Crazy Time.
I'm using this icon because things are crazy around here. Yesterday was just Homerically depressing for reasons more psychological than actual, and it was salvaged only by donating blood and getting a free shirt from the gorgeous chick at the front desk.
When the high point of your day is having a gum-popping sista with inch-long electric-blue fingernails plunge a giant frickin' needle into your arm while she hums out of tune Christmas carols under her breath, you know you have had a bad day. In her defense, though she made a great show of not knowing what the fuck she was doing trying to find my vein, I felt almost nothing when she stuck me, and I haven't got so much as a bruise.
I also got to make a gingerbread house yesterday. So that didn't suck completely.
Today was marginally better, but I got nothing done.
On the other hand, I'd forgotten just how much I dig hanging out with my dad. Whatever personality traits I have that you think are cool? He's where I get them.
ME: *sees over-the-door coat hanger, imagines perverted bondage-style uses for it*
ME: Oooooh. Hmmm. That's . . . uhh. . . .
DAD: What?
Me: Uhh . . . nothing. My brain just went to a very wrong place.
DAD: Heh. Mine lives there.
Later we were discussing family and degrees of relation, using my family as an example.
DAD: So your uncles' kids and whatnot, they don't share much blood with you, but your parents do, and so do your lineal ancestors, those who provided their genetic material so that you might exist. And your children would, too. Not that I'm saying you have to have kids. Or ought to.
ME: No, that's not in the plan.
DAD: Ah. Good.
Those of you who have wrestled with parents not accepting your reproductive choices will know what I mean when I say that it was nice to know I won't be having that problem. I've always said we understand each other. He and I are a lot alike, more alike each year. And quite by accident I've grown to be interested in many of the same things he loves: exploratory and colonial history, the history of the U.S. West, battleships. Even tonight, he lent me a book on the hunting of man-eating tigers in India. How cool is that?
It gives me pleasure.
I have to go try to write now. The muse waits for no-one. And it's soothing to be back in my world.
To the good: I'm at 87,000 words and creeping. The scene I excerpted a while back is done at last, and there's been more bad sex since then. Maybe after I finish this appalling thing I will attempt to write something publishable, with actual literary merit. Wouldn't that be a shock?
An actual Real Update should be coming down the pike sometime soon here. I just don't feel like discussing the situation with Mom much. I'll leave it at saying things are really, really bad; I'd say scary bad, except there is nothing scary about this, really, given that we've known it was coming for months. It isn't impersonal, this dying. What it is, is deeply personal and depressing and awful and terribly, terribly sad. And, scary or sad, it'll be over quite soon. And that is a change so profound that there really is no point in talking about it, because it can't really be articulated or described. There's grief for you, lost as a puppy and raw as November.
Christmas isn't canceled, though, and the familiar trappings of tree and stockings and gingerbread house are soothing and joyous. I understand better than I ever did before the idea of midwinter revels. This is the hidden gift of the darkness, and the cold: that it cannot steal all of our warmth or our light.
If it is to be denial, then let it come with wine and friends and flame, and one last, grand revel before sleep.
When the high point of your day is having a gum-popping sista with inch-long electric-blue fingernails plunge a giant frickin' needle into your arm while she hums out of tune Christmas carols under her breath, you know you have had a bad day. In her defense, though she made a great show of not knowing what the fuck she was doing trying to find my vein, I felt almost nothing when she stuck me, and I haven't got so much as a bruise.
I also got to make a gingerbread house yesterday. So that didn't suck completely.
Today was marginally better, but I got nothing done.
On the other hand, I'd forgotten just how much I dig hanging out with my dad. Whatever personality traits I have that you think are cool? He's where I get them.
ME: *sees over-the-door coat hanger, imagines perverted bondage-style uses for it*
ME: Oooooh. Hmmm. That's . . . uhh. . . .
DAD: What?
Me: Uhh . . . nothing. My brain just went to a very wrong place.
DAD: Heh. Mine lives there.
Later we were discussing family and degrees of relation, using my family as an example.
DAD: So your uncles' kids and whatnot, they don't share much blood with you, but your parents do, and so do your lineal ancestors, those who provided their genetic material so that you might exist. And your children would, too. Not that I'm saying you have to have kids. Or ought to.
ME: No, that's not in the plan.
DAD: Ah. Good.
Those of you who have wrestled with parents not accepting your reproductive choices will know what I mean when I say that it was nice to know I won't be having that problem. I've always said we understand each other. He and I are a lot alike, more alike each year. And quite by accident I've grown to be interested in many of the same things he loves: exploratory and colonial history, the history of the U.S. West, battleships. Even tonight, he lent me a book on the hunting of man-eating tigers in India. How cool is that?
It gives me pleasure.
I have to go try to write now. The muse waits for no-one. And it's soothing to be back in my world.
To the good: I'm at 87,000 words and creeping. The scene I excerpted a while back is done at last, and there's been more bad sex since then. Maybe after I finish this appalling thing I will attempt to write something publishable, with actual literary merit. Wouldn't that be a shock?
An actual Real Update should be coming down the pike sometime soon here. I just don't feel like discussing the situation with Mom much. I'll leave it at saying things are really, really bad; I'd say scary bad, except there is nothing scary about this, really, given that we've known it was coming for months. It isn't impersonal, this dying. What it is, is deeply personal and depressing and awful and terribly, terribly sad. And, scary or sad, it'll be over quite soon. And that is a change so profound that there really is no point in talking about it, because it can't really be articulated or described. There's grief for you, lost as a puppy and raw as November.
Christmas isn't canceled, though, and the familiar trappings of tree and stockings and gingerbread house are soothing and joyous. I understand better than I ever did before the idea of midwinter revels. This is the hidden gift of the darkness, and the cold: that it cannot steal all of our warmth or our light.
If it is to be denial, then let it come with wine and friends and flame, and one last, grand revel before sleep.