I have been absent a lot. Partly this is due to overwhelming life stuff, and partly it's due to what I think is RSI. My hands have been hurting too much to type save when necessary. I've been doing a lot of sound editing, and that's been really hard on them, too (it involves a lot of clicking and scrolling). I love writing, and I love doing audio stuff, and I want to be able to do those things for as long as I can, so that's meant cutting back on journal entries and comments and things. It makes me sad, because I love being a part of this community of LJers, too, but I'm afraid it's necessary. I'm starting to look into more ergonomically sound options, but I haven't come up with any concrete solutions yet.

But! I wanted to show you some pictures from a recent excursion I took with nineweaving and teenybuffalo. We went out to Cape Cod for a day, and wandered through Edward Gorey's house, and then had some afternoon tea, and a visit to a lovely used bookstore, and a swim in the ocean. It was a thoroughly marvelous day with equally marvelous company.

I'd been to the Gorey exhibit at the Boston Athenaeum this spring, and loved that, so I was quite looking forward to seeing the official Gorey museum in his old house. It did not disappoint. Not at all. The thing which impressed me most at the Athenaeum was a collection of envelopes in which he'd sent letters home from college. They were each hand decorated with drawings and watercolors in unmistakably Gorey style. Each one was a different, and each one was a delight. I thought how wonderful it must have been to receive those envelopes, and I wondered what he'd put inside them. The thing that made me the happiest about them was that he'd done it just for one person, and just because. He wasn't The Famous Edward Gorey then. He was just a college kid, and a person who couldn't help making art and spreading joy around.

His house was full of oddities and wonders which supported that theory. He was a strange person, with a tendency toward collecting and hoarding things. He saved all his ticket stubs, for instance, and there must have been thousands. The docent told us that he had a local reputation for showing up at yard sales and buying odd bits of junk. He had a collection of antiquated cheese graters and old tools. All the available surfaces were lined with glass bottles and rocks and things like that. His kitchen was not very usable for cooking because of this. They said he had thousand of books, but they'd cleared them out to make room for display cases.

He also loved cats. There was a picture of him with cats draped all over him and around him that someone had taken to illustrate a magazine article. They told us he had six at any given time. There's one left at the house now: Ombledroom, or Mr. E. He's large and white with some dark spots, and he quite enjoys attention from visitors.

They've been going through boxes (so many boxes) of things in the attic and barn, and finding bits and bobs that he used for inspiration. A collection of old tassels clearly served as models for Les Passementeries Horribles (video link).

Later, lunchtime brought us to The Optimist Cafe, which provided us with unexpected (but welcome!) afternoon tea, over which we compared horrible dating stories, among other things. Thence to Parnassus Books, where we all came away with a prize or several, and encountered some things amusing and horrifying as well. And then we walked on a boardwalk over a saltmarsh, and eventually swam in the sea (well, Nine waded, but still, all of us were dampened to some extent). Finally, tired and content from a day of rambling, we stopped at the Brewster General Store, where Teeny showed us the Dimelodeon she recalled from her childhood. All in all, a wonderful summer excursion.

And now, you will certainly wish to see pictures, no? Click on Omble below to see the whole set over on Flickr!



And, because I've had Gorey on the brain, I've also finally gotten around to putting up the set of Gashlycrumb Tinies pictures we did at our Unspeakable Horror of the Literary Life party last Halloween. We didn't get all the letters (and there are a couple of repeats in there--everyone wanted to die of ennui!), but it's a pretty fun set nonetheless. Note also, this series of outtakes for Clara, who couldn't waste away properly for ages due to feline interference. Hee!

And now I am going to make good on my subject line and read a book away from the computer, while covered in cats.