i feel...conflicted

Dear Work,

jhiogeijnmoi4geuw98fr.

--Seperis

In other news, late the other night I woke up to--okay, fine, I was awake and getting coffee on Monday night past midnight. Leave me alone. I was busy. And the point is here, I woke up got up and was amused appalled to see the desktop screen's soft, welcoming glow was being blocked by a large head belonging to Child.

Right, I'm a parent, but I've been looking forward to him hitting the internet red light district for years, because I see no reason not to greet the inevitable with the joy of finding new and exciting ways to make fun of him. I want to say this is like, a parenting strategy, but mostly, I just enjoy the twitching and recoding normal words for him into moments of horror because that's just fun.

It was definitely youtube, and he was definitely watching with intent, so I assumed--as one does--this would be a The Moment He Got Caught Watching Internet Porn and it was like Christmas. Because that's ammunition for years. Especially if it's like, bad.

Then I saw the screen. And the desk.

Child was watching an instructional origami video after midnight and making origami boxes. There was a clear progression littering the desk. He looked up at me with wide, startled eyes, but I couldn't take delight in it because my kid broke bedtime to learn origami and what on earth do you do with that? I helplessly took the box he offered, all razor-straight lines and folding open at the top in fragile triangular petals like a flower, while he flipped it to show me he'd colored in a biohazard sign over the bottom before he started, and I went back to bed to stare blearily at the wall and belatedly remember I was supposed to like, send him to bed.

(I think he's kind of good at this? All his boxes look like were folded with a ruler, a really scary ruler.)

This is right up there with the other night, where I caught him (yes!) in his room, in the dark (yes!), sprawled across his futon bed because beds are like, not cool or something, staring darkly into the screen with the emo of a thousand new teenagers (because God loves me and will send me a cliche). I leaned into the doorway to savor the first signs of adolescent drama, because Child is now 5'7"ish and this is getting fun. He was staring expressionlessly into his laptop screen like every emo band in the world was telling him about black crows dying on windowsills and the absence of pain like a razor deep in the belly in the bastard stepchild of blank verse and haiku for dummies when he saw me and frowned.

I grinned at him. "Whatcha watching?"

He sighs, put upon, and flips the screen. Live action sand art.

...do I need to link him or something? What the hell? Sand art? He is no longer ten, I cannot just cuddle him to death for being adorable and so fucking weird and awesome.

In other news, I handed over Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey for him to read, because he's going to cultivate a proper interest in fantasy if I have to force feed it to him. So far, he hates Vanyel's father and does not like his aunt and likes 'Lendel. I'm so not looking forward to the Mage Storm Night of Trauma now. He's all invested and attached.