Alright, subconscious, I’m listening. What are you trying to tell me here?

Oh no! I forgot to study for my physics exam and they’re going to make me repeat high school if I fail! These dreams always always take place in high school. And they always involve the adult-me, not the teenage-me. Adult-me, who has forgotten all her physics and most of her chemistry and higher-level math, but somehow must take these exams. The fact that I have three children to raise does not deter my high school teachers/zombie slave-masters from insisting I do so. The terror of being trapped in high school–again!–permeates these dreams.

Subconscious says: You’re feeling like you have lost control of your life. Stuff happens to you and you can’t cope. PANIC!

Help! I’m stuck in a house with a hundred rooms and I can’t get out! In this dream, I’m in a house. Supposedly my house. Only my house has spawned a hundred extra rooms when I wasn’t looking. And these rooms are old and horrid, full of peeling wallpaper, cracked linoleum, and stained metal bathtubs with clawed feet. And all of these rooms need renovating. Every single one, from the ground up.

I’m overwhelmed before I even start.

And no, it’s not like I’ve ever had to renovate a fixer-upper of a house or anything like that before. *puts tongue firmly in cheek*

Subconscious say: Yeah, you bit off more than you can chew. STRESS!!!

I’m in the ocean. No, by the shore. No, I’m crossing over a waterfall. Ah, the water dreams. These are the dreams I’ve had the longest, and they are the most ambiguous. Sometimes, they are downright terrifying, like the one in which a child of mine was swept off a narrow bridge and into the boiling rapids *shudder*. Other times, they are surprisingly peaceful; once, I dreamed I was in a shallow place in the middle of the ocean, bobbing in clear clear water, surrounded by white walls which kept out big waves. In the last iteration of the water dream, I was in a beach house right by the sea, looking out of a big picture window. Every so often, a massive wave would come in and engulf the house. I’d see dolphins and whales go by the picture window. Then the wave would retreat, and I’d wait for the next one. I wasn’t terrified, but it was surreal.

Subconscious says: WATER: raging, terrible, sweeping away. WATER: calm, peaceful, protective. WATER: vast, powerful, majestic. Oooh, look at the pretty dolphins!

Yeah, subconscious, I don’t get it, either.

What about you? Do you have recurring dreams? What do you think your subconscious is trying to tell you?

“The king’s men came for Roshana at high noon.” ~Shadow Princess

“The mourning cloak flutters against my shop window. Eyes dark and wide, mouth open in soundless desire, her pale hands scrabble against the glass that separates her from my bottles.” ~Mourning Cloak

“I had a soulmate.

I knew this as surely as I knew my name or my mother’s face or the three chittering djinns who sat upon my bedposts and made faces at me while I slept. I felt the lack of my soulmate like a missing limb, or a fallen tooth, as a constant ache in my stomach.” ~Soulmate

“The monument could once have been a coffin on a pedestal. Time had fused the box to the rock beneath. Grime and moss crept up the stone sides, the glass at the top was distorted and rippled in waves.” ~untitled steampunk Snow White

“Rafael Grenfeld burrowed deeper into his nest of potato peelings and rotten cabbage leaves. The piercing wind-shriek of the stazis’ whistles had been silent for eight long gongs, his trousers were thoroughly soaked with old tea, soup and other things he didn’t dare think about, and his sense of smell had shut down out of sheer self-defense.” ~Quartz

Join me by posting the first sentences (up to three) of some of your stories in the comments. Happy Monday, and here’s to good beginnings!

He LOVES it. And, so, rather bemusedly, we have become a taekwondo family, with husband and son rushing off to the dojang two evenings a week, and Sir I. practicing kibons and showing off punches and kicks and strikes almost all the time.

We found this amazing video of the Korean National Taekwondo demo team. Apparently they travel around the world, breaking boards and showing off spectacular spinning kicks. While I wonder how useful some of these would be in an actual fighting situation, I admire the skill and athleticism on display here.

So, according to the rules, I need to post this cute little icon (happily grabs), link to the person(s) who nominated me (done! see above), tell people seven things about myself (see below) and pass on the award to 5/7/14 other people (er…how about three?).

Seven things about me:

1. I’m bilingual. I speak English and Urdu–the language of Pakistan, the country where I grew up. Hands up if you’d heard of the language before reading this post.

2. My husband and I got engaged in Hong Kong. We spent a month there and I loved it. Would love to go back there someday and take the kids.

3. Currently, I have a 2-liter bottle full of soil and grass seeds on the window sill, and steelwool rusting in a small bowl of water on the kitchen counter. These are otherwise known as the “What is a Biosphere?” and “Why is Mars Red?” experiments. Why yes, I am a homeschooling mom! Why do you ask?

4. Apparently, when I was a wee little tot, I had a pet lamb (Rabia had a little lamb, little lamb… no, it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, does it?). I used to ride it, and it would butt me affectionately in the tummy. It was scared of my mom’s high heels and would run and hide if it heard her coming. It would also eat clothes off the line. But the little lamb grew into a great big sheep and it was given away (or turned into dinner, I suppose).

Or so they say.

I have no recollection of such a pet, and I still wonder, to this day, if it is not a hoax perpetrated upon my gullible younger self.

5. Speaking of perpetrating hoaxes: When I was a preteen, I convinced my 5-years-younger brother that we were all a family of witches who’d been sent to earth to study humans. However, since he was born without magic, we’d have to leave him behind when we returned to Witch Land.

He was most upset.

Oh, I was a horrible sister. I’m better now.

6. I have this weird squicked-out can’t-look-away fascination with giant squids. And titanic battles between sperm whales and giant squids in the black depths of the ocean.

7. I take my tea the British way– black tea with two spoonfuls of sugar and a splash of milk. And biscuits to dunk into the tea are mandatory (I use Ritz crackers, since I can’t find any of the brands I grew up with here in the US, boo).

I pass along this award to:

• long-time reader Liana Mir
• long-time reader and fellow HTRYN-ite Prue at What’s it All About?
• another fellow HTRYN-ite Lisa at Writing, Dreams, and Drops of Ink

Like the cover of Brent Weeks’ The Way of Shadows

I like the swirly purple smoke/magic/gauze, too

Or Trudi Canavan’s The Magician’s Apprentice

David Dalglish’s Shadowdance trilogy

The contrast of white background and dark figure, and the swirl of a vibrant color, makes these covers visually striking. The Way of Shadows, for instance, really stood out from the rest of the books when I first saw it on the bookstore shelf.

This cover is different from the rest, but I couldn’t help but share it. Again, there’s the black and white contrast, coupled with a clever and imaginative concept. And great execution.

What styles of cover do you particularly like? Or dislike?

Check out my cover artist posts:

• cover artist: Larry Rostant
• cover artist: Chris McGrath

However, this article shows that some things are too rare and too labor-intensive to be more than one-time novelties:

To create the cape, British art historian Simon Peers and his American business partner Nicholas Godley spent five years collecting and harnessing over 1 million spiders in special “silking” contraptions to extract their threads, 24 critters at a time.

…

On average, 23,000 spiders yield roughly 1 ounce of silk, making the process intensely laborious and time-consuming. It’s not hyperbole then to claim that the textiles are among the world’s most rare and precious objects—liquid gold, if you will.

Unless, of course, you have a high-tech world where they’ve figured out how to manufacture artificial spider silk.

Or they have really really big arachnids.

*pause*

“Spider hunter” on that world might be an um… interesting job!

I would love to touch spider silk cloth, though. Just to see how it feels.

What about you? What rare or one-of-kind item would you like to see in person or hold in your hand for a few minutes?

Appa: Taking Appa away from Aang was an awesomely evil, horribly wonderful little twist. Think about it. Appa is Aang’s link to his past, the only one who has survived from his life a hundred years ago. No wonder Aang was so unhinged when he was stolen.

Dai Li: Oooh, things are not quite right in Ba Sing Se. Aang and co. just destroyed the giant drill from tunneling through the outer walls,  but no one inside cares. They’re not allowed to talk about the war, you see. And even though Aang has important information about the Day of Black Sun, he isn’t allowed to talk to the King. Smiling, blank-eyed bureaucracy stymies them at every turn. Turns out the Dai Li and their head are more concerned about keeping their power and hold over the king and city than the threat from the Fire Nation. Bad for Aang, bad for Ba Sing Se.

Zuko: Oh, Zuko, Zuko. And here I thought you were starting to come around. You grew reconciled to serving tea. You even smiled when your uncle got his own tea shop. You kept your cool when Jet tried to provoke you into revealing your fire-bending (unlike that last time, with the thugs in that earthbender village, remember?). You freed the Avatar’s bison, and dropped your Blue Spirit mask into the lake. You even went on a date! And did something nice for someone else.

And then Azula came.

Oh, I knew why you had it to make the wrong choice. Because you needed to get what you’ve always wanted–fame, acceptance, your father’s approval, a return home as a hero–and see how hollow and tinny it all was. You needed to go home and give it all up.

But still. Bad choice. Bad bad choice.

Azula: Still awesome, in the way Pratchett’s elves are terrific. She understands people and power and oh, she uses that knowledge like a sharp knife.

Still, can we say… foreshadowing?

Azula: "It's terrible when you can't trust the people who are closest to you." Foreshadowing, anyone??

Mai: I didn’t like Mai at first, but she’s grown on me. And can I just say that I don’t think she fears Azula at all? You won’t catch her going into a chute full of muddy gunk or fight over a performing bear if she doesn’t want to. Mai does. not. care. And, nyah. Azula can’t make her.

Three words: Toph. discovers. metalbending. I love LOVE watching the characters learn and discover new ways of using their bending. It adds a dynamism to the worldbuilding.

K, that was more than three words.

The Finale: This is my favorite finale of all three seasons, just for sheer on-the-edge-of-your-seat uncertainty. Is Iroh’s and Katara’s trust in Zuko misplaced? Will Aang give up Katara to achieve the true potential of the Avatar state? Will they defeat Azula and the Dai Li? It’s the lowest point of the plot arc–the last stronghold of the Earth Kingdom falls through treachery, Aang is badly wounded, and his friends barely escape with him at the end. But there is–always–still hope. And another season.

edited to add links to previous Avatar the Last Airbender posts:

• what I’m watching: avatar the last airbender 1
• what I’m watching: avatar the last airbender 2
• what I’m watching: avatar the last airbender 3
• avatar the last airbender: azula and toph

However, they did love the opening theme of Thundercats. And I can see why. The simple striking imagery, the uncluttered background, the clear character distinctions (no doubts as to who’s the Leader Dude and what type of cat he’s supposed to be!) and that darn catchy tune (a real mindworm, that), Thundercats has aged pretty well. The classic still looks better than the updated version.

And besides, it has Cheetara in it. Wouldn’t you want to be able to run so fast that you’re a blur, turn flips high in the air, whirl your staff around, and strike a cool pose? Without having a hair of your spotted style out of place?

I can do without that eye makeup, but color me jealous over her abilities

Other 80s children, which cartoons do you look back at fondly?