trying to grow back some girl

[mrissa]

So I knew I was exhausted when I was trying to write some SF and come up with a planet name. "New!" I said to myself. "Planets can be New something! New something musical! Something euphonious!" And my brain promptly supplied, "New Chlamydia!" And not as an attempt to be funny. Just because it sounded nice. Yeah, so I don't think we'll be working on that story yet today. Or on anything else that requires judgment calls.

But the thing is, that's the sort of thing you can opt out of for the day. You can say, okay, tired now, beyond tired now, someone else flip the quesadillas, someone else name the planets, not me, because I am not safe without a minder.

But then there are the bits where the tired makes for more work in ways that in retrospect you should predict but you don't. Like having dry tired eyes while wearing contact lenses. Suddenly there is a period of time taken up by playing hunt-the-lens in new and exciting ways, where by exciting we mean tedious as hell. And when you are this tired you know you are clumsy, and when you are this tired and everyone else in the house is either this tired also or occupied elsewhere or is in fact a dog, you know you have to do it carefully or you will have to add "call for new contacts" to the list, which is more of a big deal when you don't wear disposables, as I do not. When you had on the list "library" and "bank" and "dry cleaners," and these simple tasks are all within five minutes of the house by car, and you still could not do them. So yah, really important to find the lens. I did. But oof. Tired like this complicates everything.

All leads up to saying that we are within the one month birthday ban, and guess who is not having a birthday party this year? No, this is not the "we're having a small birthday party but not a big one" kind. Nor the "we are having one in a park so I don't have to clean" kind. I am just not endowed with enough monkey energy to do the other things I am doing and also have a birthday party, so birthday party I will be having none. I will be poking my mom to see if she will make me rotini and chocolate cake and serve it to a few other family members. And if I find extra Mris lying around in Montreal, then I can have a random party later in the summer or early fall. But Fourth Street has completely kicked my butt, so there will not be the mountains of fruit and cheese and the birthdaying this year in Minneapolis*. There will be doing the things I am meant to be doing normally but not quite managing, I hope.

I quite like birthday parties. But I also like not falling over and staying fallen over. So we do what we do and do the best we can with it. And try not to think about having children's cartoons set on planets named by people who are just as tired as new parents.

*Edited so that lydy doesn't yell at me now that I'm not quite so tired: nor even in Eagan. Although I have in fact had birthday parties in each and even in St. Paul.

Comments

[coffeeem.livejournal.com]

Well, you were a most excellent Mriss at Fourth Street, and I very much appreciated all you did and said there. And I would write stories set on New Chlamydia. But that's just, er, me.

[moiread]

I would read them. But that's me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, the thing about the New Chlamydia stories (I am beginning to feel this is an anthology...) is that they should be deliberate. And not just, "heyyyy...that's a pretty word." If you're going to do it, do it, don't send editors stories with that name and have them query you, "Um, are you aware that Chlamydia...?"

It's that exhausted feeling of, "I should not have had that second glass of wine. Wait. I haven't had any wine. Oh. Crap." It's like the microcosm of that Mark Twain quote dd_b keeps quoting at me about how sad it is when your doctor tells you to stop smoking and drinking and you don't.

In related news, one of my high school friends and I read The Return of the Native and decided that the other Vye sisters were naturally Fallopia and Urethra. (You cannot name your daughter Eustacia! Like the internet, it is a kind of tubes!)

I appreciated you at Fourth Street also.

[moiread]

That seems entirely reasonable to me. ♥

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you had enough Mris to be the Best Mris At Fourth Street. I didn't see enough of you, but then I never do even when we're both at the top of our games. But this year there's Farthing Party! Maybe even ice cream at Farthing Party!

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Gelato.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Crepes! Momos! Etc.!

[carbonel]

New Chlamydia sounds as if it could be the name of a planet, it really does. But then what happened to the original Chlamydia?

And I assume there is sufficient shortage of Mris that even a birthday party that someone else made and all you had to do was attend would be too much, but if that happened not to be the case, I would be happy to know that and even do something about it.

There was not much of me at Fourth Street this year, but that, thankfully, was for temporary reasons.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but yah: the kind where someone else made it would still be monkey energy. Sweet of you to think of it, though.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

In vaguely related news, an ancient edition of The Book Of Lists I read when I was a child claimed that gonorrhea was the most intrinsically beautiful word in the English language.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is how total orderings bite us in the butt.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Gosh. There weren't ancient editions of The Book of Lists when I was a child, because not only it but also The People's Almanac came out brand new when I was a child. It's always weirdly jarring when you're reminded that yes, in fact, rather a lot of time has passed.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

If I were more clever (and less tired myself), I would think up a cool way to throw you an Internet Birthday Party -- where you don't have to do anything but read the fun things people post (and if you don't have the energy to read All The Things right away, that's fine, because they will still be there when you come back later). But it would have to be a) cool and b) set up in such a way that you would not be left feeling some kind of non-physical obligation on your end that you might not want to deal with.

I will ponder this when I am less tired (and possibly more clever).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I might declare it a music party via linkses. We'll see what I declare it. Birthdays get crazy, you know.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

New Chlamydia is rather a pretty name.

I am sorry about the lack of birthday party. I hope you get some Mris back soon.

[redbird]

Not falling over is good. And it would be nice to have chocolate cake, but your birthday is not an obligation to entertain other people.

[blue-hat-guru.livejournal.com]

*hugs*