Bragging rights
I brag a lot about my little girl. But my medium-sized girl (as I like to call SJ) is just as amazing... if not more so.
Consider this: eight years ago, I was a high school senior who had gone dateless for two years - but had managed to get just the right tertiary entrance score to pursue the career I wanted. In amongst that success came the worrying and self-loathing usually associated with teenage celibacy, and constant worries that a comic-collecting, toy-loving, cartoon-watching unrepentant geek would never be able to find love.
Consider this: six years ago, I was exiting rapidly from an incredibly mutually-destructive live-in relationship with my first serious girlfriend. I was wondering why I'd lost sight of all my major life interests (writing, music, movies, cartoons, toys, comics and such) in exchange for a so-called mature life event. I also wondered if I'd ever find a way to merge these two seemingly disparate sets of emotions together, or if the joins in the weld would always show, grow brittle and break under strain.
Consider this: two years ago, SJ and I spent our first wedding anniversary at the Sydney comic book convention. There, she worked behind the counter of David (Kabuki) Mack's stall, and went Guiness-for-Guiness with Mark (Ultimates) Millar in a Kings Cross Irish tavern until the wee hours of a Sunday night/Monday morning.
Consider this: on the weekend, SJ spent too much money on charcoal-coloured beanbag chairs for the comic room "so all three of us can spend time in there together, comfortable and surrounded by cool shit". Then she spent a further $80 on a set of three wooden coffee tables, and is in the process of using decoupage techniques to cover them with Green Lantern and Transformers designs to "help them fit the room better".
Yeah, you consider all of that. Because I don't need to. I already know, appreciate and give thanks every day for my having the most wonderful wife in the world. The one woman who can weld without the joins showing.
Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF
Consider this: eight years ago, I was a high school senior who had gone dateless for two years - but had managed to get just the right tertiary entrance score to pursue the career I wanted. In amongst that success came the worrying and self-loathing usually associated with teenage celibacy, and constant worries that a comic-collecting, toy-loving, cartoon-watching unrepentant geek would never be able to find love.
Consider this: six years ago, I was exiting rapidly from an incredibly mutually-destructive live-in relationship with my first serious girlfriend. I was wondering why I'd lost sight of all my major life interests (writing, music, movies, cartoons, toys, comics and such) in exchange for a so-called mature life event. I also wondered if I'd ever find a way to merge these two seemingly disparate sets of emotions together, or if the joins in the weld would always show, grow brittle and break under strain.
Consider this: two years ago, SJ and I spent our first wedding anniversary at the Sydney comic book convention. There, she worked behind the counter of David (Kabuki) Mack's stall, and went Guiness-for-Guiness with Mark (Ultimates) Millar in a Kings Cross Irish tavern until the wee hours of a Sunday night/Monday morning.
Consider this: on the weekend, SJ spent too much money on charcoal-coloured beanbag chairs for the comic room "so all three of us can spend time in there together, comfortable and surrounded by cool shit". Then she spent a further $80 on a set of three wooden coffee tables, and is in the process of using decoupage techniques to cover them with Green Lantern and Transformers designs to "help them fit the room better".
Yeah, you consider all of that. Because I don't need to. I already know, appreciate and give thanks every day for my having the most wonderful wife in the world. The one woman who can weld without the joins showing.
Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF