Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

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.

1. So alecaustin and I were IMing about our own tendencies in worldbuilding, and his tendencies towards cathedrals with grotesques and gargoyles. And I started to say, "Everyone likes cathedrals!" when I realized that I had neglected several prime cathedral-building opportunities in my worldbuilding in favor of cultures/groups with a flatter, more utilitarian, or generally less opulent architectural approach. And what popped into my head is, "My stuff is more Frank Lloyd Frazetta." I am mulling both the serious and the silly bit of that.

2. My godson is 9. He picked out a birthday card for me that his mother was sure I would find Just Awful. It is a hangman puzzle that lists H _ _ _ Y B _ _ T _ _ _ _, and then on the inside the answer proves to be HAIRY BUTTOCKS. I am aware that I have a 9-year-old godson, so I was not the least bit horrified at this. We are, however, looking for amusing alternatives. timprov proposes HELPY BINTURONG. Other suggestions welcome.

3. We have further evidence that I am not being obvious when I think I'm being obvious. Hands who's surprised.

4. Our lettuce may go to seed and not be producing edible crop at any time when our tomatoes and cucumbers are producing edible crop. While not the end of the world, this would annoy markgritter. Still, being able to make lettuce wraps and top other people's hamburgers with our own garden produce is very nice indeed, and the eggplant is flowering promisingly, and the tomatoes have set fruit.

5. My birthday is Tuesday! This is sort of implied by #2, I know, but I haven't been going on about its approach. There is edamame hummus, though, and there is a bit of strawberry cake still, and the hearth is full of presents and cards, and I am so very very fond of birthdays. This year the scones will be whole wheat raspberry. I will report back in if they're awesome.

I don't mean to go all Bert Blyleven on you*, but it's 12 days to my birthday.

I really like birthdays. This year I am very tired, and birthdays perk me right up.

I don't think that anybody should buy me a present who wouldn't otherwise buy me a present. I dislike trolling for presents. However. If you are a person who was already trying to think what to get me, a caffeine-free tisane with ginger and no anise in it is very welcome indeed. Staff of life, ginger. Staff. Of. Life. I went through one box of the spice tisane I'm using most in the two weeks since alecaustin went home: I distinctly remember opening it the morning he left, and now it is gone. And I've been drinking other tisanes sometimes still.

There are rumors about other things that are the staff of life, and this is my 2^5 birthday, but "to the fifth" should not be a theme, because I am not at all a good drinker, and a fifth of anything would last me to my 3^5 birthday.

Mostly you should get me a chatty e-mail for my birthday, really. Or string, or nothing.

Not actually string, unless you've done something good with it, but if I'd left the string out, it wouldn't have been a Tolkien reference. So there you have that part.

You can get me a Tolkien reference for my birthday if you like. Those are nice, and they often fit.

*/obligatory laurel reference

Happy my birthday to you! I have already had a scone and am going to go have a workout in just a minute. Yesterday my mom made lunch for markgritter, timprov, herself, Dad, Grandma, Aunt Ellen, Uncle Phil, and me, with chicken salad and fruit and cake and both of my favorite kinds of fruit bread. Today, the Smothers Brothers! And fruit crisp and pizza and godkids and many other happy birthdayish sorts of things.

Before I begin the progression of birthday fun, I wanted to say that we went and saw Grandma's apartment, and is it ever nice. I feel so good about her moving in there. I'm so glad Mom found it (and so glad it's this close to our place!). It was practically all the guys and I could talk about in the car on the way home. I had ridden past the outside in a car before, but yesterday we went in and saw the facilities and Grandma's specific apartment, which already has a sign on the door telling the other residents her name and welcoming her. They have gone past attention to detail and very nearly along the road to miracle working: the chairs in the common room, for example, are of a design that would be easy for seniors who were shaky to get in and out of, but they're also comfortable and attractive. They've managed to do all sorts of accessibility and general approach things so that this really seems like a pleasant building for older folks who are still in good health and independent. There are rolls and coffee in the downstairs common room every morning, and I really like the idea that Grandma can go down and introduce herself to her neighbors when she wants to but doesn't have to have them on top of her if she wants her space.

I feel like we could have overcome a suboptimal living circumstance because Grandma is in a better position than a lot of people who would be moving to a new city in their late 70s. But we don't have to, because this place is really, really good.

I opened some of my cards and presents yesterday and will get more today, but this year my big present is having Grandma moving up here.

I have just noticed that I have been so careful not to say anything about Grandma's moving dates in case something goes wrong with the people who are buying her house or whatever that I have not mentioned how soon it's supposed to be coming. I mean, it's not just superstition: even if the people who are buying her house have done everything right, things can go wrong with mortgage companies at the last minute. Strange and arcane are the ways of real estate transactions. It all makes me very nervous, because it doesn't feel like it just depends on people being sensible, it feels like it depends on people being sensible and having form XJ447b62 filled out properly instead of form XJ447b62a.

But: failing anything strange and arcane going wrong, my grandma will live here in the south suburbs in slightly less than two weeks.

Eeeeeeee!

I keep saying to her, "Everything is going to be so much better when you're here, Grandma." And I really do think it will.

She's coming up for her last pre-move visit this weekend, for my birthday, and we're going to see Aunt Ellen and Uncle Phil and the Smothers Brothers (consecutive, not concurrent) and generally have a fine old time. And then the next time I see her after that--good Lord willing and the creek don't rise--will be when she's moving in. To be 15 minutes away from me.

Eeeeeeee!

I have other pre-birthday things to accomplish--the making of the ritual birthday double-chocolate scones, for example, but that has to wait so they're fresh. Nobody wants stale scones. (Note to zorinth: I don't mean to taunt you, but they're very like my chocolate bread. Sorry.) It'll be a busy-ish week with that and other things. And then at the end of it there will be birthday and Grandma.

I am still celebrating my birthday until Saturday at least, and probably thereafter (because I haven't scheduled with everybody I intend to schedule with, and I doubt that all of that will happen before Saturday). But I have been asked how my "real" birthday was, and it was good. It was very good indeed. I was given sparklies and books and gooseberries and recipes and shoes and the gift of not having to shop for shoes. (Shoes are always a double gift for me, because not having to shop for shoes is such a darn relief.) And lo these other splendid things. And I'm not done, did I mention that part? It's so good.

I am enjoying a little bit of the traditional post-birthday choice paralysis when it comes to books, not helped by the fact that some of my long-standing hold items came in at the library. I enjoy the post-birthday choice paralysis. It never lasts longer than it takes for me to need another book anyway; as soon as I need one, I find myself able to choose. But the waffling is nice.

Lots of people wished me a birthday free of vertigo. And that...um. That didn't happen. At all. As I'm pretty sure they expected. But:

I'm thinking back to a post rosefox made awhile ago. She was talking about sexuality/queerness, but I was thinking of it as applied to race and sex and disability in fiction as well. The oversimplified version of the theory she was talking about (and ascribing to Rick Bowes, possibly*) was that there are three stages of having a queer person in fiction: 1) ACK!; 2) exploration of the queerness; 3) story about something else completely. And Rose was saying that she wanted another step beyond that, where the story was neither focused on the character's sexuality nor treating it as completely irrelevant, and I was thinking that I want that with race/ethnicity and gender and disability and really all sorts of other character traits, too. I see why it's sometimes interesting and sometimes necessary to have "What is it like to have a girl do these things?" stories, or "How does it change this story if the characters are black?" stories. But I feel like there are too cases where people assess whether it "matters" or not whether a character is female (/black/gay/blind/whatever) by judging whether someone was actively trying to stop them from doing something based on that trait. It can be a good story. But it's not the only way that a trait can matter.

Take The True Tale of Carter Hall, for example. Thomas Allen Lin. Called Tam because his little sister couldn't say Thomas when she was learning to talk, and it stuck. He's Chinese-American. (And not, you will note, Chinese. There are plenty of good stories to be told about born-in-China Chinese people in North America. But this is not one of them; one of the things that makes me absolutely crazy furious is when non-white people are assumed to be Not From Here due to being non-white. Will having a third-generation Chinese-American character in one hockey fantasy fix this? No. But it can't hurt.) Does it "matter" that he is Chinese-American and playing hockey? Well, on the one hand, no: there is nothing inherent that should make Chinese-American people any better or any worse at skating, stick-handling, etc. And would people picket a minor league team demanding an end to the Yellow Peril? One would most certainly hope not; not in Bemidji in 2008. I would be shocked. (I am frequently unpleasantly surprised by the newspaper. But shocked rarely.) But name for me the famous Chinese-American hockey players. I'll wait. No, good try, but Richard Park is Korean. Does it matter if you are not just the only non-white guy on the team, but the only non-white guy on any of the teams you play? Does it matter if pros of your race/ethnicity in your sport can be counted in a very short conversation? Well, yah. I think it does. Does it stop you from doing what you love to do? No. But motivational speeches aside, stopping you or not stopping you are not the only things that count. I think that's very lazy writing, frankly, and lazy social thinking. If your character interactions can be summed up in a yes/no checkbox, you're probably doing it wrong. (Oh, how many LOLauthors there could be with "Nuance: ur doin it wrong." Sigh.)

Tamora Pierce's Alanna books are dealing with the cases where someone comes out and says, You Can't Because You're A Girl. It's a pretty standard plot, done well. Her later Keladry series makes me happy because it recognizes that the world does not leap back in amazement and say, Wow, I Guess Girls Can! We Will All Reform Our Views! just because one girl did. It acknowledges that while being the first is interesting, being the second is interesting, too, in ways that are underexplored in this genre. But there are more steps down that road to take. There are more ways to explore gender mattering and not mattering in that fictional cultural context. Pierce can of course go down other roads if she likes, but this one has miles and miles ahead on it.

On the New Writers panel at Fourth Street, mmerriam said he wanted to see more disabled characters who just were disabled, who weren't there to have their disability miraculously healed at the end but who just got on with it, whether it was saving the world or contacting the aliens or what. Who were blind, or deaf, or had mobility problems, or any of a number of things, some of which show up in the real lives of the people reading this, but who were neither defined by that nor able to completely ignore it. I think there's a little more of that in books these days. I hope so. I loved how Hilary McKay handled Sarah and her wheelchair in the Casson family books. It mattered. It just didn't dominate. It wasn't the only thing that mattered.

So, circling back: did I have vertigo on my birthday? Yes. Did it matter? Yes. Did I have a good birthday anyway? Yes. Definitely. And I hope to continue to do so.

*Edited to add: Rick notes that first, this is not his theory originally, and second, he certainly doesn't see it as the be-all and end-all of what can be done with sexuality in fiction, much less other character-related topics. I think no one should have assumed the second point anyway, but it's still good to keep in mind.

Hard day yesterday. A couple of small falls early and then a bad fall in the kitchen. Broke one of my remaining favorite big mugs. I hate breaking things. (When I was at Oregon State for their NSF-REU ten years ago, they gave us accounts with the food services on campus. The money on our cards couldn't be given back to the department or transferred directly to an OSU student -- although I could and did pay for some of the meals of guys in the program who ran out of food money before the program was over due to eating a great deal more than I did -- but you could use it in the campus coffee shop. So I bought myself four tall mugs with stars all over them, and several pounds of good coffee, tea, and tisane for myself and relatives. I loved those mugs. There's one left now.)

Still and all, there were also some very fine things about yesterday, and I just got a FedEx delivery of fleur de sel caramels and burnt caramel sauce from markgritter. It's very hard to remain glum in the face of very high quality dark chocolate-covered caramel. At least it is for me.

And I have had fun plans with people I care about all week, and I have fun plans with people I care about for all of next week, too. And there are some boxes and cards waiting for me -- I opened the caramels on instructions from markgritter, because they had a cold pack in them and all, but the rest is waiting for tomorrow. I find that very cheerful.

The random-play of MP3s seems to believe that tomorrow is not my fifth birthday, nor my 30th, but instead my 17th: we have a lot of older and newer music -- most of what we have is not from that specific time and radio-play type, in fact -- but what am I getting? Cranberries. Live. Soul Asylum. Alice in Chains. And now 10,000 Maniacs. Silly MP3s! I am not going to go put on a flannel shirt, so stop hinting! And greykev has more than that one 10,000 Maniacs tape and bagpipe music now! You can branch out, too, o computer! (Clicked "next." Green Day. From Dookie. Thanks, computer.)

My birthday is one week from today. In case you missed the signs and omens: one week. Exactly seven days. And then I will be thirty. I am doing a few of my crazy birthdayish things, like making sure we have the stuff in the house for my mom's and my baking projects, and checking my Amazon list with a magazine held up over half the screen so that I can see how many things have been bought off my list without seeing what. (I consider this the digital equivalent of shaking one's wrapped presents to see if they make a noise like Legos. Or, y'know, something else. But mostly it was the "is this a Lego pack or not" ritual, although if there was a pleasing slide and heavy thump, it might be a book wrapped in a shirt box to be sneaky, which was a good sign, especially as that usually meant it was either a big thick book or more than one paperback.)

(I remember for my mom's fortieth birthday my dad wrapped a brick with plane tickets to go see her favorite cousins taped to it. When we handed her the box and asked what she thought it was, she said, "Uff da, it feels like a brick!" And it was. There's no fooling us! We are experienced present-shakers.)

The last few days have featured pretty bad vertigo-related nausea off and on. Whee. I am not only bored of how bad it's been but bored of talking about how bored I am of it, so...yah. Other stuff, posthaste. markgritter and I are taking Robin and Lillian (and their dad!) to the Science Museum's special effects/Star Wars exhibit anyway. We will get me a wheelchair, and I will sit outside the OmniMax theater with a book while they watch the movie, since I am not able to watch regular movie theater screens, much less IMax shows that are intended to make people vertiginous. I am determined to have a good time, and I think the others are as well. porphyrin and timprov told us to have fun in their absence, and I'd hate to disappoint them.

I had some people over for cake last night. Every time I do something like this, I have to remind myself that I like more people than I can chat satisfyingly with in an evening, more people than I could fit in the house, and so I have to invite a subset of the people I like. And then I do, and then I still don't get to talk enough to half of the people involved. Still, a good time had by all, particularly by me, and my house has a new motto! Courtesy of the youngest scion of the house of haddayr. We're thinking of having it embroidered to hang:

"mrissa's house: it's not icky."

I think one of the reasons I have such good birthdays is that I have such broad good expectations of them. I loved walking in the rain with the dog on my birthday. If it hadn't rained, I would have been pleased that it had stayed so clear and fine on my birthday. If we'd been in a tornado warning, I probably would have enjoyed snuggling in with a fresh book. I am pleased by presents I knew I wanted and presents I didn't know I wanted. Presents of objects, presents of ideas, presents of experiences, presents of greetings. I am even pleased by absence of presents, because I don't like anybody to feel that a gift (to anyone at any time) is an obligation, and if they didn't give me one, it clearly means that they don't feel a gift is an obligation, and so I have succeeded in that regard, and that makes me happy.

I have more birthday happiness ahead of me today with a few more people, and I have arrangements to make for more good things in my life, and all in all, it's been a good time to be the mrissa lately.

My pleasures today are domestic and imaginary. The last pan of oatmeal raisin cookies is out of the oven, and so the house smells like cinnamon, allspice, and cloves, with oats to steady them. This is one of the scent-combinations that says, "Someone loves this house," to me. I'll soon have to figure out what we're having for dinner and who's cooking it, but until then, we'll have the smell of spice cookies.

The book is booking. Book book book. It's being enough fun and absorbing enough that I will be surprised if I take my birthday off this year. I can, of course. It's my birthday. I can do what I like, approximately, within reasonable limits. It's just that I suspect that what I like will involve some book, and that's a good thing.

(Thursday is my birthday. Somewhere around Saturday my brain switched over into pre-birthday mode. Birthday! Birthday birthday! I like birthdays. We are very good at birthdays in my family.)

I'm enjoying this period of rereading before my birthday. I got to open the presents from seagrit and jffgrnfld and Amber when they were here, and markgritter finished his copy of HP7, but I'm going to hold off until after my birthday to dive into that pile, because lots of rereading all at once feels like fun right now.

Okay. Dinner cogitating. Then more book.