We're leaving tomorrow morning to go home to Florida for Christmas. It's possible I'll get a chance to blog before we return at the end of the month, but it's pretty unlikely. As this is effectively the end of my daily December updates, I feel I should give some sort of reflection on the experience, a sort of What I Learned From All This entry, but actually I think that would be better contemplated after I return. I'll know more about how the writing fit into my physical and emotional routine after it's forcibly removed.
Realized this evening that I was dreading going home and watching my family fight with each other, to the point where I did practically everything in my power to avoid packing. Got overwhelmed, freaked out, and cried until I couldn't breathe. Dunked my face and hands in freezing cold water until I was calm enough to get on with it. I now feel weirdly calm and apathetic, as well as dead tired.
I've got to go to bed. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, and good wishes to everybody else.
I had many constructive plans for this evening, such as wrapping presents, cleaning the bathroom, folding laundry, and possibly even packing for our trip home to Florida, but instead I spent some quality time with a glass of Coke and my computer, frying my brain on "Skinned." Man, that's one mind-bending story. All the argueing...yow. I'm not convinced I buy the Clark characterization--his confidence level is frankly astounding for a 15-year-old--but it doesn't really matter.
Now, of course, I'm ready to drop in my tracks, but there's still laundry to be folded and the bathroom floor still looks like someone molted in there. My time management skills aren't quite "the wages of sin is death" material, but bad enough.
The Hubster's playing some godforsaken computer game with doom and gloom music and babelicious Nazis with machine guns. "I don't know which I like better," he says, "killing hot Nazi babes or having them kill me." Me either, dude.
I'm so tired my head is starting to play movies without my conscious intent; dreamy little fic snippets or snatches of vividly illustrated dialogue, memory movies of things I've read and seen. Lex, from something of CM Baker's: "I actually had a beautiful singing voice as a child. Every Christmas, I'd be standing next to the piano, my long, girly red hair framing my face, singing, 'O holy night....'" Why that pleases me as much as it does, I have no idea.
There's been a flurry of talk recently--coincidental, but I think unrelated--about the varying purposes of journals vs. LiveJournals vs. blogs. People have been going on about getting back to the original purpose of their online journal/blog/whatever, about the differences between various forums, about what constitutes a proper entry, and about other meta-type topics that provoke a vague sense of guilt in me. I dunno. It's possible I need to analyze my motivations a little more stringently, but I don't feel the need for a mission statement here. I enjoy the faint sense of community (or "common interest," if that other word leaves a bad taste in your mouth) that I get from posting, but I don't care for the pressure I sometimes place on myself to have a fannish tie-in in each entry in case fandom people read it. I don't usually give in to that pressure, but it bothers me that I feel it in the first place. Personal forum first and foremost, you know?
Huh. I guess I just wrote my mission statement after all.
This entry is my Christmas present to AV. She comes to see me on Tuesdays and Thursdays; the second of the four V kids, all of whom are served by our facility. Through some genetic and environmental fluke, all four have moderate to severe language disorders, the result of what is essentially subtractive bilingualism. Mom speaks only Spanish, dad speaks Spanish and English, and somehow the kids don't really speak either. They're all English-dominant, but with terribly poor language skills. The three oldest are currently seen by the rehab team--I see one or the other every day of the week--while the baby is followed by our early childhood team. I'm sure I'll get him eventually, though. They're all precious to me, with their eyes and their smirks and their squabbling over attention. They all smell the same, like Goodwill.
AV is 6 and a half, and she breaks my heart. She's tall, willowy, and achingly beautiful, with huge dark eyes and dark hair to her waist. A beautiful little girl, and practically silent until you win her over, because her speech is so impaired she's almost impossible to understand out of context. Her mouth is a mess. Her musculature is weak, her speech movements are slow, labored, and imprecise...just a mess. She still drools sometimes. She's got other motor problems too, although I don't know enough to classify them. She tripped once coming out of the speech room with me; I turned around and she was face down, flat on the floor. She hadn't even been able to extend her arms to shield her body, one of the basic protective reflexes.
She's a mess. She needs intensive, quality services and she's not getting them. Her older brother says she cries at school, but he can't tell me why. I don't know if she has friends; her speech is so incredibly hard to understand and kids aren't patient. She breaks my heart.
She's also snarky and loud and capable of pushing boundaries once she's comfortable with you. She feels my hands carefully before I can touch her face for stretching exercises, and pushes them back at me if they're too cold. She squirms up against me when we sit together on the benches in the kitchen to work. She has the most gorgeous smile, and a charming deep laugh. A few sessions ago I realized she was teasing me, completing a task and then singsonging, "Awesome!" in a mocking imitation of my cheerful therapist manner. Today she offered me M&Ms from her half-eaten pack, and carefully counted five into my palm when I accepted. She's making progress, but it's painfully slow.
My Christmas gift to her is how very much I love her, and how much I will for her to improve. I want things to be better for her. I'm looking for a miracle, damn it.
First I will do the Twitchy Dance of Supplication to blogger, in the hopes that I will not lose this entry.
...pivot left, take two sips of water, shuffle post-it notes on desk, cough once, press mouse button just so...
Any fool can condition a pigeon to dance in circles. Apparently I'm no better than the pigeon. Let this be a lesson to you.
Been thinking about werewolves these past couple of days. I rented Ginger Snaps, which is supposed to be some sort of feminist commentary on werewolf legend, but so far I've been too scared to actually watch it. Instead, I read a little Buffy fic and thought about Oz. Not much, really, because I don't watch Buffy, but just sort of trying on the idea of him in my head. Mostly I wondered if there was a contract somewhere that Ozfic writers had to sign promising to use the word "laconic" in every damn Oz story on the planet. Yes, it's a cool word. Yes, I'm sure it's a perfect description. It still reminds me of Scully and the strawberry shampoo.
Pardon me while I gag.
Tomorrow I have to have a feedback conference with a parent. I expect it will not go terribly well, because the parent is not at all ready to hear what my data is going to be telling him: "I'm sorry, Mr. Smart Engineer Man, but I think your son is more than a little delayed. Perhaps we could start the acceptance process now, so you won't splinter into a thousand pieces when your kid hits school age and the difference becomes even more obvious." I personally will be much more tactful and caring, because I'm very fond of this parent and son, but that's what's going to be between the lines.
Heads: My department boss got my paperwork approved and it should go into effect Monday, which means I will be on salary and therefore get paid over Christmas break. Also, I will accrue time off and sick leave and get insurance coverage and all that good stuff.
Tails: I can't quite trust that it's actually happening until I get confirmation on Monday.
Heads: I was calm and rational and well-spoken in our department meeting today.
Tails: My calm, rational, and intelligent arguments were brusquely shot down by the department boss, and our team was essentially forced into agreeing to try evening and possibly weekend hours. Despite the fact that changing the hours won't make one fucking bit of difference unless we increase our marketing and target populations who would likely fill our empty slots. As I calmly and rationally pointed out.
Heads: I no longer feel nauseous and weird.
Tails: My cold is nasty, and my voice sounds like it's being filtered through a layer of gravel.
Heads: I am going to lie around and rest tomorrow.
Tails: I'm going to skip my planned 15 mile run, and I don't know when I'll have another good opportunity to do it, as the Hubster and I are going out of town next weekend.
Heads: We went out for dinner with friends and ate a ton of fabulous Indian food.
Tails: I forgot to bring home the leftovers. Also, I feel like an anaconda that has just consumed an entire wild boar.
Heads: I can sleep in tomorrow, which means I can stay up a little later that usual tonight! Ah ha ha!
Tails: Too bad it's 11:15 and I'm ready to collapse right this second.
I'm on my second mug of cocoa for the day, if that's any indication of my current mood. Stayed home from work and lay semi-comatose in my desk chair all day, as sometime after I went to bed last night my illness morphed from "mild cold" to "mild cold combined with weird nauseated and exhausted feeling." Again, the overall effect was just unpleasant enough to keep me home, but not so bad that I could avoid the guilt over staying home. If the whole previous paragraph gives you people a creeping sense of deja vu, well, that's because it's been approximately two weeks since the last time I caught a head cold. What the hell happened to my immune system, I ask you?
Frittered away the morning by taking the Culture-Fair IQ Test, and it turns out I'm fucking brilliant. Since I'm sick and in need of comfort, I've decided to accept these results as 100% accurate. It was kind of a fun test, actually--all visuospatial relations and puzzles. I'm going to try to get the Hubster to take it, as his results would give me a better idea of how valid the test is. The Hubster really is fucking brilliant. I say that not just as a proud wife, but as the person who's had the opportunity to feel around the edges of his intelligence almost daily for ten years: he's an exceptionally smart man. Sweet, too--last night around 2:30am when I was dragging my bleary-eyed, nauseous self downstairs to thrash around on the futon, he woke up enough to ask if I was okay. On hearing my complaints, he suggested Coke to settle my stomach, then said, "Yeah, go downstairs and try to sleep. Or you could watch Smallville; that would make you feel better, right?"
I knew I got lucky with him, but once in a while I remember just how lucky.
I have got to put receipts into Quicken, as I have no idea what my acount balances are. That's bad, especially around Christmastime.
Feeling craptacular this evening--sick, tired, and pissed off. Spent way too much time discussing work problems with the Hubster, then stayed up too late reading Smallville mush in order to decompress.
My job hacks me off in so many ways. I'm scared I'm going to feel that I have to quit after I get certified in the spring. I don't want to quit my job, because it would mean losing my kids, but...GAH. They lost the paperwork I turned in to apply for the full-time position. It's been found, yes, but with no acknowledgement whatsoever of how poorly this reflects on the people involved. I can't even get a good head of steam worked up about it, because this kind of fiasco is typical. And my boss said that in Friday's meeting we have to have a serious discussion about expanding our hours to include evenings and weekends. And it's hard to tell, because she can't finish a sentence or maintain a topic to save her life, but she made it sound like my getting put on salary is somehow dependent on the team agreeing to work said shitty hours. No, I don't know how that leap of logic got made either. Fuck. I just want to know if I'm getting paid over Christmas, or if I need to be prepared to take two weeks without pay.
Lex gives him fireworks? Does the text get any less sub?
Nice work by Michael Rosenbaum there with the ending scene. His expression as he stares at Clark from within the confines of Lionel's PR hug is almost a glower, although on only one viewing I can't say for sure if I think the effect was enhanced or distorted by the lighting in the scene. I expect we were supposed to see jealousy and yearning in that stare, and I did, but I also got an interesting shade of menace toward the Kents. Need to go back and check out the episode again to see if that holds true.
I also need to fortify myself for tomorrow, when I will try to get through an entire day of watercooler discussion of Smallville without squealing and fainting over Lex's pistol whipping.
My throat still hurts, but the running was okay. Good news, good news.
Whew. For a minute there I couldn't get into the blogger site, and my eyelids were starting to twitch.
I don't have it in me to write much tonight. I'm cranky and badly in need of sleep, and my fucking throat is sore again. I will not get sick for the third time in two and a half months. Just...no way.
I'm a little worried about running tomorrow. I felt decent while resting today and Sunday, but I do have more sore muscles than I'd hoped for, probably because I slacked on my training the week before the 13.5. Mostly it's my hip flexors and the adducting muscles on my inner thighs, whatever they're called. Other minor gripes include the horizontal strip of chafe marks across my chest where the bottom edge of my sports bra rubbed, and my left pinky toe, which continues to be gross. One could go so far as to use the phrase "giant mass of blister" without overstatement. Nothing actively hurts, but I do feel a little worn around the edges.
Caught about thirty minutes of a documentary on the Franklin expedition on the History Channel. I am nostalgic again, thinking of cold and Alaska and due South. Which reminds me: go to Kit's page and read, and then write your representatives. It doesn't take long.
I didn't think Sweet November was that bad. Stupid and unoriginal and emotionally stunted, and occasionally cringe-worthy because man, Keanu Reeves is a bad actor, but not outright unwatchable. It worked pretty well as background noise while I cleaned and did inumerable loads of laundry. But you know, for all my talk about MR in drag, it was really the cowboy hat that got me. Lord. I live in Texas, and let me tell you that not every man can pull off a cowboy hat. When they can--that's a thing to be savored, that is.
The Hubster and I bought and decorated a little Christmas tree this evening. I set up my plastic Playmobile nativity set underneath it, along with the six out of seven Disney dwarves that the Hubster got from the hotel in China. Apparently one would appear each night on his pillow, like a surreal version of the hotel mint. The overall Christmas tree effect is pretty cute--I find I don't care so much what the tree looks like, just that there is a tree. Something about the smell and the presence of the outdoors--Christmas trees always help me remember to reflect on the season.
Ow. Goddamn. Did 13.5 miles today, and I'm still not entirely sure I'm not going to puke. I mean, 90% sure I'll be fine, but that 10% is enough to make me feel kind of iffy.
The run wasn't quite as bad as it probably sounds here. I actually think my oogy feeling has more to do with the vast quantity of GU energy supplement I consumed than the running itself--I think I took four packets total, and my stomach is blorping around in there like perhaps next time I should think about adding some solid food. But I did get through the run. I had to go in the early afternoon, as LG's graduation was this morning, and I was a little apprehensive about trying to motivate myself to complete the whole distance. Had a total hand-of-God experience, though, when I pulled up at the trail parking lot and about 30 seconds later this girl S who I occasionally eat breakfast with after the group runs showed up too. She was also getting ready to do the 13.5, so we ran together and kept each other going. Damn good thing, too--I did pretty well until about 11.5, and then I thought I might possibly die. We did sets of 8-to-1 running and walking, and the last 8 minutes were brutal. Everything from the waist down was killing me. When we finally crossed our impromptu finish line, the adrenaline overload in my system pushed me perilously close to tears, although mood-wise I felt great. I'm pretty whipped now, though. I think the legs will be okay, but my feet are just thrashed: big squishy blister on my left pinky toe, and less disgusting but still uncomfortable blister on the right side.
Got to drag myself up in about 15 minutes and go to the Salt Lick, as a bunch of us are celebrating our half-marathon mark with beer and barbeque. LH, honey, eat your heart out.
A half-marathon. Damn.
Had weird due South dreams last night with smoldering flirty Fraser, and Ray Vecchio blushing and yelling and getting tossed around like a sack of potatoes. I don't feel like recounting them here, more out of fatigue than because they were particularly raunchy. I have to conserve my energy for getting downstairs and out to my car.
Damn it. Am I going to have to rent Sweet November just because Michael Rosenbaum is in it? I dislike both Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron. Angsty doomed romances (other than Smallville and Fraser/Vecchio, of course) make me sick. Terminal disease as a plot device makes me want to puke. Even the title gives me the willies.
But.
Michael Rosenbaum. In drag. With, you know, the smirk and the walk and the forearms.
Pardon me while my endocrine system flash floods.
Maybe debchan's screencaps can get me through this moment of weakness. If not, I'll let you know how the movie turns out.
I had a moment of intense, inappropriate, irrational jealousy today regarding my supervisor JD. Our facility is doing this big "Children's Art Week" as a fundraiser, with a professional artist coming in to work with the kids during their therapy times and help them create two pieces of art: one to go home and one to be auctioned off at a formal event next spring. I think it's a cute idea, and the kids I've seen participate so far have really enjoyed themselves. The staff has spent a lot of time over the past few days squealing and saying stuff like, "Oh my God, did you see so-and-so's art project?! It's so great!"
Anyway, today was the day when my 9-year-old autistic client DS was signed up to work with the artist. I was actually the one who got him signed up, as I'd called his mother a couple of weeks ago to ask if she wanted him to participate. I feel...very strongly about DS. He's one of the first kids I got when I started working for this organization; previous semi-evil supervisor L passed him along to me, probably because she didn't really want to put in the energy required to handle him. DS is a beautiful, happy hulk of a boy, with dark, dark skin and eyes and a shockingly bright grin. He's nonverbal, but affectionate and relatively tuned in to social interaction for an autistic kid. Immensely energetic, he grounds himself through vestibular and tactile input, meaning he likes nothing better than for you to tackle him into the crash pillows and hug the daylights out of him while he shrieks with laughter. His heart belongs to our amazing therapy tech, DH, but he usually digs me too. I am crazy about him. Crazy and protective and defensive, as I discovered today, to the point of irrationality. The deal was, I see him with GG, the physical therapy assistant, for our session and then after us he goes for his occupational therapy session. OT is really better geared toward doing art projects, so he was signed up for the art thing during his OT session. However, the OT that usually sees him is at a conference until next Monday. Her backup is DH, the therapy tech, but DH is seven months pregnant and today she was feeling sick and had to leave early. So that meant that DS was set up to be alone in the art session with just the artist and our social worker, CMJ, neither of whom know much about autism in general or DS in particular. He's a sweet boy, but it took me a couple of months to get a handle on how to best interact with him, and I was only able to do that because DH had spent close to a year whipping him into shape. He's not, like, the beginner's model of the autistic kid. So we were all a little concerned about how this would work out. I desperately wanted to be in the session with him, but I had another client. Nobody else was available. People started to look a little panicked. I decided that I would take my next client into the art session, and we would work in the corner so I could be available in case DS needed more prompting than the artist or CMJ were prepared to handle. Then suddenly we realized that supervisor JD's client had cancelled, and she was available to supervise DS, and internally I freaked out. I was about two steps away from telling her no, because I was convinced that if she spent any time at all with DS she would fall in love with him and want to take him away from me. This is just ridiculous on so many levels--for one thing, JD has absolutely no reason to try to switch him over to her caseload. For another, she's not at all the kind of person who would even try to do something like that. Joke about it, yes, but not seriously consider it. And for yet another thing, what the hell kind of deranged individual am I that I would begrudge my autistic client the opportunity to make another social connection, especially with someone as wonderful as JD? Good God. It's just that I love him like crazy, you know?
So the end of the story was that JD supervised DS for his art project (which turned out so great, and he had a blast), and my other client and I ended up hanging out and doing an art project as well. And JD said, "Aw, Sara, D is such an awesome kid," and I said, "Yep," and hugged him really hard. And then he started trying to push my sleeves up for me because he hates long sleeves, and I said, "Cut it out, man," and things went back to normal.
Incredibly, it's Thursday already. Seems like the week's barely started, yet the weekend's already looming over me. I'm not really looking forward to much of this weekend. Saturday morning I have to get up early--probably even earlier than during the rest of the week--to go to my buddy LG's graduation ceremony. I say this like it's a big ordeal because it kind of is. LG is the friend with whom I'm starting to feel kind of perfunctory. Our relationship is now at that awkward stage where I know she likes me a lot more than I like her, but I still like her enough that I don't quite want to let her drift away...this graduation is an enormous accomplishment for her, and I should be going because I want to support her. But you know what? I'm going because dammit, I had to hear about every single obstacle she had on the path to this point, and I had to do my share of picking her up off the floor, and by golly part of that diploma is mine.
I'm feeling like a pretty lousy friend about now. Can I get points for following the letter of the law?
Supposed to do 13.5 miles Saturday. Because of the graduation I can't run with my group (another reason I'm bitter about it), and I'm worried about trying to do it on my own. I've been too tired to work out this week except in a totally half-assed manner, and I don't know if I'm going to make it through the run. Probably with a good night's sleep and a lot of water in me I'll do okay, but I'm gonna be stressed until it's over.
I'm discovering that people read this blog. Anna mentioned me again, and I'm seeing my site linked on the pages of people whose journals I frequent. And somebody who hasn't yet said how she got here (hi, Kathy!) wrote me to say that she recognized my description of Bush Baby, and it turns out we were both at the Marine Lab that summer. There's crazy shit going down around here, I tell you. It's new and different. Like, I got that the opperative portion of "online journal" was "online," but it's still a bit of a head adjustment. In a mostly positive way, but still an adjustment.
God, I'm tired. I'm starting to free associate. It's like last weekend when we saw this stupid anime film, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, at the Dobie with our friends C and S. The movie started about 9:45pm, which is late for me even when I haven't run ten miles earlier in the day, but it was pretty enough to keep me engaged for about an hour. But there came a point about halfway through when I abruptly snapped out of whatever trance state I'd been in to realize that not only was I not watching Vampire Hunter D, but I was actively engaged in the rerun of the Highlander episode "Comes a Horseman" that was playing in my head. Which was weird, because I think I've only seen that one twice and it was at least a year ago, but I'm almost certain I had the dialogue from the car scene right.
A couple weeks ago I was poking around on the main blogger website, and a name I noticed on their "Blogs of Note" column struck me as oddly familiar. I kept rolling the name (JW) around in my head, trying to figure out where I thought I knew the guy from, and then after reading a blog entry of his that mentioned dance classes it hit me. Total blast from the past; it's a guy I went to camp with the summer between seventh and eighth grades. We did one of those fancy special programs that Duke University puts on for kids who score a certain amount on the SATs--they have a whole bunch, mostly college-level classes on various esoteric subjects--and spent three weeks together at the Duke Marine Lab on Pivers Island. I'm kind of conflicted about the whole Duke program now, more out of a sense of middle class guilt than any real objection, I think, but going to that camp was possibly the best thing that could have happened to me that summer.
There were two courses running on Pivers Island: some kind of advanced math course and the one JW and I took, which was a combined philosophy and marine biology section. (God! Utterly useless as far as my current life path goes! That's where the guilt comes in). We split our time between reading guys like Descartes and studying aquatic life forms, neither of which I remember being particularly passionate about. In fact, except for the rather memorable comparative philosophy paper that I wrote in rhyming couplets, I recall very little about the actual subject matter of the course. What stands out in my mind when I think of camp is the absolutely staggering sense of relief I felt in being surrounded by other smart kids. I made close friends at camp; real friends at a time when I was horribly awkward and uncouth and just barely beginning to gain control over my temper, and that was a life saver. I felt a change in my personality after, and looking back at my fiction from the time period, I almost wonder if camp wasn't a literal life saver. Everybody is depressed in middle school, and I don't remember the real gut-deep emotional experience enough to take this real seriously, but...my stories before camp were all suicide and death and loss. After camp, it's all screwball comedy. A certain amount of that's probably normal, but the difference is sudden and striking enough to make me wonder.
So, JW. He was one of a group of about four or five of us that hung out together, and one of the people I wrote back and forth with for several months following that summer. I remember him as a sweet little boy; delicate, short, and prepubescent, with enormous dark eyes. Beautiful eyes; we nicknamed him Bush Baby after those lemur-like tree-dwelling mammals. He was a dancer and apparently quite good, as he had already placed in some national tap competition. He was also good at platonic friendship, which was extremely valuable to me as a horny, unkempt 13-year-old. I liked him a lot. He made me one of those knotted string bracelets that were big back then; I wore it until it fell off.
So I saw his blog. I'm almost positive it's the same guy, because he talks about dancing. I sent him a very brief email asking if he was in fact the same JW, and just saying hi. He hasn't responded. My question is, do I write again? There could be any number of reasons why he hasn't written back--didn't get the email, didn't read it, computer lost it, ect. But I'm extremely leary of coming off as freaky and stalkerish, especially since it's also possible he doesn't remember me. I mean, we were buddies, but not exactly soul mates or anything. But I'd really like to talk to him...he seemed like the kind of guy who'd turn out cool.
This running business is doing quite the number on my metabolism. I woke up starving this morning--I felt like Kryptonite Milkshake Girl from the most recent Smallville episode, like I was one step away from snorking down deer fat with my giant gaping maw. Breakfast kept me away from the roadkill for a couple of hours, but lunchtime was kind of a debacle. I hadn't been up to packing a lunch the night before, so I'd planned to run out and pick something during my lunch break. Thought I'd go to this little Thai place near campus and get some moderately healthy tofu spring rolls, which I'd enjoyed in the past. Well, apparently the portion sizes have changed since last time I went there, because what was once a decent sized lunch of spring rolls is now a small handful of zucchini and rice noodles. About five minutes after I finished the rolls I realized that there was just no way they were going to carry me through the rest of the afternoon, so I ended up going through Taco Bell too. Mmm, Taco Bell...
Like Aral, I wasn't going to post my lists of four things, but then I read hers and I kind of had to.
4 Things I'd Eat on the Last Day of My Life: My mom's chocolate cheesecake
Spanakopita--the family recipe
McDonald's cheeseburgers
Garden tomatoes and onions with Italian dressing
4 CDs I Never Get Tired of: Northwest Passage--Stan Rogers
The Do It A Cappella tape I got off a PBS special when I was in seventh grade
Graceland--Paul Simon
My personalized mix tape, Mood Swings.
4 Celebrities I would have sex with: Okay, honestly? None. But it would really, really hurt me to turn down:
Paul Gross
Callum Keith Rennie
Angelina Jolie
Michael fucking Rosenbaum
4 Vacations I Have Taken: Alaska and the Yukon, on my honeymoon
Scotland and England, during grad school with my best friend
California wine country, during college with my family
Wells Beach, Maine, the summer between 4th and 5th grade with my family
4 Songs that Get Stuck in My Head Frequently: Needles and Pins--The Ramones
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum--The New Christy Minstrels
Sitting Pretty--Webb Wilder
That infernal Mazda jingle set to La Bamba--"...you could be driving a Mazda!"
4 Things I Want to Learn: How to beat the crap out of somebody
Dogsledding
How to be an electrician
Greenlandic
4 Beverages I Drink Frequently: Water
Coke
Watered down Gatorade
Chocolate Silk soymilk
4 TV Shows that Were on When I Was a Kid: G.I. Joe
Transformers
He-Man
Inspector Gadget
4 Things to Do When I'm Bored: Read fanfic
Clean
Drink vodka and Coke and buy CDs off Amazon.com
Take a drive and argue out loud with myself in the car
4 Things That Never Fail to Cheer Me Up: The Hubster pretending to be a badass ("Lex Luthor? I could break his pansy ass in half.")
Finishing a long run
New fanfic by an author I love
Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need
We got a few more of our Christmas vacation plans ironed out today, which is a relief. Not so much a relief for me--I was doing just fine with the uncertainty--but a relief that I can now call all the people who've been hassling me about our plans and give them the details, and then they can leave me alone for a couple of days. So that's the good news. The bad news is that I have yet to hear if the paperwork I turned in to get switched from an hourly to a permanent position has gone through. If I don't get switched over in time, I won't get paid for almost two full weeks out of this month. Our facility is closed the week between Christmas and New Year's, so it's not like I even have the option of working during that time period. It would really piss me off to miss two weeks of pay this month just in general, but since the department boss turned in my paperwork for the salaried position a month ago, I'm going to be mad if they're still dicking around with it come Christmas. I mean, give me a break. Either put me on salary or don't, but don't waste my time this way and then wonder why I'm not overflowing with loyalty to the organization. Plus my department boss has jury duty this week, so I can't bring this issue up with her in a timely manner, which pisses me off once again.
I have to say, Smallville fandom is teaching me some mildly disturbing things about my hot buttons. For instance, the whole "innocence vs. experience" theme? You know, with Clark as the underage virgin/whore and Lex as the temptor/serpent and all the apples and nature imagery? Good Lord, does that ever work for me. I had no idea my subconscious was so cliched. I've heard several people talk about how they can't quite get into the fandom because of the ages (15 and 21-ish) of the protagonists, and I'm finding I have quite the opposite response: that's a large part of what I like about the show. I mean, let's be honest here. I'm not quite 25, and I still glance around guiltily when I refer to myself as an adult. The more adult-oriented conflicts and themes are still occasionally difficult for me to relate to. It's no big stretch for me to remember being 21, or even 15, so the ideas of emerging knowledge and experience (primarily sexual) are still sparking off some highly visceral memories. Experiencing the show is like wallowing in one long first time story. Whoo!
Plus, I cannot possibly look at Tom Welling and believe him as a 15-year-old. Just...no way. So I picture this mid-twenties guy who's supposed to be having these teenage defining-identity moments, and somehow the conflict is just an added zing.
That makes practically no sense, but now I'm feeling kind of shallow. The kind of shallow where I want to go read "Boxed" again, to see if this time it will actually provoke heart failure.
Day Two of the daily December updates. Must figure out how to put in the linking graphic for the journal ring. I'm a touch concerned about this journal project, because today I found myself doing the avoidance dance with my blog: thinking about writing, looking forward to writing, yet putting it off. I'd really like for this to be something I do because I enjoy it, and not marred by some sense of homework assignment. But it is only day two. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.
I have a fancy new ergonomic keyboard and trackball, because I talked to JG, one of the OTs at work, and she confirmed that the burning, tingling pain radiating up the underside of my right forearm matches the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. I'm 95% sure that the symptoms are brought on by the horrid, awkward position I must twist myself into to use my mouse--sitting at an angle to the screen with my elbow propped on the chair armrest and my wrist cocked and unsupported--so I went ahead and coughed up the money. Or, (heh) the Hubster coughed up the money, since we happened to be shopping together. I've also attempted to change my chair position, so we'll see if the pain goes away.
Went to a play today. It was a play I'd seen previously; actually one with which I have a bit of a history. It's called The SantaLand Diaries, and it may be unique to my city, as I believe it was written by the main actor. I could be way off here, but I'm too lazy to go check right this minute. Anyway, it's obviously a seasonal thing, and it's run every December here for about the last three years. I tried to go see it the first year it opened, back when I was in grad school, but I got lost on the way to the theater and by the time I arrived it was sold out. I'd picked the last possible day before I flew home for Christmas to try to see the play, so it turned out I was out of luck for 1998. I saw it the next year with the Hubster-to-be, and loved it. Found it both hysterically funny and oddly touching, and left with an enormous, instantaneous crush on the actor. I didn't go see it last year, just noticed the review in the paper and sort of smiled benevolently in memory, like: aww, SantaLand Diaries. Then suddenly on Friday I was overcome with the need to re-experience the play. The Hubster wasn't interested, but I rounded up MV, an OT intern from work, and my buddy LG, and we went to the matinee today. It was...a little disappointing. I don't know. I think part of it was, paradoxically, that I'd seen the play already: I could anticipate the jokes, and I had trouble breaking through the anticipation enough to actually appreciate the play as it was happening. Plus, the actor seemed a little less shiny and enthusiastic than the first time I'd seen him. He's this short, wiry, active little guy, and he plays his part (narrative of a disgruntled Macy's elf) with an unbelievable manic energy. Literally bouncing off walls. Today he just seemed kinda tired. Messed up a couple of lines. He does some heckling of the audience as part of the show, but at one point today he ended up collapsed on the stairs leaning against this guy in the end seat of the row, and he looked up at him and heaved this big sigh and said, "You wanna do this for me?" Meaning, finish the play. I felt a little bad for him, because he really did look beat, but I also felt bad for me. I really liked that show, but a bit of the sheen came off today.
Anna mentioned my site in her blog, which made me squeal with glee. Anna's fanfic in general pleases me greatly, but oddly enough, when I think of her I always think of Soul Coughing. There's a tiny little line in "In a Dark Time: Sleepless" that mentions them, and I remember the little shock of pleasure and recognition that hit me the first time I read that story. And, mmm. Krycek.
Must email relatives and clean the house. And add more links, but that probably won't get done tonight.
In the process of redesigning the site. Or, really, designing the site, since it never looked like much in the first place. The impetus was that I joined this web ring of people updating their online journals daily for the month of December (link to follow when I figure out how the hell to put in the kind I want), and I finally felt shamed into digging out my ancient HTML notes. I used to have a bare bones kind of web design knowledge, but that was back in my second year of college, and it's since gone, gone, gone. Luckily my personal filing system extends back far enough that I still have a couple sheets of loose leaf notebook paper with scrawly little snippets of code and explanations; enough to work from, anyway.
I'm in the process of adding a bunch of links to fandom journals I frequent. Many of them are part of a loose collective of folks within the broader slash fandom. Some I've exchanged emails with, but many I've had no contact with. If you recognize yourself on this page and do not wish to be linked for whatever reason, email me and I'll remove you immediately.
The Webb Wilder CD doo dad has been on heavy rotation this past week, and people, I cannot imagine why this man isn't a star. Or, well. It's possible that he is and I'm just late to the party; my knowledge of countrified rock'n'roll being what it is. But based on the reactions of the people I've raved to about the CD, I'm pretty sure he's still obscure, and it's a crying shame. His sound has a depth and an edge to it that just hits me low in the belly and sparks. He's got this amazingly flexible voice that's growly and rough and yet fully in control, with a command over the lower register that's just...ooh. The effect for me is on a par with that of M. Doughty from Soul Coughing, although their styles are completely different. Plus smart lyrics, raw energy, and God, something about the chord structure...an estimated fifteen years of musical training and I'm reduced to blithering. It's a great CD, I tell you.
I just got a look at myself in the bathroom mirror, and I look like Snow White. I've got that pale skin/dark hair combo that makes any redness in your face really stand out, and my cheeks are currently a deep, deep flaming scarlet color. It's pretty impressive, actually. Not a color you'd expect to find on people. I think my face is probably chapped from standing outside in the below-freezing wind-chill-o-rama weather (in Central Texas! It's the apocalypse!) for 20 minutes this morning as I chipped ice off my windshield with a spatula. 101 Creative Uses for Kitchen Implements, that's me.
I felt like writing, but it turns out I'm too tired to organize my thoughts.
The Hubster was able to recover all of my files. I am deeply grateful.
Felt like a total asshole after writing that last entry, but when I went back and looked at it today it didn't seem quite as awful as I remembered. I guess that's good. Except now I'm worrying about whether I like Lana because she acts like a girl's "supposed" to act, and dislike Chloe because she doesn't. Except...no, I'm not totally fucking programmed by society. Chloe just pisses me off. I don't know. I think it's her smugness that bothers me more than anything; I like that she's smart, and that she doesn't mind showing that she's smart, but her attitude while she's doing it...gah. Are we supposed to give you cookies for knowing how to run an internet search?
I realize that I am conflicted about this subject.
I am open to the show giving me a reason to groove on her.
Shutting up.
This weekend has been made up of both the heads and the tails of the coin toss.
Heads:
*Talked for a long while with my Australian buddy LH. (Hi, L!) I've never felt much of an age difference between us (it's a compliment, hon; you are four years younger), but speaking with her this morning I realized that I couldn't feel a difference hardly at all. She's going off to Canberra for a summer research project, and it all sounds so fresh and exciting. Almost makes me miss grad school. Briefly calculated whether I could scrape up the money and the time off in order to fly out there and accompany her on her cross-country car trip back home in February. It would be reminiscent of our drive from Florida to Texas when she visited two years ago, and I'd love to see the country. Her description of southern Australia puts me in mind of both California wine country and what I imagine Italy to be--vineyards and rolling hills and long low houses, with long dusty roads stretching between. It sounds beautiful, and I would love to go, but...sometimes you need to take a long car trip by yourself. Sometimes you don't get a lot of chances for that, and I'd hate to take one away from her. Next time.
*Saw The Endurance, a documentary film about Earnest Shackleton's failed quest to cross Antarctica on foot. Beautiful.
*Bought a Billy Idol CD.
*Hanging out in the Half Price Books while we waited for the movie to start yesterday, I was idly sifting through the used CD rack when I came across Webb Wilder's doo dad. Okay. I desperately wanted this CD, yet couldn't find it on amazon. Not only did I find it in this store totally by chance, but it cost me $5.45 and so far it is Grade A-mazing. I am thrilled.
*Ran 12.5 miles yesterday with no particular problem. Only minimal stiffness today. I'm...surprised and pleased by how well my body seems to be taking to distance running.
*New mattress!
Tails:
*My computer is dead. It is possible that the Hubster will be unable to recover any of my files. Many of them are crap, but there's a lot of stuff on there that I wrote that I'd miss. There are six pages of a Sentinel story that I was never going to finish, but that I sometimes would reread when I needed a grin. Not to mention the other unfinished stuff that I can't even remember.
*My car's acting weird, which probably means I'll have to spend money on it soon.
*The Hubster's caught my cold.
*There are dirty pumpkin and pecan pie plates all over the house.
*Laundry.
*I'm unable to locate a Clark/Lex story I want to read. I just emailed the author for help and she said it was on the mailing list. I've checked the mailing list. Am I blind? Missing the secret password? Bah.
Turns out that I called that conversation with coworker GG almost to the letter. Heh.
Happy late Thanksgiving to all you Americans. I had a pleasant day yesterday, and was actually able to get out of my head long enough to be thankful for that. I also am extremely thankful for my renter's insurance, because they're going to cover most of the cost of replacing the mattress. Ever since it got wet last Thursday it's reeked of mold, and everybody we've talked to says that there's really no way to deep clean a mattress, so it's toast. Highly unfortunate, since we'd had it less than four months. But I tell you, right now I just want the damn thing out of my house. I'm sick again, and I'm a bit afraid that it's because of the extremely high mold content in both my home and workplace. I've never had allergies, but I bet I could damn well develop them given prolonged high-intensity exposure to known allergens. Right now I've got a minor cold, which is no big deal, and an itchy, dry, itchy itchy cough, which is a killer. I spent the hours from 4:30 to 6:30am last night coughing my fool head off, to the point where the poor Hubster ended up moving to a sleeping bag on the floor of the computer room. Normally if I was coughing that much I would go downstairs and sleep on the futon, but since the mattress is toast and we were already sleeping on the futon, the poor bastard had to go looking for floor space at 5:45am. But the new mattress is getting delivered tonight, and the claims guy said he'd cut me a check for most of it, so things are looking up.
I keep thinking about the comments a few people have made in relation to slasher misogyny and fan reaction to Lana, and...
Mein Gott. I cannot get to any of the posts about which I wish to comment. That is fucking annoying.
Flying blind here: I've just been thinking recently about Lana and Chloe and misogyny and the "sin" of feminization of male characters and the lack of popular interest in femmeslash, and the whole winding discussion makes me kind of squirm around uncomfortably, because dude, I know what that blatant disrespect for your own sex feels like. I feel like I should be waving people into my market stall: "Misogyny? I got your misogyny right here!"
That's probably a little strong, but my point is that the insta-hatred of female characters, as Maygra puts it, bothers me so damn much because I recognize it in myself and I hate it. I've never particularly identified with female characters in books or the media. I'm more comfortable viewing women as sexual objects rather than partners and friends. I don't know what to do with female characters. There was a "why I write slash" essay I read ages ago (can't remember the author, sorry) wherein the author described an experience she had with an "epic" written when she was 12 or 13. A friend read this epic over and asked why none of the characters in it happened to be female. The author said she remembered thinking about this quite seriously, and then answering that she didn't want any of her characters to be in love. That was the only reason she could see for including women in her story: to be the love interest. Writing as an adult, she expressed how appalled she was to think of her attitudes as a child, but I...totally got it. I remember being like that, thinking like that. When I was a kid I always wanted to be a boy, or be like what I thought a boy should be, although I was mostly too shy to pull it off. (I feel like I should mention that I interpret this purely as an internalization of societal values, and not as, say, a case of gender misassignment). Apparently I'd figured out that guys were the ones who had it going on, and as a little kid I didn't bother trying to be a cool little girl who was just as good as a guy, I just went straight for the qualities that said "guy" to me. Strength. Anger. Power. Energy. Girls didn't have those.
This isn't something that pleases me. It's an attitude of mine that I hate, and I fight it every time I meet a girl who's smart, or more confident than me, or who can do something I can't. I'm not proud of it, by any means. But I do know where people are coming from when they look at Lana and see her as a waste of space. (Although I happen to like Lana. She's kind to people (Clark, BugBoy, ShapeShifta) who aren't necessarily easy to like, and the actress really sold me on her portrayal of guilty-yet-trying-to-justify-it-to-herself-because-she's-hurt Lana when Whitney confronted her about the concert. It's Chloe who drives me batshit. I'm trying not to hate her just because she's a mouthy girl, I swear I am, but damn does she frost my shorts. Her smugness and seemingly constant need to deflate Clark or Pete's egos just drives me up a wall. Paradoxically, that means this is the actress who impresses me the most. She's probably the only one of the main cast who I really believe could be fifteen, because that's such a fifteen-year-old way to be).
Happiness is knowing that in approximately eight minutes there will be screencaps of Lex in the rain of blood somewhere on the net.
Tomorrow I will go to work and have enthusiastic, high volume, non-intellectually challenging discussions of tonight's episode with my coworker, GG. I can already predict how these conversations will go, because he called me during the commercial break right after Clark got stabbed.
Me: Heeeeeey! How about that rain of blood?
GG: That was so freaky when Lex touched that flower and then everything died! And he had those slick leather gloves on (envious sucking-breath-in-through-teeth noises).
Me: Yeah! And the rain of blood!
GG: But the coolest thing was when that dude tried to stab Superboy and the knife shattered into like twenty pieces. That was just like The Matrix, man, it was so awesome! (Enthusiastic re-enactment of the knife scene, and possibly parts of The Matrix).
Me: Yeah! I want a big poster of Lex in the rain of blood for over my desk.
Lordy. I think one of the biggest perks of Smallville for me is that I actually have people besides the long-suffering Hubster to discuss it with. I don't watch Friends, or Survivor, or ER, or any of the other big crowd pleasers, so I've never really had a water cooler show before. GG hasn't got the most, uh, layered outlook on Smallville, but I'm still really enjoying discussing it with him. Loudly. With copious hand gestures.
The Hubster returns home amid much rejoicing. Also, bearing many, many gifts. My current dilemma goes something like, "Which really cool new shirt should I wear tomorrow?"
Did something kind of skeezy. That Thanksgiving party I was supposed to go to? I was there for a grand total of 15 minutes--just long enough to eat some stuffing and cranberry sauce and say hi to BGR. Then I dumped my plate in the trash and walked out. Didn't say goodbye or anything. I just...I dunno. When I've done this sort of thing in the past, it's been motivated by intense, unbearable anxiety or awkwardness with the situation, the kind of thing where I try to picture staying long enough to be polite and it's like walls closing in on my brain. I didn't feel particularly uncomfortable at this party, just...I walked down the hill to BGR's patio, and it was thronging with other members of her math graduate program, all drinking beer and standing around in the damp. I knew no one, the food was cold and unappealing, there was nowhere dry to sit, and I simply did not care to be there. So I left.
Wow. I forgot I still had my eye makeup on from the wedding, and I just rubbed my tired, watery eyes. Now I look like a damn rentboy. Must purchase waterproof mascara.
Came home and spent the evening reading through the Smallville slash archive; some of the fic's quite well done and some of it's clearly people's Lex jerk-off fantasies. Bleh. Although I did have my own moment of bone-deep Lex empathy recently; standing in line at the McDonald's while the Hubster picked up supplies at the grocery next door, I looked up to see a father walk in with his teenage son and felt my mouth go dry. The kid couldn't have been more than 16, but tall with the broad frame and those rangy hips you see on teenage boys. Crewcut, smooth blunt cheekbones, and impossibly smooth jawline...He had on dirty jeans and a ball cap and sneakers with the laces undone, and I couldn't stop sneaking glances at him. Not my type at all, and even looking at him gave me the bad pedophile vibe, but all I could think was look at the pretty farmboy. Man. It was like a punch to the gut.
Going to bed. The Hubster comes home tomorrow evening; there will be much rejoicing.
I went to a wedding this morning. It was a young woman from my church group whom I know casually; I actually know her mother better. The ceremony was lovely, and it was rather a treat for me to see, because the bride attended my wedding and specifically told me that they'd patterned a lot of their ceremony off of ours. Since most of my wedding passed in a haze of high-grade nervousness, it was nice to get an idea of what it must have been like. The reception was also most enjoyable, and the food was amazing. I'm not exactly sure of the present religious affiliation of the groom--when I first met him a year or so ago he was a practicing Hare Krishna, but I believe he no longer considers himself one--but he still follows many if not all of the Hare Krishna dietary guidelines. Much of the food was vegan, and a great portion of it was fabulous Indian cuisine, which I love but almost never get to eat. So I ate as much like a starving animal as my skirt waistline would permit.
Am supposed to be making an appearance at my friend BGR's pre-Thanksgiving party right now. I'm wiped out from staying out till 3am at the movie last night, plus from eating at the wedding, but I know how hard she worked to put the party together so I really need to show up. Besides, I saw the movie with BGR, so I can't exactly use fatigue as an excuse.
This has certainly been a colorful week. Wednesday was the kind of day where I wanted to come home and bathe in Clorox (I almost wrote "sterilize myself," but that made me think of going to the vet), yet in a kind of good way. What happened was my 2:15 kid, LC, rides the facility bus in from school and the instant I see him in the transportation office I can tell something's happened, because he just reeks. He'd clearly had an accident, but he isn't saying anything about it. So I kind of pussyfoot around it, because he's five-ish and old enough to potentially be embarassed, but I take him into the big wheelchair accessible bathroom where we have a changing table with spare clothes, and just start looking for new pants. Apparently at 5 years old the size you wear is very important, because he was insistent that, "I wear seven and a half, Sara! When I was four years old I was going to Mrs. So-and-so's class and I was wearing size 6, but now I'm big, right? And I wear seven and a half!" Size notwithstanding, we find some pants and underwear that are acceptable, but it turns out he can't actually change in that bathroom because the toilet's blocked up with the nasty plunger still sticking out of it, and I don't want to risk him handling anything. So we troop down the hall to the other client bathroom, and once we get in there he just kind of blurts out the story of how he was on the playground and he had to go but he didn't ask the teacher and then "my poop came out too fast." Then I give him baby wipes to clean up with and he changes, and I snap on the latex and try to get his old clothes in reasonable condition to go home, and that story is too graphic to relate. Just...yuck. Then I'm sterilizing the area and making him wash his hands six or eight times and he says, "After I go to college I'm going to work at [your facitily] and when people make a mess I'm going to clean it up." At first I thought he meant he wanted to be a janitor, but then I looked down at myself with the gloves and the disinfectant, and I realized he was saying he wanted to be like me. A speech therapist, in all possible permutations. God. I thought I would burst with thankfulness. Every sappy Halmark quote you've ever read about the challenge being worth it if you make a difference in the life of a child? They're all true.
Yesterday was kind of rough. A front dumped close to ten inches of rain on Central Texas, and we had tornados and flash flooding and all kinds of severe weather. Spent an hour and a half in the basement of our building with my client and the rest of the staff following a tornado sighting--and how fucking stupid is it that we have to take test after test on our facility emergency plans, but when an actual emergency weather situation occurs, we find out because the OT's sister calls her on her cell phone? The plumbing chose yesterday to back up, possibly due to the flash flooding, so not only were we huddled in the humid windowless basement offices, but we got an up-close view of the maintenance guys wading around in sewage overflow. The big boss finally closed the facility at about 4:45, so I drove home through heavy traffic and intense, scary thunderstorms to find out that our roof leaks right over my side of the bed. It's a small leak, thank God, and I was planning to sleep downstairs anyway because of tornado watch, but without the Hubster and kicked out of my own bed I felt displaced and alone. Watched three back-to-back episodes of Smallville in an effort at escapism, interspersed with the Weather Channel. Again found myself crying through the teaser of the pilot episode. I still don't quite know why.
Didn't have to go to work until 11:15, but I saw kids this afternoon even though I question the wisdom of treating in a building that's a potential health hazard. Going out shortly to meet some friends and eat and see a midnight showing of Blackbelt Jones, which I am really looking forward to.
The Hubster comes back Sunday evening. I miss him.
I just reread my last entry, which motherfucking blogger didn't post until today. I get kinda pretentious with a few beers in me, don't I?
I haven't written in what feels like forever, to the point where I don't think I can handle a cohesive entry. Instead, I'm making a list of memory snippets that I want to hang on to. Roughly in chronological order:
*Spent the weekend before last camping at Lake Canyon with the Hubster for the Wurstfest Regatta. We were on the grounds of the Lake Canyon Yacht Club, so it wasn't roughing it by any means; however, camping has always been a bit of a hassle for me because of my contacts. Every time I have to put them in by makeup mirror, or stumble blindly through the woods in the middle of the night to get to the bathroom, that laser eye surgery sounds more attractive. I think there's a good chance I'd really get into camping if I could see.
*Enjoyed the regatta. As I wasn't sailing, I spent the majority of the weekend lying around reading without feeling like I should be doing housework instead. Ran 9.5 miles by myself that Saturday, and got a noticeable sunburn on my face while doing it. The only downside was sometime on Saturday, when I looked up from my book and realized that there were no non-white people within at least a five mile radius. Wondered if I would be a bad person if I liked a sport geared almost exclusively toward upper-middle class white folk.
*Celebrated my 6-month wedding aniversary last Monday.
*Sat in a coffee shop at 6:30am Friday morning and drank in the changing sky.
*Pulled up at a stoplight this weekend and realized that the bed of the pickup in front of me was full of plastic coolers, and out of each cooler stuck the heads of two or three bucks. I assume the rest of the deer bodies were also in the coolers, but all I could see were the heads with their dead eyes.
*Bought the cutest damn shoes ever yesterday--burgundy with chunky soles. They look kind of like bowling shoes, except cooler.
*There was a brief segment on NPR this morning on the 12th century Middle Eastern mystic poet Rumi. The featured expert was some guy with a deep voice and a honey-thick drawl, and something about this Bubba guy reading the ecstatic words of a poet from pre-Afghanistan made me teary. And...hopeful.
*When I heard that the official word was that the plane crash in New York this morning was an isolated event, my first reaction was relief. Not horror for the 200-some people on board, but relief that it was an accident. I wish I could apologize to those 200 people for that.
That's it for now, except for a brief note. What I was going on about last entry about fandom and security issues boils down to this: I have recognized for a while that I use fandom and fan participation more or less as a safety zone--it's my escape hatch from the rest of my life. But lately I've started to wonder why exactly it is that I need such a damn big safety zone. Perhaps later I'll think more about this.
The subtitle for this entry should be: Sara perpetuates a bad habit, i.e. more blogging while lit.
The Hubster is in China until next Sunday, something I have neglected to mention here in the hopes that not thinking about it would make it not be true. I guess we see where that gets you. Anyway, he works as a product engineer for a major computer company, and it happens that they have a plant outside of Shanghai where they are starting production on a part he's familiar with. So he and about five other guys flew out there to teach some classes on how to make the part. He left yesterday morning at some ungodly hour of the morning (I had to get up at 4:40 to drive him to the airport), and so far he's left a couple of messages indicating that he's reached the plant alive and intact. I continue to be torn between desperate jealousy and dread. I really want to go with him, yet I really don't care for him to be out of the country at the moment. Wish us both luck, please.
Luckily, I have cool friends in my hour of need. C and S called to see if they could take me to the Alamo Drafthouse for a showing of Hedwig and the Angry Inch this evening. Aral, I don't think it really resonated with me the way it did with you, but it was a damn cool movie, and I still enjoyed it very much. Also (and this is really shallow, but so be it) I seem to have proved my hypothesis about drinking as a long distance runner. To wit: I seem to be unable to get more than just barely tipsy when I am well hydrated. Usually this is just fine--as I have mentioned before, I am paranoid about hydration and don't drink much of anything besides water anyway. But dammit, sometimes you just need to drink some beer and act silly, and it's really frustrating when you drink beer after beer until you're sick of it and still can't get drunk. That's what happened to me at the Halloween party, and it was a real drag. But this week I have been poorly hydrated, which culminated in a really crappy 7.5 miles this morning (it was supposed to be 9.5, but the coach told me to forget the last two, I was struggling so much), but did allow me to get tipsy with C and S this evening. I had to drink a hell of a lot of beer to get there, but at least it was possible.
Coming tomorrow: events of the past week and a half, plus meditations on fandom and security issues. And probably complaints about my hangover.
Feeling much better today. Not that that would be difficult.
Further evidence that my job serves the fringe element of society: I may have mentioned my 4-year-old client NC before. He's a very active, high maintenance kiddo with mild speech and language issues; he's also quite sweet and has a rather touching 4-year-old crush on me. His mom attends every therapy session with him. Every session. I kid you not; this kid would not miss therapy unless he was bleeding out his eyes. It's weird--you'd think that that kind of dedication would come from a parent who was rigid or highly concerned about their child's progress or overly focused on the western medical model, like if they rack up enough attendance points I'll fix their kid for them or something, but NC's mom really doesn't strike me that way at all. I mean, she's real good with the follow through and actually made up her own home program for NC, but she seems pretty laid back. Her attitude is more like, "Mondays and Wednesdays we have speech, so that's just what we do..." Other things don't seem get in the way of following the routine for her. Case in point: this morning, NC's 8:15 speech session was attended by NC, mom, dad, and five day old brother KC. KC was born last Wednesday. They went to the hospital directly after speech that day, and one epidural and three big pushes later she popped him out. Dad had to drive them in this morning, because mom's still on the Vicodan and can't drive, but it was Monday so they were there for therapy. What do you say to that kind of dedication? I sort of laughed weakly and got on with the session.
I had kind of pictured NC as being the kid who'd freak out over having mom's attention divided between him and the new baby, but he was actually really sweet. He and I were working at the table, and occasionally KC would make a little peep in his sleep, and NC would stop and go over to check: "What my baby doing, mama?"
I think about my speech kids sometimes and my heart just aches, I love them so much. I feel like I'm being poured out, and it's a blessing but it's scary too.
A warning up front: I strongly suspect this entry will be full of self-indulgent whining. Uh, I mean more self-indulgent whining.
I am so very tired. For various reasons I have not had a full night's sleep in over a week, meaning I am shaky and strung out and cranky as hell. I drank one of those Code Red Mountain Dews during the repeat of Smallville this afternoon (brilliant idea, that. Wired and wiped out is such the way to go), and ended up bawling throughout most of the teaser. God only knows why; there wasn't anything particularly sad about the cartoon violence of the meteor shower. The pilot episode was cute, but it didn't strike me as quite as slashy as people seem to be suggesting. I dig the show, though. Yeah, it's cheesy and the dialogue is embarassing in patches (and was I the only one who had a moment of abject fear that the writers were going to go for a bad "facts of life" joke during that exchange between Clark and his dad? "This morning when I woke up...I was kind of floating." "Well, son, there comes a time in every young man's life when his body starts to change...") and Lana's character is really bland, even if she's sweet, but I still like the show. There's a feeling of security in cheesy television--I already know they're going to undershoot my expectations, so I don't have to wait for the blow. More importantly, if the show's bad I can watch without obsessing over it.
The Hubster's in the bathroom removing a splinter from his palm. With a pocketknife. I suggested the knife, because it's easier than using tweezers, but still. Shudder.
Okay, he got it.
At some other point I will talk about the party last night, which was kind of disappointing. Our costumes looked fabulous, though.
Oh. The 8.5 miles went quite well. I got through the whole run, which included a bunch of hills, without significant trouble, and then came home and sat in a bathtub full of cold water for ten minutes, which sucked. But our coach strongly suggested that method for reducing soreness, and in fact the only muscles that are sore today are my hip flexors. I'll have to figure out some way to strengthen them, because I have it on good authority that your hip flexors are what you finish the marathon on after your quads give out around mile 22.
Okay, going to bed. LH, if you're reading this, I went to bed very shortly after posting last time, so I got your email the next day. Sorry!
I'm having a total back-to-middle-school experience right this minute. I'm all squealy and squirmy-happy because I just realized somebody else--namely, xen--linked to my blog, and it's like Ben Brockhouse smiled at me in homeroom or something. I am such a geekazoid.
Halloween party tomorrow night at C and S's house. I supppose I'm looking forward to it. I'm in that anticipation/dread stage where I know it's going to be fun, but I also know I'm going to hate the hour and a half or so that the Hubster and I sit around in our costumes and make half-hearted small talk with the four other people who get there at the start time listed on the invitation. I'm also torn with regards to our costumes--I can't wait to wear mine, yet I don't think they're going to be particularly successful with just the two of us. We're going as boyband members, but since it's only the Hubster and me we don't make much of a visual impression. I'm just dying to get dressed up, though. With luck, I can use this opportunity to work through some of my love/hate issues surrounding the boyband phenomenon, as well as indulge my apparent kink for genderbending.
I feel this entry about to veer off into faux intellectualism regarding sexuality, gender identity, and the impressionability of youth, and I will divert it now. I do not want to get into the lack of strong female role models in my childhood and my persistent identification with badass anti-authority figures such as Darth Maul, because I am essentially a harmless weiner geek. I just wish I was Darth Maul, so I could totally make people lick my boots.
No veering. I said we weren't going to veer.
Anyway, the Smallville pilot's getting replayed here on Sunday. I plan to lie on the couch in a daze and let Lex's sexy bald head work magic on my endocrine system.
Feeling much better today. My congestion has greatly decreased, so I can blow my nose without the sound of huge gears grinding. Also, the resulting colors are considerably less...flamboyant, shall we say. It's cool to feel human.
Some things I did this weekend, aside from recover: shop at thrift stores for Halloween costume items. Purchase a shirt with a spectacularly conflicted design concept, namely, a brown and gold snakeskin pattern in faux velvet. Yes, the shirt is part of my costume...Also bought some hideous mustard colored men's Levi's to go with the shirt, and trashy fake-punk accessories. Had people over for dinner. Watched Election, which I enjoyed rather less than I'd hoped. Objectively, the movie was well written, but subjectively...bleh. Didn't like it. A big part of my reaction is explained fairly simply: I greatly dislike adultery plotlines. I find them morally offensive in a manner that I cannot joke about, and plus I'm a newlywed. Give me a fucking break. Also watched The Craft, which I liked more. I have this weird affection for Robin Tunney, yet I can't figure out what generates it. I don't think she's a particularly good actress, nor do I find her attractive. I think it's just the result of having seen a lot of movies she's been in, although damned if I can remember any of them aside from Vertical Limit.
Things I did not do this weekend: Finish my re-evaluation report on AV, which really ought to have been done last week. Watch due South tapes. Reply to email from my local buddy LG. This last one is something I'll probably have more to say about at a later date, because I'm kind of in an awkward situation with her. We've reached a stage in the friendship where I'm starting to...lack interest, and I don't really know what to do about it.
I'd explore that subject more fully, but what do you know? It's 10:17pm. Time for bed.
So that cold I was bitching about earlier? You know, back on Saturday? It's still around.
Yeah. I can't believe it either.
It was a generic cold (although bad, bad, bad) through the weekend. Monday and Tuesday had a slight lessening of symptoms, enough to make me think I was flirting with recovery. Hah. I should have been on alert after Tuesday night. I woke up about 2am with the right side of my nose completely blocked. Nothing I did would relieve the congestion enough for me to breathe through that side. I felt like a stroke patient, except instead of hemispheric neglect, my body had right sinus neglect. "Sinus? What sinus? That's not my sinus. I don't know how it got there..."
Wednesday...ugh. Sinus congestion, the likes of which I cannot recall. I was at work, of course. It was awful. My nose was totally blocked, crap was running down my throat, I was hacking and coughing, and I had no nasal consonants whatsoever. Thankfully, it wasn't my day to see TK, with whom I'm working on nasal sounds (/m/, /n/, and "ng"), because I would have been no good to him at all. I made it through the day, but it was a close call.
Thursday I went in for about an hour and a half, and then called it quits. The congestion was still there, and my face had started to ache along my right cheekbone, stretching back toward my ear. Enough people told me (politely) that I looked like shit, and I was becoming concerned that I had a sinus infection, though I'd never had one before. I ended up going home and calling my doctor to see if it was worth coming in; I'd talked to the doctor who comes to our Thursday morning meetings and she'd said that what I had was going around. The nurse I got on the phone was noncommital until I mentioned the color of the crap coming out of my nose, and then she was like, "Hmm, well, you might want to be safe and get that checked out." So I went in and spent about four minutes with the doctor while he wrote me some prescriptions on the chance that I did in fact have a sinus infection. Got them filled, and then spent the rest of the day sleeping and lying around. I still wasn't sure that I was actually infected, so I had some pangs of conscience about possibly contributing to the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but I was running a fever last night, so I'm pretty sure I've got more than just a nasty cold.
Thought about going in to work again today, but as I was eating breakfast this morning I noticed that my damn teeth ached when I chewed, so I just said fuck it. I'm glad I'm not there, because every time I start thinking I feel fine and I should get up, I'll do something outrageous like lean over and my face will start throbbing again. Plus I got winded walking to the mailbox, so I'm feeling extra pathetic.
What most pisses me off about this illness, aside from the fact that I'm not getting paid for two days this week, is that I've been almost totally unable to run for two weeks, so there's no way I'm going to attempt the 8 miles we're supposed to do tomorrow. Bleh. I was looking forward to that. My plan, with luck, is to recover enough to do the 8.5 next weekend.
In other news, I'm a little pissed that I missed the Smallville premiere. I hadn't planned to watch it, but I've heard a bunch of people talking about how cool the premiere was, and I'm a bit jealous. I looked to see if my local WB station was rerunning it this weekend, but it appears not. There's a small chance C and S taped it, but I'm not sure if the WB is really their speed, so probably not. But dude, even the mightybigtv guy said it was slashy.
Also, I am not watching Buffy. This is a calculated move on my part, and one that I sometimes regret, but...I just can't. I know it's a good solid show for the most part. I know it's got a blend of horror and camp that I'd probably love. I know that Joss Whedon's good with bringing a plot arc to completion within our natural lifetimes, a trait that I value tremendously. But I can't watch Buffy, and the reasons are mostly because it is all of those things. I am just not willing to expend the kind of emotional energy I know Buffy would engender in me on another damn tv show. Been there, done that, and it was called The X-Files. I wove almost four years of my life around that show, and when I think about its current state my chest aches. It sounds melodramatic, and it is melodramatic, but you have to remember that when season four started I was in my second year of college. Things were in a fairly constant state of suckage, and XF in many ways kept my head above water. I made some truly excellent friends through the show. I lost one of those somewhere in late season five, and my life is much the better for the loss, but that doesn't mean it didn't hurt like hell at the time. The Scully cancer arc made some of that bearable. When I moved to Texas for grad school, somewhere in those endless months between the movie (the beloved movie! Ask me how many times I saw it in the theater, and what it meant to me) and the start of season six, XF was one of the few ties I had to hang on to. When my interest started to fade, somewhere mid-season six...it was scary. Mulder and Scully and Krycek (mmm, Krycek) had been present in my mind for so long, I didn't quite know how to let go of them. Last season was painful. Krycek's death made me want to break things. I watched the episode on tape shortly after returning from my honeymoon, and I was completely unspoiled and unprepared. The poor Hubster--he came down from upstairs to find me bawling on the couch, and didn't know whether to take it seriously or not. I cried so hard for Krycek, but also for the time and energy and emotion that I had put into a show that didn't work anymore. I'm not going to watch this season. When I get maudlin, it feels like I'm betraying the characters.
So I'm not going to watch Buffy. I mean, for one thing it's the sixth season and I'd never really catch up. For another, I'm not ready to give up the intensity of the love I have for due South yet, and I know that would happen to some degree. But mostly it's because of The X-Files, and what that show used to be to me.
Man. I better go take some meds before I get even more nostalgic.
The Hubster thinks calling me Snotty McPhlegmster is freaking hysterical. If I had energy for anything more taxing than lying in my desk chair and coughing weakly, I'd remind him that people who spent the entire day in detox after drinking way too much at a non-heavy drinking oriented party last night would do well to exercise a little tact.
This place was the Duplex O' Misery today, I tell you.
I'm sick. It's distressing, because this is the third or fourth time in about five months that I've been physically ill, when in the past I've typically been pretty healthy. Physically healthy. Let me continue to stress that "physically" part. But man, these past couple of months...they've been hell on my system. There was the awful, terrible cold I got on the tail end of my honeymoon in May, where I went through mountains of kleenex trying to keep a handle on the sneezing. That was bad--I'd never before found sneezing to be much of a hassle; in fact, if you sneeze rarely enough, it can actually be kind of fun when it does happen. (Fun like you say "heh" and then you get over it, mind you; not fun like you leap up and down while shrieking joyously). But that cold--man. I spent the two and a half days we were in Seattle with my nose tingling and itching and my eyes running and having to stop dead in my tracks and spazz out on a sneeze every ten feet or so. It was a new and different cold experience in many unpleasant ways.
Then there was the laryngitis in late May, when I lost my voice for two days. Which was highly unfortunate, because let me just remind you that I'm a speech therapist. The irony in my life was a bit thick during that period, I tell you what. Then I got sort of nauseous and weird and had to go home one other afternoon, although I think that may have been fatigue more than anything. Then there have been the mood swings, and the "drinking an entire bottle of wine on a school night" incident of last month, and now this cold and sore throat, which I am afraid will devolve into more laryngitis, as my voice has deepened dramatically. It sucks.
To be honest, I don't really feel all that bad, aside from the stuffy nose and raw throat. No headache or fever or anything, and I actually ran with my group this morning with no particular discomfort. Of course, the cold hadn't kicked in yet, but I was still well enough to get through drills and 4.5 miles without spontaneous combustion. I was a bit disappointed with the run, though, because last week's 6 miles felt so much better than this week's shorter distance. I was sick, yes, and I had skipped several of the weekly training runs because I was trying to stave off my illness, yes, but today was still kind of a crappy run.
Okay, this is turning into a big long entry of me whining. Let's switch course.
Fun stuff that's happened recently:
* I went to a cool conference in Dallas last weekend. It was on Sensory Integration techniques for SLPs (speech-language pathologists), and I feel simultaneously like I learned a ton and nothing at all. But I've tried out some of the ideas on my kids, and I've gotten some results that seem to be positively voodoo, that's how dramatic they are. Pretty exciting.
* While in Dallas I stayed with supervisor JD's parents, who were extremely sweet, and hung out with her and her friends on Friday night during their pre-O.U. weekend party. Of course, the Longhorns went on to lose to O.U. the next day, but I still got to sit in a loud, smoky bar with JD and drink too much beer.
* Some guy on a bicycle whistled at me when I was running last week. How long has it been since that happened? It was nice to have my internal image of myself as blazingly hot mama validated by someone other than the Hubster.
* To my surprise and pleasure, I've found that I like Enterprise. Other than a brief stint with Voyager fandom, I've never been much into Star Trek, but I'm kind of digging the new show. And I can't believe I'm about to say this, but T'Pol and that guy Tripp? I could probably get behind them as a het pairing. They have some actual chemistry.
Think I will go take some more cold medicine. Later.
There are several things I am wishing for at this moment:
1. I wish that I had never discovered that I really, really need a full eight hours of sleep every night, because I hate going to bed at ten-fucking-thirty six days a week. Especially right now, when it's 10:20.
2. I wish we weren't bombing Afghanistan.
3. I wish that either a). it didn't feel like such an enormous effort to keep myself informed about current events, or b). I wouldn't feel guilty about ignoring them.
4. I wish the Hubster and I didn't generate so damn much laundry.
5. I wish my late day at work didn't coincide with my long midweek running day.
6. I wish I had enough energy to pack a lunch that I might conceivably want to eat tomorrow.
7. I wish entering receipts into Quicken was jolly good fun.
8. I desperately wish my moods would stabilize. I do not understand how I can be simultaneously hugely excited about getting back to work so I can try out some of the new ideas I learned at my conference this weekend, and so not ready to go back that I spend the evening cleaning and crying, cleaning and crying.
9. I wish I had the energy to write email.
10. I wish it was not 10:32, and therefore past my bedtime.
I sort of magically have archives now. Except I haven't figured out how to get the main page to display only the posts I want it to show, so currently I have, like, three months' worth of posts published and not much actual need for archives. Most every time I pull up blogger these days, I spend a brief moment being embarassed by how inept I am in the field of web design, to the point where I don't even bother to read the blogger FAQ because I might have to make notes. Then I have a brief moment of shame over how little I care. Then I decide that I like the default template, and it's my forum and I can make it look--or not make it look--any way I want, dammit, and I come here to write, not code. And then I move on.
Eh. I'm feeling kind of unmotivated tonight. I'm feeling kind of unmotivated in general, at least about anything that resembles an obligation. Because it's going to be October, people! I love October. The cooler weather, the breezes, the way the sky turns that deep, crisp, cloudless blue on sunny days, Halloween...woo. It's a good month. I get stirred up, though; unable or unwilling to sit still and take care of business. There's more struggle in my life in October.
More musings on October to come, probably. But now it's 10:20, and I'm going to bed.
"Ship of Fools" by the Grateful Dead
"The Wreck of the Antelope" by Privateer, assuming a recording really exists
"The Glasgow" by John Renfro Davis, again, assuming I can find a recording
"The Rhyme of the Chivalrous Shark" by Lesley Nelson, ditto
"The Reuben James" by Woodie Guthrie
"Nautical Disaster" by the Tragically Hip; I think the title alone qualifies it for inclusion, even if I think the song is actually about D-Day.
I don't how many people actually read this blog, but if you do and you can hook me up with any type of recording of the songs above (except the Hip song; I've already got that), please let me know. I'd appreciate it.
I just got off the phone with my best friend of almost fifteen years, HB, and now I feel nostalgic and weird. This same quality of feeling has been plagueing me the past few times I've spoken to HB, and I fear now that what I'm experiencing is the friendship softening and fading over distance and time. I knew this was more or less inevitable--we've lived several states apart for close to eight years now; the sort of day-to-day interaction and knowledge of each other's lives that we had as 11-year-olds living on the same street simply isn't possible. The distance between us has been creeping in gradually for years; I shouldn't be surprised. But it seems that there's been a noticeable...lessening of intensity, perhaps, of our relationship in the past few months. I can think about it logically and pinpoint several recent key events that are likely contributing: I finally finished grad school. She's beginning her third year of teaching. I got a full-time job. She officially came out to me as bisexual, although I had known, and she had known that I knew, for several years prior. I got married. She began her first serious relationship with another person, a girl whom I have met only briefly. She is planning to apply to grad school. I am considering maybe thinking about buying a house. We are both essentially becoming adults. There are myriad reasons why it is increasingly difficult to find our common reference points, all of which are natural, and many of which are to be celebrated in and of themselves.
I am still...sad.
She's been my best friend since I was eleven, since we were young enough to chase softballs in the street at dusk and make up songs about badmitton. She was my friend through basketball camp, through babysitting, through biking home past the chin-up bars in the park during middle school. She was my friend through different high schools, through our vastly different academic strengths and weaknesses. Through my adolescent trials with the Hubster-to-be, and more band-camp stories than she probably ever wanted to hear. Sometime during high school she told me about the awful, defining experience she had as a child, and I was sick to my stomach for days. She was my friend through her college application process, and her first year of college out-of-state. Through my own first, terrible semester in college, when we spoke on the phone every Monday at 11pm. When I was eighteen, she told me how to go about getting on the pill. She was my friend through her semester abroad in England, when I missed her so badly, but didn't realize how much until her mom finally gave me her number over there and I tried to call for days until her flatmate finally answered, then passed her the phone, and I heard her say hello and felt tears in my eyes. She was my friend through mutual depression and growing pains, through academic pressure and the time I spent with B that I wish I could blot from my memory; through the X-Files, God, the X-Files. So many of the formative events of my young adult life can be marked by what hairstyle Scully was wearing at the time. Through her graduation and my graduation, through her first job and my own move out of state for grad school. Through grad school. Through our trip to the UK, where we slept on trains and ate inumerable Cadbury Fruit and Nut bars from vending machines; where we stood in the rain next to a four thousand year old stone circle on the west coast of Lewis, in the Hebrides. Where we walked and walked through the back roads of Stirling, Scotland, seeing the Wallace monument rising up before us, but not knowing if we were on the right road or if we would ever reach it. She was my friend through my scrapped thesis topic and the ghastly eleven pages that went with it; through her K1 class and my first 10K. Through my real thesis topic and her State of North Carolina-ordered teacher Product. Through my wedding planning, and crazy days before my actual wedding. She was the Maid of Honor. She loves my sister, and took her out for the entire day on the eve of the ceremony, when I was trying to pack and move houses and see my family and the Hubster's family and not kill anybody before the "I do" part. Even though my sister was out of her routine and getting freaky and autistic on us, even though she's a rough ride at the best of times, even though HB was recovering from sun poisoning and a severe allergic reaction to a medication at the time. She was my friend through the honeymoon stories. She was my friend through all of that; she's been my friend for years; I know that's not going away. But God, I love her, and it kills me to feel the distance spreading between us. Natural and inevitable though it may be.
I'd never go back to being eleven, but sometimes I think of her and wish it was possible.
I don't know anyone face-to-face in NYC, but it doesn't fucking matter. Ten thousand dead--I can't even begin to imagine. I'm sitting here fearing for Miriam and her family, and Francesca, and CLFinn, and Ins's relatives, and people I've never even talked to, because there's no other way to make it real. I wish I didn't have to think of them--I don't want it to be real.
This morning I was thinking about how I was hung over and didn't go to work on Monday, and wondering if I should maybe get some counseling. Driving to work, I told myself that I'd ask my buddy who's a social worker for her opinion, but that there probably wasn't anything wrong with me that a reality check couldn't fix.
Oh my God. LaT's not kidding--blogging while lit is a bad idea. But I was in a bad fucking mood earlier, so I drank an entire bottle of wine by myself. I think it's lunar related--and spare me your sarcasm, because I've already gotten it from the Hubster--but July 4th I was in a filthy mood, and a month after that too, and I haven't actually looked outside, because that would involve standing up, but I'm pretty sure it's close to the full moon now. And I felt like crap earlier. I'm thinking there's a pattern here.
Because I'm too blasted to write email:
LAL: If you're reading this, I'm sorry I haven't emailed you back yet. I hope you got my package, and that you've been enjoying the tapes.
Aral: I hope things with you and T are working out, sweetie. I did get your letter with the article, and I enjoyed it very much. "Guns, guns, guns, strong homoerotic subtext, more guns," is how I described it to the Hubster. I'd like to re-read it before discussion ensues, but expect to hear from me soon.
MR: I don't know if you read this blog or not, but hang in there, hon. You'll get time to write, and Adam and Ian will be waiting for you. I miss them too, if it's any consolation.
Oh, dear. I drank a full 64oz of water in the last two hours, so with luck I shouldn't be hung over. But I still have an 8:15am client tomorrow, so if you people could wish me luck I'd appreciate it.
My alarm clock this morning woke me out of a vivid, highly detailed dream of Ray and Fraser in some sort of bizarre Shakespearian stage production, which is weird in and of itself, but also because I almost never used to have fandom-related dreams, yet this makes the third or fourth due South dream I've had since I got into the fandom. That's, oh, three or four times more nocturnal character appearances than I had in a little over a year of Sentinel fandom, and a considerably higher proportion than I had in roughly two and a half years of X-Files fanaticism. Although, my XF dream holds a place in my heart merely because the one time I did dream in that fandom, I had the honor of dreaming in Vehemently's "Sovereignty" universe. Mulder, Scully, and Krycek, staring at each other in the hazy glow of a DC steetlamp while rain falls around them, uneasy awareness thrumming between the three of them...aaaaaahhh. Few writers make me miss XF fic the way Vee does.
But anyway, the dS stage production. This dream was remarkable also in that I think it was the first overtly slashy dream I've had--I guess my subconscious likes subtext too, because during some of the ones I've had previously I may have been aware within the dream that so-and-so were vibing off each other, but there was never any actual (canon?) slash content. This particular dream actually had some rather impressive internal consistency, although in the illogical and convoluted way that dreams do. It began with me sitting in a crowd in a sort of outdoor public park, but with everyone seated in rows upon rows of plastic folding chairs on an awning-covered concrete platform of the sort that I associate with summer and fried chicken and church socials, not that I've ever been to a church social. So I'm sitting there with all these people, and I've got scads of luggage and cloth tote bags and stuffed animals and crap with me, because apparently I'm going on a trip. All of a sudden--maybe there was an anouncement, I don't recall--I realize that I need to move to the back section of the crowd, because it turns out we're actually on a plane and I've got to go find my seat. So I get up to move, but of course I can't carry all of my luggage with me because I've got so much crap. I pick up what I can and head through an open doorway into what is ostensibly the coach section of the plane, but it looks more like a crowded college classroom or lab, what with the hard plastic chairs and big wide study tables. I move to the center of the room and find an empty chair at this one table--there are people sitting at my back and to my right, and a girl sitting across from me reading what turns out to be an F/K zine, although I don't know how I know this. I put my stuff down, and then for a minute I worry that I've taken somebody's spot, because there's also an open F/K zine at my place, and it doesn't belong to me. I'm not one to pass up free reading material, though, so I start skimming and realize with a shock that it's a good zine. I haven't read the story before, and it's engaging and well-written and of course it's open to the foreplay, and it's good. I'm reading, and I'm having the same problem with this zine that I tend to have with zines, the one that makes me not particularly like them--I've only actually read two, but they were both formatted with two columns per page, and I have a really hard time not skipping ahead because my eyes expect to keep moving horizontally across the page. So I'm reading the foreplay, and unintentionally skipping over to the next column where there's some goofy dialogue written as though Ray's been gagged, because Fraser's kissing him and he's trying to talk around Fraser's tongue in his mouth. So hey, it's all good, and then an announcement comes over the PA system and I realize that the flight's leaving and I need to go back and get the rest of my stuff from the church social before takeoff. Turns out we're going to Thailand--why the fuck am I going to Thailand? Even in the dream I have no particular desire to go there, but I am anyway.
I make my way back through the classroom/coach area to the platform with the folding chairs, where I gather the rest of my belongings. They consist of a backpack and one extremely large stuffed bear with long, furry, floppy arms and legs. I'm rather self-conscious as I thread my way back through the people; I wish I'd had the presence of mind to put the bear in a duffle bag so I wouldn't have to display myself as someone who travels with security stuffed animals. I'm sitting down in my seat at the table, the bear's fur tickling my nose, when I realize that not only is there a little wooden stage running across the left side of the room, about four feet high and floored in light blond wood, but Paul Gross is standing on it. He's dressed in awful Gladiator-style Roman garb, with a short Cesar/George Clooney haircut under a laurel wreath or some such nonsense. He's giving an intense, melodramatic monologue in these horrible, high-pitched femmey tones, and I'm torn between fainting with shock and cringing in embarassment, with the cringing looking to win out. The dialogue he's reciting is all about pain and losing his one true love, and it's totally over-the-top; I know it's from Shakespeare, although I don't know which play. So I'm shrinking down in my seat, face burning, and suddenly I realize that PG's gestures and eye gaze are getting more localized--he's switched from giving a soliliquy to directing his dialogue at someone. I look far stage left (my right, of course), and there is CKR in the same sort of fake Roman get-up as PG, except he's got a little metal helmet with a plume on, because of course he's in the army. God. It's like those AUish stories by Viridian, except Viridian's are, you know, good.
Anyway, CKR--I don't know if they're supposed to be Ray and Fraser or the actors at this point--is cold and hard-hearted in the face of PG's sweeping melodrama. I think he's either the fickle lover or the haughty officer who won't return PG's desperate love. PG's getting nearer and nearer to him, still talking in that horrid high voice, and then he reaches him and leans in and utters his closing line. CKR's still stone-faced, and I'm sensing what's about to happen and thinking, "Shit, this is going to be so much clearer than 'Mountie on the Bounty,'" and not knowing if I'm turned on or weirded out or what, and the camera (what fucking camera?!) zooms in in time to see PG give CKR a hard, passionate kiss on the cheek. The frame freezes then, in this odd shot-from-below angle so we see the triangular shape of CKR's jaw and the longish stubble covering it, and his cold expression. PG has his eyes squeezed shut and desperation all over his face, and then my alarm goes off. Scared the hell out of me.
