A New Motif

I just read another Breton fairy tale.  This girl is married to a guy who's been married four times before, but each of his former wives disappeared in suspicious circumstancte (no, it's not Bluebeard).  The girl gets scared one night, fearing that her husband will soon kill her too, so she goes to the chapel to pray and come up with a plan.  The ghosts of the four dead wives appear and tell her to run.  They each give her an object to help her escape--poison, rope, fire, and a club--objects with which they were respectively murdered.

I am absolutely fascinated by this motif; that one's pain and method of demise can be turned into a tool to succor another in their time of need, even to the point of undermining the plans of the original evil-doer.

Brilliant.

You Can Take The Girl Out Of The Fairy-Tale

...but you can't take the fairy-tale out of the girl.
Every once in a while I think I've outgrown or outrun my fairy-tale-daydreamer reputation, but though I swear I'm not giving myself away, I can't seem to escape it or hide it.

Yesterday I was talking to Sebastien and Kate about a weekend when everyone here is going to a wedding and I'll be here with one other wwoofer from Saturday to Tuesday morning by ourselves.  I was like, je peux faire n'importe quoi!  i can do anything at all!
Sebastien said you could run through the fields, swim in the river, climb the big oak tree to the very top!
Kate said or weave all day
and Sebastien said or maybe weave all night!  I grinned at the thought of that
and then Kate said, we will fill the studio with straw and tell you to weave it all into gold before we return
and Sebastien, then the fairies will come and finish it all for you in a moment so that you can go the ball.  they'll find some mice for horses and Petit Puss and Petit Noel will turn into people to escort you.
Kate interrupted, Petit Noel will turn into a handsome prince!  he will say he's always loved you and you will run away together and we will get back and wonder where you two went.
and I, laughing and loving this story, wondered how in the world they knew.



(and now I call that darling cat 'mon prince')  ^-^

Later

First pic:  thumb all wrapped up in the first thing I had at hand.  Second pic:  thumb after being wrapped up tightly for maybe 15 minutes.  I certainly will lose my thumbnail, but seeing as it is cut in half, that should be a straightforward process.  If I get some good bruising, I'll be sure to share pics of that as well :)

When Bruno got back to the house, he got me some homeopathic stuff, both for my thumb and for the little bit of shock that was making my hands shake. Also, he got me a real bandaid.  And Kate gave me a hug.  It doesn't hurt so bad anymore.

I am OH SO glad that I didn't lose the tip of my thumb!!  I am also grateful that it is my left thumb so that it won't interfere that much with typing or sewing.  Thank you thank you thank you, Heavenly Father, for that.

A Flesh Wound

I...just cut my thumb while chopping wood.  Like ten minutes ago.  It hurts.  It's a cut across my thumbnail, not very deep thank goodness.  The axe bounced on my thumb; I wasn't swinging it or anything.

I've wrapped it up very tightly and I'm holding it above my heart (meaning I'm typing this one-handed. Hey, what else am I going to do while wounded?).  I think the most painful thing is my imagination re-living the chop of an axe, only harder and faster.  I am SO grateful I still have the tip of my thumb.  This is why chainsaws and tablesaws are the stuff of nightmares.  Give me a sewing machine or a loom any day!!!

I'll post pictures later.
*pained grin*

'This Is A Dreaming Nest'

I have had the strangest dreams here.  For example:

My house was haunted by several ghosts, and became a tourist attraction for a bus-ful of Asians; but it wasn't until my sister and I were trapped in a burning basement with a dozen children that we discovered it was all set up by our murderous, shotgun-toting step-mother.  I woke up before the end.

My dad and I traversed a strange city with a crazy assassin on the loose.  My dad figured out it was us the man was looking for and attacked him, but turned out to be very bad at choking someone to death, and the man escaped.  I was furious, not because I really wanted to succeed at killing someone, but because now the killer knew who he was looking for.  I spent the rest of the dream sneaking around.

A baby died, and I couldn't save her.

I was running through logging territory in my underwear when I stopped to pull a car out of the woods by a cable. 

I married a man that I didn't love.  He didn't love me either, but the family of his true love refused to let them marry, and he figured I would make a good wife and mother.  It was very depressing.  Also, he somehow was the guardian of a houseful of children, not his.  I was trying to decide whether or not to keep our relationship strictly platonic until we could get a divorce.  When I woke up and realized it wasn't real, I almost wept tears of relief.

And then, last night, I wove and unwove and wove and unwove..

You might say my subconsious is working through some things.

*Does anyone know the movie reference in the title??  I'll give you a hint: the character who dreams in the nest is a cat...

Cuddling The Cat And Also Sylvan

The Stupidest Thing I've Done During A Lightning Storm

The sky was growing darker and darker as damp breezes made the trees and grasses rustle.  Thunder rumbled in an almost continuous threat.  I watched lightning flash from cloud to distant cloud as I held a ten foot metal pole in place.  We were building a sheep enclosure in preparation for gathering the sheep in preparation for shearing the sheep.  If I had gotten hit by lightning, it would've made for a great story.