I wanted to show everybody this because I’m just so proud of it! They’ll be another proper Denizen this month, though, don’t worry.
Here on the island, one of the churches has a twice yearly rummage sale where you donate what you can per bag you take, and we all bring old stuff to find new homes. Lately, there’s been SEVERAL KIDDIE POOLS full of incredible, untouched, often quite high end yarn…all my fiber buddies be still your hearts, it’s AWESOME.
So I had my 6 year ...
2025-01-26 19:53:41 +0000 UTC
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Hello, everyone!
Welp, if you follow me on Bluesky or Mastodon or X, you probably already know all this, but if you missed it...my work, of all and any kinds, has been severely curtailed by my child acquiring a movie-monster version of the flu that’s been going on for almost two weeks now. Tried school today and got sent home before noon because poor love is too weak to sit at their desk.
Aaaaaand my cat was sort of scarce over the weekend? Which is hard because he is a massive ...
2025-01-14 19:03:40 +0000 UTC
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It is the hush at the close of the year.
It always feels hushed to me, even if it's full of noise. The Northern Hemisphere in me, I suppose. There is always some flavor of excess dark, some flavor of excess cold, some sense of putting things away for the long white road of January. Even though New Year's Day is meant to be all new beginnings, December 31st has always felt like an ending to me.
I don't know too terribly many people mourning the end of 2024. It's been a strange, sou...
2025-01-01 00:24:14 +0000 UTC
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2024-12-31 20:35:01 +0000 UTC
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Okay, I have to admit, I'm pretty fucking chuffed about this one. And PROUD OF MYSELF.
Bastian found the original recipe on Alexa, presumably while attempting to get her to forget all music that isn't Star Wars music. I took one look at the architecture on that dough, KNEW there was laminating involved, and immediately said "I am not making that."
But B begged and pleaded and frankly, that kid does not eat a lot of different types of food so being eager to try anything new is not ...
2024-12-17 16:46:49 +0000 UTC
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Note: This piece is cross-posted from my Substack. That's where I talk about horrible political shit. My rule is that if anyone directly asks for a paywalled post over there to be available here, I'll provide, so that everyone gets their money's worth. But Substack posts are rarely cozy, and this one is just a howl of despair and rage, so if that's going to affect your mood on a holiday week, give it a mi...
2024-11-26 16:33:17 +0000 UTC
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Well, I mean, everyone's gonna give you some elaborate deconstructed haut Thanksgiving 12-hour layered mess of a basic casserole this week. I thought I'd go for something fun and quick that doesn't take hours and hours of unappreciated labor.
Yeah, it's rice krispy treats, but bish, do you even remember how good that shit is when it's still warm? Heaven smells like that. Come on, you know it, I know it.
And this has two extra steps that really kick it up. I'm saying four table...
2024-11-26 16:21:59 +0000 UTC
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When the light turns green you go
When the light turns red you stop
But oh, what do you do when the light turns blue
With orange and lavender spots?
--Shel Silverstein
HEY EVERYONE I AM SUPER NOT OKAY!
None of us are! So great, so glad to be part of this trash compactor of a world with SUCH people in't!
Though I didn't start this Patreon until well after the 2016 election, I remember devoting a few essays over the y...
2024-11-15 18:14:50 +0000 UTC
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Fifteen years ago, I wrote a book, mostly, but not entirely, for children, called 2024-11-08 17:26:16 +0000 UTC
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I know it's my job to be one of the people who Says Something About It.
I know it's my job to be one of the people who says something comforting, or at least insightful, or at a minimum cathartic. I'll try soon. I promise.
But I just don't have anything right now. I can't even look at the analysis, or the internet at all. Not yet. I don't even know how to describe what I feel. I would have to actually cheer up to climb my way through to plain old nihilism right now.
And whe...
2024-11-06 15:28:49 +0000 UTC
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The outstanding rewards for October are coming, I promise, I just am having a lot of physcial issues right now and also I can't think about anything but the election tomorrow so here is my brain at the moment...it's all I got.
***
It’s almost over. One way or the other.
I think I’ve aged ten years since the first primary. Twenty since 2020.
A century since 2016.
And I do feel cautiously optimistic about tomorrow. Cautiously. Because I h...
2024-11-04 20:53:50 +0000 UTC
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This is actually one of my new favorite objects in this house. But I thought you extra-special folk would enjoy the slightly-unethical yet very nearly old-school editor/author adventuring that one once read about in Smort Peepull Magazines.
Well. The PG-13 version of said adventures, anyway.
2024-10-29 18:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Note: I am still recovering from left-hand (of darkness) carpal tunnel surgery, with stitches scheduled out on Friday. But work and Halloween wait on no primate, so I'm going to try to get all the October rewards up before pain takes over. Thank you all for your patience and support while I invest in the radical future of Not Being In Pain Always All the Time. You are all my heroes, and it will never be otherwise. Hold tight.
******
Ughhhh I DON'T LIKE MAKING THIS POST AN...
2024-10-29 17:04:42 +0000 UTC
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Note: cross-posted from my Substack, where it was under a paywall. If anyone asks directly for a cross-post I will always do so, so that folks on both sites feel like they're getting their money's worth, even though the Substack's content is considerably less cozy. Don't worry, the essay and other rewards are unaffected by these cross-posts, I'm just having surgery in an hour for the other carpal tunnel'd hand and it'll take me a few days to come round from that. See you on the flip side!...
2024-10-21 16:30:03 +0000 UTC
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Note: Cross-posted from Substack--if any patron asks directly for a cross-post, I will always post these here as well. Don't worry! Other rewards are unaffected by cross-posts, I'm just having my left hand surgeried upon for carpal tunnel so it'll be a few days before I can get back on it. In the meantime...
I suppose the bright side of, well, every goddamned thing I’m about to say, is that people finally seem to be noticing that the media, whether mainstream/legacy me...
2024-10-21 16:13:45 +0000 UTC
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In my usual bleary, resentful early-morning delerium, I followed a link in the comments discussing an article about something beyond completely unrelated (oh, concerned piece about long-term effects of America's increasing marijuana use, who knew you came bearing such gifts!) and pitched headfirst down a long rabbit hole, at the bottom of which was a molten ancient nuclear reactor I feel just unreasonably affectionate toward now.
Obviously I immediately went to tell the internet about i...
2024-10-04 19:02:18 +0000 UTC
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Ok, in fairness this one is really an idea more than a recipe. I used standard recipes for all the components, but I'm reasonably mostly sure the concept itself is my own invention. At least the portmanteau is!
And it's fabulous.
I made a batch of onigiri (rice balls stuffed with something wrapped in seaweed, an old comfort food from my years in Japan) in advance of my carpal tunnel surgery, figuring it was an easy food I would not have to do anything with my hands...
2024-09-27 18:38:45 +0000 UTC
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Well, obviously it came out yesterday, but YESTERDAY, Bastian was creating and distributing a wide variety of colorful fluids every ten minutes all over everything, and thus...well, as launch days go, it was a struggle. TODAY IS THEIR 6TH BIRTHDAY (WHAT) and they're back in school...but it's their birthday and early release day, so my week is essentially that gif of Elmo b...
2024-09-25 15:45:43 +0000 UTC
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It's Space Oddity month, so I wanted to give all of you something special ahead of the book launch--you are all the spaceship that takes me to the stars. (Another excerpt will still go up for those at that tier. This is just a gift for the whole fam)
So.
Here is the Great Acknowledgments Essay at the end of SO2, featuring many sadnesses, as has become the tradition wit...
2024-09-18 18:42:03 +0000 UTC
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Well, that hurt.
It says something about just how much pain I have been in for the last seven years or so, how high my baseline of “normal” became, that my yet-to-be-fixed left hand hurts more than the repaired right hand that got cut open palm to wrist and has been healing with zero pain management other than “lol Tylenol I guess.”
Sometimes you just forget that you lived without pain at some point. Pain becomes the new neutral resting state.
The recovery has taken ...
2024-09-03 16:10:02 +0000 UTC
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This is sort of a denizen of the month post, but accessible to everyone because I’m about to get CUT ON!
My dumb wrist is definitely the MVP this month. I have carpal tunnel to an extent that made my doctor’s eyes get REAL BIG when she saw the ultrasound. She kept looking at me like I should also be alarmed. I said: “Unless there’s gonna be a baby on that screen I have no idea what I’m looking at. Is it supposed to look like that?”
Doc: “It is super not supposed to l...
2024-08-26 16:52:18 +0000 UTC
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Hello my wonderful Mad Fiction Laboratory/Cozy Cult family!
This is your semi-regular post reminding you that, as part of your Patreon support, you get access to our dedicated Discord, which has become a truly special place where we filter in all the good stuff from the internet and keep all the bad outside the cottage door.
Please come and join us for discussion and camaraderie on many subjects! It is very nice in there, and you'll find out what the Cozy Cult is (if you d...
2024-07-31 17:00:10 +0000 UTC
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(Cross-posted from Substack. This was a paywalled post there, and as usual, if any Patreon member actively asks to see it here, I will cross-post it for you beautiful folk. That codicil is only in place to maintain the Cozy Code here and only bring politics and bad feelings if requested.)
I’m incredibly happy to see people here, there, and everywhere embracin...
2024-07-31 15:49:35 +0000 UTC
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You know how cakes in cafes just taste different? More moist, more dense, more perfect than you really ever get at home?
Well, this summer my niece is working in a cafe/bakery where she makes them, so she's been coming home and whipping up the same cakes she makes there, and I have the recipe for the $5 a slice lemon (and nothing else) cake I love at her spot.
Now, I would never just hand out a workplace's recipe, so I've made some changes and I won't say which are mine. But this ...
2024-07-17 17:26:15 +0000 UTC
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On the night Ray Bradbury died, I was performing at a large event in New York as part of Book Expo America (may she rest in peace). We’d all heard sometime not long before the authors went on stage, but no one had really had a chance to process or discuss it. The Emcee, Lev Grossman, introduced me, and when he first started to speak, I saw my publicist sit up very straight and make a note on her phone. I knew why. I’m not entirely a naive and idealistic poet.
Because that nigh...
2024-07-09 18:01:26 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone!
I covered this a few months ago when Patreon changed everything all around for whimsy, as they are wont to do, but I wanted to make sure the new new folk are aware:
If you clicked the free tier button thinking that was sort of…the whole of it…as Patreon led you to believe so, you know, totally understandable…you’re missing most of the content. There will be an occasional free post, but most of the goodies are under the tiers. The $5 one gets you the main conte...
2024-06-29 00:40:01 +0000 UTC
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I don't have a cute story about why this is a meaningful dish. Wish I did, though maybe you're glad given how looooong pre-recipe chit-chat is getting on foodie sites, even after we explicitly told all of them we hated it like a hundred thousand times a year for ten years.
I had ground lamb. I didn't want to make meatballs. I love pea shoots. I grow peas and just eat the shoots because peas are whatever but the shoots are magic. I combined several recipes and added other elements like t...
2024-05-31 22:49:44 +0000 UTC
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When I had the original idea to do this, several deadlines ago, I figured I'd post it as a Denizen of the Month.
But honestly I'm just so pleased with it I'm making it an open post so everyone can see what, specifically, is wrong with me that I would, while literally and actually losing hair over multiple by-wooshing deadlines and struggling to pay the cat's medical bills, feel compelled to buy a novelty claw machine which IN NO WAY TAKES REAL MONEY, and fill it with hand-written fortu...
2024-05-15 20:22:00 +0000 UTC
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Ramps! They are amazing!
If you don't know what they are, it's more or less like onion and garlic got together and had a crazy leafy baby. And they grow wild all over my yard and the forest behind it. As soon as spring starts, they come shooting up out of the ground before anything else, bright green patches in the grey and the brown.
I started looking for things to do with them beyond slicing them into my scrambled eggs or to fancy up ramen, and ended up with this. They're soft...
2024-05-01 00:58:52 +0000 UTC
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Some of you, especially if you're a member of our Discord server, may be aware that one of our own passed away a few weeks ago. John Peacock, who I've known for over a decade, who until recently, single-handedly moderated that server, alongside the hundreds of other things he did for so many people throughout his life. I will not say he's no longer with us, because he, and the ripple-effects of his kindness, will alway...
2024-04-29 17:47:13 +0000 UTC
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