Published!

...well, self-published, as a co-author. Nephew told the story, and I wrote it down and illustrated it. He was delighted. The story makes absolutely no sense at first, but then as you realize the source material, it makes sense in a five year old kind of way.

"There was a dragon in with the socks.
The socks caught on fire.
There were some guys.
They ran around and around in circles.
They disappeared like ghosts.
The dragon flew away.
The End."

I had been telling about a kindergarten worksheet I'd had, one of the "Circle the ones that belong together" ones, with one oddball thing in with the things that were alike. The one that had made me giggle hysterically for years afterwards had been a dragon in with the socks. Nephew plays a game with a dragon in it, and guys that he makes run around and around in circles, and if you get the camera angle just right, they disappear. Like ghosts.

After I explained this to Mommy, it all made sense.

He's been reading the book over and over, because it's words he's knowing and learning, and it makes absolutely no logical sense in the conventional way.

You always hurt the ones you love

Every time I get close to Darkside, he shoves me away. Usually gently. Sometimes he hits a sore spot, though. I don't think he knows it when he does things like that -- whenever he sees that he's hurt me, he becomes gentle and careful and brings me back to smiling, if weakly.

But over the phone, he can't see the way my face freezes, he can't read the hurt out of my body language -- he has only silence and tone of voice to tell him that he's said something that was if not the absolute wrong thing to say, something close to that.

After I was able to speak again, I had a long conversation with Votania, shredding his psyche in absentia, hacking out for me the best way to proceed as good friend and clergy. Not shredding. Dissecting. Working from our maps, tracing root causes. She knew horribly little about the subject I'd hoped she'd know more about, so it's up to me.

1. Darkside now has friends who will stay in contact no matter what.


2. Darkside may have a crusty, grumpy exterior that he displays most of the time, and a rocketing fanboy side as well, but he's also capable of exceptional sweetness, mostly when he's with someone he cares about a lot.

Now, to just convince him of these two facts...

Work

I went to the job fair at DeVry yesterday, and applied for a security position (rent-a-Lunatic!) and Radio Shack.

There will probably not be good things forthcoming from the security company, as they either have no position for me, or I was too cute to look scary-securing.

In any case, I'm babysitting Nephew. I proposed to Votania that I advertize in the laundry room for other people who need babysitters -- two kids, one chunk of time. $. A good arrangement.

Computer Whammy

What do you do when the network inexplicably stops working, even though it should?

You make it so it shouldn't work at all, try to run it, notice that it fails, and then put it the way it should be. Then it should run.

We did this today. After what felt like hours of trying to make it work by manually twiddling the settings (somehow Tigereye had gotten the wrong subnet address, 255.255.0.0 while Enki was using 255.255.255.0) I did the above -- and it worked.

The Humanoid Monsoon

My room has transformed itself from tidy to trashed in a few short steps. I searched for some cords, and I moved a few pieces of furniture away from the wall momentarily... and the room's a bloody mess again.

Entropy must like me a lot.

Drama.

What goes around, comes around.

If you dish it out, expect to have it returned.

In other news, I think I just may have developed an intolerance for lactose. There has been pain and suffering too graphic to depict here.