A Twist of Things to Come

The hubby says I've been quiet today, and I suppose it's true. (His actual word was "subdued.") I think it was mostly because I realized that nearly all our pictures of my mom are in storage. We didn't think we'd be here this long.

I don't know. I miss my mother. We were always close, and I really don't expect to ever stop missing her.

Our terabyte array on the family computer had a drive fail this week, and a second drive said it failed but we revived it long enough to copy most of our data over. We swapped out the array for a simple huge hard drive, which means no onsite data recovery. So we signed up for internet-based back up, and move all our digital photos and stuff to Picasa.

Then I went through today and organized them all by person, using their face recognition software, which was actually pretty good, considering.

It was a big job, so that is my Thing today.

There are other things I've been putting off that I need to get to soon, like finishing up my transcript of an author interview I did ... a month ago now. *wince*

Also, I broke a nail so now I have a good excuse to cut all of my fingernails short again. :) I like doing that every so often, for the novelty of it.

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My laptop was trying to crack at teh hinge, but the hubby fixed it because he's magic like that. :) We had to go Lowe's for some stuff to fix it, and walking around made me think of when we had a house to do all kinds of home improvement projects on. I can't say I miss that aspect of it, but we did not intend to be renters this long. It's much easier to rent, though.

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My friend Mer gave me two tomato caterpillars for the boys to look after. She thought they would think it was cool. So far, I'm the only one who will touch/feed them, and one of them doesn't seem to be eating. :P It is alive, but smaller and generally not looking as healthy. *sigh*

Let me start by plugging the latest on GeekaChicas, How to Save the World by Alpha Lyra (aka amy34). This short piece and the article it points to are inspiring and spot-on. If there is one, single way to save the world, this is it.

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So many famous people have died this week. I knew Swayze wasn't doing so well, but wow. Also, Henry Gibson. My mom used to do little "poetry moments" in his style, for the amusement of all who gathered to hear her. She was funny as well as gorgeous. She never really made a scene, but she was a scene, if you take my meaning.

She died in September, see, and her ghost has felt very near me just lately. It seems outrageously unfair that she's gone.

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I'm excited to learn that the Nightrunner series has been optioned for a movie. As the author says, it's early days yet, but it's exciting news. It's an odd thing, this excitement about a beloved book getting made into a film, yeah? Luck in the Shadows was awesome, yet in my heart I know no movie will ever do it justice. Movies don't often manage to supplant the books they visualize, though I'm sure it has happened.

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Time to get the schooling going, and see if I can squeak in some time for the re-writes. ;)

The kind you read and the kind your write. Both are good for you. At the moment I'm enmeshed in one of each. More about that later, maybe. ;)

In any case, we're coming back to our first love over at GeekaChicas with Beatrice Blythe's Letter to Brandon Sanderson. It's a very kind but still honest review of a fan who gets a book she expected to love and finds it a bit of a slog.

It makes me proud to call her my friend. :)

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I've been having a rough patch, to be honest. My Mother's Day was wonderful, and my kids are great.

But Mother's Day will always bee a two-edged sword for me, because my mother is dead. Oh, how she used to dote on the boys! They do not get a scrap of that from the other grandparents -- it's just not their thing. You know?

My mother was one of those beautiful, charming people who, when she talked to you made feel like the most important person in the world. She did that to everyone. It was amazing to see how the coldest of people would warm to her.

Anyway, my Wee Boy was looking at LOLcats on teh computer while waiting for the sound of the bus, and out of the blue I realized how much my mom would have dug lolcats. I could almost see her standing beside him, looking over his shoulder and laughing with him. She had a great laugh.

So, now I'm hormonal and I miss my mommy.

How lame is that?

My ISP notified us that our internet a and Phone service would be offline for about 45 minutes, sometime between midnight Monday night and 6am Tuesday morning. That was fine, because, yanno, we should be sleeping. (I actually had some insomnia that night, so I had occasion to notice it was out. I am aware how lame that makes me. *cheesy grin*)

What I didn't expect was that my Internet service (and home phone!) would be out of service for most of the day on Wednesday, and going out at odd intervals all day today. During times I had set aside for the purpose of beating the website To DO list into shape.

So, you get the code right, you hit enter to upload it... and then you get Try Again Later messages. Check phone -- no dial tone. Twenty minutes later, DIAL TONE! Begin uploading nifty website stuff. Hit Enter. Unable to Locate Server. No dial tone.

So, I opened writing files and was later surprised when my email program notified me I had mail. So it was working again! Reply to email. Get "Unable to Locate Server" message. Auuurrrgghh!

You know what the really messed up thing is? Technical difficulties actually made me feel better about my life, today. No foolin'.

I haven't written about Natasha Richardson, or various recent internet kerfluffles, or how I accidentally discovered that some folks really DO need, on some deeply personal level I don't quite understand, to be outraged by something for it to be important. You know? Like, if you're not emotionally torn up about something, it must not be important to you. *surprise* I'm one of those weirdos who thinks that when something is *truly* important, that is when we need to be our most rational, our most willing to understand each other.

If something is important to me, it becomes more important than my ego. I have no comprehension of the habit of thought that keeps people from admitting they were wrong about something. Or makes them see politeness and understanding as a weakness.

It's just alien to me. I've been puzzling over it, trying to make it make sense, while at the same time thinking about Natasha Richardson. How close I am to her in age, how close in age our children are.

And then there's the realization that, with that sort of brain injury, someone had to give the termination of life support order. Like I had to with my mom. I would not, literally WOULD NOT wish that sort of decision on my worst enemy.

Yup. That's me cracking up, going all emotional and gooey over something very remote from me, but still somehow really close. (What if my boys had to grow up without me?)

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So, you know, fantasizing about my Internet Service Provider lying dead with a spork in every orifice was actually very good for my mood.

I see from his blog that Neil Gaiman has lost his father, just a few weeks before his parents' golden wedding celebration. My heart goes out to him. The death of a parent is something that changes you, or at least changes the shape of the world as you see it inside your mind.

If you don't read his blog, you should find it and take a look at the picture he posted of himself, his father and his grandfather. His father looks exactly like him, only with more orderly hair and not all in black.

It reminded me of how much I carry with me that is my parents. My dad's crooked pinkies and lopsided smile, my mother's laugh and surprising strength (and a portion of her beauty, or so I'm told).

I miss them.

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My friend who ordered me the book I had been lusting after on Amazon? I had sent her an email the same day she ordered it, and i thought it was odd that she'd buy me a book but NOT reply to the email. As it turns out, she had just ordered the book when she got the email, and decided not to reply until I had got the book.

So we were thinking very strongly of each other at just the same time. How is that for serendipity?

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The website lumbers along with maddening slowness, but my energy and appetite for progress has not waned. I'm learning a lot, and still enjoying myself. Everyone who has contributed has been consistently witty and wonderful to the point I'm almost abashed at my own meager contributions. I will say that I'm sure my output will improve the less time I need to spend fiddling with the technical side. That will hopefully occur in the next two weeks.

My best friend just signed up to be a contributor this weekend, and I'm jazzed about that. She's a smart cookie, and very careful about her facts (which is a very good thing, in her profession). I know she'll tell me when something needs fixing, and I really need that. :)

I shall try to STFU about it for now (here at least). If anyone wants to hear more about what's going on, let me know and I'll put you on the mailing list. :) I know that, to some of you, hearing me talk about learning how to do various things is the equivalent to a two-year-old bragging about her big girl panties, so I'll try not to bore you. ;)

Hope you all have a good day!

In past Christmas times I spent with my in-laws, I always missed the huge gatherings of my own kin, with our Christmas Eve traditions and my Papa dressed up as Santa to the awe of the growing masses of little ones (myself once among them, but no more). I'd miss the huge potlucks and cackling laughter of strong women with ready wit, not realizing that people would look back on the pictures of gatherings when I was absent and think that I was in fact there because my cousin's new wife looked so much like me (just another skinny girl with the same haircut and wide, straight smile).

And now nothing has changed, really. It's easier when I'm with my in-laws, because there are no more strong, cackling women and the parties died with them. Those of us who live have our own families, and no one brings us together anymore. When I'm with the in-laws thinking how lame and imperfect their holidays are, if only they knew, I can pretend that my perfect family holiday is still happening somewhere.

But, I am grateful that I had them while they lasted, and I know this flu or whatever that has laid us low will pass, and maybe next year we'll get it right, even as bare as my side of the family tree has become.

It's all good. My eldest was most excited about a stocking stuffed with new underpants, then they got those Nerf machine guns, and OMG. And my three year old niece demanded I sit beside her at the feast, because she decided I was beautiful.

Now I have my nice, warm socks. Though the highs have been in the 60s, I know I'll need them eventually. I love the games and making towers out of Lego and getting to make stickers with two wee girls to whom I am "Auntie Livvy." I could pick them each up with one hand and it makes me wonder if my boys were ever that small.

Then I realize it really IS all good, and this was a great Christmas. Family is family, and life goes on. :)

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The work goes on as well, and I am very happy with it, too.

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Almost there. Stay on target! Notes are piling up for the re-write, too, which I hadn't expected. I mean, I had thought I was going to plow through just so I could say I'd finished it, but I suspected that would be it. So, I'm pleased that character names and things are coming to me, in the walk-up-and-introduce-themselves sort of way. Maybe it's the fever, but I could go on like this.

Then tehre is this:

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Which was done on HMOWK. Much of it unexpected until a few days ago, but I'm very pleased with it. I suppose I couldn't ask for more than that. ;)

Thanks to the lovely biggelois, Big Boy now has a pen pal in Sweden. :D Strangely enough, these two boys are of an age and appear to be currently obsessed with the game Team Fortress 2. They figured out the time difference and played together online this weekend.

This from a boy who had to be forced to rake one tiny swath of the back yard, and then had to redo it because of the substandard job he did. *sigh* We have a leaf blower and all, but kids should know how to do things manually. I think he may have more chores rather than less, if this keeps up.

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The costume party was great fun. My friends have the best parties! They really do. Both boys went to a birthday party for Wee Boy's friend L. yesterday. Also great fun.

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I have the best friendslist ever! Just this morning, narniadear posted a poem she wrote that begins, "My skirt is like a sausage casing..." It made me happy. :) (It's friendslocked, so you can't read it (NYAH) but I thought it was brilliant.)

Also, I followed a recent link on Elizabeth Bear's blog to the Page 69 Project, which inspired me to drag up page 69 of my current work in progress. It wasn't bad, for a rough draft, which was quite encouraging.

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It is getting cooler here. We may have to turn on the heat soon. I have a bit of a dilemma with my plants. Basically, the only ones I have other than my African violets are the sections of Butterfly plant I grew from clippings. They are hearty, which is good. The only reason I have them, the only reason I've re-potted them and bought new pots to separate them out in, etc. is because the original plant was given to me after my mother's funeral. I've managed to kill all the plants she ever gave me. I do not have her interest in indoor plants. It only makes sense that in my re-organization, they must go.

They are not my mother. Whatever she left me is something I carry inside, and keeping a bunch of plants I have no place for or interest in is not keeping her memory alive. It's just penance.

Because somewhere in my stupid, stupid brain, deeply and beyond all hope of reason, I believe that if only I was good enough, and strong enough, I could have saved her. I should have been able to keep her from dying, somehow.

There you have it. I'm not just crazy, I'm freaking Anakin whiney-ass-beeyotch Skywalker. *bangshead*

*strikes theatrical pose* NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

The plants have GOT to go.

Got home just in time for a cold snap, but the weather in der hinterland was awesome. My Beloved and I walked to the gorgeous, hilltop cemetery where a large portion of my family is interred. The apple orchard next to it is about to be sold off for housing lots, but it's all fields now. The apple trees have been disposed of, making the distance visibility of our walk home a bit better.

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My sister has a new puppy, more than half wolfhound. It's cute now, but I suspect that in a year or so it will take care of her cat infestation. She has around a dozen cats, two dogs (including the new addition) plus various rats, rabbits and turtles. The exact number of pets in the house fluctuates a bit, depending what else her daughter brings home or trades with friends.

She is SO getting the Crazy Cat Lady action figure for her birthday. Hee! She may be a therapist, but that doesn't mean she can't be a tad cracked herself.

I love my family.

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Charlton Heston movies-- especially the religious ones-- are considerably more homoerotic than I remembered. Also, he had nice feet.

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By way of hedgegoth The Engineer's Guide to Cats:



That video lovingly combines two things for which I have great personal affection-- cats and engineers.