Eight random things

[mrissa]

buymeaclue tagged me, so I guess I'm listing eight random things about myself. If you want to do like this, please do, but I don't tend to tag people for memes, even though I don't mind being tagged myself.

1. Eight is my favorite number. First cube! Well, first cube that isn't one. Or zero, I suppose. I am also fond of 27, in theory. As a number. In practice, well...I won't be sorry to see what 28 is like, come July, let's say that much.

2. In retrospect, the worst year of my childhood was the year I was 9, and the best year was the year I was 12. I define "childhood" as "period before I left for college" for this particular purpose. Different subjects of discussion require different definitions -- I was startled, when talking to a 15-year-old at Minicon, to hear her refer to herself in a conversation about what kids are reading. I said, "What? No, no, in literary terms you're a grown-up." This is not universally true, I suppose, but the odds seem good. Anyway, 12 may vary a lot, but I think 9 is hard across the board. You're no longer a cute little kid in the same way as you were before, but people only want to treat you as a "big kid" when it's something that's convenient for them, never when it's convenient for you.

3. I hate shoes. My feet are very bad at keeping callouses (so I also hate going barefoot), so it's always more of a process of breaking my feet in than breaking my shoes in. Stupid shoes. I am theoretically very easy to fit in shoes, not to one end or another of length or width. American women's 7.5 regular. Easy, sort of. Except for the part where my feet bleed. Boots, boots are the answer.

4. I love to feed people. Mostly I love to cook for people, but it does go beyond that: when some of my younger friends didn't really much care for the soup I'd made, they were thrilled to be offered peanut butter sandwiches, and I was thrilled to be able to get them something they wanted. (I'm not always as keen on people getting into my pantry/fridge and utterly ransacking it without consulting me or without listening to what I said -- sometimes I had plans for that stuff! -- but that's not as much an issue as once it was.)

5. Related thereto -- and I thought everybody who knew me already knew this, but then someone I consider a dear friend had not made the connection -- I don't actually enjoy eating all that much. I enjoy baking, and cooking, and smelling food. But putting it in my mouth and chewing and swallowing? Meh. I get resentful of people who say "never trust a skinny cook." I have smelled the dish in great detail before I serve it to you, and probably have tasted it in multiple stages, but the kinds of tastes I get before I serve people food are not meals in themselves. Not even close. I don't need bigger pants to smell well.

6. I don't really mean to accrete people. It just happens. I used to mean it a lot more, because I used to think that if I didn't make superheroic efforts, people would just evaporate. Now I trust you-all a good deal more than that. Well, okay, not you-all. But at least you-some. I am often surprised at what kind of people I have gotten handed sort of matter-of-factly by the universe. "Thought you might want someone to Noel Streatfeild geek with." "Uh...okay. Thanks, universe." Etc.

7. I have periods when short stories are attempting to cascade out of me and are getting a big bruised in the crush. Right now is one of those times -- or rather, it feels like the beginning of one. I haven't had one for awhile, so this is probably okay.

8. I don't have nearly so many short stories that are quiet, subtle, decorous ways of yelling at one specific person any more. Most of the people who were going to be able to hear that have already had their stories written, and most of the rest probably won't be able to hear it. I do get obscurely wistful in stories that are not themselves wistful at all. They are outlets for my wist, in tiny pieces, sometimes. Not always. The more I go along, the more the stories are self-sustaining and self-defining, and the less they're object lessons or target practice. This seems like a fine thing to me.

Comments

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I love shoes. They, however, never ever love me. When I was still living in DC though, I learned that have bone spurs on my heels that make any shoes with a heel cup (ie, anything with a back) such a bad idea. So I feel your pain. And I buy expensive shoes, because at least they love my feet more than the cheap ones do. (and I love buying the expensive shoes for very little money--the best of both worlds, baby!)

Also, one can never have too many people to geek about Noel Streatfield with. I'm just saying.

27

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

27 is three cubed, which is it's own thing right there.

B

[lutin.livejournal.com]

Why were 9 and 12 so neat?

Re: 27

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's why it came up in such close proximity to 8, although I suppose you could argue that it's more similar to 4 that way, as an N^N rather than N^3.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

9 was not neat. 9 sucked. I was growing like mad -- my growing pains started at 9, though they worsened for most of 10 -- and that was when I hit puberty like the proverbial freight train. And nobody else in my class was hitting puberty like any kind of train at that time. I've heard people complain about how weird everything felt, but I think it was worse to be the only one feeling it. Also, my beloved gifted ed teacher had been gone for a year, and the lady they had replacing her refused to exhibit learning behavior and kept being surprised at what I knew and could do (Ms. Kinkle had not been surprised, because Ms. Kinkle believed in me), and my classroom teacher had started using me as an unpaid teacher's aide, and I had read all the books in the school library

12, however, was wonderful. Everybody else was doing that stupid puberty thing -- me, I was settling into this very same body I currently have, and while there were some drawbacks to having it at 12, it was starting to feel familiar; it was starting to feel like mine. (It could go a whole month without going up a cup size, for example, which I appreciated.) Also people would treat me like more of an adult and then find out how old I was, but they couldn't wholly take it back even once they knew I was 12 and not older; the attitudes remained a bit, especially since I could talk to them like I was much older. I met scottjames. I had the best set of teachers I had in my entire primary or secondary schooling: Marylyn Bremmer, who has remained my friend, and also Kirk Troutman and Tim Lesch and Karen Stalker. The main exceptions to this rule seemed terrified of me and would leave me alone to read. I had discovered physics with A Brief History of Time and modern science fiction with Beggars in Spain. I found out that I could just start ignoring people's expectations of me, and they would more or less go away -- the people, if not the expectations. I verified that I could wander off and find friends on my own, that the friends I'd made the year before in Kansas had not been a fluke. They started having contests for smart kids, and I started winning them, and all of a sudden I had a way to start to gauge my place in the larger world, not just in a dinky Nebraska elementary school. I started to learn to flirt. It was a great year all over the place.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Expensive hiking boots and expensive socks are the best combo ever for my feet. Our friend CJ is extremely good at fitting them on people, too.

See, and up until a year or two ago, I had no people to geek about Noel Streatfeild with, and now I have someone my own size and someone much smaller. Definitely progress.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I was startled, when talking to a 15-year-old at Minicon, to hear her refer to herself in a conversation about what kids are reading. I said, "What? No, no, in literary terms you're a grown-up."

Was that by any chance my daughter, who started reading Jane Austen at 9?

I'm not bragging about her. She certainly didn't understand all the words and concepts then, and probably still doesn't understand all of them in what she reads. But she went directly from children's picture books to adult books; none of the "tween" or "teen" stuff ever attracted her. She does, however, call herself a "kid."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, it was Judy R.

I hope your R. goes back and discovers some of the YA stuff that's out there as an adult. The better end of it is no less complex and interesting than the adult stuff. (Said the YA writer without any bias whatsoever....)