(no subject)

Having talented friends gets expensive some months. Worth it, though.

There is a tomato nearly ripe on the vine. I could have picked it yesterday, and it would have tasted as good as a supermarket tomato. I waited. Tomorrow, I think. Maybe even this evening. We didn't plant them just for what we could get at the store. There are lots of green ones on all the plants, and I can tell that in another week or two, my mouth will be sore from all the acidic tomatoes. It will be worth it. One of the peppers is a fiery orange now, and the short little plant can barely stand with all the green ones on it. They're balanced perfectly on the stem. Last year we were disappointed in this pepper for not being the straw-colored Hungarian bell kind. This year we knew what they were, and markgritter wanted them for themselves, which is always better. The cilantro is pretty dead, so we'll know not to put it there next year.

Our yard is of indifferent quality, and our garden would not impress pros or even serious amateurs, but we have kept Miss Ista from biting markgritter's marigolds more than in passing, and there are tomatoes. I am content.

She does this thing when she's waking up and yawning, where she ritually puts her mouth around someone's arm. She doesn't actually bite, but it's like, "Oh, my mouth is open already, I might as well make as if to gnaw something." Yesterday I saw her do this to me, timprov, and herself. That last amused me.

I am still tired, weary clear down to my bones. Beat-down, dog-tahrd, and half-daid, as Jen The World's Best Lab Partner would say. I have not heard from the doctor about the MRI or non-zinc blood tests yet. I'm pretty sure this is in the "good news" category of "no news," but I would still like to be done with this bit. I would still like to move on to the bit where we figure out why I'm so tired and make it go away. Or where it disappears on its own. Either way.

But in lieu of that: onwards.

Three too many

Stephanie was our butterfly-girl. Delicate, fine-boned, soft-voiced. Sometimes her younger sister would get frustrated with her fluttering. When she felt safe, she would share poems she'd written and music she liked. She was gentle and encouraging with other people's dreams. With mine. We retreated from the noise of a block party once when we were teenagers and sat on my bed and talked for hours.

Jason had a big boomy bass voice before the other boys in our class. He had broad, strong hands -- a man's hands, even when we were in junior high -- and broad shoulders. Mandy and I teased him mercilessly. He got frustrated -- especially with Manda, whom he'd known since they were tiny -- but he liked it, too. It was a frustration that made sense to him, I think.

I always wanted to touch Dave's hair -- it was so black and shiny, and most of my other cousins were fair like me. The aunties told the story about how he'd called the judge a "jugs" when he went to get adopted into our family. It was the sort of little kid cuteness they liked. Later they brought up his music, his interest in biochemistry, with a little more hesitation. He rassled with the little cousins smaller than me, played volleyball with the bigger ones. He was always there. He wanted to show me off to the neighborhood kids for being so clever, his clever little cousin. Later I think he just wanted to see how my world went, since it was such a different world than his.

I see them all in my head, how they might have been if they'd made it this far, if it hadn't all become too much for them, if they hadn't ended their own lives. I see all sorts of different ways things could have gone -- jobs, relationships, hobbies. Things that would fit them for life, things they would discard after a week or a month or a year. All the possibilities, gone. They didn't feel like there were any. I can't agree.

One of you made a locked post tonight about how you would do it if you followed them. Thank you for making that post. I truly do appreciate it, as much as it upset me, because you gave me the chance to say something, to let you know that you mean a lot to me, that things will change -- the world is full of change. That it would hurt like hell for a lot of people if you did it, and I know because I've been there before. I've gotten that phone call before, three times before my quarter-century mark, and damned if I want to do it again. Damned if I want it to be someone closer.

If you're in that situation -- if you made that post tonight, or if you thought about it and didn't -- please give me or someone else the chance to say something. Even if it's not good enough, even if it doesn't change your mind. You're not alone, and you're not without options. Please. Keep talking.

Not all like that.

In much happier mode than my last post, missista finished her puppy kindergarten class tonight. She and the other graduates left their, er, mark on the classroom. I am selfishly glad that the first housebreaking incident in a week or more was not in our house. And truthfully, even her wretched beastly bratty moods are much better than the wretched beastly brattiness of two weeks ago, or even last week.

Someone did make Ista a livejournal, but I won't be posting to it. The attempts at reading puppy psychology would get too tempting for my science fiction writer brain, I think. (Some part of me thinks, well, then at least I'd be writing something SFnal again. Well, fee. Surely I can manage a short story, if I feel like that. Surely. And yet.)

(Not that there is anything wrong with being an exclusively-fantasy writer. Not a bit of it. Some of my best friends are etc. But in my head that's not how it goes, so I can't tell yet what will transpire here: whether I will settle into writing fantasy and not fuss about it any more, whether I will continue to write SF that doesn't satisfy me, or whether I will find some way to, um, revolutionize at least a corner of the genre. I don't feel the need to do this with fantasy, but I don't feel the need for someone else to do this with fantasy, either, and I'd be perfectly happy if someone who was not me revolutionized a corner of SF in a way I can't specify or I'd just do it. So if you could get on that, one of you? It'd be convenient. Thanks.)

One more thing, and then I'll stop spamming the friendslist. Really.

I ran out my red pen today. Luckily I have another in backup -- well, that's not actually luck, that's a personality trait. But still. I remember someone -- but I don't remember who -- being fascinated that I was running a pen out. "You don't run pens out!" she said. (I remember gender, at least.) "You never keep them long enough to run them out! You always lose them first!" But I don't. I keep a death grip on them until the last dregs leave their skinny little rollerball bodies. Except for the fountain pens, and I keep even more of a death grip on those, and change the cartridges frequently.

Still, only 18 pages into Sampo and already a pen has died for the cause. I suspect that can't be a good omen.