portrait of a fanfic writer in the urban wilderness, with rum

Fic writing hangover -- kind of like real hangover, but without the alcohol headache and instead with a sleep-dep headache and a vague sense of personal shame. Actually, I think it's more like a drunken one night stand? Sure, oh my God it was good, but then you start to remember what you did and how you did it and wait, what the hell was that? Except this time, you have to read it, so it's more like, oh my God, they don't have that many joints! And what lube is that? And you realize that it's not a defense to say "It was a good idea at the time". At least, not a good one.

Yeah, like that.

Has anything happened in the last two days I should know about? I was dragged to Academy today (apparently, I agreed to let Child go camping? With fish or something?) to get Child fishing gear, and it's hard to explain the entire sequence of events, but Child discovered all the male mannequins have nipples. Hey, I discovered all the male mannequins have nipples, and one of them had muscle definition rather resembling the face of ET if you squint. I took a picture and then tried not to cry. Then Child found a mannequin and came running back yelling "The bulge, it's hideous!" and we all went to look, because yes, we are that stupid and there is not enough alcohol in the world to erase these memories.

The mannequin had a bulge. I just don't know what to do with my life at this point.

(The nipples looked like tiny eyes underneath skin-tight jerseys and followed you around while you tried to escape. I am not kidding. My mom was there and there's suddenly less vanilla rum in the house. Send help. By help, I mean, rum. Obviously.)

ETA: Okay, I know you are all going were you drinking before you went and well, I wish I had been, but no. Below cut. You can see the face of ET in this thing's abs! Tell me you do not see it.

Yes, that is what is looking directly at the dressing room.

( fine, here, feel my pain )

growing up on the internet

So it's not like I don't think it's my duty to educate my only child. I mean, I don't, I think that's TV's job obviously. And media, of course. There, he can learn exciting life lessons about rape and the women who love their rapists and so forth. However, every so often? The media fails me and then I have to actually interact with the brat and like, teach him stuff.

Important Life Lesson: Guarding Our Borders From Those Brown Peoples

Now, you might make the mistake of thinking I'm informed or something about this, which is insane, because I cannot point out enough, I'm on Ritalin for a reason, and it's not because of the high (as apparently, I can't do that, my body uses it for the practical purposes of making sure I keep two thoughts coherent and in order, which as you can see, is working wonderfully), but I will admit, with shame, I was reading through CNN the other day (it was an accident) and saw the blurb, shivered at this intersection with reality, and moved on to look for something shiny that required less critical thinking skills.

But no, then it had to show up yesterday while I was trying to eat cake as my son said, from the computer "I am patrolling the border!" Granted, my son also says things like, "I am cloning you!" and "I didn't do that!" so usually, this is a dirty lie. So imagine my shock when I went through the effort of looking at the screen (and missed a bite of cake, because I forgot to stop the fork) and indeed, he was patrolling the border and was hoping to make a report. With this like, red report button. Right there on the screen.

In the last year of my son's life, everything changed, and I think I changed the most.

( answer this for me )