The vacation post, on probably the worst day I could choose to make it
Am fairly horrifically depressed today, mostly because of the worst PMS I've had in recent memory, magnified by several other things that shouldn't bother me nearly as much as they do. My mother's at the top of that list. Conflicted, confused feelings toward a parental unit, thy name is hiyacynth.
However, I went over to Debbie's after work tonight to have dinner, talk Harry Potter, catch up, and go over the most recent rework she'd done on our screenplay (the last revision, I swear), and laughed harder than I've laughed in a really long time. It was wonderfully healing. She wrote two versions of our ending, tweaked to shorten the whole thing up a few pages and to tighten up a particular relationship arc. One version she called the "mean" edit. I read it first. And fell over laughing on her couch. Stayed that way for a good five minutes. Read the second, nicer, more mature ending, smiled warmly, and said, "Very nice. But absolutely no question: You have to go with the knothole line." Felt really good. Debbie is also having a rough go of it this week, and she clearly needed a good laugh and some validation, too.
So. The vacation. Um. I don't really want to talk about a lot of it. Suffice to say that the anticipated family drama made its appearance, and that my therapist and my sister's are in business for several more years. And it was actually good. Just... psychically damaging in all the same old places. Welcome to having a family. But the kids were really fun. Antonin is the cutest thing ever, Martin is a budding fantasy/gamer nerd, and Johanna is a full-blooded, fic-reading fangirl.
The funniest thing and most satisfying thing that happened was the reveal of Johanna's fangirl gene, . I caught her reading Fall Out Boy fanfic, took her back into my bedroom (stop making that sound dirty), and showed her my "Like the Rifle" locket and the pictures therein, and then confessed that I, myself--gasp!--write fanfic. Then we took a long, long walk and discussed fanfic, fandom, and the various kinds of love that lie therein. She found Sam and Dean to be very attractive and asked if I had more pictures of them, so I walked her through the screencaps and vids I had on my computer. (She's a Sam girl and was SHOCKED and horrified to witness caps of the end of AHBL 1.) She asked me to tell her the whole story of Sam and Dean, and that was another long, long walk. Very satisfying.
Anyway, on to my funny moment. Saturday afternoon I put my locket onto the chain with my other pendant because its chain had broken. When I went to start the hugging and kissing of the boys, Antonin noticed it, cracked it open before I could stop him, and asked who those guys were. "My friends," I answered fairly smoothly. "Your BOYFRIENDS!! Tata has BOYFRIENDS!!" And then began the chorus of Martin and Antonin, between hugs and kisses, calling, "Goodbye, Tata! Goodbye, Tata's boyfriends!" Over, and over, and over, and over, and over...
It was lovely. And also more hugs and kisses than I've gotten from those two in a long time.
I've been bitching at myself for not having gotten any writing done, but when I did a word count on what I wrote on the plane there and back and Saturday through Monday nights, it adds up to around 5,000 words and puts me firmly in the last scene of Chapter 9 of 10. I hope to finish 9 by the end of the weekend and, if I can swing things right, actually start posting the thing next week or early the week after. Which kind of bends my brain. I've been writing it since January. JANUARY. It's close to 80,000 words long and will probably come in somewhere just shy of 100,000. I just double-spaced it so I could think about it in a page-count comparison to the novel Debbie and I wrote together... It'll come in within 100 pages of the same length. As a novel two people spent three years writing. That just doesn't really compute to me.
AT ANY RATE. I seriously need to buck up and lay off myself already, so I've uploaded my nifty, pretentious "Ooh, lookit me, I made myself an icon for my stupid epic angst-o-rama of a fic" icon. It pleases me.
Oh, and Fangirl Central? Your wands all have cores of pure, awesome love. And I have a new craft project in mind for Labor Day.
ETA: You know what I want right now? Sports Night, and lots of it. You know what I still don't own? Even a tiny little bit of Sports Night. Danny! Casey! Where are you?
However, I went over to Debbie's after work tonight to have dinner, talk Harry Potter, catch up, and go over the most recent rework she'd done on our screenplay (the last revision, I swear), and laughed harder than I've laughed in a really long time. It was wonderfully healing. She wrote two versions of our ending, tweaked to shorten the whole thing up a few pages and to tighten up a particular relationship arc. One version she called the "mean" edit. I read it first. And fell over laughing on her couch. Stayed that way for a good five minutes. Read the second, nicer, more mature ending, smiled warmly, and said, "Very nice. But absolutely no question: You have to go with the knothole line." Felt really good. Debbie is also having a rough go of it this week, and she clearly needed a good laugh and some validation, too.
So. The vacation. Um. I don't really want to talk about a lot of it. Suffice to say that the anticipated family drama made its appearance, and that my therapist and my sister's are in business for several more years. And it was actually good. Just... psychically damaging in all the same old places. Welcome to having a family. But the kids were really fun. Antonin is the cutest thing ever, Martin is a budding fantasy/gamer nerd, and Johanna is a full-blooded, fic-reading fangirl.
The funniest thing and most satisfying thing that happened was the reveal of Johanna's fangirl gene, . I caught her reading Fall Out Boy fanfic, took her back into my bedroom (stop making that sound dirty), and showed her my "Like the Rifle" locket and the pictures therein, and then confessed that I, myself--gasp!--write fanfic. Then we took a long, long walk and discussed fanfic, fandom, and the various kinds of love that lie therein. She found Sam and Dean to be very attractive and asked if I had more pictures of them, so I walked her through the screencaps and vids I had on my computer. (She's a Sam girl and was SHOCKED and horrified to witness caps of the end of AHBL 1.) She asked me to tell her the whole story of Sam and Dean, and that was another long, long walk. Very satisfying.
Anyway, on to my funny moment. Saturday afternoon I put my locket onto the chain with my other pendant because its chain had broken. When I went to start the hugging and kissing of the boys, Antonin noticed it, cracked it open before I could stop him, and asked who those guys were. "My friends," I answered fairly smoothly. "Your BOYFRIENDS!! Tata has BOYFRIENDS!!" And then began the chorus of Martin and Antonin, between hugs and kisses, calling, "Goodbye, Tata! Goodbye, Tata's boyfriends!" Over, and over, and over, and over, and over...
It was lovely. And also more hugs and kisses than I've gotten from those two in a long time.
I've been bitching at myself for not having gotten any writing done, but when I did a word count on what I wrote on the plane there and back and Saturday through Monday nights, it adds up to around 5,000 words and puts me firmly in the last scene of Chapter 9 of 10. I hope to finish 9 by the end of the weekend and, if I can swing things right, actually start posting the thing next week or early the week after. Which kind of bends my brain. I've been writing it since January. JANUARY. It's close to 80,000 words long and will probably come in somewhere just shy of 100,000. I just double-spaced it so I could think about it in a page-count comparison to the novel Debbie and I wrote together... It'll come in within 100 pages of the same length. As a novel two people spent three years writing. That just doesn't really compute to me.
AT ANY RATE. I seriously need to buck up and lay off myself already, so I've uploaded my nifty, pretentious "Ooh, lookit me, I made myself an icon for my stupid epic angst-o-rama of a fic" icon. It pleases me.
Oh, and Fangirl Central? Your wands all have cores of pure, awesome love. And I have a new craft project in mind for Labor Day.
ETA: You know what I want right now? Sports Night, and lots of it. You know what I still don't own? Even a tiny little bit of Sports Night. Danny! Casey! Where are you?