Res ipsa loquitur

Fandom's young but all of us are getting older, so maybe my experiences would be of use to someone?

The short version: I'm 41 days post surgery. Back at work, hardly ever in pain but still lacking in stamina, have a lot of bad muscle habits to break and a lot of strength to recover. The worst part was that it took a month before I started getting a good night's sleep again. Technology is amazing.

( Hip surgery prep and recovery, for those who are interested )

from china_shop, because I miss you kitties daily even though I can't seem to sustain a posting habit.

So what have you been up to?
Nearly everything is going under major life changes; aside from that, mostly working and driving. I did take a long road trip with my mom, which was lovely.

Also, the kidlet and I are volunteering at the animal shelter, or, to put it another way, we perform the public service of petting cats a couple of evenings a week.

Major life changes? Same old same old?
Where even to begin ...

The spouse is done with school, ordained, and working as a Presbyterian pastor.

Unfortunately, his job is in a town of 3,000 an hour away. So from Sunday afternoon to Friday afternoon, the kidlet and I live in a quite tiny but rather charming duplex in New City, and on the weekends we live with the spouse and the cat in a rambling, eccentric, amazing 1800-vintage house provided by the church.

The church is tiny and friendly and sweet, though a bit less progressive than we would prefer.

The kidlet is 16, getting ready to be a junior in high school, and has come out as agender this year. The kidlet prefers the pronoun 'they,' but I spent four years in journalism school and find a singular 'they' kind of painful, so I'm trying to avoid pronouns altogether. This is easier when talking to the kidlet than when talking about the kidlet. Aside from wrestling with gender, the kidlet is writing fantasy and science fiction, singing, drawing, studying physics, and generally making my brain feel old.

Professionally, I'm in a frustrating place. I'm still working at Teranerd. Generally I like the company, but a massive round of layoffs shook me up; I'm bored with the work I do; also, this job won't stay in this location forever, and I have no desire to go to Minnesota when it moves. I'd like to get project management certified, but I feel like I have zero energy to devote to studying for the exam.

I adore New City and could easily settle here for good, but somehow I'm not making friends here. (Well, normally I'd be using weekends and church to look for friends, but my weekends and my church are both happening in Spouseville.)

What fandom are you in/do you spend most of your time in?
I really miss having a fandom. astolat writes Fast & Furious, so I read Fast & Furious; predatrix.livejournal.com writes Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, so I read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I'm much looking forward to Marvel-universe movies but not feeling particularly fannish about them.

Where do you hang out online?
Here, if anywhere. I abandoned my old Tumblr because I couldn't handle the constant undertone of judgment and imminent attack; the kidlet helped me carefully curate a new one that subscribed to basically nothing but the kidlet's own page, some baby-animal pages, Important Birds, Ursula Vernon's personal page, Reapersun, and Iguanamouth.

What are you reading?
Lots of nonfiction about the Mississippi River, which might or might not end up being research for something fictional. I highly recommend Lee Sandlin's Wicked River: The Mississippi When Last It Was Wild.

What are you watching?
Marvel movies. The kidlet makes me look at Homestuck vids sometimes.

What are you making?
I think maybe I'm fallow? Because I'd hate to think I'd just run dry.

What are you squeeing about today?
The dumbo octopus.

If you could rope old fandom friends into a new fandom, it would be.....
I'm waiting for someone to rope me in!

I should really watch/read/dive into _______ and then come talk to you about it!
Something fantastic that I don't already know about.

What else is on your mind?
If my life were a film, all this change would happen in a nice neat montage. But I'm in the middle of it, and it's occupying pretty much all the energy I've got.

So my lovable puppylike ninth-grade boyfriend just got in touch on Facebook. He's living on a farm some miles outside our hometown, and his only neighbor is ... my pharmaceutically enhanced yet endearingly goofy twelfth-grade boyfriend.

If they could get Wonder If He Knows He's Gay Yet and Epic Love, Epic Daddy Issues out there, it would be a whole little colony of my teenage mistakes.

The spouse once said to me, "I don't know why your parents are always so nice to me," and I said, "That's because you haven't met the boys that I could have ended up with."

(It's a favorite of my father, who shares the trait.)

A guy takes a job at a bank. The first day, his superivisor hands him a bundle of bills. "There ought to be a hundred in this stack. I need you to count and make sure."

The guy starts counting. "One ... two ... three ... four ... five ... six ... seven ..." Then he hands the stack back to his supervisor. "If it's right so far, I'm sure it's right all the way through."

Take a picture of yourself right now. Don’t change your clothes. Don’t fix your hair. Just take a picture. Post that picture with no editing. (Except maybe to get the image size down to something reasonable. Don’t go posting an eight megapixel image.) Include these instructions.

( Read more... )

I was tempted to do that meme where I ask you all about your impressions of me as a writer, except that I figure there's nobody out there who's half as fascinated by my writing as I am. So, taking my cue from godofwine, I'll give you my list of the telltale signs that you're reading a Res story:

( Telltale Signs )

Also, last night I dreamed I was playing bingo with pirates, so clearly my life is lacking in excitement.

Root canal was today. The plan of listening to books on the iPod fell through -- the process is just noisy enough to drown out key bits of plot -- but I was happy to have my music with me.

They put a waterproof thing in my mouth to isolate the area they were working on, presumably so that I wouldn't get little fragments of tooth all over my tongue. I haven't had a mouthful of latex since I was single. The flavor has not improved any.*

It was a little unnerving to see smoke curling up out of my mouth, but it wasn't actually painful. Yet. Ask me when the numbness wears off. For the moment I'm more troubled by drool than anything else.

* I said this to the spouse when I got home and he stopped dead in his tracks with shock. Then he said, "I started to ask you, 'What kind of debauchery were you getting up to, anyway?' and then I remembered that you were getting up to it with me."

-----

Also, randomly: Our local newspaper's headline about Harriet Miers' appointment said: "Female appointed to Supreme Court."

This is either an appallingly bad headline, or a very good one, in that they've pinpointed her one and only qualification.

Hey, why not. Here's a meme last seen chez darthfox:

Ask me for "top five" lists of pretty much anything, and I will list you my top five of that thing or things.

Note that if you ask for something that requires any knowledge of pop culture that can't be gleaned from reading slash, I'm likely to disappoint, as I'm sadly out of touch with my own culture.

I think I first saw this chez stresskitten.

Ten things I've done that you probably haven't.

1. Interviewed the state beekeeper of West Virginia

2. Been bitten by a snake

3. Ridden with Santa Claus in the Christmas parade

4. Spent the night sleeping on a staircase landing. With four other people.

5. Had a job cleaning bathrooms at a kindergarten.

6. Been a personal organizer for bored rich women.

7. Been polygraphed.

8. Seen a bear cub in the wild.

9. Eaten pickled pigs' feet.

10. Held a cat as she died.