round up

The last few weeks have been a little more bonkers than usual, including the weekends, so when I say I didn't do anything but mess around in the kitchen and listen to podcasts and poke at various writing projects this weekend, I don't think it really conveys how truly excellent it felt to have a quiet couple of days.
In the kitchen, I finally used all the blueberries the boys have picked recently to make Martha's Blueberry Cobbler. It's a biscuit-y cobbler top (though biscuits made with heavy cream, so it's not like it's particularly light) but it was easy enough. To go with it, I made a Ben & Jerry's vanilla ice cream made in the food processor, as described on Food & Wine, which worked out super well. And since I was on a roll, I also tried the sliced-frozen-banana + food processor=soft-serve banana ice cream trick (I hesitate to call it a recipe, as it is literally just frozen bananas) and despite everything looking like a gray, glue-y mess at the start, it did actually turn out to be an unqualified success. I added about a tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa and whoaaaaaaa, it was awesome. I feel that there are many occasions when chocolate-banana ice cream w/no dairy or sugar or fat would keep me from a screaming fit. (I feel like I should also mention that the HoB gave multiple thumbs up for this, too, and you know damn well they could care less about anything but the taste, so I assure you this isn't an instance of 'this tastes okay for what it is' but rather that it really does taste awesome (if you like bananas, obvs.))

I also kind of fell down the Disney World fandom abyss and somehow ended up listening to about 3 hours worth of speculation about what might or might not be coming in the next few years. (Bottom-line, there are gonna be lots of construction walls but Hollywood Studios might actually end up being navigable and StarWarsLand is coming. Also, Anna and Elsa are never ever going away, but you probably knew that already.) I find I still could care less about the actual events of Avatar (not the last Airbender Avatar, but the Pocahontas-in-space one) but I am still surprisingly excited to see the world around the events. There might also have been a few additions to the bad-for-you-but-hey-it's-vacation list of foods (BLT-ranch fries, BabyBoy is ready to go now) and some preliminary discussions about the plan of attack for the Food & Wine Festival this year. So, yeah, not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning while the laundry was trundling along.

…and writing… My marvel_bang is progressing (which is good news after having lost a thousand words and then getting caught up in the mess of school starting again/#2 finishing a semester.) I think it's falling into a three-part structure and the first part is almost done, the second is solidly in progress and I at least know why the third part happens. So that's good.

In the same crash/reboot/crash sequence, I also lost almost everything I had on a be_compromised ficathon prompt, and that really stalled everything out there, but I did have fun with the three-sentence mini ficathon, and ended up writing a bunch over the weekend (all Clint/Natasha)---

The Female Gaze (prompt: these hips don't lie)

between the rock and the hard place (prompt: nowhere left to run)

nerds in love (prompt: Movie night: Star Trek or Star Wars?), plus alphaflyer (whose prompt it was) responded with a little bit more, which I also added to.

the family that spies together (prompt: Everybody just assumed that Natasha didn't want/couldn't have children)

trust fall (prompt: being forced into corporate teamwork event)

It's been a long time since I've done one of these. Aside from how I haven't lost my love of run-on sentences (look away, without_me, look away!), I'd forgotten how much fun it is to try to distill a story down this far.