this is how I panic

How You Know You Are Desperate

Mom started reading--*deep breath*--Somewhere I Have Never Travelled. For those playing the home game, kkpixie gave me the most awesome gift ever of a hardcover version with all the stories in the continuity in it. Yay! Except my mom saw it and wanted to borrow it and yeah, stopping now.

She is reading it!

From what I can work out between spells of hysterical amnesia, she is around that thing with th giant teddy bear, which means I have about ten or so thousand words before mamma is introduced The Big Gay Former Superhero Buttsex Thing. That's how I am thinking about it, because I can honestly state that my mother probably is not all that familiar with my chosen writing genre-thingie.

And she's seen all the Superman films but never Smallville! Hell, at least Smallville would give some--er. Something. A more atractive Lex, definitely.

Seriously. Am I--supposed to be taking this well? Honestly?

Anyway. I bought her the latest Richard Bachman/Stephen King book and shoved into her lap. She made happy dolphin sounds. I saw her reading it.

Hmm. I think this can only end in tragedy.

other than that thing with the illness and the wedding

On Saturday, my mother's brother and my aunt celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. In a lot of ways, they are as ordinarily as any couple that makes it through a quarter of a century with two kids. They're friendly and kind and remarkably fun; my uncle has a wicked sense of humor and my aunt is gracious and witty and funny. And corrects my Spanish a lot.

Their lives are ordinary except in all the ways they aren't.

My aunt was born in Venezuela and came to American, I think to attend college. She and my uncle met soon after he got out of the army and fell in love. They agreed to get married.

That's when things get complex.

They tell the story a thousand times better than I ever can, evoking the humor of a wedding that started with bad omens that only got worse, navigating immigration and flight schedules and maybe some kind of mild unpleasantness going on with the Venezuelan government. Eventually, my uncle and my grandmother went to Venezuela so they could marry, when my aunt promply got sick and ended up hospitalized.

Being on visa, they were restricted on how long they could stay, and for that matter, the restriction on the marriage. My uncle offered to go back to America and come later for teh wedding. My aunt, being--herself--decided that wasn't quite good enough. She got herself released from the hospital, carted to her wedding, where she got through her vows, got her husband, and immediately returned to the hospital after the wedding so she would avoid making her husband a widower.

From what my uncle suggests, the fever helped his courtship along a lot.

The picture of them when they finishd their vows, by the way, is beautiful. I think it amuses her to know she would be throwing up about a minute later.

A year later, my aunt's visa (I'm unclear on teh details of how this happened), expired or was revoked while she was visiting family in Venezuela. Their first anniversay was spent apart, sending documents not through the mail, which was dangerous, but through people coming and going to Venezuela so she could come home. Eventually, she got back.

Five years ago, my uncle was diagnosed with stomach cancer, a hazard of being a firefighter. He lost--his stomach and some other internal organs (I am unclear on the actual losses farther: I think part of his pancreas, his spleen, and part of his liver). A few operations, chemo, radiation, and three and a half years later, he was emaciated to the point of starvation, unable to eat or hold down food, and thought he was going to die. Finally, his doctors gave him access to a pain management clinic to teach him how to use his pain medications and how to schedule his life.

He gained forty pounds. I watched him grinning and raise his glass to his wife when he told stories about the time he locked her out of the house in a fight, relented, went outside to get her, and she went in behind him adn locked him out. He told us about how early in their marriage, they only had one car and she'd walk a mile to the bus stop for work every day. My aunt hosted my baby shower and brought me gifts from Venezuela and made fun of how I conjugated my Spanish verbs.

They had two extraordinary daughters, one of whom is *sighs* nineteen and in her senior year at the University of Texas at Austin and is freaking quadrilingual. (Not that I'm bitter.) The youngest will probably turn out the same.

They're ordinary in all the ways I think one day I want to be ordinary with someone who makes me want to.

Twenty-five years. I am hoping we'll all be there for fifty.

moody, like a cow. see the icon? just like that.

This is definitely one of those days that could be improved with the application of alcohol.

I am *so* in a mood. And not even for a reason! Well, to be fair, I was in a mood, and you know that thing that you do where you go over the last five or so days and think of everything that pissed you off? And make lists? And then plot elaborate revenge?

...maybe that's just me.

I am seriously considering creatively renaming all my tags, like say, sga fanfic 2006 will become Lots of Puppies Die.

It's a thought.

Links

Sockpuppeting 101

Posted in comments in F-W:

I'll post again and mention my old sock-puppeting days. The vital thing that Msscribe seems to have forgotten is that people have memories. When I was sockpuppeting I kept a list of every attribute I had given my socks, every birthday that I had mentioned, and I made sure they all tied together. I also endeavoured to make them have different writing styles - one would use consciously more stilted and simpler vocabulary as well as making spelling mistakes etc.

http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1104166.html?thread=160675878#t160675878

There will be a quiz later to assure you have read and understood the material. During the lab practical, everyone will be expected to create and maintain at least two sockpuppets, one of which must be a male Chilean who loves Clex.

Comfort Fic Recs

Because everyone has them for days of darkness and despair and avoiding suddenly taking off on some kind of sockpuppet crusade.

101 Ways to Get Lucky (In Love) by scribblinlenore - mmm. Comfort fic. Harlequin comfort fic.

A Dangerous Desire or McKay Makes a Match by janne_d - that wins for How To Make Me Smile Sappily. Cause for serious. So. Adorable.

Pilgrim's Hands Do Touch by beadattitude - happy sounds of *touching*. And all--*flails*--hand-y. Pretty.

Vids

Falling For the First Time by sisabet, SPN. I--um. Love. And Glee. And Puppies *everywhere*. And seriously, download already. Love and puppies and glee! HOW CAN YOU BEAT THAT?

I--should be working on something? But instead, there will be sulking. And staring at the moinitor. And ooh. I'm going to mull my fannish existence.

(I have still not discarded the tempting process of manufacturing a viciosu flamewar with someone, floucing away, and coming back under a new name like BobLovesSheppard or something. Or AstralWife. Expect not those names, because you could find me under them. So another one. It could happen.)

(SheppardAstralWife? *uncertain*)

(Maybe SuperHarrySlut.)

(Maybe I'll just write a story all in lowercase letters and see what happens. In the second person future perfect. With wings.)

(No, I have no idea what that tag means. I just--yeah. It exists.)

ETA: I swear to God, if lj does not fix the damn problem with emailing comments, I am bringing all my porn back. Even the stuff that sucks. I WILL TYPE IN THE STUFF I WROTE WHILE I WAS FOURTEEN AND IT WILL APPEAR ON FLISTS AND PEOPLE WILL CRY CRY CRY. DO YOU WANT THAT ON YOUR CONSCIENCE LJ? DO YOU?)

ETA: - contributed by z_rayne in comments, and seriously, this *deserves* to be shared.

Metaquoted on LJ

i feel accomplished - entry copies completed

Okay, final post today. Probably. Really.

This is actually mostly informational. In some of the entries I locked down recently, I also had recs posted in them. I'm adding these here for reference, since a.) good fic never hurt anyone and b.) I am moody and bored and you really want to *argue*? Seriously?

Smallville rec posted 8/19/2003 for emerlin's Before the Songs Were Made. Medium long.

Smallville recs posted for 5/30/2003.

Smallville recs and links posted for 4/30/2003.

Smallville recs and links posted for 2/10/2003.