek girl in Tennessee learning bits and pieces of so many languages?  And then I think .. why not?  I could put the same amount of effort into mathematics, accounting, business etc... and not get as much joy and progress out of it.  It's taken a long time to find out I was actually good at languages, after being told for so long that I couldn't possibly be (because of the speech impediment and dyslexia)... so I'm enjoying this thing my brain can do :)  and have to keep finding ways to make it more useful, but that is second chair to actually enjoying learning.

bits

It is starting to get cooler - and we'll probably have to light up Mark's propane heater soon.   I've been busy at my new job, and trying to get enough sleep at night in between it all - it starts so early, and then our typical family schedule runs until 7 pm or so... I am really wondering how that is going to work when winter hits, as it is already far before daylight that I have to set out for it.  It has been really good to know that all the bills for the month can get paid now - and Esme's birthday is coming up as well.

 

I'm still studying Japanese every day, and found a site for reading some manga, in multiple languages.  I read one in Portuguese the other day, and some of one in Turkish (although my Turkish is very low level, I understood some of it without going to the translator and then when I found the English version I was further impressed).  I am also sprinkling in some French and Spanish in there.  There was a driver at work that did not speak English, but I was too afraid to speak to him in what little Spanish I have.  I know that is still strange, studying all of these other languages and Spanish is the most useful, but not the one I find the easiest to grasp.  If only a driver from Houston spoke fluent Welsh ;)   

 

(Honestly, a goal of mine is to do Babbel or some lessons on italki or something at some point and get some good practice in doing actual production in conversational Spanish, but since it is one of my hardest languages to grasp, I haven't reached out to actually spending anything on it)



The manga I just finished reading was '365 days to the wedding', which was very sweet and different from the things I have usually found. The pair start out as barely work acquaintances and then claim they are getting married to avoid being sent on a bad assignment - but it turns into more, and they both break out of their shells and find out life is so much more than they were shielding themselves away from, and that together they can get through the embarrassments and constant worries and build on what they are discovering . Another one was really hard to translate the title of it - it was 'Usuzumi no Hate', which is translated from the Japanese as 'the color of the End, mission in the apocalypse' about an android girl with the memories of a real person? (they are still explaining some of that), who is trying to clean up a strange plague that has turned countless millions of humans to crystal - and is still extremely contagious and fatal to any remaining human life unless dealt with by the androids. That was the one I had started reading in Turkish before I found it in English. I finished all there is so far of Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) but it is definitely not finished yet. I had to read the last chapter of that in Portuguese as it was the only langauge available.




Of course, the hurricane (Milton) is about to hit in a few days as well - hope everything is alright for the people there. I know a few that are staying, and a family that is evacuating to the east until it is over with.




Languages:  (old style Duolingo, from DuoMe)

French                 L 25     XP 52905 22905 XP beyond Level 25
Welsh                  L 25      XP 30114 114 XP beyond Level 25
Spanish               L 23       XP 25613 +387 XP to next level
Japanese             L 21     XP 17741 +1259 XP to next level

Czech                  L 19     XP 13888 +1112 XP to next level
Romanian           L 17      XP 11143 +857 XP to next level
Portuguese         L 16     XP 9632 +868 XP to next level

Italian                 L 15     XP 7952 +1048 XP to next level
Greek                 L 14     XP 7226 +274 XP to next level
German             L 14     XP 6148 +1352 XP to next level
Finnish              L 13     XP 5515 +485 XP to next level
Catalan (en espanol)      L 12 XP 4303 +597 XP to next level

Swedish            L 11     XP 3848 +52 XP to next level
Russian             L 11     XP 3818 +82 XP to next level
Spanish (from French)     L 11 XP 3190 +710 XP to next level
Norwegian        L 11     XP 3097 +803 XP to next level
Hungarian        L 10     XP 2591 +409 XP to next level

Ukrainian         L 10      XP 2288 +712 XP to next level
Irish                 L 9        XP 2174 +76 XP to next level
Turkish            L 9       XP 2074 +176 XP to next level
Chinese            L 9       XP 2055 +195 XP to next level
Polish               L 9         XP 1798 +452 XP to next level
Danish             L 4         XP 299 +1 XP to next level

and Latvian elsewhere, and Lithuanian on babadum and baltoslav

and another duolingo profile on my phone that I had made in 2017 and took back up again because it was easier to do that than have dual login from pc... //sigh  I usually stick to about two to five languages per day unless I'm feeling overly bouncy and need brain exercise

Japanese on Clozemaster, did Russian on Busuu for a bit, Japanese on LingQ for a bit, French and Spanish on Kwizik, yomuyama and a few other things in Japanese, mangadex in whatever languages it lets me, cooking blogs in Portuguese and Norwegian and Latvian, children's games sites etc etc..

the dream of three heads exchanged

 

 There are the three heads of state, they are meeting.  One is the Wizard, with his long hair and robes.  He is stern, and angry, and can move and change things with just the sound of his voice or the wave of his hand.  And yet, this does not satisfy him.  Another is the Scholar, who is not actually meeting.  This is his house, and the other two have showed up, and are having some sort of insistence on having a meeting.  The Scholar arranges his inks, looks at his books.  He wishes there was a room in the house that he could get away from the other two, and work on creating the drawings and books that are still so disorganized after so many years.  In many ways, he has been running from both of them for years.  He has been running away from the entire world, perhaps for all of his life.  He picks up bottles of ink from another room, how have they wandered there?  He scowls at his housekeeper girl, who reminds him so much, in some ways, of the King.  No matter how well the house is organized, something is always wandering away one way or the other, sometimes even by his own absentmindedness.  In that, he himself reminds himself of the King. 

 

The King is a young and strong man, with a curly black head of hair.  The Scholar is trying to tell him things, trying to pass information through stories, bringing out maps, drawings - hoping to pick up the man's interest.  The King actually does visit here often, with one thought or another to discuss, and the Scholar tries to remember information he has found that might help him or help him make his decisions.  But the King is not in the mood to think, he feels like all he does is think all day - on things everyone asks him to do, laws to make, things that seem to swirl around and around and hardly ever come to anything but by inches.  

 

The Scholar is upset, and wishes he could make the Wizard go away - he is a bad influence on such a young hothead as the King is at the moment.  And the bringing of the three together, at this place, at this time, does not bode well.  There is a prophecy of the switching of three heads, and that in this could end the world.  

 

The Wizard strides angrily around the room, interested by everything but not having time for any of it.  He paces and does nothing useful.  He breaks things, he smacks the mouth of a small white monkey that is attempting to get affection.  He threatens to take its mouth away entirely by magic, if it does not go away.  The housekeeper gives it a bit of fruit and it sits clutching her robes at her feet and bares its teeth as the Wizard paces about.  He gestures angrily at everything, whether it is right or wrong.  The thought of the end of the world actually makes him excited.  He rubs his hands together and thinks of all the ways it could be accomplished.  And yet, something does hold him back.

 

The Scholar gathers the last of his inks into one room, on the desk, even though he is afraid with one sweep of his hand the Wizard will simply dash them to pieces.  Then, with the Wizard to his one side, and the King to the other, he begins to make his case.  I know what you have come to do, brother, he tells the Wizard.  And I know you do not think you can stop him, but you have come anyway, he tells the King.  And you do this because you do not know, neither of you, the way everything entangles and becomes from things you have not yet discovered.  Without you here, King, this could not happen.  If you had left and went far away, this would not have happened.  Without you here, I would have no need to worry, he tells the Wizard.  And yes, if I was not here, if I went out that door and left my home and all of these books, it would also not happen.  However, how can I leave you, with your destructive nature, and you, with your carelessness, here in my library?  You come here to my home, and because of that, I do not leave.  We are all to blame.  

 

But I also know that this was prophecy because it will happen, at some point.  I have read it, in many languages, and have spent many years thinking over what it could possibly mean.  And now, my brother, for yes - you see, I remember in many lives, I was your little brother, my Wizard friend.  And you, also my brother, you were my little brother in many lives, my friend the King.  And I know you both as brothers.  You, my elder brother, are hotheaded and do not think things through, and are even more angry when you discover the very information you wished for but did not have when you acted.  You, my younger brother, are strong and ready to act, but have the worst habit of getting yourself into exactly the place you do not need to be.  It is not entirely a fault, without that, we would never solve some things that need solving.  For my fault, all too much, is that I will avoid the fight at all costs except the loss of knowledge.  

 

Here, we sit, looking at the prophecy that says the end of the world will come from the switching of three great heads.  And you, my elder brother, are all ready with the sword to take them off and reassemble them by magic.  And you, my younger brother, are also ready with the sword, with no plans whatsoever.  For years I have been trying to rephrase and reword, are they heads of state, are they headwaters of rivers, are they this, are they that.  And here as I sit between you two I find that they are actually the changing of minds.  

And now that I cannot back away from this situation any longer, I have a proposal.  We should switch our heads.  Ah, yes, I have your attention.  Hold with me a little longer, as I explain how.   The Scholar holds his hair for a moment up on top of his head, mimicking the Wizard's hairstyle, then flattens it down to his head, mimicking the King. He turns to address the Wizard first.  You, my elder brother, should become a Scholar.  If you were to become a King, in your frame of mind - you would destroy the world.  But something holds you back because you want to know what will happen - and that curiosity needs to be developed.  You must learn more and solve the anger that burns in your eyes.  You must take to maps and stars, chemistry and botany and use your powers to discover how the world is put together, in order to use your powers in ways that do not destroy things.  Don't look at me like that.  Think.  That is the thing that you Avoid.  The scholar avoids too much, but he also teaches, and collects information so it can not disappear.  I see that recognition now in your eyes.  This is what it means to exchange our heads - to exchange our old ways of thinking, and try on new ones.

 

And you, my brother, the King - you must become the Wizard, taking your energy and your vitality out into the world learning to make things move in ways that do not involve the horse and the sword.  You must animate your energies and organize things beyond campaign and country.  And to do this yes, you will also need to learn, and you will need a teacher, perhaps in our eldest brother, the Wizard here, as he becomes the Scholar.  

 

And I will also need a teacher.  I, who do not wish the position and would avoid it at all costs, must become a King, and go out into the world and use what I have learned in books.  But they do not always work in the real world, as you, my little brother the King, know all too well.  I must try to arrange the affairs of real men and women, laws and countries.  And without the power of the Wizard to point and make things happen, for that only works in one or two places, where the power of the King is to move many minds and set up structures that will move whole societies in good and purposeful directions even in the places he is not present.  

 

And in this, we would have swapped heads, and the world would not end, as it might if we lost all the knowledge I, the Scholar have put together in this place.  And we might surely lose it if you the Wizard, my dear brother, destroys it out of anger.  We might also lose it, though, if you were to became the King.  For you are so used to having your way immediately at the snap of your fingers.  And if the Wizard has thought this through, and has any love in him still for his little brothers, he will open his eyes and take to quelling his impatience with the world.  

 

And you, my youngest brother, the King.  In learning how to move (the very elements of) things yourself, where you are, in the powers of the Wizard, and with your wisdom and knowledge of people and their ways, perhaps you can influence in one or two places the world as it is, and move it the directions you had always wanted to, bit by bit, inch by inch, still, but in a different way that you can see and touch.  Perhaps this will fill that longing ache within you for the things that never seem to happen, no matter how hard you have tried to get people to agree and work towards them.

For in the end, you can know all there is to know, but do nothing with it.  You can move mountains, but not in the right directions, if you have not studied the flow of the rivers and the animals that live there.  You can move nation states to peace or to war, but it is still a game of chess and the moving of hearts and minds that often cannot agree.  In changing our heads, we each can grow and become more, instead of less on the chopping block.  The Library is yours, my eldest brother.  Please be gentle with it, and let it show you the wonders of it.  If you become impatient with one thing, open another - and another.. and through the learning of many things the structures of this world you have moved so easily in the past will reveal their miraculous interwoven web.  A world of energy and possibilities awaits you, my youngest brother, and a change to move your chess pieces on the world stage differently and with more purpose.  And perhaps I will need both of you to point my way out into the World of men and minds, as well.  

 

So, can we decide to cooperate, instead of destroy? 

bits

 

 So much in the news today - Iran, Lebanon and Israel - the port worker's strike and a lot of fear being spread around about supplies being hard to get over the holidays and winter if it continues.  Gah.  I don't like fearmongering like that - and we all should already know things will be a little harder to get because of the hurricane damage.  It doesn't mean go run out and buy up every store, making more trouble far and wide.  But that doesn't stop people from trying to do it.   I did go get all of our animal feeds, but mostly because I was running to the other town for something Mark wanted - and that is where the feed store is, and I didn't want to have to run there again right after work in a few days.  Now that I work in the other 'other' town Monday through Friday, and at the post office on Saturday, there isn't a lot of time to get to something that is only open until 5.  I stopped by that grocery store there to pick up the few things that I usually do buy there that the other one doesn't have, or doesn't have generic of (canned apples, and canned carrots - the big store has been out of canned carrots for going on a month and that's weird)  It made for a long day, and 150 lbs of animal feeds unloaded at home, then dinner, and some Scrapheap Challenge, and Japanese lessons.  

 

 

I've done some French, a lot of Japanese - my phone Japanese has now surpassed both the French and Spanish levels, as well as the Tetris type game on my breaks and before work starts.  Some of the manuals and invoices for equipment have bits in them in Italian, and yesterday - one with electrical descriptions in Turkish.  I read a bit of a welcome page that was bilingual and realized after a few sentences that it was Turkish - the word 'onun' especially and all the 'az' on the ends of things.   I still haven't gone past level 9 on Duolingo in Turkish, just enough to see the structure of the language and the most common words  Not really the kind of words in an electrical manual!  Then I confirmed by seeing a website link that ended in .tr which is the country code.  I had to scan a lot of those manuals in for digitizing, part of what they wanted me to do for this job.  Lots more truck stuff tomorrow.  Reading more of the Apothecary Diaries manga that I found - not quite up to the point where the anime had left off until next year - but enjoying it.  I am seeing some differences in translation between the English translated manga and the English dub anime even - word choices etc.  And there are some little scenes or details that are not included in the anime, to cut down time and frames etc. 

Also, I had been taking a mixture of cranberry juice and water in one container to work, and coffee in my thermos.  Then, when I got home, I would combine all that was left, heat it up, and drink it together.  Yes.  That's odd.  What's worse though - is I forgot one of those cups in the microwave when Mark and Esme were starting to cook yesterday - and Mark told me my 'coffee' was beeping.  So I took it out, nice and warm, and added a bit of milk to it like I usually do, forgetting it had the cranberry juice with it.  Curdled.  *Stare at it*  Oh.  Yes.  That combination doesn't work too well!  Mark could barely contain a giggle there, after he heard what the issue was.