*paraphrases Al Swearengen* Advancements, none miraculous
I've been almost silent on the LJ front for a while now. I continue to have nearly nothing to say fannishly and for some reason have developed a thing where I feel weird about talking about my personal life here. Part of it, I think, is because LJ has always been primarily about fandom for me, and through fandom I've found these friends with whom I can talk about my "real" personal life. But I feel strange to just ramble on about the non-fannish part of my life, which is my main focus these days.
But anyway, it has been a while since I made any kind of an update, and there's a lot going on in my life, so I figured I'd take the plunge.
The Good:
Marc
Things with Marc are so wonderful. I'm continually bowled over by how happy I am with him, how well suited we are to one another, and how easy it is to be around him. Last week, following the very wise buffyaddict13's advice, I sucked up my fear of bringing up Relationship Stuff and asked if we could talk about some things that have been on my mind. To which he said, "Of course." So I put the water on to boil for our pasta, and we dove into it. And before the water had even boiled, we'd discussed short-, mid-, and long-term plans, as well as my general state of conflict over not wanting to rush things but also being very aware that I'm much closer to the end of my span of reproductive years than to the beginning, and if we do decide we want children (we generally talk vaguely about how we haven't ruled it out, but we never get beyond the sort of "I don't NOT want kids" stage) we need to start making some plans to get on it.
There was absolutely no drama involved in this discussion, and the upshot is that I'm going to move my cats into his place for a few weeks in May to make sure we're all as comfortable together as we think we are, and if that proves out we'll start talking seriously about when and how to make the move permanent. And also have some more discussions about kids and what we want to do about them.
So that's the Big Relationship Stuff. But there's also all this Smallish Relationship Stuff that makes me feel incredibly happy and lucky. Like that our hours-long discussion of Watchmen ended with Marc sitting back and saying, "You know, when I first read Watchmen at sixteen, there were three things I was absolutely sure would never happen: That there'd be a movie of it, that the movie would be number one at the box office, and that I would one day have the 'which superhero would win in a fight?' conversation with a woman who would end the discussion by telling me she wanted to have sex with me." Also? He occasionally sends me random emails on behalf of my cats, written in fluent, accurate LOLCAT.
School
I'm taking Readers' Advisory this term, and it's reawakened my inner reading geek. I mean, I I've always loved to read, but my book reading has decreased greatly in the last ten or so years due to my often-shoulders-deep involvement in fandom. Which I also love. And I do strongly believe that reading and writing fic counts as "real" reading and writing. But being forced to read novels as homework has really brought me back to my love of reading all kinds of books. One of the challenges our teachers have put to us is to read beyond our normal patterns-to explore genres we don't generally read-so that we can help other readers find the books they like. So not only have I been reading a lot more books, but I'm discovering whole genres that I hadn't really explored before or had dismissed for whatever reason. And I'm also reinforcing my dislike for some genres but learning to understand what people like about them so I can still make well-informed suggestions to those readers.
I'm also really pleased that I got into my first-choice summer class, which has a ridiculously long name that is something like "Literacy and Language Development in Young Children through Children's Literature" and is taught by the same amazing professor I had for Children's Literature this fall. It's going to be a challenge because of the nine-day schedule-Saturday Sunday 9:30-5, Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday 5:30-9, Saturday Sunday 9:30-5-but I know it will be worth it. Not only is it my last chance to take one of Steve's classes, it also gives me five weeks off school on either side, which sounds heavenly and will allow me time for things like:
* Practicing my ukulele, which has been sadly neglected of late.
* Finishing my ridiculously late Sweet Charity fic, which has been sadly neglected of late.
* "Test run" of moving into Marc's place, which is sure to be at least slightly traumatic for the cats.
* Seeing my friends, local and otherwise, who I haven't been seeing enough of lately.
The Bad/Annoying/Stressful
Work. Meh. Mostly it's fine, but some days/weeks one of my coworkers drives me right up the wall. Like this week, for example, when I've wanted to stab her repeatedly with my Bic.
Condo. On the plus side, if I do move in with Marc in the next year or so, I can take advantage of having me and my cats not living in the unit to get and keep it clean enough to show, and I can move/give away/store furniture so it will stage nicely. But on the downside is the stress of trying to sell in this crap economy. Prices in our building have dropped dramatically (not a surprise), and though the numbers I've heard from neighbors who are trying to sell are still higher than I paid (I was in the original buy-in, and paid about $40K less than the neighbor in question), it's still going to be a considerably smaller profit margin for me than if I'd sold a year ago.
Which is pointless to worry about because I wasn't ready to try to sell a year ago, first off, and also because the market is what the market is, and I'm not going to be selling *rightnow* so there's some possibility of a slight recovery between now and then. And see above, Cynthia, about there being nothing I can do about it, especially this far off. So just stop keeping yourself up nights about it already. Jeebus.
My body. Is driving me nuts.
Whatever random allergies I have are worse and worse, but I can't identify what's setting them off. Kitty litter seems to play a role, but this morning it seems much more closely related to my face cream. Which I've used for, like, nine years without a reaction of any kind. Some days just walking by someone with perfume on will set me off, and other days I can walk through the cosmetics department with those silly women spraying stuff all over and not even blink.
Girl parts still have the weird stuff going on, but again, no pattern. I'm sure the doctor's diagnosis of side effects from my birth control pills and "nothing to worry about" assurances are correct, but it still freaks me out and generally makes me want to ditch oral contraceptives because this random stuff makes me obsess over whether I'm going through some hormonal change that indicates that I'm officially pre-menopausal. Which I'm not ready for because of the aforementioned preliminary discussions of the idea of potential geekspawn. It all makes the ticking of my biological clock really, really loud, which makes it harder for me to not be all "OMG let's just start trying to knock me up because OMG I'm so fucking old!"
In Other News:
* I broke down and bought a new dishwasher after two years using this one as a drying rack. I figured I'm going to have to buy one if I'm going to sell this place, I might as well enjoy its benefits for myself for a while beforehand. It's getting delivered next Thursday and will likely be installed the following week.
* Awesome six weeks of concert going ahead: Friday = Andrew Bird; later April = Flight of the Conchords; early May = Leonard Cohen. We've also got 3-day passes for the Pitchfork festival the week we get back from France.
* This site makes me so happy. It shows real-time ukulele chords for Beatles songs, which play in the background while the lyrics scroll above. I can't wait to get home to my neglected uke and try it out.
Phew. I think that's it. Nothing more to see here, folks. Move along if that's your inclination. Lots of love to you all.
But anyway, it has been a while since I made any kind of an update, and there's a lot going on in my life, so I figured I'd take the plunge.
The Good:
Marc
Things with Marc are so wonderful. I'm continually bowled over by how happy I am with him, how well suited we are to one another, and how easy it is to be around him. Last week, following the very wise buffyaddict13's advice, I sucked up my fear of bringing up Relationship Stuff and asked if we could talk about some things that have been on my mind. To which he said, "Of course." So I put the water on to boil for our pasta, and we dove into it. And before the water had even boiled, we'd discussed short-, mid-, and long-term plans, as well as my general state of conflict over not wanting to rush things but also being very aware that I'm much closer to the end of my span of reproductive years than to the beginning, and if we do decide we want children (we generally talk vaguely about how we haven't ruled it out, but we never get beyond the sort of "I don't NOT want kids" stage) we need to start making some plans to get on it.
There was absolutely no drama involved in this discussion, and the upshot is that I'm going to move my cats into his place for a few weeks in May to make sure we're all as comfortable together as we think we are, and if that proves out we'll start talking seriously about when and how to make the move permanent. And also have some more discussions about kids and what we want to do about them.
So that's the Big Relationship Stuff. But there's also all this Smallish Relationship Stuff that makes me feel incredibly happy and lucky. Like that our hours-long discussion of Watchmen ended with Marc sitting back and saying, "You know, when I first read Watchmen at sixteen, there were three things I was absolutely sure would never happen: That there'd be a movie of it, that the movie would be number one at the box office, and that I would one day have the 'which superhero would win in a fight?' conversation with a woman who would end the discussion by telling me she wanted to have sex with me." Also? He occasionally sends me random emails on behalf of my cats, written in fluent, accurate LOLCAT.
School
I'm taking Readers' Advisory this term, and it's reawakened my inner reading geek. I mean, I I've always loved to read, but my book reading has decreased greatly in the last ten or so years due to my often-shoulders-deep involvement in fandom. Which I also love. And I do strongly believe that reading and writing fic counts as "real" reading and writing. But being forced to read novels as homework has really brought me back to my love of reading all kinds of books. One of the challenges our teachers have put to us is to read beyond our normal patterns-to explore genres we don't generally read-so that we can help other readers find the books they like. So not only have I been reading a lot more books, but I'm discovering whole genres that I hadn't really explored before or had dismissed for whatever reason. And I'm also reinforcing my dislike for some genres but learning to understand what people like about them so I can still make well-informed suggestions to those readers.
I'm also really pleased that I got into my first-choice summer class, which has a ridiculously long name that is something like "Literacy and Language Development in Young Children through Children's Literature" and is taught by the same amazing professor I had for Children's Literature this fall. It's going to be a challenge because of the nine-day schedule-Saturday Sunday 9:30-5, Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday 5:30-9, Saturday Sunday 9:30-5-but I know it will be worth it. Not only is it my last chance to take one of Steve's classes, it also gives me five weeks off school on either side, which sounds heavenly and will allow me time for things like:
* Practicing my ukulele, which has been sadly neglected of late.
* Finishing my ridiculously late Sweet Charity fic, which has been sadly neglected of late.
* "Test run" of moving into Marc's place, which is sure to be at least slightly traumatic for the cats.
* Seeing my friends, local and otherwise, who I haven't been seeing enough of lately.
The Bad/Annoying/Stressful
Work. Meh. Mostly it's fine, but some days/weeks one of my coworkers drives me right up the wall. Like this week, for example, when I've wanted to stab her repeatedly with my Bic.
Condo. On the plus side, if I do move in with Marc in the next year or so, I can take advantage of having me and my cats not living in the unit to get and keep it clean enough to show, and I can move/give away/store furniture so it will stage nicely. But on the downside is the stress of trying to sell in this crap economy. Prices in our building have dropped dramatically (not a surprise), and though the numbers I've heard from neighbors who are trying to sell are still higher than I paid (I was in the original buy-in, and paid about $40K less than the neighbor in question), it's still going to be a considerably smaller profit margin for me than if I'd sold a year ago.
Which is pointless to worry about because I wasn't ready to try to sell a year ago, first off, and also because the market is what the market is, and I'm not going to be selling *rightnow* so there's some possibility of a slight recovery between now and then. And see above, Cynthia, about there being nothing I can do about it, especially this far off. So just stop keeping yourself up nights about it already. Jeebus.
My body. Is driving me nuts.
Whatever random allergies I have are worse and worse, but I can't identify what's setting them off. Kitty litter seems to play a role, but this morning it seems much more closely related to my face cream. Which I've used for, like, nine years without a reaction of any kind. Some days just walking by someone with perfume on will set me off, and other days I can walk through the cosmetics department with those silly women spraying stuff all over and not even blink.
Girl parts still have the weird stuff going on, but again, no pattern. I'm sure the doctor's diagnosis of side effects from my birth control pills and "nothing to worry about" assurances are correct, but it still freaks me out and generally makes me want to ditch oral contraceptives because this random stuff makes me obsess over whether I'm going through some hormonal change that indicates that I'm officially pre-menopausal. Which I'm not ready for because of the aforementioned preliminary discussions of the idea of potential geekspawn. It all makes the ticking of my biological clock really, really loud, which makes it harder for me to not be all "OMG let's just start trying to knock me up because OMG I'm so fucking old!"
In Other News:
* I broke down and bought a new dishwasher after two years using this one as a drying rack. I figured I'm going to have to buy one if I'm going to sell this place, I might as well enjoy its benefits for myself for a while beforehand. It's getting delivered next Thursday and will likely be installed the following week.
* Awesome six weeks of concert going ahead: Friday = Andrew Bird; later April = Flight of the Conchords; early May = Leonard Cohen. We've also got 3-day passes for the Pitchfork festival the week we get back from France.
* This site makes me so happy. It shows real-time ukulele chords for Beatles songs, which play in the background while the lyrics scroll above. I can't wait to get home to my neglected uke and try it out.
Phew. I think that's it. Nothing more to see here, folks. Move along if that's your inclination. Lots of love to you all.