163: A Random Blend of Families and Fashions

[thefourthvine]

Do you ever have one of those Bad Fannish Idea days? Where, like, you think, "I know what'd be cool! A Fullmetal Alchemist x Supernatural crossover. Yes, I want that, despite the fact that I don't know either fandom and it would be so angst-filled that small nations would simply collapse under the weight of the despair and never really know why."

Comments

[sheldrake]

I, too, had a childhood briefly blighted by macrame. It was one in a long line of my mother's fads which also included wood-carving, stained glass, and building radios from scratch.

I also have the time travel kink. I wonder if the two things are connected?

I hear he's in charge of a team of (possibly) lovable misfits

Completely right except for the lovable bit. But anyway, my hindbrain says thank you very much for reccing a time travel story! :)

[thefourthvine]

I, too, had a childhood briefly blighted by macrame. It was one in a long line of my mother's fads which also included wood-carving, stained glass, and building radios from scratch.

*bonds*

My mother was not meant for hobbies, and after a while I think she got that, but my youth was greatly marred by her attempts to develop one. Like, she's actually an incredible gardener/plant-grower-person (which I did not inherit from her - I kill plants merely by becoming aware of their existence), but during roughly the same time period as the Unfortunate Macrame Experiment, she started a garden in which she planted twenty-four zucchini plants. There were four of us. I will leave you to imagine the many creative uses we found for zucchini in the months that followed the first zucchini's appearance. (It's a tribute to my love of vegetables that I'm still quite fond of zucchini, although I remain surprised that I have to pay for them, since in my youth everyone was so desperate to give them away

[thefourthvine]

It was very scary. And then my mother put a bunch of the excess ones on the compost heap, and - MORE zucchinis sprouted. Everywhere. (Also pumpkins, which was odd, because she hadn't planted or composted any. And the thing is - we had fewer pumpkins, although still way too many, because there's not much you can do with a pumpkin. We ate a lot of roasted pumpkin seeds, which I think my mother did mostly to make sure the seeds couldn't creep out and start new pumpkins.) I was lucky, because I really liked zucchini and have never required a lot of variety in what I eat, but my sister resents zucchini to this day.

And I keep thinking - maybe I could plant a zucchini plant. Just one. Surely if I can keep any plant alive, it would be a zucchini, and maybe I could build from there to other successes!

...Hmmm. This is the right time of year to plant a zucchini, isn't it? I wonder if one would be happy amongst our roses.

[brown_betty]

Try rhubarb. I've never heard of anyone killing one, and they're not so likely to try to invade your house and kill your loved ones.

[sheldrake]

I think my mum's Main Thing was really photography. Cue the frequent cries of 'could you just stand still a minute/balance on that log/smile', followed by 'Oh, do we have to?' She's still on the search for the perfect hobby though - every now and again she gets that look in her eye and goes, 'Maybe I'll get a loom...'

Or maybe we just spent a lot of time hiding from our craft-ridden mothers, reading time travel stories.

Although I'm keen on your first theory, this does sound strangely familiar...

I recently discovered just how deeply the time travel kink is buried in me when I got addicted to Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books. They're about someone who goes back in time, omg!

What adjectives are more appropriate? *prepares to take notes*Ok, right. Let me think

[_divya_]

Ha, that is some creative vegetable-passing right there.

We usually ended up with a surplus of tomatoes, which was fine, because at the end of the season, we'd just pick all the unripe ones, wrap them in newspaper and put them in a basket in the basement. Then, when we wanted some throughout the winter, we'd just go down there and get a few, unwrap them and put them on the windowsill in the kitchen. They'd ripen in a few days, sitting there in the sun.

That being said, I hated being the one who had to weed the damn garden. Bugs, yuck.

[brown_betty]

The joke where I grew up was "Why do farmers lock their doors in August?"

(To get this joke it may help if you know that no one ever locked their doors, and it was considered only mildly rude to pop into someone's basement to see if they were home.)

[brown_betty]

I started hyperventilating in an attempt not to laugh hysterically in a public place at "twenty-four zucchini plants," and wasn't able to finish your comment until I practised deep breathing for a bit.