sophia_sol | 5 things: lightning bugs, writing, birds, book clubs, fashion pants

one.

we have lightning bugs in our backyard again this year! it feels so magical to me; I may have cried a few happy tears about it when I watched them the other night in the falling dusk

still feels weird to me though that everyone around here calls them fireflies - the last time they were a normal part of my life, I was a kid in a very different region than where I currently live, and lightning bugs is what everyone called them! it feels so much more cozy and homey to me; fireflies sounds very, like, the ten-dollar word you pull out for poetry

two.

sparkly brain: reading fic that makes you kick your feet in delight

exploding galaxy brain: writing fic that makes you kick your feet in delight

three.

I'm so glad that loving birds has unlocked within me the ability to find things cute

there are so many cute things in this world, it turns out!

(but birds are the cutest)

four.

me like how many different reading groups can one person be in 😅

- weekly orv/umineko book club

- weekly mdzs book club

- monthly chinese history paper club

- weekly tgcf read-along (yes I'm very behind)

- new addition, fortnightly yaoi studies reading group!

thinking back to the younger me who was desperate for a book club, but the only book clubs I could find were of people my parents' age reading Literary Fiction because reading is supposed to Improve Your Mind and that's how you do it

younger me would be so astonished that current me has so many fun groups to talk with about things we read, things that I WANT to read! current me is endlessly delighted.

five.

considering my fashion choices.....for any of my pants, do I want to add any decorative elements to them? to break up the vast swathe of unpatterned single colour, single texture. I'm thinking like how the edwardians used insertion lace, but just on top of the body fabric rather than actually splitting the fabric. and not quite as all-in as the edwardians were, lol! and it doesn't necessarily have to be lace, either

pants are just BORING, is the thing, at least until I can source pants-weight fabric in fun patterns and also learn how to sew pants. and adding decorative elements is much faster!

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sparkly brain: reading fic that makes you kick your feet in delight

exploding galaxy brain: writing fic that makes you kick your feet in delight

\o/ \o/ \o/

it's so much fun!!!!

There were fireflies at the place where I was just petsitting! I opened the back door to call the dog because it was getting dark, and he was sitting out in the yard just staring, and then I saw them flashing out there. (I doubt that he was really watching them since it's not uncommon for this dog to stare at nothing, but it looked like he was watching them!) Then while I was holding the door open and looking, the cat ran out the door and wouldn't come back in. Fortunately it was the fourth of July and soon the fireworks started which convinced everyone to come inside.

Anyway! I didn't grow up with fireflies because they're rare on the west coast, and I lived in the city anyway. I'm sure I never saw them until I moved to Vermont. Everyone seems to call them fireflies here, though if I heard lightning bug I'd know what was meant.

I went and looked up a USA dialect map of firefly vs lightning bug, because I knew I'd seen one before, and it's really interesting! looks like in vermont you're juuuust north of the lightning bug dominance zone. (I did have to look up a US map to find out which shape/location vermont is, though. I do not know US states well enough, lol!)

That's fine, Vermont is small enough and insignificant enough to the national economy and culture that a lot of Americans couldn't point to it on a map either. :P I know I couldn't when I lived in California and my mental map of the northeast consisted of New York and... whatever all those other ones are.

I think the thing is that I always forget how much there is to the sticky-uppy bit of the USA that goes from the tip of southern ontario up to meet new brunswick! like, in my head there's pennsylvania/new jersey, then new york/massachusetts, then maine. the end. but there's all those other little ones stuck in amongst them there too! also. for whatever reason "vermont" sounds like the name of a state that belongs in the zone around where wisconsin and minnesota are, whatever that region is called. idek why!

Yeah, I think a lot of Americans, unless they live right here, are like "Pennsylvania, New York, mumblemumble Maine?" There are too many tiny states in there. When I was a kid and had a jigsaw puzzle of all the states, the northeast was just one big piece, I guess because the little states would be a choking hazard.

I will also say that most Americans have no idea how far Canada extends out beyond Maine. Our mental map is that you are directly north of us, which works in most of the country, but there is WAY more land in the southeastern portion of Canada than we think! My eyes were opened to this years ago when there was a guy from Nova Scotia in my WoW guild, which led to my discovery that there are more time zones to the east of Eastern!! It's not just all ocean until you hit GMT! :o

"vermont" sounds like the name of a state that belongs in the zone around where wisconsin and minnesota are, whatever that region is called

We call it the Upper Midwest! The name Vermont is French... sort of. We used to be part of the French colony that became Quebec, and we do still have a lot of people of French descent here, but the word Vermont seems to have been coined by the English when they took control of the area later in an attempt to give us some kind of "authentic" French name based on the English name Green Mountains. But the Upper Midwest states all have names that are attempts to transliterate Indigenous place names, I believe.

I would definitely concur that most americans have no idea of a LOT of things about canada, lol! people in the US just never have reason to learn about canada whereas we have lots of reasons why understanding of the USA happens to us whether we want it or not :P and yet I am still astonished that you didn't know about the east coast provinces until you met that guy in WoW, bc it just feels so OBVIOUS to me that they're over there! Newfoundland even gets to have a time zone that's a half hour off from everyone else's time zones, to feel special.

oh, it's not that the name vermont itself feels like it fits in the upper midwest, more that I guess...the vague feeling I had of what kind of place it was feels like it belongs in that geographical area? that story about how vermont got its name is VERY funny and very english though.

I knew of the east coast provinces in that if you'd named them to me I would have said they were provinces in the eastern part of Canada. It's just that my mental map had them all squished in directly north of Maine instead of going further out into the Atlantic. So I guess I thought Quebec was a lot skinnier. (Désolé!) The Nova Scotia guy did also tell me about Newfoundland's special half hour time zone, which raised my number of known Newfoundland facts to two, if you count big floofy dogs as one.

here's a third newfoundland fact for you -- it used to be its own independent country, and it only joined canada after world war ii!

Gasp! When they don't like what the rest of the country is doing, do they get like Texas does and start saying "we don't even NEED the rest of you, we were our OWN country and we totally could be AGAIN but we don't want to right now"?

ahhhhh no unfortunately the fishing industry was the main economic driver in newfoundland and since the fishing industry collapsed, it along with the rest of the east coast has really struggled. I think socio-culturally it's possible they might prefer to be their own country? but I don't think anyone believes they could actually make a go of it. There are so many folk songs about the collapse of the fishing industry on the east coast and the ensuing lack of economic opportunities for the young folks!

The province that's most interested in seceding is Quebec -- there have been times in canada's history when they have come AWFULLY close to it, too.

Yeah, I have heard some about the economic issues there. I also played WoW with a guy from New Brunswick who had moved to Alberta to work in the oil sands, and I learned from him about how young people don't stay on the east coast because there's no work. (Ducks filled in some of the gaps when I read it years later.)

I think Quebec's lack of enthusiasm for being part of Canada is something that has entered US popular consciousness, at least vaguely. Sometimes people here joke about how great it would be if Quebec seceded and annexed Vermont, so New France could be together again.

I use fireflies and lightning bugs semi-interchangeably, but all the same I agree with you about the different connotations. I would write a sentence about fireflies lighting up the darkness, but a lightning bug is what I'd catch in my hands in the backyard. (At least, if we had a sufficiently non-urban and dimly lit backyard in which to get them, sigh. I miss them!)

yes, exactly!!! I hope you can get lightning bugs in your life again sometime.

I only ever see lightning bugs in the mountains and can't wait to go back and see them in August.

ahhh I'm glad you're still able to access an area with lightning bugs, even if you can't see them regularly!

5 things: lightning bugs, writing, birds, book clubs, fashion pants

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