Morte

Hello everyone.

I regret to say that I need to take a two/three month break from swapping. Due to the pain from the car accident, the drugs I'm on to help with the pain, and my sever lack of finances I feel as though I cannot create and send the quality swaps that my partners deserve. I will be checking in every week and rating those that have sent to me. I have also informed the people that are running some round robin swaps I was participating in. Hopefully I'll be able to be back up to full swapping strength sooner.

Er, I'm always really bad at these things. I'm a 38 yr. old mortician who lives very happily in Rogers Park with her husband, 3 cats, and smallish dog. I love gardening, reading, crafting, coffee, coffeehouses, dancing, surfing, skateboarding, and puzzles.

I have a zoo of animals, all of whom are rescues. I have a Yellow Lab/?Hound mix who is about 40lbs named Tesla. Then there's Death, Harley Quinn, Dunwich. Death is the matriarch of the house and is a 12 year old grey tabby. She's named after Neil Gaiman's Sandman character. Harley is a 11 yr old tortoiseshell named after the Batman character, and Dunwich is her kitten. Dunwich oddly looks like a mini-Death even though they are in no way related. So I can in fact say with all honesty that Death does lurk behind every door in my house, although her preferred napping spot is in closets.

I collect Nightmare Before Christmas, HP Lovecraft, Sandman, antique Halloween things, horror movie memorabilia, really bad 50's/60's/70's B and Z-grade horror movies, zombies, and generally spooky stuff.

I have a passion for antique funeral memorabilia. I have an embalming kit from the 1820's that I love, and some antique embalming bottles. I love antique anatomy drawings. I'm talking Roman and Greek era, up to Victorian times when they actually started to realize where everything was in and on the human body. Especially prints of old woodcuts and such. My bathroom is anatomy themed, so think 'Body Worlds' by Gunther Von Hagen. I also collect antique keys. I wear a winding key from a grandfather clock as a pendant.

On that note, each of the rooms in my apartment has (or will have) a different theme. The kitchen is Edward Gorey themed, my study is HP Lovecraft / Cthulhu themed, the bathroom is anatomy themed (as mentioned before). The living room will probably be Alice in Wonderland themed (more on the American McGee's Alice and/or the original Alice illustrations than the Disney (I don't really like Disney)). I haven't settled on a theme for the bedroom yet, or the animal room, but I figure I have enough to work towards right now. :P So anything that fits into those themes is wonderful.

I do pirate reenactment (both cheesy Hollywood and authentic) with some other friends for parties, theatres, galleries, etc. Ocean-mythos oriented things are wonderful, actually, well, just any mythological type thingy is right up my alley.

I have pretty wide musical tastes. My main loves are punk, goth, and industrial. I also love metal of all stripes, rockabilly, gothabilly, country and western, musicals, opera, classical, parody, blues, jazz, funk, and very very occasionally hip-hop, but only on a song by song basis.

Favorite books, hmm, how do I narrow it down... My favorite books are the ones with printing in them. :) I am a bibliophalic lifeform with a tropism for bookstores. I don't need speed reading, I need speed bookcase building. Seriously, I have books stacked on top of every flat space in my house that doesn't have collectible toys on it, and generally there are books on top of those.

I mostly use TV as background noise when I'm reading, but my favorite shows are Bones, NCIS, Fringe, and House, MD. My favorite shows that are no longer on the air (GRRR) are Tales of the Gold Monkey, Brimstone, Robotech, Six Feet Under, and Dead Like Me. I'm also addicted to History, Food, SciFi, Discovery, and BBC Channels.

I love to knit and spin my own yarn. I also love to make odd little things out of found objects, and papercrafting. By papercrafting I mean building toys and what not out of paper, haven't quite gotten into the scrapbooking thing.

I just read my mom's profile and realized that I could probably be a bit more forthcoming about myself and my interests. I guess I've gotten used to the general 200 word max 'sound bites' that most sites limit you to.

I prefer the darker asthetics of life, while at the same time I celebrate the absurd. I love classic films. My favorite actor, who I still have a mad mad crush on to this day, is Danny Kaye. Beyond that, the classicer the better. I love silent films, one of my favorite experiences was seeing Metropolis with a live full orchestra.

I am fascinated with anything having to do with the printed word. I will hear a word and embark on a search to find the origins of it, as well as any other information that I can find. To put it another way, I was reading at a college level well before I was 10. Mom used to have to bring a note to the library telling them that I was allowed to read out of the adult sections, since I had exhausted most of the books in the children's room by the time I was 8. So anything involving literature, words, or writing of any sort is right up my alley.

My favorite holidays are, in order: Halloween, 4th of July (cause it's right before my birthday. I get to have the country blowing things up to celebrate my birth!), and Christmas. My favorite seasons are Summer and Fall.

My favorite colours are dark and dusty blues, greys, and black. I love darker colours like wine red, forest green, dark blue, etc. If you remember the whole 'Seasonal Colours' from the 80's I'm a Fall. :P Actually, I just don't look that good in pastels or bright colours.

I have a fetish for stripey socks. I love love LOVE stripey socks of all colour combinations. Especially if they're knee socks. Call it an effect of having read the Adventures of Pippi Longstocking at an impressionable age.

My favorite scents are: almond, bitter almond (yay, arsenic!), cinnamon, cedar, wood smoke, pine, ginger, clove, etc. I like natural, woody, and spice scents.

I love tea of all sorts, especially greens, chais, and cammomiles. I also adore coffee, but only high-end coffees. My absolute favorite is Raven's Brew. I'm actually allergic to coffee right now, which is teh suck. Standard brands like Folgers, Hill Bros, etc, make with the unhappy. I can handle a cup of Peet's and Raven's Brew every once in a while, but that was only after drinking no coffee whatsoever for almost 2 years.

I love candles of any sort, and I collect teddy bears in costumes and mooses. Find/make me a teddy bear dressed in a moose costume and I will love you forever. Moose, not reindeer. There is a difference. But only stuffed mooses. And anything with ravens on it. I love ravens. I have 5 + raven tattoos, and once my back piece is finished I'll have 14+ ravens.

I'm also fascinated with new ways of making things. I will try anything once, and love creating things in a new (to me) way. I draw Celtic knotwork for fun, for instance.

Hmm, I really don't know what else to say right now, I'll probably update and edit this as I think of things.

I'm a pretty easy going person, but there are a few things I can't stand. Not saying that if someone sends me something that falls into one of these categories I'll rate them low and toss it. I'm not like that. Even if it's something I don't personally like I appreciate the time and effort that went in to making it/picking it out and as such I will respect that effort and try to find a home for that item that it will be loved and used.

These things are:

Overly cutesy stuff, the only exception being Hello Kitty and the occasional anime.

Flowery or floral scents in anything. Don't particularly like lavender unless the scent is coming from something made with actual lavender. Also can't stand patchouli.

Perfume of any sort. The only perfume I like is Sunflowers. Other than that I stick with essential oils because the alcohol scents in 99% of perfumes makes me sneeze.

Anything that would look perfect in a Precious Moments card. I hate big eyed overly anthropomorphized animals and children, except for VeggieTales. VeggieTales rock.

Jasmine scented anything. Yes, my name is Jasmyn, but they (in the universal sense) can never get the scent of jasmine right. It always ends of smelling like Dial soap, which is not a pleasant scent to me. :( I do love jasmine teas, though.

Pinks, pastels, or neon colours. I own precisely three pieces of pink clothing, one being a pair of Chuck Taylors with a Misfits skull on them, a Cramps t-shirt, and a baseball tee from a tattoo shop. See a theme?

Overly sticky sweet candies. I do like them, but I can only handle them very sparingly one-piece-at-a-time.

I am 'sensitive' (read: not precisely allergic by themselves, but in aggregate pretty bad) to a lot of things. Plants, for one.

I used to have a bumper sticker that said 'I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.' I'm definitely NOT a vegetarian, by the way. Meat is about the only thing I can eat that doesn't have something in it I'm allergic to. As an aside, I'm not a militant carnivore either. I don't really care what your personal lifestyle choices are, from food to religion to music to sexual preference. Have at it, says I, as long as you don't try to force me to see it your way and you're not hurting anyone. I'm more than happy to engage in reasoned debate and discussion. I've been studying psychology for a very very VERY long time and I am well aware of my reasons for the why and wherefore of my habits, mores, etc. I'll accept you for who you are, warts and all, as long as you accept me for who I am, hideous scars nonwithstanding. To put it another way, not only do I admit that I have baggage, I've got it categorized, sorted by date, size, shape, and colour, and am working on unpacking it. I don't need anyone coming in and trying to sort it for me, thankyouverymuch! /rant

All of my food and environmental allergies have caused me to have what amounts to a low grade cold year round since I was about 10. I'm also allergic to gold, titanium, the glue on most bandaids and stickers, iodine, and some kinds of latex, just to up the weird quotient. There is actually weirder stuff that I'm allergic to, believe it or not.