#I hope you are infinitely nicer to your child than you were your sister

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Oho boy she has a son?!

[ddagent]

Podcast question for Jay & Bee: What's the worst version of Goldenhand and the Blue Knight you've ever read? Can you describe any of the scenes that made it so bad? And, relatedly, what inspired this podcast? Loving it and appreciate the distraction from my own undergrad students. ;D

Anonymous: Hi Jay and Bee! I've binged your eps on my work break and I'm a big fan! I have two questions, if you don't mind. One serious and on silly. 1. Were Ser Blue and Goldenhand the figures that got you into history, or are they just the current end point of your path? 2. And how are you the two of you most and least like BOTH of your namesakes/ancestors?

B: The following podcast contains strong language, literary violence, and explicit sexual content.

(tourney horn plays)

J: It’s The Bear and the Poorly Written Maiden, the footnotes! And, for the first time, we’re recording at my place. 

B: I don’t know why we don’t record here more often; it’s infinitely nicer than my flat, and you don’t have any neighbours fiddling with their bedframe all night.

J: (laughs) Their headboard is banging, Bee; I think they’re fucking. 

B: I know that; I’m not an idiot. I was just trying to be coy.

J: We read out historical pornography on a podcast; coy went out the window along with your valiant attempts for us to just be acquaintances. 

B: Yes, suddenly it’s five years later and you’re my best friend. 

J: You could do a lot worse. 

B: I could do a lot better, too. When you give friends spare keys, for instance, it’s expected they only use them for emergencies. 

J: Is this about this morning?

B: I was in a towel.

J: Your bedroom door was open.

B: My front door was locked. 

J: I ran out of cereal!

B: You live on the other side of the city! (pause) Right, enough bickering, let’s get on with the podcast. 

J: Fine. So, this is our footnotes podcast, where we answer your questions, go into a little more depth with our discussions. 

B: Eventually, we would like to have a couple of guests on, like your brother does.

J: (laughs) As if anyone would want to be on this! No, that’s a lie, Papa Bee would love to do this podcast. He’s up next week; you should ask him.

B: I am not asking my father for his help analysing historical erotica. 

J: Well, it’s a good thing I’m invited to dinner so I can ask him myself. 

B: (sighs) Jay.

J: Bee. (pause) Fine. We’ll talk about it later. For now, we’ve had two questions. The first one is from (laughs) oh, this is great. It’s from tarthserjaime@ravenmail.com. They must be a fan of The Caged Lion. For those of you that aren’t familiar, it’s the sequel to The King’s Road, and it covers Goldenhand’s journey as he, well, becomes Goldenhand the Just.

B: That is a beautiful scene, as well. Very vivid. 

J: Having seen your island, I completely understand the reaction. 

B: (pause) It is rather beautiful. 

J: So it is. (pause) Anyway, tarthserjaime has two questions, the first is: “What's the worst version of Goldenhand and the Blue Knight you've ever read? Can you describe any of the scenes that made it so bad?” Oh, fuck, well for Goldenhand it has to be Trant. 

B: We’ve mentioned Trant a couple of times. That’s Roslin Trant, and she has a whole series of Goldenhand novels, such as The Ravishing at Riverrun, The Kingsguard’s Oath, The Lion and the Maiden, The Squire’s Suprise, The Bedding of the Beauty...she’s written about twenty of them, I think. 

J: And in all these books, Goldenhand fucks at least three different people. 

B: Oh, at least. In The Quest South, there’s an orgy in Sunspear. 

J: It’s got very little in common with the real Goldenhand: Trant writes him as a playboy who’ll fuck anything. 

B: He has multiple bastard children, too. Well—

J: (laughs) More than the three he had canonically, at any rate. So, yeah, Trant is the worst. We will have to read some of it, won’t we? 

B: I think we’ll have to. As for Ser Blue, the versions vary. I think the worst one is Into the Wild, where, during the Long Night, Ser Blue takes a break during the fighting to engage one of the Wildlings also in the battle. 

J: (gasps) Oh, I remember when you read that. I got a series of angry text messages at 3am. THE BLUE KNIGHT WOULD HAVE FOUGHT TO THE DEATH; SHE WOULDN’T HAVE TOSSED ASIDE HER SWORD TO SWALLOW A WILDLING’S COCK. 

B: (groans) Oh, Gods, yes, that one is dreadful. And I think, is it Blackwood who wrote her as a broodmare for Goldenhand?

J: Yeah, he knighted her, and then immediately she wanted him to fill her with his seed. She spent the Long Night in their chambers, waiting for a break in the fighting so he could come and impregnate her. 

B: Thank you for the reminder, tarthserjaime.

J: Hopefully her second question doesn’t bring up such bad memories. 

B: Let’s hope not.

J: “And, relatedly, what inspired this podcast? Loving it and appreciate the distraction from my own undergrad students." Undergraduates are terrible, aren’t they?

B: Not all of them.

J: Of course you don’t think that; you get the good ones. Cee likes you best.

B: Of course she does. And, in answer to your excellent question tarthserjaime, it all started when Jay’s brother Ty came round and he was looking at the strange collection of books on his brother’s nightstand. He asked Jay to read out the worst bits, we all got atrociously drunk, and the next day Ty suggested we should do the podcast. 

J: Excellent chance to plug Ty’s podcast, by the way. It’s A Hundred Ways to Disappoint Your Father; listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. 

B: Now we have a question from oathkeeper@ravenmail.com. Excellent choice of email address.

J: I’d prefer Widow’s Wail.

B: No you wouldn’t; everyone prefers Oathkeeper. (pause) They write: “Hi Jay and Bee!”

J: Hi yourself.

B: “I've binged your eps on my work break and I'm a big fan!” Well, that makes two. You and my father. “I have two questions, if you don't mind. One serious and one silly. 1. Were Ser Blue and Goldenhand the figures that got you into history, or are they just the current endpoint of your path?” The Blue Knight and Oathkeeper and our family line was certainly the reason I got into history. I was obsessed with knights and quests as a child. I even tried to take Oathkeeper from the exhibit. 

J: Is that the photo up in your dad’s hallway?

B: Yes, my neighbour Robb took a picture before my Dad found us and, very gently, told me to put the priceless family heirloom down. (they laugh) What about you?

J: It was my uncle, Gerold, who got me into history. My father didn’t like the stories, didn’t want me or my brother fixating on the golden age of heroes. But my uncle took us to the museums in Lannisport and the Targaryen Museum of Ancient History in King’s Landing. I remember the day he told me I shared the name of one of the greatest knights in history. I was over the moon.

B: He sounds like a great uncle. 

J: He was. (pause) Anyway, so that’s the first question, what’s the second?

B: “How are the two of you most and least like BOTH of your namesakes/ancestors?” So not just Ser Blue for me but Goldenhand, too. 

J: Well, I don’t have a hand made out of gold. (both laugh) That’s probably the most obvious difference. I haven’t got a sister, but I do have a younger brother. No children. Goldenhand stepped away from family duty really early, but I didn’t. I went to school originally for business and worked at my father’s company for five years before I decided I’d had enough and walked away. 

B: There’s actually eight years between us. 

J: You were so sweet and innocent back when we first met. Eighteen years old, fresh-faced from the Stormlands. 

B: Oh don’t.

J: See, you’re more like Goldenhand. Papa Bee wanted you to go to SEU but you applied in secret to—

B: Bear Pit University.

J: (laughs) Bear Pit University, yeah. You knew your own path and you went for it. 

B: I suppose so. As for the Blue Knight and I, we share a similar background. Only child, widowed father, exceptionally tall and plain. 

J: Oh pull the other one.

B: Am I not taller than you?

J: You are but you’re not...you had a boyfriend in upper school. 

B: One boyfriend does not mean I’m suddenly pretty, Jay. 

J: No, but nor do no boyfriends mean that people aren’t attracted to you.

B: I think we’re getting off-topic. (pause) oathkeeper, tarthserjaime, I hope we’ve answered your questions. If you have any more, send them to us at thebearandthemaiden@ravenmail.com.

J: We’ll be back with a new book to read very soon. Until then, valar morghulis.

(tourney horn plays)

[yesterdaysdreams]

Elsie’s 2018 Renovation + Blog Goals

Hi friends! Today just wanted to share some of my goals with you for the new year, specifically related to renovations and my work for this blog. 2017 was a great year for me, I felt the most fulfilled in my work that I ever had and worked so hard. It was a lot of fun and it feels so good to look back and see all my hard work in the form of our bnb home (which is 90% completed) and our own home (which is 100% completed, even though as any homeowner knows, you are never really finished).

Here are some projects I am looking to check off in 2018!

First, a few goals for my own home:

-Add a deck to our backyard and landscaping.  In the past two years, we have completed our interior renovations, but we haven’t done much to the outside besides having it painted white, adding the flowerbeds and building two playhouses (this is one, we haven’t blogged the second one yet). In 2018, we would like to add a deck and complete the landscaping in our yard.

-Tweak our kitchen for our new lifestyle.  Since bringing Nova home, we are eating (quick) meals at home constantly. This is a big change for us as we used to eat out a lot and when we cooked it was more leisurely before. Now I want to reorganize and completely redo our small pantry. I feel like this will really help me keep up with the daily tasks of food prep and the constant rotation of doing the same dishes over and over.

-Maximize our closet space.  We love our closets, but ever since we built out Nova’s closet custom I have been dreaming of how I could rework our closets to better fit what we have. I am planning to make a few small tweaks this year.

-Tweak Nova’s nursery for her toddler years.  Since we designed the nursery before we were matched, I always knew we’d need to do a round of tweaks once we came home with our child. For the record, I do not regret fully completing it before meeting Nova. It gave me something positive to do during one of the most difficult seasons of my life and it’s MUCH easier to tweak it now than it would be to design it from scratch. And since we plan to adopt another child in the future, anything Nova doesn’t use can be stored for them.

I’ll leave the full list of modifications for the post (I’ll be done by next month; already working on it now), but I’m so excited to keep using this room for her all throughout her childhood. I feel like it can definitely grow with her!

-Complete tours.  I still need to photograph our den, the hallway bathroom (also known as the “kids” bathroom or Nova’s bathroom for now), our master bedroom and my office.

-Film a before/after home tour.  When we first got the keys to this home, the first thing we did was film a “before” tour. I am SO looking forward to taking new footage of all the rooms and cutting it together with the BEFORE footage. I think that will be so satisfying after (coming up on) three years of hard work!

-Finish these bookshelves. Working on this right now! I am really looking forward to completing this project. It’s one of my favorite projects of all time.

And next, a couple of goals for my bnb home:

-Tour the laundry room and living room.  I only have two tours left in this home before it’s completely done. Should I do a video tour for this one too?

-Landscape the exterior.  I am still deciding what to do in the backyard. It has a nice, big yard. I’m thinking of adding a playset and a willow tree to start with! And I still haven’t decided whether to paint the brick exterior. I know a lot of people are against painting brick, but a lot of the nicer homes that have been remodeled in this area are painted. I’m still on the fence.

Other goals for the blog in 2018 …

-A decor product line. For years it’s been a goal of mine to do a product line in the decor category, but it has always fallen through or not felt right. I think this will finally be our year. I’m hopeful!

-Invest in a new property.  Not sure what kind, but I had such a great experience working on the bnb this past year that I’d like to invest in another property (and we’re definitely not moving, at least for a while!). I love the idea of doing a tiny home or a cabin. Right now, I’m just looking at options and dreaming.

Well, that’s all for my goals! Since becoming a mom I definitely have less time to run in infinite directions, so I am planning to pour all that I have into ABM, A Color Story (which will be launching a sister app in early 2018) and Oui Fresh. Here on the blog, I plan to mainly focus on my decor content, but I will still share other things I am passionate about like green beauty and occasional snapshots from my personal life.

If you have requests for anything you’d like to see on ABM (be it from me or one of the other writers), we’d love to hear it.

I can honestly say that after 10 years of blogging I am loving it more than ever … maybe even a lot more than ever. And I believe that the secret to our staying power is continuing to change and evolve each year and follow our passions.

I hope your 2018 is off to a great start! Love, Elsie

Credits// Author: Elsie Larson. Photography by Elsie Larson and Amber Ulmer.

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