Secret Santa Squee, and December ramble meme, day 19: characters in need of Iroh's parenting advice
So I've been having some very productive mail days! I went and mailed off the New Year packages to ikel89 and danny_li2 (and I've gotten *really* good at packing just under the 4lb weight limit -- one was 3lb 15oz, and the other one 3lb 15.3oz :D), and in the same two days sephystabbity got my thank-you-for-the-awesome-scarf package and rinkafushi (hi! :D) got the Secret Santa package. And then yesterday B called me in the morning but I was in a meeting at work, and when I called him back, he couldn't remember why he'd called. "Somebody called for me?" I said. "Something came in the mail?" Sort of -- they dropped off a slip because it was signature required and they would try to redeliver on Friday. But it had the sender name, and B said, "Do you know a Kim?" And I started bouncing in my chair because I now knew my Secret Santa was deeplyunhip :DDD
I made sure to be home in time for the promised 10:30-2 window today, and the doorbell rang right at 11, so I ran downstairs and snatched my package away, and could barely wait for my 11-12 meeting to wrap up so I could open it. And it was even more awesome than I had expected when I learned who my Secret Santa was!
Kim (adoooorable snowman) card was charmingly apologetic about lack of access to foreign delicacies and mad crafting skillz as pertains to the gift selection (I hope my questionnaire was not too obnoxious! XD), but, like. GUYS. EVERYTHING in the package was amazing and tailored perfectly to my taste, usually in more than one way, and there were so many goodies! Every new thing I picked up to look at made me squee inordinately, and for a while I genuinely couldn't decide what my favorite part of the Santa parcel was (the ultimate answer will be revealed in the end).
LOOK:
The big box is a Periodic Table game. This is precisely the sort of incredibly dorky stuff I love, and it is also useful because L is learning chemistry this year, and O loves the elements song, and we will SO be playing this at the first opportunity. I'm not sure I will win 100% of the time, but, with Loras as my witness, I WILL TRY! >:D
Next we have the wooden puzzle box:
I looove boxes, and I've always admired boxes made out of different kinds of wood, and puzzle boxes are things I've loved playing with forever but never owned. Well, now I have one, and it is a turtle, which is a critter that is indelibly connected with deeplyunhip in my mind, which makes it a doubly awesome gift. At least. And the card mentioned that it's made by a local-to-Kim artisan, which is extra neat. Now I just have to find something sufficiently awesome to conceal in it!
Possibly it will be this gorgeous necklace:
I love it! The dragonfly and the roses and the turquoise stone are very much my sort of thing indeed, and the necklace has a really warm, solid weight, and it lies really comfortably and prettily against my collarbone, which I would not have expected of a necklace this size. I am so taking this to Hawaii with me to show it off, and I even have the perfect top to wear it with. (Also the bracelet from decostilla's Secret Santa package last year, which goes perfectly with the stone.)
Speaking of tops, the green backdrop in the picture above is a fabulous T-shirt (where do you get all these awesome shirts, Kim? Why do they have them in NYC and not here? *pouts*), in a cheerful green (for Tyrell, but also just plain my favorite color, and in one of my favorite shades), with a Hobbity inscription. It says "Second Breakfast Diner" and the small letters on the bottom read "Breakfast * Second Breakfast * Elevenses * Luncheon * Afternoon Tea * Dinner * Supper". Hey, lunasariel, guess what I'm wearing (with my Tyrell scarf from sephystabbity) next time we meet up for a Hobbit-y meal at westerosorting West? :D) Also wearing this when we got to see the Hobbit! :DD
The little box on the left in the top picture is a package of handmade chocolates from Brooklyn, but, guys... I don't know if I can bring myself to destroy half of them by eating them, because THEY ARE SO PRETTY:
(Oh hey! I have pictures of them now. I guess I can bear to eat them after all ;) After I show them to L and make her THOROUGHLY jealous :D)
But my favorite part of the present is actually the hourglass.
It has magnetic sand in it. No, you don't understand. It has MAGNETIC SAND. Which I love and can play with for hours at the Exploratorium and the like. And which I did not realize was a thing they put in hourglasses (which I love on their own accord, with plain vanilla garden-variety sand). This is the perfect sort of gift, where I did not realize it was something that existed and now do and it is brilliant and I have one! I showed it off to B right away, and he was similarly geeked. BRB, buying one for him and a bunch of other people I know! :D And Kim's card referenced a Time-Turner, which, YES! I have even lost track of all the ways in which this gift is awesome, but I think it is roughly a bazillion by my latest estimate. *may or may not have been playing with the hourglass Time-Turner for the last three hours*
*while wearing my Hobbity shirt and the dragonfly necklace*
:D
(The card made mention of an acrostic but, unless it's hidden in the card writing itself, I have not been able to find it :( Maybe I dislodged it during unpacking? :( I would obviously LOVE to read it, because as you well know, I share your love for RIDICULOUS ACROSTICS (and our crafting abilities also align along these lines, although it should be noted that you also draw ADORABLE frogs!)
Kim, thank you SO MUCH for the awesome Santa-ing! This package was filled to the brim with joy and things I love and didn't realize I needed in my life, and with the heartwarmth derived from your thoughtfulness and that special amazing feeling of receiving presents from somebody who *gets* you in all kinds of ways and goes to great lengths to show that.
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
And thank you, ikel89, for facilitating this wonderful tradition and masterminding the coast-to-coast and international squee. You are the best Santa-yenta, and I am now two for two for two in terms of fabulous Santa gifts and awesome recipients and just all-around amazing Santa-ing experience. <333
*
While I'm uploading pictures and talking about presents, let me show off some of L's handiwork that went into the parcels to sephystabbity and rinkafushi:
Running into the dilemma that I didn't know what kind of tea Moni liked, I hit on the compromise of sending her a tea medley of our household favorites, based on the notion that even if she didn't like some of them, there would hopefully be others that would work for her. We packaged them in a repurposes sipping chocolate tin from TJ's, and L offered to decorate it:
And here are the earrings sets L made for sephystabbity at my commission:
And, since people had asked, some other earrings she's made:
For the craft fair:
For the lady who wanted burnt sienna or red and black ones after the Fair:
For her friends:
*
Dec 19: top 5 people Iroh needs to give parenting advice to (lunasariel)
1. Tywin Lannister (ASOIAF). So much. Why Tywin needs parenting advice is self-evident, but also, he might actually listen to Iroh? Unlikely, but if he would listen to anyone, a brilliant general like Iroh might actually be it. It seems that Iroh went through a change in priorities when his son died, and while I don't think Tywin cares about any of his children as people sufficiently to have a similar change of heart, I do think knowing loss of his own may help them understand each other. (I also considered Randyll Tarly, but the only parenting advice Randyll deserves involves Firebending, let's put it that way. Also, I decided to stick to one character per canon.)
2. Count Piotr Vorkosigan (Vorkosigan Saga). And yes, I'm probably cheating a bit, because I have reflected at some point that Piotr and Tywin have several things in common -- being bereaved single fathers, a very tough approach to parenting, a focus on the family honor at the expense of any actual human beings involved. I do believe that, unlike Tywin, Piotr does actually care about Aral (and eventually Miles) as people, but while he's actively parenting, that's not his first priority. As with Tywin, I think Piotr and Iroh would have plenty of stuff to talk about and bond over (though Piotr might have a few choice things to say about wars of conquest; I have a feeling he'd be firmly on the side of the Earth Kingdom in the AtLA war, as a former guerilla fighter himself), and Iroh is somebody whose point of view Piotr may be willing to consider, if presented carefully enough.
3. Denethor (LotR). And another similar character to the two above, with the added bit where, like Ozai (though much less blatantly, until the very end), Denethor clearly preferred one child of his to the other, and made no secret of this. I suspect that, before he was poisoned by the palantir, Denethor would have been outraged by any intimation that he was doing anything like Ozai, and at the end, he wouldn't have listened to anything anyway, so I have more doubts an intervention would do anything at all in this case, but it's worth a shot. (Under the one-character-per-canon rule I have imposed on myself, I can't also mention Feanor, but he could also use a parenting lesson in, like, actually valuing his children more than his inaninamte creations, no matter how sparkly. And not dragging said children into a doomed quest, therefore.)
4. Anderle *and* Tlennen Montrei-Vayir (Inda series) -- two for the price of one because they are brothers. Actually, like, half the Marlovan parents XD But especially those two, because there is SO much going on that somebody should've stepped in to try to help them unpack, before the whole family imploded in tragedy. Like, their own childhood issues (or, rather, Anderle's childhood adoration / the feeling of being ignored), and Anderle's complete lack-of-parenting and cruelty to his son, and Tlennen's hands-off approach with both the Sirlaef and Evred, for different reasons. And not that Anderle would think it at all applicable, but some role modeling of appropriate interaction with one's troubled nephew would be good. (And again, because both Iroh and these men come from warrior cultures, his voice may actually carry some weight with them. Especially if accompanied by some nice tea.)
5. Olidan Ancrath (Broken Empire) -- I think Olidan *might* actually be an even more terrible father than Ozai, which is rather impressive. I won't go into detail because it is both spoilery and really kind of stomach-churning, but he is a supremely terrible person, and unlikely to listen to any sort of advice, so, in this case, we're definitely also talking about the Firebending variety of "advice", but after trying to brainstorm a fifth person for a while, he occurred to me, and then I couldn't NOT mention him.
and one person who does not need the advice:
+ Noish-Pa (Vlad Taltos). I just feel like Noish-Pa strikes a really good balance between being there for Vlad, teaching him the things Vlad needs to know, being honest with him, and letting Vlad figure out his own way, even when it's a way he doesn't agree with. Iroh does a fair bit of that with Zuko, too, so I think they would see mostly eye-to-eye. And I think they would enjoy sharing a meal together and talking about the young ones in their lives with just the right measures of fondness, pride, and concern.
I made sure to be home in time for the promised 10:30-2 window today, and the doorbell rang right at 11, so I ran downstairs and snatched my package away, and could barely wait for my 11-12 meeting to wrap up so I could open it. And it was even more awesome than I had expected when I learned who my Secret Santa was!
Kim (adoooorable snowman) card was charmingly apologetic about lack of access to foreign delicacies and mad crafting skillz as pertains to the gift selection (I hope my questionnaire was not too obnoxious! XD), but, like. GUYS. EVERYTHING in the package was amazing and tailored perfectly to my taste, usually in more than one way, and there were so many goodies! Every new thing I picked up to look at made me squee inordinately, and for a while I genuinely couldn't decide what my favorite part of the Santa parcel was (the ultimate answer will be revealed in the end).
LOOK:
The big box is a Periodic Table game. This is precisely the sort of incredibly dorky stuff I love, and it is also useful because L is learning chemistry this year, and O loves the elements song, and we will SO be playing this at the first opportunity. I'm not sure I will win 100% of the time, but, with Loras as my witness, I WILL TRY! >:D
Next we have the wooden puzzle box:
I looove boxes, and I've always admired boxes made out of different kinds of wood, and puzzle boxes are things I've loved playing with forever but never owned. Well, now I have one, and it is a turtle, which is a critter that is indelibly connected with deeplyunhip in my mind, which makes it a doubly awesome gift. At least. And the card mentioned that it's made by a local-to-Kim artisan, which is extra neat. Now I just have to find something sufficiently awesome to conceal in it!
Possibly it will be this gorgeous necklace:
I love it! The dragonfly and the roses and the turquoise stone are very much my sort of thing indeed, and the necklace has a really warm, solid weight, and it lies really comfortably and prettily against my collarbone, which I would not have expected of a necklace this size. I am so taking this to Hawaii with me to show it off, and I even have the perfect top to wear it with. (Also the bracelet from decostilla's Secret Santa package last year, which goes perfectly with the stone.)
Speaking of tops, the green backdrop in the picture above is a fabulous T-shirt (where do you get all these awesome shirts, Kim? Why do they have them in NYC and not here? *pouts*), in a cheerful green (for Tyrell, but also just plain my favorite color, and in one of my favorite shades), with a Hobbity inscription. It says "Second Breakfast Diner" and the small letters on the bottom read "Breakfast * Second Breakfast * Elevenses * Luncheon * Afternoon Tea * Dinner * Supper". Hey, lunasariel, guess what I'm wearing (with my Tyrell scarf from sephystabbity) next time we meet up for a Hobbit-y meal at westerosorting West? :D) Also wearing this when we got to see the Hobbit! :DD
The little box on the left in the top picture is a package of handmade chocolates from Brooklyn, but, guys... I don't know if I can bring myself to destroy half of them by eating them, because THEY ARE SO PRETTY:
(Oh hey! I have pictures of them now. I guess I can bear to eat them after all ;) After I show them to L and make her THOROUGHLY jealous :D)
But my favorite part of the present is actually the hourglass.
It has magnetic sand in it. No, you don't understand. It has MAGNETIC SAND. Which I love and can play with for hours at the Exploratorium and the like. And which I did not realize was a thing they put in hourglasses (which I love on their own accord, with plain vanilla garden-variety sand). This is the perfect sort of gift, where I did not realize it was something that existed and now do and it is brilliant and I have one! I showed it off to B right away, and he was similarly geeked. BRB, buying one for him and a bunch of other people I know! :D And Kim's card referenced a Time-Turner, which, YES! I have even lost track of all the ways in which this gift is awesome, but I think it is roughly a bazillion by my latest estimate. *may or may not have been playing with the hourglass Time-Turner for the last three hours*
*while wearing my Hobbity shirt and the dragonfly necklace*
:D
(The card made mention of an acrostic but, unless it's hidden in the card writing itself, I have not been able to find it :( Maybe I dislodged it during unpacking? :( I would obviously LOVE to read it, because as you well know, I share your love for RIDICULOUS ACROSTICS (and our crafting abilities also align along these lines, although it should be noted that you also draw ADORABLE frogs!)
Kim, thank you SO MUCH for the awesome Santa-ing! This package was filled to the brim with joy and things I love and didn't realize I needed in my life, and with the heartwarmth derived from your thoughtfulness and that special amazing feeling of receiving presents from somebody who *gets* you in all kinds of ways and goes to great lengths to show that.
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
And thank you, ikel89, for facilitating this wonderful tradition and masterminding the coast-to-coast and international squee. You are the best Santa-yenta, and I am now two for two for two in terms of fabulous Santa gifts and awesome recipients and just all-around amazing Santa-ing experience. <333
*
While I'm uploading pictures and talking about presents, let me show off some of L's handiwork that went into the parcels to sephystabbity and rinkafushi:
Running into the dilemma that I didn't know what kind of tea Moni liked, I hit on the compromise of sending her a tea medley of our household favorites, based on the notion that even if she didn't like some of them, there would hopefully be others that would work for her. We packaged them in a repurposes sipping chocolate tin from TJ's, and L offered to decorate it:
And here are the earrings sets L made for sephystabbity at my commission:
And, since people had asked, some other earrings she's made:
For the craft fair:
For the lady who wanted burnt sienna or red and black ones after the Fair:
For her friends:
*
Dec 19: top 5 people Iroh needs to give parenting advice to (lunasariel)
1. Tywin Lannister (ASOIAF). So much. Why Tywin needs parenting advice is self-evident, but also, he might actually listen to Iroh? Unlikely, but if he would listen to anyone, a brilliant general like Iroh might actually be it. It seems that Iroh went through a change in priorities when his son died, and while I don't think Tywin cares about any of his children as people sufficiently to have a similar change of heart, I do think knowing loss of his own may help them understand each other. (I also considered Randyll Tarly, but the only parenting advice Randyll deserves involves Firebending, let's put it that way. Also, I decided to stick to one character per canon.)
2. Count Piotr Vorkosigan (Vorkosigan Saga). And yes, I'm probably cheating a bit, because I have reflected at some point that Piotr and Tywin have several things in common -- being bereaved single fathers, a very tough approach to parenting, a focus on the family honor at the expense of any actual human beings involved. I do believe that, unlike Tywin, Piotr does actually care about Aral (and eventually Miles) as people, but while he's actively parenting, that's not his first priority. As with Tywin, I think Piotr and Iroh would have plenty of stuff to talk about and bond over (though Piotr might have a few choice things to say about wars of conquest; I have a feeling he'd be firmly on the side of the Earth Kingdom in the AtLA war, as a former guerilla fighter himself), and Iroh is somebody whose point of view Piotr may be willing to consider, if presented carefully enough.
3. Denethor (LotR). And another similar character to the two above, with the added bit where, like Ozai (though much less blatantly, until the very end), Denethor clearly preferred one child of his to the other, and made no secret of this. I suspect that, before he was poisoned by the palantir, Denethor would have been outraged by any intimation that he was doing anything like Ozai, and at the end, he wouldn't have listened to anything anyway, so I have more doubts an intervention would do anything at all in this case, but it's worth a shot. (Under the one-character-per-canon rule I have imposed on myself, I can't also mention Feanor, but he could also use a parenting lesson in, like, actually valuing his children more than his inaninamte creations, no matter how sparkly. And not dragging said children into a doomed quest, therefore.)
4. Anderle *and* Tlennen Montrei-Vayir (Inda series) -- two for the price of one because they are brothers. Actually, like, half the Marlovan parents XD But especially those two, because there is SO much going on that somebody should've stepped in to try to help them unpack, before the whole family imploded in tragedy. Like, their own childhood issues (or, rather, Anderle's childhood adoration / the feeling of being ignored), and Anderle's complete lack-of-parenting and cruelty to his son, and Tlennen's hands-off approach with both the Sirlaef and Evred, for different reasons. And not that Anderle would think it at all applicable, but some role modeling of appropriate interaction with one's troubled nephew would be good. (And again, because both Iroh and these men come from warrior cultures, his voice may actually carry some weight with them. Especially if accompanied by some nice tea.)
5. Olidan Ancrath (Broken Empire) -- I think Olidan *might* actually be an even more terrible father than Ozai, which is rather impressive. I won't go into detail because it is both spoilery and really kind of stomach-churning, but he is a supremely terrible person, and unlikely to listen to any sort of advice, so, in this case, we're definitely also talking about the Firebending variety of "advice", but after trying to brainstorm a fifth person for a while, he occurred to me, and then I couldn't NOT mention him.
and one person who does not need the advice:
+ Noish-Pa (Vlad Taltos). I just feel like Noish-Pa strikes a really good balance between being there for Vlad, teaching him the things Vlad needs to know, being honest with him, and letting Vlad figure out his own way, even when it's a way he doesn't agree with. Iroh does a fair bit of that with Zuko, too, so I think they would see mostly eye-to-eye. And I think they would enjoy sharing a meal together and talking about the young ones in their lives with just the right measures of fondness, pride, and concern.