Raaaaaargh. (Want brains.)

Crashed out early. Woke with cramps. Got lovely stuff from votania as I was too zonked to find my own.

Cramps all gone. Perhaps brain too. Not sure. Still too much asleep. Chatting with Red Sandlewood about how to wash cats.

From the Peanut Gallery, metacomments on symbolism.

boojum:

Saw the other day one of those "These colors don't run" pickup back window stickers. You know, the ones with lots of red white and blue and flaggishness about them. The ones using very non-lightfast red ink. I was amused.

Read the discussion here.

Wired for Sprog [What is the plural of that, anyway? Is it its own plural? "sprogs"? "sproggen"?]

My tolerence for kids is evidently exceptionally low.

This came up in conversation when I mentioned to votania that it was too much for me to have more than three hours of the Little Fayoumis's friends. She mentioned that my tolerence for kids was extremely low, and that it would change when I became a parent.

Um, no.

It has already changed. It is at what is probably its all-time height. The Little Fayoumis has already thrown the "I am a parent" switch, and I can put up with him comfortably most of the time. (And he's been trained to put up with me: a simple, "Joanie's grouchy", or "tired and grouchy" means that both of us will be happier if he leaves me strictly alone, and chooses locations far from me to play with his noisy toys. This works for both of us.) (And, randomly, thinking back to today, he *has* been flinching when corrected, in ways different from his old habit of put-hands-to-ears, and I do not know why, and this disturbs me, and I will get to the bottom of this.)

Becoming a parent, or so close that I get mistaken for one on the bus, does do things. I can pick his voice out of a crowd, and tell you if he's hurt, mad, tired, playing, or what. He's *mine*, on most levels except the biological. (He's more votania's, and that's as it should be, but we've bonded on the "adored stepparent/kid" model.) I can deal with barf in the middle of the night. Helping him wipe his upchucky face off does not make me blow chunks. (Thank you to the good offices of several screwdrivers, and BJ, that one night...) But I still don't have patience with kids-in-the-aggregate.

So, the casual statement, "When you have kids of your own that'll change" rubbed me the wrong way. Not all people who have kids are converted to instant saint like she was. (And she was. She and shadesong might want to swap tales about "how having a kid changed my life" sometime.) I pointed out that I'd actually gained in patience after adding the Little Fayoumis to my life, and further pointed out that at this point, I had more kid-patience than FatherSir.

This was a definite eeep moment, but there was agreement.

I am unlikely to gain any more patience with kids as an actual biological parent. (Also, the older the kid is, the better I deal with them. I am not interested in babies, and think most of them fearfully ugly, and horribly useless. This is mostly because I cannot have interaction with them that I consider meaningful.)

No, I think the next threshold of my gaining kid-patience would be the Grandparent phase, which I think FatherSir has already reached. (It was horribly frustrating when FatherSir had more time, attention, and patience for other people's kids than he had for his own.) Grandparents are supposed to be bomb-proof, no?

Arrivals & Departures

Nobody new today; several people departing from the moment-to-moment serial of weirdness. Farewell!

dreams

dreamed were getting into city that was both real and code. my dad wrote the building directory.

mr. burns was teaching a science class. George the liar was in it, and he was my deadly rival. tried to verbally battle him; failed. sputtered furious impotent. wit kept falling flat as class clown too.

*Yawnstretch*

Happy Thursday to me.

Nice long bath, in which I finished Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Have to work my way through To Say Nothing of the Dog and the two L*ckeys before I may embark upon the Holy Grail -- or no, wait, that was the last book.

(Yes. My snark is emerging. Perhaps it is exposure to boojum?)

Happy Things Meme (created by rainstorm13)

1. What brings you joy, deep down in your soul, something you can always rely on or fall back on to lift your spirits and make your heart sing again?

There are a couple things.

1. The Young Wizards series


2. Old Star Trek books (especially the ones by the author of #1)


3. R.E.M.


4. The certain knowledge that Darkside cares about me too deeply to even express it fully to himself

2. What are you most looking forward to in the near future?

Reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (which I can spell, as I currently live in Phoenix, AZ)

3. What do you like to do to indulge yourself?

Long, multi-stage bath. Includes bubble bath, bath salts, orgasm(s), and book.

4. Forget about all the stuff that's messed up or not working out or what have you. Instead, tell me about the things that are going well. What's good about your life right now?

1. Darkside cares about me incredibly much


2. ( Grifyn doesn't want to read this )


3. I have Good Books


4. While Actively Broke, it's not Painfully Broke at the moment


5. I saw Darkside on Saturday!

5. What's one little thing we could all do to make ourselves feel better, to make ourselves or someone else smile, to brighten things up just a little bit?

Read good things. Write good things. Sing happy songs!

Fic

There are more chapters of "A Bittersweet Potion" up.

*yawn*

Giving plasma. People are starting to really notice my necklace. "Eclectic Wiccan" is as good a US summary of my position as any. Very eclectic, and perhaps not so Wiccan (garnetdagger can't be), but fairly close.

Reading To Say Nothing of the Dog at the moment. Again.

Still madly in love.

Taking a long time at the plasma place. Radio and book are far preferable to movies.

Book rec for me: The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. Asperger's.

Backdated from palmtop, plasma

2003.06.26.12.14

Giving plasma. People are starting to really notice my necklace. "Eclectic Wiccan" is as good a US summary of my position as any. Very eclectic, and perhaps not so Wiccan (garnetdagger can't be), but fairly close.

Reading To Say Nothing of the Dog at the moment. Again.

Still madly in love.

plasma (backdated from palm)

2003.06.26.12.14

Giving plasma. People are starting to really notice my necklace. "Eclectic Wiccan" is as good a US summary of my position as any. Very eclectic, and perhaps not so Wiccan (garnetdagger can't be), but fairly close.

Reading To Say Nothing of the Dog at the moment. Again.

Still madly in love.

Tea Candy

swallowtayle decided to post the recipe for river water. I thought about making some, but then decided to make tea candy instead.

4 bags of Lipton's tea
1 bag of Orange Zinger
appx. 1 cup water
Boil the bejeezus out of this combination.

Add enough sugar to give your eyes a sugar overload (I think it was 3 to 4 cups) and 1/2 cup margerine or butter. Stir until supersaturated syrup, on an appropriate heat setting.

Boil until it reaches the hard-crack stage, and then put on a buttered sheet of waxed paper. (I forgot to butter mine, which means the candy is sticking to the paper.)

Yum.

*yawn*

Safe at home.

LF and his friends are gaming.

votania's car B has miraculously not exploded and killed everybody.

It took me 45 minutes for my arm to stop leaking at the plasma place today. This is unprecedented, but not surprising. Each time, it seems to take longer... like my body's trying too hard to cooperate.

Let's see if Darkside's home yet.

50bookchallenge progress report

Here

Brain break.

Must remember that not everyone Shawn.

Must remember that in some places, "talk about tomorrow morning" actually means that will talk about.

Still not doing well.

Do not trust self to bring up things to talk about. Bringing up something in the first place took rather more guts than one might expect. Bringing up calmly, more. When is said that not going to happen now, bad.

Good...

Called Darkside, slightly less than coherent.

Got through my problem to him, and he provided me with words of caring and kicking ass.

He said that he thought that most people needed anger management lessons; I needed anger lessons. And I needed to stand up for myself.

Thank you for listening and understanding, m'love.

National Do Not Call Registry up and running

PSA: If you live in the US and don't want junk phone calls, sign up here.

Ganked from stronae, who has all the cool geek news.

So yes.

He does see me as a pushover. However, he sees me as a pushover with potential for improving, and he sounds like he is determined to kick my ass until I become not-a-pushover.

He cares about me.

I still don't think of myself as the sort of person that someone who only has a few people that they care about would care about.