Errands and writing group

After discovering that my floppy drive was being a bad, bad puppy, I went to the office, turned in rent (which is like homework in a way), then hit the bus to the plasma place. I was listening to my little radio on the headphones I'd gotten some time ago. Turns out the headphones are the worst headphones I've ever purchased, bar none.

The movie at the plasma place was decent, fortunately, for certain values of "decent" that include Grease or some more modern updating of same (I knew the hair looked 80s!). It was very silly, and I found myself giggling and not reading my wizard-book so much as I should have been.

After that was done (complete with an initial high-pressure return that had the local obligatory shaved-head beanpole young pagan man in his 30s poking the thing to make it run slower but more reliably) I caught the 17 over to Central, caught the first bus going down Central and rode it until I saw the Kinko's sign, where I debussed and walked there.

Kinko's was moderately busy. I printed out the current iteration of the magicgeeking document ($4+ for the internet and printing, yipe) and then stopped in at the Phoenix Kerry campaign headquarters and made a small donation. Somewhere between getting off the bus and getting back to the bus stop, I lost my bus card: yipe again! I don't think it'll be worth it for me to get another bus card, unless I tie it to my nose or something. Yow.

Fortunately, I had a dollar coin in my change purse, and found a quarter lying on the ground at the bus stop. Teach me to go about without bus fare...

Hit writing group. witchofrock showed up in pink wings and this absolutely fabulous grey miniskirt with a scalloped edge and nifty cutouts as trim. Sadly, I haven't the legs to carry the look off...

This was a much, much better writing group than last time. Sadly, the good writer new lady from last time didn't show up; fortunately, the obnoxious dumb lady with more degrees than brains didn't show up. Two new ladies did show up. One didn't say very much; the other has the story of her life and could probably trade war stories with wiseheron on the medical problems/dreadful pasts fronts. Despite the horrific content of the stuff she read, she was generally cheerful and interesting, and wrote it well.

I read some portions of my magicgeeking document. They went over well. I'll be needing to find some of the $MAGIC For Dummies books to see what parts of the wheel I'm re-inventing, as per witchofrock's suggestion.

I've also been revisiting some Ectogenesis in writing exercises of late. I think Rose may be telling me something? Tonight I wrote her picking out the place where they wind up living until the baby.

We did the dinner thing. One of the other regulars, the other bellydancing lady who's a teacher in her day job, showed up for the last bits of stuff and then dinner. That was fun. Our waiter (Orlando: Josh is back working there again but was out sick) was not his usual charming self because he was waiting the entire resturant by himself and he was running.

I'm doing laundry. I'm exhuasted.

I'm still boggled by the bitchslap from Eris, but I'm coming more to terms with it. More things to consider. More ties. More affirmation of my own nature. What marxdarx said was right on, though as usual when you're doing advicework of that sort, you never know how accurate it's going to be until they feel it, you just have to pull it out of your ass...

Still processing...

It's amazing. I've theoretically known this little handy fact since at least 2002, I should think. Time blurs together, but the first Lord of the Rings movie came out in December 2001, and that's a time anchor for the ensuing kerfuffle with digitalambience, ralmathon, teenagewitch, marxdarx, and the rest of the household. And that kerfuffle is the time anchor for how long I've held the theoretical knowledge of the depth of a thing.

So. 2002 was The Two Towers, and I hadn't figured it out.
2003 was Return of the King, and perhaps by then I had noted that if not for the one, then the other.

2004 is now.

I have been officially godsmacked.

Now I have to decide what to do about it, if anything, besides wait out what waiting there is, and discuss things with people.

There shan't be a full discussion of this until at least Saturday, if not Sunday or Monday, if then. Had I not been so absolutely floored, I would have remained sitting on this until then. I have a rule that when there is something going on, the most affected parties are informed first. If other parties need to be pulled in to help someone deal with something that is very weird shit, so be it, but things don't get talked about until the chain of discussion has been worked through.

If then.

I'm babbling, because my brain is so very broken. I can't help but scroll my brain backward to the Ides of March, 2000 -- is this a repeat? Dear fuck $DEITY shit, I hope not. Violation of Caesar's left toenail, I hope not. And if it is, I'll be warned about it and I will have the tools and experience to deal with it. Tay-tay, if you read this, I'm going to need to spend some argh-time with you over this. This is serious.

...Bechdel's Law. Bechdel's Law. Bechdel's Law. Anyone seen any monsters around?

Sekrit Message to Byron

Yep, I'm angstwanking again, but not drunk. Utterly sober. Ack?

Lyrics in the head: "The Difference", the Wallflowers (from Bringing Down the Horse)

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This was one of the songs on the radio in the summer of 1996.
If I were not so physically and mentally exhausted, and did not need to sleep, I would put on some street clothes and go walking around and around in circles. I don't know how many times I'd have to circle whatever it was I was circling until I figured it all out, but I need the mindless drone of feet on concrete in a guided path. Pacing the circle of the fountain for as long as I needed to, I processed enough of it to become sane. This is going to take longer than just a few hours.

Laffy Taffy has nothing on the Lunatic.

So why did the busy mother brew up an infusion of eucalyptus leaves to drink with her daughter while spending a rare afternoon of uninterrupted time with her daughter?

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So, it's morning, and the cat starts crying.

eris_raven does not like being trapped in my room when she thinks there's something interesting or tasty going on outside. So she yowled at me, busting me out of a sound sleep.

I opened the door and she rocketed out, only to have her sound somewhat miffed when she realized that it was no better out there than it was in here.

I went back to bed, with the door open. It was loud out there, but I could put a pillow over my ear...

Then there was a CRASH! and the distinctive tinkaklinkatinkaklinka of something being knocked over and very broken.

All the adults came running. It was the mirror in my bathroom, the large mirror propped against the wall, the one I nearly broke several toes with last summer. Sis contributed that she had seen shammash running around, and he was looking distinctively guilty now, so he must have moshed into it. As usual.

If I leave the door shut, the little bitch pisses on things. If I leave it open, the demon moshes into things and breaks them.

Can't win.

I mopped up the glass. Here's hoping I got it all, and I won't discover that I haven't the hard way, or the really hard way. (The hard way, I get some of it lodged in my feet; the really hard way, Miss Goddamn Vacuum Cleaner Face will eat some and I will have an ill or dead kitling on my hands. I'd rather find any the hard way, or the easy way, by noticing it.)

Yes, I've become utterly incoherent. Bear with me. I'm OK, and I'm going to be OK, but this is weird

From a comment, and it bears repeating to the rest of you who've been worried because I've been sounding completely off my rocker:

I'm OK. And I'll be OK. I'm just wondering what shape my mind's going to be in. Not as in intact or splattered, but square, circle, heart, star, triangle... because it's being put through some interesting gymnastics to wrap itself around something it should have realized a long time ago.

I've been through this sort of universe-spin before. It's always something I should have been bright enough to pick up on when I first realized it, or taken a clue, but for whatever reason I didn't notice and I went along on my merry little way doing things according to my outdated view of the universe, so now I have several years of mental re-filing to do, and incoherent blibbering and a great deal of uncertainty as to what I'm going to do with the new universe-view.

This has happened several times recently. I suspect that quite a few of my ancient (and erroneous) merry little assumptions are going to be challenged, so you may see quite a bit of me sounding like this. Maybe I'll even get used to it.

It's not a particularly scary mental state for me to be in, as much as I may seem utterly unhinged to the outsider. It's not so much unhinged, it's just that the hinges have been moved and I'm just now realizing it...

AKICIF: Author current contact info search

For personal reasons, I'd like to write a thank-you note to Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath for writing certain of their lovely slashy Star Trek books and official fic.

Does anyone know where I might be able to find a guestbook, an e-mail address, a mail drop, or something?

Walkinq Thursday

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Peer Pressure

The Little Fayoumis still hadn't taken in the ziplock bags. I went over to him and pointed out that these were for him to take to school and give to his teacher. Finally, the truest motivation came out: no one else was bringing any in!

So that was a situation that took careful handling. I rarely had too much trouble doing good things that my peers were not doing; my problem was wanting to do fun things my peers were doing even if it was bad. I did not want to force the issue, because social issues are delicate and so is his self-esteem. I want him to do as told, but also have a chance to do so on his own, not because I forced him to against his social instincts. I do not want to put anything in place now that will hamper him later.

I told the Little Fayoumis that it was optional to bring those in, which meant that we didn't have to, but if we did, it would be really, really nice. So if none of the other kids brought them in, he would be the only one being really really nice.

As I was marshalling my arguments for the second round, the Little Fayoumis picked up the box and stuffed it in his backpack.

So. Heh. That was that, then.

After a bit, I sat down with him and told him that when the other kids were doing something and that made him want to do it, or the other kids were not doing it and that made him not want to do it, there was a name for that, and that was peer pressure. Sometimes it's hard dealing with peer pressure...

I like to give him words and other mental tools to deal with life. Later, I'll go into the positive uses of peer pressure, maybe tonight, but it's enough that he knows the name now.