Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

Well, we'll be heading out before too long here, so I'm shutting down the computer. I'll be back on Monday. Hoping I return to find that timprov is over his flu and tasks have not multiplied unduly in my absence, because I'll only have a day to get back on top of them.

Have a good weekend.

The cold stuff has eased off considerably, with only a few deep coughs and a bit of snozzliness in a given hour. This may be due to cold meds finally being enough to hold it at bay; we'll see. Anyway, today I'm mostly left with much dizziness (lots of blue sparkly dots, wheee!) and a rather uncalled-for degree of weariness. I can deal with that, sort of. By taking it easy and reading a lot and snuggling the beastlet, who is helping me type.

My voice is barely starting to reappear. I have a tiny thready I-am-5-years-old sort of voice, which is not at all the sort of voice I actually had at 5. Somewhere around that age, I was in a fundraiser bridal fashion show for my grandmother's church -- I wore flower girl dresses -- and several old family friends permanently have an impression of me as the bitty little blonde girl who calmly but firmly corrected the pastor/MC when he called me Melissa. I never really went through a soft-spoken phase, except the ones like these that are virally induced.

(ETA: I am corrected. The MC was not the pastor, and there was no fund-raising, just a bridal fashion show for the fun of people who liked that sort of thing. So now you know.)

I continue to feel like rereading things, but since I have a long mental list of stuff I've meant to reread, that's not a problem. Unlike most of my lists, though, it's only a mental list, so I will be winging it again in just a minute here. Despite missing the Dreamhaven reading for Dr. Mike's birthday/memorial (sigh), I don't really feel like it's time for one of his, so...well. We'll see what comes up, when I look around downstairs.

This is what I was talking about Saturday morning: scottjames's father was killed in a car accident Friday night. I met Marc James 15 years ago, when Scott and I were still in junior high. I last saw him in September, when Scott married Liz, and it didn't even occur to him to be weird and awkward about the fact that Scott and I used to date -- he was genuinely glad to see me, immediately demanding, "And how's your mother?" with his slight remaining New York accent.

My mom and Scott's dad thought they were the funniest people on the planet when they got together. We rolled our eyes about it, but to tell you the truth they were pretty funny, and it was fun to watch them enjoy each other so much. And to tell you the truth, they weren't entirely unlike Scott and me, standing in the middle of Barnes and Noble or the grocery store or wherever cracking wise. Neither of us has entirely turned into either of our parents, but as we got older, we got a little more comfortable with the ways in which we maybe had, just a little. A tiny bit. Maybe.

When we were in high school, Scott's dad never believed that we weren't dating. His son hung out with the same girl every weekend night, regardless of who else was around? And we weren't dating? Sure, pull the other one, kids. And then we did date in college for awhile, so that just cemented it: he was never going to believe that we hadn't been, in high school. I got back from my Gran's one weekend when we were high school seniors, and I called over to Scott's house to see if he wanted to go to Perkins or something that night. A familiar voice I thought was Scott's answered, so I chirped, "Hi, honey, I'm ho-ome!" And Marc chirped back, "Hi, honey! Scott's at the store!" Through giggles, I managed to leave a message, though it was redundant at that point, and when Scott got back from the store and called me 15 minutes later, he said, "Are you still laughing?" I was. "My dad is, too."

I have never had so much trouble with denial before. My brain keeps jumping through extravagant hoops trying to come up with ways that markgritter got the message wrong, ways that the obit I just linked was a terrible coincidence: there was a Marc James who died in Omaha? How eerie, I know a Marc James in Omaha! Who isn't dead, of course, because he can't be. Because that would mean that I would never hear that laugh again in my whole life, and it would mean that Scott wouldn't have his dad any more, and that absolutely can't be true, so clearly Mark and the newspaper and the whole entire world must have written it down wrong. I keep staring at the screen trying to make the letters change, trying to make it un-happen, and it just won't, and I know that this is not a tenth, not a thousandth of what Scott and his family are feeling right now. And I'm not there to make them lasagna and bars and give them hugs and try to keep my mouth shut when there's nothing good to say, because there isn't, none of it ever is enough, but I do wish I could at least try.

Apparently livejournal is progressing towards the day when everyone I've ever met has an lj account, except for my mom. This is not wholly a bad thing, but I'm not sure it's wholly a good one, either. I should be used to the idea that people will go on knowing each other without me -- all fandom is one, or something like that. And when it's fandom, I'm better with it. It's just when it's people I know from totally different places popping up knowing each other that I start to get a little freaked.

I am bouncing off things lately. Skimming along and then bouncing off, and I hope it rights itself soon, because it's pretty annoying. I pulled up a short story to try to trick my brain into doing something focused for awhile. I hope it works. I've also been cropping the remainder of my Christmas and New Year's pictures. Better late than never, and all that...not a project requiring great focus. So those should be up at novel_gazing in not too long.

( answering questions about adulthood )

Horrible nightmare last night. It ranks with the one about gaaldine among my worst nightmares ever. It was not a screaming one, thankfully, so it just bothered me and not markgritter and timprov. Still, it combined personal helplessness, great harm to my loved ones, and malicious stupidity from other people. Oh yay. I just can't wait to go back to sleep.

So rather than obsessively wandering from room to room checking whether timprov and markgritter are still breathing (since, y'know, they're here and I could, even if it would be neurotic and obnoxious), I've been writing e-mail and finishing up a thank-you note, and now here I am.

Someone asked what my favorite cartoons/TV shows were when I was a kid. ( the answers, such as they are )

Okay, so one of you asked for a writers' autobiography (of me, as I'm not really qualified to write anyone else's autobiography). I think by now there's some law that mandates a certain percentage of autobiographies start out, "I was born in the wagon of a travelin' show." So take that as a given.

( Many of you have heard all this, on the whole or in part, so feel free to skip; there will not be a quiz. )

Dear Person-in-my-Life:

markgritter is not a band, nor is he a multiple personality. Therefore, addressing a Christmas card to "The Mark Gritters" is stupid and wrong. Marrying the man did not make me into another of him.

Love,
me

Three rejections, no acceptances, no other writing news.

But other than that, and other than a wee bit of uncertainty about whether the dishwasher will hold up for the in-laws' visit, and other than a usually-reasonable local chain restaurant really sucking, it's been good to be home. It was good to be in Omaha, too. Lots of good stuff, really.

The good thing about the trip to Omaha for Christmas was that it featured lots of stress-free family time. The bad thing is that most of the non-family people I wanted to see came in later than I did, and we left pretty early, so I didn't get to see anybody outside my family for more than maybe half an hour solo time, plus a few hours of group time. greykev and scottjames and Mike and Tom came over last night. That was good. Would have liked more time, but isn't that the story of my life.

Oh, and I got good baby-time with Kari's Noah, who is muchly cute but was more interested in Mark than in me. (I had taken off my shiny sparkly necklace, and I have no glasses and no beard. Therefore I am boring.)

(Since I am so boring, I'm going to go do something else.)