seperis | child

So it is June, aka It's Already Fucking Ninety Are You Serious?

After two weeks out sick, I finally went in for my CT scan, and the test results--written in medicalese--seem to suggest that yes, I have some kind of stuffed nose (the word 'mucus' was involved), many words which seem to suggest that indeed the septum is a righty ('septum' and 'right' appeared in adjoining sentences though a lot of words were between them) and nothing is remarkable. I assume a mucus goblin would be remarkable enough to mention, so there goes that theory.

Next: go back to the ENT so he can recommend something. Honestly, unless my life is at stake here, I do not want surgery and the medicalese seemed not to indicate it (degrees of right septumness?) but I'll know more at that appointment.

...good God I lead a boring life. That was literally all my drama for like, a month.

However, I got back in touch with an ex-coworker recently, whose age falls exactly between me and Child, which is significant here. And I realized abruptly while talking to him that Child was still a teenager when we worked together and now years later he is very much not and goes to the same clubs (it's not like there are that many).

( ex-coworker history )

Cue me being open and honest:

Me: Please don't pick up my son by accident that will be weird
Him: Wait, he's [no longer a teenager but with more words]!?!?!
Me: Oh God yes it's been [years] since you quit.
Him: Oh, that might be weird. But I'd be nice--
Me: I'll also make fun of you both for goddamn ever.
Him: ...[understood but with more words]

Secret: it's super goddamn hard to embarrass Child. I mean, he can be embarrassed but not by like, normal things or things that don't require more effort than I generally really care to expend. In other words, an empty threat...when it comes to him.

Ex Co-worker, however, is a normal human being, knows I am capable of acts of embarrassment that I'll invent, and therefore I win.

(But God that would be hilarious and I'd have material for like, years.)

Child quit his job at Target, mostly due to a.) being interviewed and hired for lead position but them not giving it and b.) the new manager.

To give context, Child's worked there almost since he graduated high school (about three years) and he abruptly came to talk to me for the first time about quitting a month ago.

Me: Oh thank God. Go to school.
Him: ...not what I expected.

( more stuff )

Child came home three days ago with a fancyish paper-wrapped bottle and presented it to me like it was straight from the Fountain of Youth.

It doesn't matter how old they get: slug, preserved rattlesnake head in a jar, cream of tartar, an unsettling amount of human hair, something you hope to God isn't a very squished mouse, wtf!!!!!, it's your kid giving you something and it's automatic, you don't even think about it: "Oh, cool."

I turned it over and admired the pink paper and tried to work out what this bottle was. Shape and size meant drink, greater than two, so I decided to give us a starting point. "So wine?"

He beams at me. "Yes."

This may sound counter-intuitive, but that kind of scared me. You don't live with Child his entire life, shape his mind and go to war over DVDs and crush on the same characters (secretly), negotiate our separate fannish presences and split social media up between us like ancient potentates and have literal hard rules like "Don't bury shit in the backyard before telling me what it is" and "No, you cannot clone me when you grow up, stop collecting my hair and cackling" before age twelve and most recently, "This is my last warning, I will write min ten thousand words of your NOTP, it will be bdsm porn, and I'll blackmail every friend I have to help. I've seen two episodes, I can extrapolate, now GIVE ME THE REMOTE I WANT TO WATCH BRITISH BAKEOFF." and not be aware the simplest explanation is always the most worrying and sometimes, may require poison control, a competent medium, or a local friend who would notice my sudden disappearance on speed dial (Hi

lillian13!)

I looked over the pink-papered bottle a little frantically; yep, that was the right shape and size, fuck my life. And he won't. Stop. Smiling. "So--just curious, why did you get me wine?"

"I got us wine, Mommy."

Jesus Christ.

For context: using "Mommy" is the verbal equivalent of a literal summoning spell or a nuclear detonation and by design is guaranteed to elicit my undivided attention. It is only used in two situations: life or death pain and fear ("I think i summoned a demon, mommy." or "I SLAMMED MY ENTIRE HAND IN THE DOOR AND IT IS SWELLING MOMMY." or "I have a fever mommy, my temperature is 98.8.") or to really fuck with my head.

Parenthood is ride or die by design; here we go. "For what?"

"Tradition," he answers so promptly and with so much certainty that for a second, I believed him and wondered how I'd forgotten about the traditional bottle of wine three days before Christmas we did every year, weird, am I right. Then I remembered: uh, we don't. It's so annoying when the manipulation skills you so carefully taught your kid are used against you, but then again, he still carries a grudge for me convincing him for nearly ten years that he always liked spinach (when he was older, I'd sometimes say "spinach from Eurasia" and then he read 1984; yeah, that was cool) and he seriously needs to get over it.

"We don't have a traditional bottle of wine for Christmas," I said, settling back to wait, because it occurred to me he'd been squirrely about his tinder and that shit may need alcohol first.

In general, I don't know and don't want to because dear God no, but as I told him, if he was kidnapped and mutilated by a serial killer or worse, had a really bad date with a guy from south Austin who owns a basement and a lot of anime, would he like the police to start the search with "I have no idea where he was going to go when he left at 6" or "His two o'clock AM check in was that bar on Fifth Street", his choice. So generally, I get a text when he has a dramatic location or group change, because it's not like we didn't both watch all the seasons of Criminal Minds.

The tinder thing however, is specific: if you didn't see my twitter about this a bit back, short version: tinder date at the drag show, he went to talk to the performers after, forgot his date--literally forgot that poor guy at their table--to go party with the drag queens and had a great time. His check in to me was "Kidnapped by drag queens" me "K", then I remembered his date and asked about it and as it turns out, he was surprised to realize he'd had one of those earlier and wasn't entirely sure where he'd been lost.

(Spoiler: There was no second date.)

"We do now," Child tells me, taking the bottle back. "We'll drink it on Christmas night."

At this moment, Child is hanging out with some friends from high school who don't celebrate Christmas so is getting fed an indecent amount of kosher-compliant/halal-compliant/vegan-compliant Chinese food and knows for a fact he doesn't get back into the apartment unless he brings me some too. I also keep looking at the refrigerator, where a pink-paper wrapped bottle of wine waits like a concrete example of the concept of foreshadowing; this shit has haunted me for three days and the worst part is?

It's just a bottle of wine. It means nothing. He just thought it would be funny.

I'm so proud of him.

Happy Insert Winter Holiday of Your Choice!

Millennia ago, there was a woman who in a hut labored for a night and a day; in the end, into her arms was given the fruit of her labor, and on beholding him, she said (so I’m told), “With God’s help, I’ve made a son.”

What she said second isn’t recorded by history, but eighteen years ago, as I beheld my son (quite ugly, to be honest), the first thing I said was “Is he always going to look like that” but the second (or so I remember, I was very goddamn high for a while after that) came after–-much like I’m sure it did to Eve–-where she took stock of the world in which her son lived (hut, cow, whatever) and said, “Yeah, no. We can do better than this.”

It wasn’t fit for him, this world, but to make him fit for it would be a degradation of what he was and all he could be. So for eighteen years, I made him fit to be exactly who he was, is, and wanted to be, so he would be able to change it.

Five years ago, my son came out to me, and upon such a revelation, the first thing I said, “It’s midnight, you have school tomorrow, what the hell are you doing on AIM?” Also something like, “I love you, I loved you before I met you, now go to bed or you’re grounded” (dude, five years ago and around midnight, do I look like a wizard)? Then I thought–as did Eve and the me who thought her child looked like an extra from Coneheads becuse she was so very stoned (and seriously, he really did)–as I beheld the world again, “Yeah, no. You gotta be better than this.”

Like every mother in the world, when my son leaves my sight, I know he’s at risk of being harassed, threatened, assaulted, or killed because this world has that.

Some mothers carry this burden as well; our child is at risk for being harassed, threatened, assaulted, or killed simply for being who they are.

You see, the world into which I bore my son, the one he would have to live in, was one in which legal provision had to be made to place him in protected class, not for what he’s done but for what he is. Because murder of my gay son would not be given the same weight in the courts as one who was straight; because my son was in a class of people who would be deliberately and systematically sought out for harassement, threat, assault, and murder, crimes committed against him because of who he is are classified as hate crimes.

Some mothers have carried this additional weight from the moment they first felt their children move within them, before they even first saw their face or heard their first cry; that’s forever. I’ve only carried it for five years, but it feels like so much longer.

This year, my son turned eighteen, and my work isn’t done, but my right to ground him is pretty much at an end (he doesn’t know that; don’t tell him; he thinks it’s twenty-one, like drinking). In January, by right of birth in this country, he could vote, be drafted to join the army, to be deciding voice in the course of his life, but he wasn’t guaranteed the rights I was given, denied them not by age or sex, but sexuality. The law of the country would not allow him to marry the partner of his choice, adopt a child, be protected against workplace discrimination, the list goes on.

On June 26, 2015, my son is still a protected class, at risk of being the target of hate crimes; he can be harassed, threatened, assaulted, even killed, for being gay. He can still face discrimination in the workplace, and the legal adoption of a child is sketchy, but I have hope that last part may not be for long; however, one thing changed.

He turned eighteen in January, and six months later, the Supreme Court confirmed a right he should have had then; in the country of his birth, he cannot be denied the right to marry the partner of his choice. No one–not individuals or states–can take that away.

So said Justice Kennedy: it is so ordered.

Reference:
Supreme Court rules in Favor of Same-Sex Marriage
The Decision

Child just graduated high school yesterday!

Now the real question: whether seperis on tumblr will tag all his tumblr accounts with such, including the ones he doesn't know I know about.

I was thinking an entry like this:

My widdle wee man graduated high school! *SQUEEZES CHEEKS*

...trolling one's child on his high school graduation. It's like, so hard not to. Though granted, we already wore t-shirts with his face on them to the graduation ceremony, so maybe that was enough. Because my sister thinks like this and his expression was amazing.

So just seeing how this sounds:

Vacation with entire extended immediate family including: mother, both sisters, sister's husband, sister's MIL, sister's three kids, other sister's kid, mother's parents, me, and Child.

In one house on the beach.

Okay, that does in fact look terrifying when seen in print. I was wondering. There will be the gulf and a confection store that makes their own fudge. I'm clinging very hard to that right now.

Wait, there's more:

Child in his infinite wisdom at some point in the past--who knows when--broke a tooth but couldn't be assed to tell me or care until Friday evening, when the entire left side of his face rounded out not unlike a ripe tomato. At first--not knowing the tooth sitch because who hides tooth pain? How?--I thought it was an unexpected reaction to a topical anesthetic we keep for those times you bite the inside of your cheek or poke yourself in the gum with a pencil which no, isn't something that happens to me because I have much better hand/eye coordination than that and will fight any comment to the contrary to the death if necessary or whatever. It became very clear, however, that it wasn't and he reluctantly admitted maybe there was a tooth that was bothering him maybe a little, which you don't say, ye who has lost any vestige of facial symmetry.

Saturday morning was spent frantically googling for a dentist open on Saturdays who took walk-ins or emergencies or both. Found one, who didn't have a time open and then listening to me start to dissolve into tears--seriously, over-ripened tomato Child, but not that color, it was unsettling--offered to fit him and for that will love her until the day I die. Fortunately--and this is literal--Child was still in pain and the appointment was in less than an hour, and even so, it was a bad ten minutes getting him dressed and to the vehicle while he protested--with asymmetry growing by the moment--that it didn't hurt that much and he was fine (I actually stopped to stare at him disbelievingly, wondering if the infection reached his brain already).

We shall not speak of what we discovered of Child's unbelievable lack of interest in what goes on in his own mouth (I whine when I poke my gum with a pencil, fine, judge away), but anyway, surprise, he broke a tooth and it got infected and how. So we left with antibiotics, painkillers, and a very serious speech that if he starts having vision problems to go to the ER immediately, which was one of those surreal moments where I stare at Child and Child acts totally shocked about how nature and infection work.

( brief Child digression, for parents who haven't had to deal with this )

( short family digression, related )

After this adventurous weekend, I wonder why there aren't more dentists who decide to specialize in 'emergency' and 'weekends' only because seriously, they could probably make a killing doing nothing else. Every weekend dentist I found (very not many) wasn't just packed, but stacking them up in the waiting room. I didn't even bother with trying to negotiate my (annoying) insurance and paid cash, I was that desperate and from the looks of those waiting with me and Child, that wasn't unique. And why isn't there a Dental ER somewhere?

Note: Child still looks asymmetrical but much better, and is hilariously following almost exactly the dentist's prediction on how long it would take for the swelling to go down and the pain to taper off.

Child's slowly growing rage at Teen Wolf for Derek's man-(wolf-?)pain is possibly the best thing about the show I don't watch. I don't need to, honestly; once a week, come the apocalypse, Child drops down disconsolately on the patio swing to talk about his epic feelings about Derek and Stiles and how they're being epically abused by $whoever.

One of the (hilarious) advantages of growing up fannish is he's on a good balance of way too invested and overenthusiastic (entertainment forever) but cynical as hell because he's been through All the Ship Wars Ever by proxy, so everything is old news as far as he's concerned.

And then there's this (semi-verbatim, this was weird):

Child: it's like the Ray wars, mom.
(note: using mom is always, always a warning sign.)
Me: ....sterek is like the Ray Wars? Wait, how?
Child: Yeah, it's like--
Me: I wasn't in the Ray Wars. We started watching way after the Ray Wars.
Me: Hold on, were you even born then? Potty trained? Able to argue with me?
Child: ...what does that have to do with it?

I'm sorry, I didn't find out how Sterek is just like the Ray Wars, I'll get on that, but seriously? To be fair to him, he was around during my ranting John Sheppard days, so yeah, that might have helped form his sensibilities.

Other random conversation (this is partially verbatim, because wow, that was a bad moment):

Child: you have any ideas for a name? I need a new one.
Me: Those are personal, but--wait. Why do you need a new one?
Child: Reasons.
Me: What did you do?
Child: Nothing.
Me: You know I can check tumblr, right?
Child: Not that one.
Me: The secret one I'm not supposed to know about?
Child: ....no, it's--nevermind.
Me: It's not xxxxxxx one, is it?
Child: Stop breaking into my computer.
Me: Lock your screen once in a while.

(note: he actually didn't do anything, he just gets bored with consistency. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or disappointed. Also, his password security is getting much better. Who says invasion of adolescent privacy has no practical benefits?)

I wonder what it's like to be the teenage fanson of a fanparent. Knowing fanparent is out there somewhere, anywhere, separated from you by three degrees of tumblr or less at all times, hideously aware of her hovering presence and getting recced 'oomg did you read this!1!!!!' written by her or her bffs (this happens), and horribly, horribly aware she could show up in your fandom at any moment and may do it just to fuck with her fankid because why not?

I feel like I've been waiting for him to hit this level of self-awareness and horror all my life.

Dear Fanparents,

This is so much fun, you have no idea.

-seperis

Child just started pasta on fire.

Pasta.

On fire.

Parenthood: totally worth it.

So I got my merit bonus at work in lump sum instead of a raise, which trust me, not a problem. So I told Child his share and what he wanted to do with it.

Child: I want to go see Fall Out boy in concert.
Me: You can't go alone.
Child: I'm not a child, it's a concert (imagine teenage arguments here. You know what they sound like.)
Me: I could go with you.
Child: Okay, we'll get up front. Maybe I can touch Pete Wentz! Can he be my new daddy if I catch him?
Me: ....well played. Let me think about it.
Child: I thought you'd see it my way.

I'm not actually worried about Child, per se, but it's a concert and this is new to him. If one of his friends go with him and he keeps his phone on, I don't have a problem with it. His second choice is hideously expensive shoes, which is weird, because Child isn't a clothing person at all.

Well, I take that back; he's picked up an inexplicable thing for suits that I can't explain, matched with a truly unearthly number of ties. I buy my kid random ties. I mean, this being Child, I'd feel a lot better about it if he was using them for evil, but no, he wears them without irony with really nice button up shirts, and it comes out of nowhere. Days of Child in school uniforms or maybe gym shorts and graphic t-shirts, then suddenly he wants to go shopping and browsing the tailor-this portion of Dillards or Nordstroms with a dissatisfied expression on having to (not) buy off the rack, because Child also doesn't understand what suits are used for.

Child: Why don't you dress up for work?
Me: I'm state and tech. Analysts aren't supposed to wear things that even match, so I'm one up there. It shows we're committed to the job and have no human attachments to interfere. They'd prefer I shower less, to be honest. Really show my commitment to my work and assure I'm not tempted to get a life.
Child: ....you're kidding.
Me: When's the last time you saw me wear makeup?
Child: You used to wear make up?
Me: I rest my case.

Child was actually very hazy on my days at the Ombudsman, which if anyone heres' been reading long enough, was a period of about two years I had to shop regularly for dress clothes as I had none, because no denim at all, no t-shirts, all business casual all the time, and because we were only three steps down from the Commissioner, that shit was taken seriously. I pulled out a few of my old slacks which he stared at in awe, then looked at me, dressed for work in a black tank top, batman t-shirt, black hoodie, skinny jeans, and my black chunk heels, and eyeliner, because that's not makeup, that's eyeliner.

Child: What people wear suits?
Me: You're gonna choose your job by the clothes?
Child: I like suits.
Me: I've heard worse.

Sometimes, I really like him.

My life, now:

1.) Teaching Child the Finer Points of Do Not Engage.

He's a Sterek shipper but loves the whole cast--seriously, even the annoying ones, it's weird--and a hardcore Destiel shipper who likes Sam, and Tumblr is a daily test of his ability to not get his ass doxxed before he's legally no longer my responsibility. It's a countdown to eighteen, when he can play the youtube, instagram, and facebook personal humiliation angle to his heart's content. Per usual, he finds this completely unfair; this would be, he explains, a learning experience for me as a parent; how to deal with your fanboy kid when he becomes the subject of a massive fandom-wide wank. I reminded him I've been here longer and I have an army and I will troll his ass into the ground, because that too, is a learning experience; do not stress your parent during weirdness at work.

BTW, I need an army, just in case. Anyone got one I could borrow? No reason.

2.) So That Family Legend Thing Was Like, Real?

A couple of months ago, we got a random letter from a firm in Colorado or Oklahoma--I should know this, but it's just so weird--to the estate of my grandfather, who died twenty-one years ago, so passing to my Dad, who died almost two years ago, to us, check enclosed. Not much here, but thing; we own mineral rights somewhere since like, my great-grandpa's time (who died before I was born), or possibly my great-great-grandfather (eighteen freaking hundreds, folks), or so we were told. Much like the Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster and the theory of trickle-down economics, it was told over campfires (barbecues and polish sausage?) as a thing that no one actually believed because seriously, who believes trickle-down works?

Right, I digressed, and here's another one; I come from a long, long, Jesus long line of sharecroppers, semi-subsistence farmer, serfs, and ethnic Wends Lutherans running away from religious persecution due to a union between two disparate versions of Protestantism in Bavaria (I looked this up and I still can't tell the difference, but all of them were going to hell from what I understand) while also failing to get anywhere above 'growing enough food to continue the family line, and how'. Which let me say is an accomplishment and possibly a miracle. Some of us live in the Rockies and don't talk to people or possibly shoot at strangers, it's a thing we do. I've heard bears are involved.

So you see why our first reaction was hysterical laughter followed by wtf followed by calling and being genuinely surprised this wasn't a poor British widow whose colonel/general husband died in India (to this day, I still think it was an email from Victorian England; there's no other explanation) but an actual lawyer--seriously, passed the bar and everything--and so many years ago, some great (-great?) grandparent split up shares between their kids and lo, for the first time ever, that shit was 1.) a real thing that was real and 2.) produced (a very small) amount of money that was actually real and came in legal tender form to be--not kidding--deposited in an actual account without anyone (FBI?) muttering "suckers" like those poor people who thought the fake Publisher's Clearinghouse check was real.

Again, very small amount (somewhat more if I kill all the other heirs, the math is very interesting if my how serendipitous genealogy information is accurate but depends on if this is great or great-great-grandpa as origin (if it's great-great-grandpa, I may need a professional consultation for the number I'm getting on the number of direct descendents, because huh, calculators don't lie)), and this proves 1.) wow, so evil really is a light-switch, who knew and 2.) these things actually happen?

The universe moves in mysterious ways. My entire worldview is in revolution, or something.

3.) So That's a Much Better Interpretation Than Mine and I Wrote It.

I read a fantastic review of one of my fic and it was both surreal and gratifying beyond words, but what really got me thinking was reading it again out of the context of the fandom at the time.

It's not just author death in this case; it's well over a decade, the fandom has progressed past all recognition, but far more interesting to me is that it still works, just in a completely different way than it did then, and in some ways much better because it can stand alone like this. To get my intention in the fic--and the readers at the time picked it up immediately--you had to have read not just several other fic in the fandom, but been in the fandom and subject to the atmosphere at the time, enough that you were--if you were me--deeply committed to being very tired of it all.

The thing is--and I say this with mixed feelings--I'm torn on Death of the Author. I don't necessarily believe it, but I'm a massive fan of people who are and practice it, and the reason is why I'm in fandom in the first place. A text is static--it's words on the page, they can't change--but people do, over a week, a year, a lifetime, an age, a millennia. The idea that we are reading Homer exactly the same way as the Greeks did the odd thousands of years ago would imply we've managed, quite literally, to have progressed absolutely nowhere except invented flight and cellphones. What we read, how we read, how we process it, what we see in the text and what we take away from it better be subject to change.

I remember high school and college English as a dark period of my existence--I've never gotten over how I couldn't get the teacher to debate The Lady or the Tiger in eighth grade and I will take that to my grave--and the noble papers I wrote on the real meaning of The Yellow Wallpaper (ghost, obviously) and A Good Man Is Hard to Find (why am I reading this, two thousand goddamn words of making up shit; Man Is Fucked Up, what do you want from me?) and a plethora of forgettable short stories and novels where I was asked to describe what I got out of it and how that was very wrong because reasons (unknown, but definitely there). If there's one defining characteristic of fandom, it's that we all care deeply about the one true interpretation as meant by the author/writer/producer right up until we disagree with them and kill them immediately and write the one true true interpretation their blood, and you get this is metaphorical, right? I can see how that'd be a concern after point two. Metaphor, promise.

Text doesn't change, it can't; it's words. People should. I will happily take a thousand Moby Dick as unsettling psychosexual drama with man/boat/whale threesome on a semen sea--I'll need therapy, but whatever, I'll take one for the team--than risk the stagnation, however small, however irrelevant it may seem, of human thought in which we cannot comprehend the idea of seeing something new, a thought that didn't exist when Homer wrote it that exists now. Anyone who tells you there's nothing new under the sun's never seen anything but a single candle in a dark room.

*****

Brief afterward; it has been a very unsettling work week and insomnia is apparently a feature. I'm kind of looking forward to reading this when I'm rested and relatively sane again. In that way I will never be able to mock Child's tumblr posts again from any kind of high ground, but hey, he won't know that.

Finally saw Lifetime's Flowers in the Attic.

Of course, it's not as good as the book, which is really saying something considering the material here. To me, it shouldn't be that hard to pull off. It's got the best shit ever: serial killer mother, poison, evil grandmother, crazy grandpa, so much pseudo-religion and incest tension watching with a family member becomes deeply uncomfortable ten minutes in. Oedipal and Jocasta complexes abound; Freud checked in and went "whoa, too much for me": seriously, what the hell.

( okay, so weird )

In other news, the following have occurred: I have new headphones (v-moda M-80s, which make me want to cry from the purity of hte sound), a new cord for my old ones, and we have a cat.

For various reasons, I'm not up to explaining how we acquired a black cat (name: Jo-Jo) that is emotionally needy and affectionate (what the hell), because I'm not clear on the events that occurred between Child saying "I want a cat" and appearing before me with a cat, a lot of cat-related literature, and adoption papers while I squinted at him blankly, not sure if I was living the right life (apparently, I am?).

We have a cat. It's name is Jo-Jo. It's very, very affectionate, hates my cell phone, and kneads my chin for attention. My assumption right now is that I was taken by aliens and lost some time somewhere because we have a cat and I don't remember any comment on Child's part other than the random ass "I want a cat" and me saying "Whatever" (Should have said no? Hindsight). I read the paperwork my mother of her own free will signed and later, I sat with her and we stared at each other while she said, helpless, "I have no idea how this happened, either."

"Child," I said with a nod, staring at my completely non-alcoholic coffee mournfully. "Did he even tell you what you were signing before they handed you the cat in the carrier?"

"Yes." She stared at me worriedly. "I think."

This happens a lot more than you'd think with Child. I'm philosophical about it, because honestly? Could have been a snake.

Child did his first cosplay at IKKiCON today.

I'd like to take a moment to glow in parental satisfaction at watching my offspring wander unselfconsciously out of the house this morning wearing firetruck red jeans--firetrucks seem rather faded by comparison--and a USA hoodie--with eyeholes--so he could join his friends as an AU version of the US from Hetalia.

...then he texted me from a Dr. Who panel while I slaved over testing an emergency release at work and thought about why again I chose to reproduce when they can do shit like that.

One day, they're babies and you're doing psychology experiments on them for class (got an A) and putting them in green velvet rompers because that shit's hilarious in pictures; then suddenly, they're almost six feet tall wearing a red that doesn't exist in nature and perhaps shouldn't.

Life = awesome.

My niece had her birthday party at Gattiland, and after doing my duty shepherding three under-six year olds for a while between games (easy, really; everything is shiny, so it's a matter of keeping them all moving in the same shiny direction), I was free to play. Which is, and I don't know if you know this, a surprising hazard.

I played skeeball.

I woke up this morning with a huge pain on my right side just between waist and hip and went through the options I was dying or seriously injured or you know, accidentally sacrificed something vital for three wishes that I'd forgotten I'd made (this is me; it could happen) until I mentioned it to Child, who gave me the most disappointed look ever.

"Turn around," he said, and rolled his eyes and turned me himself. "Where does it hurt?"

Blank, I pointed, and he poked me gamely because that's my kid. "Ouch, and what the--"

"Okay, try this," he says, getting my arm and pulling it back and nudging my shoulder. "Pretend you're skeeballing."

I did so, and crouched, seeing the game before my eyes now, lights lit up and fucking missing 10,000 again and--oh. Ouch.

"You can get skeeball injuries?" I asked, surprised. Because hey, you can. "How many games did I play?"

"A lot," he answers grimly, visibly not rubbing his side, which oh. "Skeeball hates left handed players."

Which it does, which is why his shoulder hurts too. Because apparently Child and I are the kind of people who get super competitive about skeeball to the point of injuring ourselves playing. No, we don't know how many games we played, but apparently, way too much. Which now explains why the rest of the skeeball lanes were mysteriously empty while Child and I doggedly ramped up the tension of playing like our souls were at stake.

So now you know--Skeeball Side and Skeeball Shoulder Are A Thing. Is there any exercises I should do before the next time? Get in shape, if you will.

Black Butler

Child has been trying to drag me into anime and manga as a serious thing, and in my absence, my niece is his favorite victim. Which is how I wandered into the room just as Sebastian's careless lock of black hair fell between his red eyes and fell in love, echoing my niece's cooing, and sat down. Two eps later, Child came in to gaze upon his work in satisfaction for a job well done.

You know, my fannish life was much less eclectic--and anime-filled--when it was online. Adding in an IRL fanboy in residence totally changes the rules. Any moment of any day I can and will be accosted with new fandoms, and God help me, he's trying to get me into Homestuck like an evangelical on a bender. It's surreal. Not as surreal, of course, as finding out we frequent some of the same journals and forums, but up there. There's a part of me--cruel--that kind of half-wishes he hadn't been coached into fandom so carefully and so knows the basics; he's a teen, and therefore has poor-impulse control, and he'd be fantastic in random flame war. Though his adoration of Misha Collins is worrying me on his troll potential. We shall not speak of his appalled discovery of comms that loathe Misha, as it's best left to the imagination, but I will tell you it was hilarious and only a mention now can set off a tirade to do a OTCer proud.

Black Butler--okay, yes, I should have totally jumped on this one like, yesterday, fine. God.

Duolingo

Note: it actually does work. Yeah, that was interesting to find out.

My text Spanish is dramatically improved, and I can report this objectively since at work I help review the Spanish and English text for SSP, and while I used to just be able to check for special characters, I can read most if not all of it now and can even--to my own shock--realize the rare times we get a translation for one thing that ends up matched to the wrong English text when a sentence from another part of the site ends up crammed into the wrong page. Which makes some hysterical reading now.

I'm as surprised as anyone on this one; college and high school did very little for me other than being able to pass the tests, and only when I was a clerk and then a caseworker did it ever actually progress to real-world usability. Now, it's not completely effortless, and I have to concentrate, but it's doable to read through a Spanish wikipedia article and get most of it. Duolingo's strongest arena is obviously going to be reading and translating, but equally surprising was the verbal--listening, not speaking--is coming across pretty well. I used to have to use the slow repeat a lot more than I do now, and I can sometimes follow the conversations at work from a few of the Spanish speakers.

( i am totally into this )

Also, it's raining. I like this.

Child has found Homestuck and Welcome to Nightvale while Teen Wolf is in hiatus, so my free time, small though it is, is now spent being pimped by my child into things I wasn't terribly interested in before but now much love or die. It's like living with a fangirl, minus the female accoutrements, and with added height exactly one inch greater than my own.

Also, he's on youtube like a drug addict.

The Fox - Child made us watch it this weekend and suffice to say, I didn't realize you could combine something not unlike Lord King Badvid, preschool sing-a-long, and furries and make something that will haunt you for all your days on earth. You're welcome.

Randomly, Child finally linked me to his tumblr account, but only with the promise I'd never follow or reblog him as long as we both live. It was extraordinarily, almost freakishly, adorable to watch him squee over an entire team of soccer players (I think?), and today, he tried to talk me into getting Converse shoes to match his.

Reproduction of actual conversation today at Academy:
"Because," he said seriously, "then I can show you to my friends."

"You said your friends think I'm awesome already," I replied, confused. "Because I'm tall. They call me Gigantor, which thanks, I do know you came up with that name."

"No, they think you're an awesome person because you are and [because of] fandom. Not how you dress."

"...how many of your friends know my username?"

Nothing about this conversation was comfortable, but I'm not sure whether I'm upset because his friends know my screennames or because he criticized my dress sense.

This is the unacknowledged downside of your username becoming your online identity and literally cannot imagine getting another one anywhere. It really makes your son's fanfic-writing (Christ) friends find you easily, and now anyone who follows me on tumblr is Possibly One of Them.

However: I honestly think half the reason Facebook makes me uncomfortable is that my RL name is there and while online, it feels like I'm pretending to be someone else. Someone boring, by the way: if you friended me on Facebook, you may notice my lack of content. Because it's the wrong goddamn name. Facebook even has its very own email account attached to it unrelated to my other ones, because again, not really me and I'm vaguely uncomfortable checking it.

Child finally hit Vampire Diaries, and admittedly, I was curious what he'd make of it. Trufax, I read the books years ago and I liked Stefan and Damon both pretty much equally (Stefan kind of won with green eyes like leaves; I was young and green eyes are still a thing with me, I have no idea why), but the show, true to form, made me vary between liking Stefan and kind of wanting to set him on fire. This is not actually entirely because the show doesn't do good Stefan--it's just they do much, much, much better Damon. Damon does random ass musical numbers; Stefan stares longingly at containers of blood. Stefan does stoic manpain with brief moments of happiness; Damon's high-manic social disorder mainpain murderboy, but it's like, hilarious. Damon's high drama is set to covers of eighties and nineties bands; I mean, how can you not love this just on spec.

Child loathes Stefan. He can do no right. There's this inner rage that I haven't witnessed since the days of Due South Kowalski dislike before he got over it. And for the life of me, I can't figure out where he got it from. I was forcedfed all of season one I missed and part of season two and I'm telling you, I don't know what crime Stefan has committed in Child's eyes and asking gets me this look. And the thing is, I'm a fangirl. I know how to hate a character and cherry pick my rage here, but all I got is Stefan may be too boring in his angst, which doesn't really work in context of Child's chilling hatred.

It's like staring into the abyss and recognizing yourself, really. You with an active tumblr account at an early age and a distinct inability to rationalize your hatred properly before expressing it. I feel I missed something in his education; maybe I should send him to my Smallville reviews for a primer on how to hate with canonical evidence?

Cracked's 30 Second Guide too How Gay Marriage Ruling Affects You

To be fair, I've been stuck in a multi-day severe allergy attack, so I was out of it when this passed, and at this moment, only by the Grace of ibuprofen do I not have a headache though I still lack a working sense of smell, but Child did wake me up to tell me DOMA had failed.

( this does, however affect me, at least by proxy )

I would do almost anything to make my left ear work correctly in the hearing. What the hell, Texas allergies?

My least favorite time to write anything is when I really have something to say. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it's true, and this is why; when I do have something to say, that rarely if ever coincides with any desire to talk about it, which sets up a conundrum in that everything else piles up behind it. As many a apocryphal mother has said, you can only eat one bite at a time, except that would end with choking and a tragic yet easily preventable death when you have too many bites and don't get with the program, while this just ends in not being able to talk about anything at all. Or at least, nothing that makes much sense. It does lead to a lot of uploading old Smallville fic to AO3, so if you're curious, almost everything is there now.

TW: abuse, alcoholism, etc in part two.

( this is what I'm not talking about, part 1 )

( this is what I'm not talking about, part 2 )

The only explanation I have for this is that Child was still pre-verbal when I first watched Tarzan, so this part of Tarzan--to this day, as in, five seconds ago--still sets me off into fits of tears. Basically, anytime the gorilla mom or the human mom are on-screen, I have this total connection and also, being me, hoping a gorilla mother would take in Child should I be killed by tigers. Fuck tigers. Just, fuck parent and baby gorilla eating goddamn tigers.

Parenthood, let me remind you, is rarely sane, and I'll be honest, the first year of parenting should be considered a viable entry in the DSMIV on principle. It manifests in two very distinct ways and I think most parents will agree with me on this one; you will spend a significant amount of time being paranoid--and I do mean paranoid--about completely normal things like killing the kid by changing his diaper wrong, or you're copacetic with putting a baby seat on a motorcycle but like, the likelihood of aliens actually existing goes up like whoa and a certainty kidnapping is imminent. Sometimes both at the same time but in general, the human brain does get there are limits, and when air itself becomes a viable threat to your sprog, it does eventually reset itself to sanity or something less likely to require medical intervention via IV with concerned strangers asking what the voices are telling you.

To give you perspective on this, my nightmare scenario--born of a goddamn Dean Koontz novel turned shitty TV movie but strangely having very little actual relation to it--was a home invasion where I'm tied to a chair, Child (pre-verbal, remember?) in his high chair, and the burglar for sadistically inclined reasons is willing to trust in probability and sets a whole bunch of small legos on the high chair for Child to choke on while I watch. Child never once choked on anything in his life that I remember--and believe me, I would--but that stuck in my head and became this Thing. I mean, I get there was some deeply symbolic subconscious meaning going on, but dude, the literal was plenty nightmare fuel for me. Which is why I was like the only parent in the world who didn't worry about their kid setting the world on fire with his discovery of matches--though this could also be because Child's hand-eye coordination has never been what we'd call advanced for his age--but did spend valuable time considering how to trick the hypothetical burglar in question into tying the ropes badly or working out how to secret a knife on my person without that leading to dramatic questions on my intentions should it come out I was carrying one in less dangerous conditions, like say, going swimming.

It's also the reason that to this day, the four times--I can count this--when I was genuinely shocked into terror at home, my first act was to palm a knife from the kitchen. A steak knife at that, I wasn't picky here, I wanted sawing capabilities as well a pointy tip. Writing it out looks insane, but I can promise you that if someone were to break into the house--or like, there's a sound like that is going on--today, I won't even think about it, I'll go for the first I find in the drawer. You also have to keep in mind my one and only work-related event of the flying squirrel guy when I was a caseworker, after being knocked over by the door, I crouched there holding an unfolded stapler guarding the erstwhile door with ninja-like thoughts on how I'd use it even as at the time my brain was screaming at me what the hell are you doing to do to the guy with a stapler? Staple him? and my internal answer every time was YES. YES I WILL. A THOUSAND TIMES. because apparently, that's just how I roll. Apparently, that includes not being sure if a stapler refill has a thousand staples, which I'm looking up right now, just in case.

In case anyone is curious, Child has officially entered true teenage surliness, but this is my kid and so, it has variations. Everything is out to get him and unfair, but he expresses his pain both normally (as TV has taught him, of course), but also in reciting blank verse at the top of his lungs and gets my five year old nephew to add performance art to the entire situation. It is really, really difficult to hold onto parenting values--I am still working the entire raise him not to be a serial killer or menace to society rock bottom minimum parental accomplishment and it's working out well so far--when he's treating me to at least college-quality improv in the living room and I don't have to even pay for tickets. Being a parent, I think he's genius, but also as a realist, I think he's a genius at knowing how to work with my weaknesses by reciting the equivalent of teenage-level Gilgamesh in which he fights the good fight against parental monsters and symbolic representations of heroic tasks like taking out the trash. It's unreal. I mean, I don't know whether to send him to his room to think about what he's done or applaud, so I end up doing both, which may be the very definition of a mixed message.

I'm wondering when he'll realize his guitar is also a viable weapon of obfuscation of parental wrath. He's tone deaf--I mean, his singing can actually make my eardrums want to burst, he's discovered notes I didn't know existed and really shouldn't, not unless we're summoning Cthulhu for a personal visit--and his ability to navigate strings is very iffy, but I'm honestly not sure what I'd do if he started setting his teen-pain to a beat with terrible accompaniment. This ends in Elder Gods or sheer shock, but both ways will include insanity, and I do not yet have a plan to deal with this well. It may be the unbeatable weapon.

The following have occurred:

1.) Child's new computer was assembled to everyone's satisfaction except the computer's. So waiting for a part from Amazon to convert the power supply. The computer's name, for you playing the home game, is Stiles. Yeah, welcome to my life.

2.) My birthday Kindle Paperwhite has arrived and is not named Derek for reasons, most of them Child's. Due to reasons, I am out of active fannish names so this one is Destiel. Screw it, it was this or American Horror Story and I'm not naming my Kindle after a character on a show I have to watch from behind the couch.

3.) Child may or may or not be starting to develop a crush on Pete Wentz. This is new.

I have been a good parent and carefully kept him secluded from emo during his formative years, concentrating his attention on Breaking Benjamin and Skillet and Rise Against and Metallica--guitars broken in fits of mindless violence and sometimes teenage angst rather than from inner turmoil with messages written in tear-smeared eyeliner. Child was already a MySpace poet in the making like, from birth, and while MySpace is deadish, bad poetry never dies. He's already a surly geek who hacks his X-Box and whose clan is filled with inner teenage drama-angst. Like, why stack the freaking deck, you know?

This is really all Mikey Way's fault, let's just put that out there, or at least, my inability to stop reading tumblr about it. Child read over my shoulder, asked for a summary, then suddenly, his playlists are looking suspicious. I'm just saying, what the hell, Child. I introduce your ass to death metal--I cant' even pronounce some of those names in polite company, or around people who can issue federal warrants for persons of interest--and you repay me with pulling my album lists? This isn't happening.

If anyone needs me, I'm going to be failing as a parent somewhere else. At this rate, he's going to be a Republican investment banker or something and I'll never be able to show my face among humanity again.

Child sent me his Christmas essay, which was a twenty minute writing exercise at school. Sitting down beside me, he tenderly dragged my hand to my touchpad and kindly forced me to click on the link in gmail, at which time, he stared at me until I read it.

To say I was surprised at his subject matter would be an understatement. His cackling should have been a warning.

( meta: jingle bells war by child, age 15 )

I'm still mulling how to write up Teen Wolf 2.12, since my initial reaction was two days and two nights of growling whenever I remembered it and freaking everyone out but Child, who would answer with a bitter grunt if he was in the same room (I don't think Child is telepathic, but I won't say I haven't been pricing a diy Faraday cage for my room, and possibly a helmet of some kind).

Teen Wolf is a milestone in our fanparent/fanchild relationship, in that we are in a non-closed canon watching new eps as they air followed by arguing to the ground everything that happens. At first, I felt a kind of warm satisfaction--this must be what it's like to live with another fangirl!--but then I realized why perhaps my (secret) ambition to one day open a fangirl commune might have drawbacks in that, and maybe this has happened to someone, but in times of high stress (Derek's manpain), time loses meaning when you really want to talk about, well, Derek's manpain.

To start with: this actually happened. However, dialogue is paraphrased.

( at some point, this will be an example somewhere of how not to parent )

( this is more about me )

In the last two weeks, Child and I have bought matching hoodies (mine grey, his black) and matching t-shirts (exactly the same) independently of each other. We just realized the t-shirt situation, as we are both wearing them now. The only reason he has cargo pants and I don't is that all my pants purchases have to go through Nordstrom's due to freakishly long legs. Like, does this happen to normal people?

There is really nothing like this moment in parenting books. Like, why not?

Child

When I accused Child of giving me bronchitis, he speculated this might be a hitherto unknown yet strangely compelling superpower. I told him that the reason we don't have cats is because I didn't want it proven he was a future serial killer. He seemed surprised I used the word 'future'. The really sad part, that's not even the incipient fever type of conversation.

I have picked up a bad habit due to the internet and Child; he gets in the mood to ask me questions (like, unanswerable ones: "Are there any female Reavers? How does that work if they rape and eat everyone?" What the fuck, Child? Don't make me think about that.) in endless barrages of 'why'. This was fine before he was literate and the existence of wikipedia, but now it's just to annoy me. My most recent go-to answer is "Because they hate you", which by the way, doesn't actually work except in changing the nature of the questions, at least as it relates to Firefly as Child observed, "Joss Whedon kind of his entire audience" which I cannot say isn't true, so that went well.

Child's bff and my sister's first ex-husband's son is over for a few days before he goes back home, which is always kind of disastrously adorable, as they're both teenagers and yet have been friends since the age of four, so regression is both inevitable and hysterical. Step-Nephew is also at the hilarious age of discovering girls and the shocked realization after years of comfortable acquaintance that my youngest sister, me, and his father's female friends are, y'know, girls. Child has been fucking ruthless about noticing really verbally whenever possible despite retaliation during X-Box tournaments. This doesn't end well for Child. He really doesn't seem to care.

( child and things, at length )

Ouch

I am less amused than anything at picking up bronchitis up now. I haven't actually been feverish as it's been just a really goddamn irritating cough and surprisingly mild congestion, which is actually fairly typical at work right now with everyone. It's much, much worse when I want to do stupid things like sleep, but seems to go away completely when I have to work or talk to people, which is the most inconvenient illness in history. I honestly don't see the goddamn point of being just ill enough to not sleep well and have a sore throat but can still test a program and have to carry on conversations. It's just stupid.

Mostly work is caught up as much as it can be, and there's no air conditioning, so Child and I consoled ourselves catching up to current with Teen Wolf.

I kind of get why people like fannish roommates now. Child recently picked up a mild fanboy thing for Sam Winchester (don't ask, please), so it was Vecchio Versus Kowalski Redux, but luckily all the eps are on the server, so he can't hide SPN from me, and thank God,

winterlive was pushing like the best dealer ever, so.

I get why people think this is a lot like Buffy; I see the resemblance in the secondary characters if Stiles = Willow and Lydia/Jackson make a very uncomfortable Cordelia, but Scott is no Buffy, and neither Derek nor Allison could pull off Angel, but Child and I did entertain ourselves in recasting how that would work.

This is incredibly random and unorganized, so.

( maybe spoilers )

Moment of cognitive dissonance:

Child comes in to critique your 174,000 Dean/Castiel WIP you left on a jump drive he borrowed.

...dude, I am still lying down after that.

(I have no idea what he said or when he left the room, but I'm pretty sure I didn't blink or breathe the entire time. Just. What. No. Dude, starting circa page 175--suffice to say, fuck my life.)

norabombay can testify this is actually true.

Every so often, I run pop quizzes on Child's fannish knowledge to check he's keeping up with his studies, which also doubles as hilarious entertainment for me (note to parents of young children: wikipedia will tell them it's not true that revolutionary science is allowing men now give birth and mpreg is real; if you use this, keep them away from Wikipedia. Child checks me now every time, dammit.)

In this vein,

norabombay and I were chatting about mpreg and I turned to Child to ask him what he thought. Child stared at me for a few minutes, serious and baffled, then said that in his opinion the penis would be a more appropriate orifice and what we had against penis babies.

Owner of said penis did not flinch; I did. I think he won that one.

Still in love with my kid, in case that was in question here.

(This led to revolutionary thoughts on male pouch pregnancy with

norabombay, so.)

This may sound, on the surface, like laziness, but you have to take into account that Child is a.) within the first flush of reading a new pairing and is b.) fifteen, so when he demands Dean/Castiel recs, I am not required to hysterically evaluate for quality lest he judge me not so silently (he is not silent, ever). Or even read it, really, because, and I say this with love, he is a teenager and I've seen what he's reading; he does not know the difference between Godiva and Hershey, or even perhaps Godiva and brown colored substances that may or may not even be chocolate, if I can be blunt here.

Also, I'm pretty sure though not entirely that he may or may not be writing it himself, and because I value his privacy, I am not checking any word doc with a suspicious title but dear God I want to.

Parenting is hard. Like, drugs, alcohol, knocking people up, bullying, etc, those weren't too bad for parenting decisions, but honestly, do I or do I not read his fic is my big ethical dilemma. I suspect my ethics will deteriorate if he doesn't change his password soon. He's got to learn the magic of using ones with more than ten characters and throw some numbers and special characters in. I mean, if you think about it, it's almost like a life lesson in passwords. That's a very--parental duty, really.

I will be talking about work when I have words that aren't exclusively used in a famous George Carlin routine; having said that, and with the understanding that I do not approve of shoddy programming, I have to admit that there is nothing quite like writing up one line defects because they are so painfully obvious I can literally say "See subject line for details". I was told that is condescending, so yeah, I'm back on condescending watch by sympathetic coworkers so I do not accidentally tell a developer that as a child, I collected eggs from the henhouse (no, I really did, we had a short affair with chickens that ended in coyotes) with a higher level of sentience.

The thing is, you have to know your audience when you make sassy remarks.

Example: early in Child's development, I decided that the only way I would be able to deal with asking teh hard questions (are you sexually active? Did you build a bomb in teh bathroom? What the fuck is with all those carefully filled holes in teh backyard? Why for the love of God do you have cream of tartar in your bedroom?) by effectively reversing lifelong conditioning to filter. The growing pains of doing this did lead to our first sex talk with Child worriedly wondering about the eggs in the refrigerator and nesting (no, really, I wrote about it here; I made a lot of LJ parents feel really competent), but since then, my social conditioning has effectively been compromise, which is how I end up with a condescending-checker when I send certain emails to certain people or file certain types of defects. Once you have forced a meaningful talk on your child explaining the ways and means of condom use, offering demonstrations on various vegetables, and forever codewording raincoat so he never, ever feels entirely comfortable when weather is a conversational topic, pretty much everyone is fair game.

Which again, why I have coworkers check my email in case I am truthful about my feelings in metaphors not entirely suited to conversation or possibly, anatomy.

More people need to try this.

In general, it is far more likely that you can get your frankly medically dangerous, not to mention fucking ridiculous bill on requiring women to carry a stillborn child after twenty weeks because it's natural to be listened to if you don't phrase your concerns at any time by comparing it to the time you helped cows and pigs give birth.

“Life gives us many experiences…I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive. Delivering pigs, dead or alive. It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.”

This is equivalent to the Republican candidate of a few years ago who expressed his own wild and woolly days actually getting down with that which owns wool and baahhhs. As apparently, he was of the opinion this was something men do when they are young, carefree, and that ewe was gagging for it (metaphorically speaking).

(Note: no, really.)

My point is, know your audience does not, in general, possess four legs and give birth in straw in a barn like structure; they will not feel this is the best method of achieving your goal of a.) literally killing women due to medical neglect, b.) promoting anti-abortion, but it may achieve c.) reminding me we have enough bacon for a sandwich because I'm starving. Which yeah, that hit the spot.

The War on Women is being fought across the country by people who, quite literally, need the equivalent of a condescending-checker. Do not tell them that. I see no reason to refuse them weapons with which they so brutally shoot themselves; admittedly, it's the equivalent of watching a SAW marathon being carried out in the public forum (messy!), but think of all the comedians whose careers are being made by this, the comedy club revenues, the expansion of the economy, and any hope this particular spate of legislation will last.

The free market in action. We are living the dream.

So this is awkward, but there's a certain word count at which I have to admit I'm actually writing something that may one day be a story. I passed that, so I need to ask, nicely, if anyone would be interested in reading through for me. It's currently at 60K, and I estimate it'll be around 120K before I'm done, the fandom is Supernatural. Please email if you have time. I do not promise this is like, good, but I promise there are many words and they fit into sentences pretty much constantly. Email at seperis at gmail.com or I'm online, whichever, and thank you in advance.

In what I meant to post here before I suddenly realized I was writing again like, for keeps, Child and Sister's Ex-Husband #1's son got thrown out of a movie theater after trying to sneak into an R movie. This is because they didn't take my advice. So I was right, and I win forever. Sort of.

This is terrible parenting, but I'm not sure on what level.

Child and I try to limit our tandem media watching due to the fact that breaking out in a ship and/or character war in the middle of the night without access to a keyboard is kinda awkward and not a little surreal. We recently discovered that the thing people say, you would never say to someone's face what you wrote in that double flamey comment? Yeah, no, we do. But it's still half in netspeak and fanspeak, so I'm ruined for talking to normal people for hours.

I have been very wary about watching Supernatural with him; I mean, Stargate Atlantis, he was more a Sheppard/Ronan shipper, but that was my secondary ship, so I could roll with that. Torchwood we were fine, but the Due South period of our lives, for those who remember that, was not pretty at all. But this is different, okay? There are all kinds of people, and I'm totally accepting and everything, but if he turned into a Sam OTC, I might have to give him up for adoption, which is kinda tricky at his age and everything.

(Not that I do not love Sam and everything, my best friends are OTC Sam and apparently ship Sam/Lucifer, but Child is what you might call an evangelical OTCer, and this wouldn't end well for anyone, and I do mean anyone. Like, this is how supervillians are made, okay? It will be the stolen Due South box sets all over again and the Vecchio stanning and dude, he's like, five nine, I can't duct tape him in his closet. Not that I ever did that, but I'm saying, that option, permanently off the table. Now the best I can do is block his wireless and change his X-Box login. And he's going to work out how to fix this when he realizes I locked the router login page to my laptop's IP. I feel bad about that, though; he's really good about leaving comments at AO3 on fics he likes and a good feedbacker is not to be trifled with.)

Child skipped backward to refresh his season one and two, barrel through season three with a faintly shell-shocked expression, and emerged with me for season four viewing with a faint trace of horror. Finally, near the end of season four, he says, like he just can't stand not to say it:

(this is a paraphrased summary of a really deep and meaningful set of conversations about the Pain of Dean Winchester. It was beautiful. I honestly wish I'd recorded it. It was magic, okay? Magic.)

"Why does Dean always suffer so much?"

(At this point, we are around 4.19 or so. Before this, he was exploring agnosticism. I explained this is TV. He wasn't convinced.)

My heart swelled like, fifty sizes, but apparently my silence was like, an indictment or something because he said, "Jenn--" because apparently, I lose my mom title when I'm fannishly traumatizing him.

"I'm with you." But I hate not get it all out there. "I'm kinda a Castiel girl, too, though. Seriously. He's magic."

Child thought about it for most of the rest of the season (read, forty-eight hours give or take) and at the end of 4.22 while we were discussing whether or not Dean goes off to silently cry like, all the time and why people who judge him for that should be smited like whoa, he says, "So Castiel and Dean--"

I'm getting him a rec list.

(He has a subversive love of Sam/Ruby that he won't admit, but I checked his cache and I know things. I don't even think he liked her until 4.22, when suddenly he was all OMG (it sounded just like it looks) and I mean, from his point of view, it makes sense.)

ETA: Child finally set up his AO3 account and gave up pretending that his cache is a lie, so I'm feeling a strong sense of parental accomplishment right now.

Person Who Will One Day Become Warlord-Ruler Of What Was Once Nebraska Born In Omaha Hospital

Okay, I'm torn; it's not like I want to spend my undead existence in a pink vat miles below sea level dreaming of my own voiceless screams of horror while Child fruitlessly tries to clone me in his skull-shaped Pacific Island headquarters surrounded by mindless minions (some of whom will have such colorful names as The Murder of Crows, The Albatross of Despair, The One Without a Cool Name, look, he's fifteen and plays Magic the Gathering after school; what do you expect?), nor am I entirely comfortable with his plans to create a hybrid human-reptile army (or a cockroach-human hybrid army for radiation survival purposes).

But. I am his mother, and he brings me coffee when I want it. Should I tell him about this Nebraska threat or not?

Podfic!

I have never worked out if it is good form to rec podfic of your fic, but I finally had a chance to listen to some that I downloaded, and my God.

Fic: It's My Death, My Rhythm, My Arithmetic, AIRPS, Adam/Kris, AU
Podfic:It's My Death, My Rhythm, My Arithmetic by

reena_jenkins - I rarely creep myself out during writing, but this one was an exception. Reena dialed it up to eleven in the reading. Just. Whoa.

Fic: Marked, Smallville, Clark/Lex
Podfic: Marked by

reena_jenkins - I get weirdly self-conscious reading my own fic a lot, but listening seems to get it a remove from me enough to enjoy it. I so enjoyed this one. She also inspired me to add a few more fics to AO3 since this one wasn't up yet and I felt bad she couldn't link it properly.

Fic: The Tale of the Sea Serpent, Merlin, Merlin/Arthur
Podfic: The Tale of the Sea Serpent by

eosrose - this was such a fun listen. I love her voice.

Happy.

Work

For some reason, Cisco VPN stopped working entirely yesterday and even after reinstall, I could not get it to run. It kept not starting and I have no idea why. So had to go into the office for validation in the evening, and did two hours of COLA validation in an empty building. Child bravely came along and was disappointed to realize how boring it was to go through dozens of cases to validate that everyone receiving RSDI/SSI got their COLA update.

It wasn't bad, per se, just repetitive; open case, check dates, get calculator and do rough math to make sure the amounts were correct. Considering the horror that will emerge after the new year in testing, I am taking repetitive and a little boring to the alternatives.

( about my unit's management team )

ETA: I forgot this earlier. Child's school introduced rugby to PE class. My child can play rugby. I can never send him to regular public school now.

...I am not knocking rugby, I'm just saying, that is not a sport I would have thought an American high school, even charter, would toss out there. For context, his school doesn't have organized team sports like regular public high schools; they have after school sports that competes--I think?--with other charter schools in our system. Soccer (yes, football, fine) makes sense since the founders are Turkish and a lot of the students are from immigrant families, some of whom have a colonial background* from Britain and other European nations, but I didn't see rugby coming. At all.

Also, he passed the semester with all A's and B's and kicked Algebra's ass, so for the record, my kid is deeply awesome and is currently glued to the X-Box engaging in parental-approved first-person shooter violence with friends on his headset. His kill ratios are superlative. I leave it to you to imagine my personal pride in his accomplishments.

( more than slightly enraging )

ETA 2: Fixed link to podfic for The Tale of the Sea Serpent.

Per the end of Farscape Season Three (I snuck in the first four of season four and--I really don't want to talk about it yet, but I think I watched them from the wrong perspective or something? What the hell?), Child is on a Glee rampage, so we are hitting season one and two in no particular order and God do I hate Amazon Prime free streaming or I wouldn't be in this mess right now. He's scheduled in Season Four viewing sometime in the middle of the Glee medley and Sanctuary season one and SG1 season one (not streaming; sadly, I have them already).

In other words, I have a really uncomfortable feeling that I will start to expect Sanctuary to break into song if Child keeps me on this media extravaganza for any length of time.

You may now return to more interesting reading. I'm suffering from multi-genre overload.

Currently prepping for Child's dental appointment. Which may not go well, and is one of those places I fail as a parent, because at a certain age, parental authority fails entirely in teh face of outright hatred, and Child hates the dentist.

Most children hate the dentist, and most will be overcome with, you know, pain or fear of teeth hurting and go anyway. Child, not so much. As Child has a plan; he wants all these teeth to fall out--them being, IDK, substandard--and regrow them from--and I hate myself for this--that article I posted a bit back about regrowing teeth? Yeah, he not only read it; he took it to heart. Or get implants, which--you see where this is going. He goes to a science school. They encourage creative thinking.

However, luckily, his tooth really hurts--and I do mean luckily--and hasn't stopped and I called in this morning to the nearest available dentist who I will pay in cash if necessary, but one of them will have a carefully phrased discussion on the likelihood of gorwing teeth coming about in the next ten years or so and chewing. Which right now he cannot do while in pain. So--I mean, one should not be happy one's child is in pain, but seriously, he has at least one broken--BROKEN--tooth that I know of and this shit's got to stop.

Most of it is my fault in that I assumed--crazily--that he'd give in when there were actual problems instead of theoretical "oh, broken tooth would hurt". Instead, it's two years later and he would give in like a person with sense. Also, to be honest, tooth pain sucks; if anything makes you love a dentist, it is when things hurt and only they can fix it and I know from experience, that makes you a regular customer fast. I didn't realize he could blow that shit off for the most part.

I'm trying to think of a good way to phrase a moment of parental advice to pass down generations on how to handle pre-teens and teenagers with dental hatred, but honest to God, I'd like to see the parent who can physically drag their child into a dental office, plunk them down, and jack their mouths open for their own good. Bribery, threats of dental horrors, and the apocalypse do not help, for the record.

In reward for Child bootstrapping his way through math, see below cut.

( yes, he did leave the house like this )

So like the bulletproof kink, I have the vid-equivalent of bulletproof music; there are some songs that no matter how crappy the vid, I will watch them to the bitter end because the song or performers speak so well that for me, the vid has no choice but to be meaningful, which can end with me watching a lot of AMVs of obscure anime tearfully finding meaning in long shots of unnaturally beautiful, expressionless characters whose names I can't even pronounce, but I feel it okay?

Then sometimes, just sometimes, a vid defines the perfect way the song should be vidded and no other vid can ever ever ever match it and I am so fucked, because that song is now off-limits and I want to ban anyone from ever using it again. And yet, i keep trying, which is why I have watched no less than twenty vids set to How to Save a Life and hate all of them, because they'll never be as awesome as that one FMA one, dammit. Even if, you know, some of them are amazing.

It's also been taken down because youtube is evil, and thank God I officially download anything I like immediately.

My sulking is very fandom-oriented.

Child

There comes a time in every parent's life in which they feel the universe seem to expand before them, timespace opening like the petals of a flower in the sun and eternity residing deep within.

My son asked me for fanfic recs.

I had five minutes and a fucked up internet connection, and he requested in two fandoms: SGA and Torchwood. And I said, oh.

For Torchwood:

I gave him

dira's Get Loved, Make More, Try to Stay Alive: I wanted a clean intro to Jack/Ianto fanfiction and an introduction to mpreg that won't traumatize him, and something well-plotted and well-executed and long enough to hold his attention. It also has a kid, and Child loves kids like whoa. This one seemed perfect, as it's one of my favorites.

For SGA:

The Retrograde Series by ltlj: this is the fic of my dreams, the Stargate Atlantis I wanted and everything about my fandom I love. To be more, to be better, to fight because you can't afford not to lose.

Qui Habitat by miss porcupine: this is the fic of my mind, politically complex combined religious fanaticism, rebellion and the unending and inexplicable hope that Stargate Atlantis is, and the complexity and well-plotted arcs it should have been. To be all and everything that you are, to fight because winning may not be certain, but losing would mean the end of everything.

Written by the Victors by

cesperanza: this is the fic of my heart, what Stargate Atlantis could have been, secession and creating something new on the battered remains of what was. To be more than you thought you were, to fight because it's the right thing to do.

Your Cowboy Days Are Over by samdonne: this is the fic of my soul. It shook me and stole sleep and changed not only how I saw Atlantis, but how I saw the fandom that grew around it. To fight, to sacrifice until there's nothing left to lose, to bend and break and still get up again, because that's who you are and will always be.

I wanted to offer him the best of what media fandom in LJ has been and is and will be, livejournal's media culture and the house styles, the underpinnings of slash fandom, the writers who I felt encompassed so much of what makes fandom such a huge part of my life, the stories that could only be written in the fandom they were in and redefined them for me; it's a pretty good start.

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.

Child's Kindle was delivered today as a slightly belated birthday present, and oh.

Now I get why people like these.

I didn't make the connection for some weird reason--this is instant no-wait access to books. I mean, it's like, the pieces just came together all of a sudden. Ebooks. Instant. Access. Books.

And I'll be honest; I'm kind of running out of space for mine.

I don't mean like, literally. Of course there's space. I mean, for the practical purposes of keeping up with them and finding them when I want, and I still tape paperbacks together that I can't locate anywhere else (Sydney van Scyoc, for one), but the fog has lifted.

How did I not get this on a gut level I have no idea. I think I'm suffering from a great deal of envy now. He's stupidly excited, and I feel his book budget is going to get a workout. It's adorable.

Okay, am I the only one who is desperately in love with the kudos function in AO3? It's like tiny cookies left in my inbox. Not that I do not adore regular feedback (or epic length examination, whoo boy, do I love), but kudos! Tiny cookies of happy! In inbox!

This has been a message from she whose amazon boxes of manga goodness arrived today. Also, I'm on volume three of loveless. I have no clue why I'm reading this. I'm not even sure where they came from (barnes and noble), or how I got them (with a credit card). Okay, lies, but there was this other one with a guy with a really creepy red hat and vampires. And a wicked sword for cutting people (vampires?) up; maybe a war? I was more staring at the sword, tbh. I really feel I should have gotten that, too, but I'm trying to like, set a good example, which would have worked better probably if I hadn't just agreed to get him Sin City next month because apparently my parenting skills when it comes anything readable consist of "Shiny," and "Wait, don't I have this somewhere?" or more depressingly, "How can you be my kid and not know that's in the box under my bed/in the closet on the top shelf/if you can't find it, you don't deserve to have it".

My life lessons - invasions of privacy and being sneaky. Well done, me.

Child's absconded with everything Fullmetal Alchemist due to an obscure canon continuity question; the really unfortunate thing is, his mom's a fangirl and gets why he needs the entire fucking first series and all the canon-compliant in the house, because he's just too special to trust google or something. So it's not like I can argue the point. Also, he's blackmailing me because he watched Brotherhood on youtube already and threatens to spoil me for the entire thing if I try and sneak anything away.

It's not like this is new.

Warfare in the Seperis household always ends with tears and threats of cutting each other with the sharp edges of our keyboards. He's been holding Buffy the Vampire Slayer sixth season hostage because I hid all the Saiyuki until I get Due South back (could be anywhere). I'm about two steps from sleeping with my Star Trek books and Gravitation has gone into hiding. I'm so locking him out of the router tonight; he wants internet, he can damn well brute force my passwords.

This has been a message from the side of fandom that makes new fanpeople. Those of you with children; yeah, start adding GPS tags to everything now. Trust me, you'll need it.

( okay, i wasn't thinking of spoilers, mostly bitterness. sorry! )

Joy:

Child (this has been a month of delightful child antics) has somehow:
a) Activated McAfee parent controls
b) Does not know the password
c) HILARITY

He is locked out of like, everything interesting on the net. I think teletubbies is blocked, even. I should make him check Disney, for his dignity. It's beautiful.

So far, he's tried command line overriding, staring vaguely at the screen while shaking one not-so-tiny fist, and staring at me beseechingly. For the record, I laughed. And by that, I mean, still am. If he's going to be this easy, life is very good. Kind of impressed he tried to command line it, even though I read it and realized it was how to command line freaking vista. And not well, either.

Me: You're locked out of your computer like a five year old. Ha ha!
Child: *sulks dramatically, draped across a recliner, woe*

From OTF Wank on Journalfen:

Okay, so the salon article was what killed me really. Better Yet, Don't Write That Novel by Laura Miller <--This Is How to Miss the Point Dramatically, and With a Lot of Words, Perhaps More Words Than Necessary, Really. Learn Brevity, Thanks.

Pop quiz:

It was yet another depressing sign that the cultural spaces once dedicated to the selfless art of reading are being taken over by the narcissistic commerce of writing.

Does this mean:

a.) buy my books and tell me I'm smart!
b.) sales are falling.
c.) ...sorry, what cultural spaces doing what?

Trufax: I may or may not have been part of the movement that destroyed reading cultural spaces. I won't like, admit this, but, okay, there was this whole "compare and contrast the cultural relevance of American Psycho with Moby Dick" one night in the Cultural Reading Space Room because let's face it, in the end, it's all about Moby Fucking Dick, and why use a less hackneyed comparison? And who doesn't love curling up on a stormy evening with a blanket to re-read that bit of poetic mastery of graphic sexual violence performed with everyday props with prose of the exquisite blandness of non-steel cut oatmeal, unsurpassed even by de Sade, who it cannot be said did not have a hard-on for female torture and sexual mutilation (and how!). Okay, I was napping, but they got to the rat/ham-and-cheese (could be one or the other, I was napping in the Cultural Literary Osmosis Corner, maybe a sandwich was involved?) thing and oh, I was like, I'm so burning this cultural space.

Every nano story destroys another cultural space. I laugh as I watch them die. This is why there aren't any. Destroyed so well that even now, I'm not sure what they are.

(This may tie into my very early exposure to literary criticism which was when I read my first review of American Psycho that managed to be very positive and spoke of it being engaging and possibly pushing the boundaries but never mentioned anything actually contained in the novel itself. Let's say my first read of that ended very quickly and with surprisingly abruptness. I've kind of never forgiven the literary community or pretty much the entirety of anything published in New York for that. I will drag this experience out every chance I get. My God, why.)

In other news, received a phone call today to tell me my child is going to another country this summer and I'd missed my appointment to get the arrangements in order. The words "my child is what and where, wait, what?" were said, because I'm sure this is pretty obvious, but I had no idea. I'm going tomorrow to--get the arrangements in order. Child is bemused that I'd want to be aware he was exporting himself; I'm just trying to figure out what exactly will make July of next year a bad time for him to be in the country. There aren't any new holes, but there's a rope draped over the back fence that's tied to a really sketchy tree. Beyond the fence is a fairly steep drop to a dry creek. It looks obvious, and yet....

How's Turkey on extradition? Just curious.

If he had a passport right now, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't know about this until he got back. Extradited? Something.

Child is always an inspiration and a joy forever, but I also have a fairly elaborate system in place to hide from him when he's feeling especially curious and his prepubescent ass can't bother itself with Wikipedia (ie, all the time). This is not because his questions aren't awesome; it's because at the end of the day, physics is fucking up my life.

Most of the time, he's going on about space, which thanks to a lifetime of Star Trek and TOS I can get through with the quick addition of surreptitious googling or reference to Dr. Who and technobabble, which let me say, thank God for.

Today was not space; today he posited a hole that goes from one side of the earth to the other, and you're laughing because come on, that one's easy. Yeah, I did too until he started with how he'd do it and avoid the molten core of the earth (don't ask) while achieving escape velocity once the other side was reached (God I was stupid; I mentioned escape velocity and he didn't even frown in frustration that he missed something). We were okay until I realized this wasn't so much a question as a plan, perhaps more meticulous than I'm comfortable with, and I'm really not entirely copacetic with him wanting to know how big a hole we're talking about that wouldn't lead to the earth growing unstable or flooding the earth with the core through the mantle.

What I'm saying is, he's thirteen and has neither enough theory or like, supplies, to pull this off (or for that matter, a working way to bend if not break some physics in a really geological way), but I have an uneasy feeling I'm seeing the beginnings of a bucket list. I'm usually pretty comfortable with the fact technology hasn't caught up with his ideas of what to do with his life, and when that fails, there's always the immutable existence of say, reality to work with.

But put it this way; this not a black hole and there aren't any warp engines; I just spent way too much time trying to work out how technology or reality can actually stop him and I'm coming up just a little short. I think he sensed this; he went away with a grin and seriously, I'm tired of holes in the backyard.

If anyone tells him the thinnest part of the crust is actually in the ocean and he should start working on his scuba diving and pick up an interest in drills and pressure, I will so cut you. We're only five years away from a time I can no longer punish him with 4chan trauma macros, people. The future is coming, and apparently, it wants to find out if digging your way to China really is a metaphor.

So I did not get the job that I interviewed for on Tuesday--see, this is why I didn't post about it!--as the call was supposed to come today and there was none. Which okay, I didn't expect to, to be honest. I was kind of shocked they interviewed me. But it's still--well, let's say mpreg and

keewick's vid were kind of like, my happy place?

However, on a brighter note, Child got a website from my ex-bil and used it to set up a remote login to our home computer to get around the IP blocks that the school has installed in their computer lab and play Evony and check Facebook during class.

God, I have never love him more. And yes, tomorrow he has to tell his teacher and show them how he did it. Fine. But still. And I have to block that on the home computer and everything, sure. But for the record; if the class was teaching him something, he wouldn't be hacking, now would he? Or like, noticed him playing Evony and reading Facebook? Yeah.

Yeah, this.

Inappropriate pride for Child is very appropriate, actually.

ETA: The Kradam mpreg, Papa Don't Preach (do I love this title? Yes) is updated to part 5c. You know you want to know what happens next.

Sgastoryfinder social experiment?

On one hand, who doesn't go to sgastoryfinders to read the hilarity of some of the requests? OTOH, astroturfing requests for lulz in a community based on good-faith requests feels weird somehow. I kind of thought the funny was in the sincerity of the search and the way people remember things, in almost random bits of plot or dialogue or scene and why some things that seem insignificant to the author or even other readers make such a lasting impression that they define how the story is remembered. It was funny to see your fic remembered as the one where John wore pink or Rodney got a hangnail after he ate a donut, but also fascinating that something so small could define it, and try to work out why and how. And in any case, it was kind of flattering that anyone remembered it well enough to look for it at all because they wanted to read it again. The results either way are the same, but I feel kind of weird for the people who searched for the fic and those who wrote the ones that were found and didn't know they weren't doing something nice for someone else, but participating in a joke on themselves.

OTOH, it's two days post-con and my sense of humor is on par with a slug in the sun and I seriously am scheduling myself like, a weekend with Comedy Central or something. My recent personal tragedy involved a broken nail and a search for a file that took on epic proportions ending in a bitter exchange when it was found Child had absconded with it for reasons I decided I just didn't want to know, but for the record, I'm getting uncomfortable with him having an empty aquarium that is slowly being filled with layers of sand and decorated with rocks in a way not unlike a place you plan to store, oh, some sort of lizard. And frankly, how a nail file fits into this is information I just do not think I am ready to know.

How is everyone else's week going?

ETA: *winces* Okay, made it to second page of comments and there are actually some people who were upset by this. I apologize if anything I wrote here made them feel more uncomfortable. I can see their point on feeling unhappy they thought they were doing something nice for someone else and find out now they were kind of a punchline instead.

ETA 2: Mea culpa. Objectivity does indeed fly out the window when it's a close friend and cowriter whose fic ends up being involved. Thank God for people bringing me sympathetic post-vacation slump Snickers.

I apologize for my initial response if it came off flippant, because--yeah, no, that's pretty shitty behavior. I don't really participate in fic searches in public all that often, but I'm pretty sure if I did, I'd like to know I was starring in metacomedic performance art for the amusement of someone and their friends.

ETA 3:

ineptshieldmaid in comments states the post has been taken down. More in the comment.

ETA 4: Thanks to

raine for linking me: here toft apologizes with a longer explanation of her motives.

Child: You have a half-sister. You get married to your half-sister's father. You have a baby with your half-sister's father. What will the baby be to you and your sister?

Me: What the hell are you watching?

Child: Christian and Ollie on youtube.

Me: Did you actually wake me up for this? Wait. I'm posting this convo. Tell me that again.

[this is where i started typing above]

Child: So you don't know?

Me: German soap operas? Seriously?

Child: You really don't know?

Me: You want to see penises split to look like squid? Wait, I bookmarked this just for you.

Child: I'm going to go watch my soaps now.

Me: German soaps! With subtitles!

This is when I realized it was almost five. I'm so selling him. When people talked about the wonder of parenthood, for the record, being woken up at five in the morning to squint at subtitled German soap operas to work out complex dysfunctional family relationships was not mentioned and come the hell on. I'm protesting.

To other fen on my flist with kids who are smug and whose fanchildren are still adorable and small--this is your future. Just think about that one.

Next time, I'm sending him to two girls one cup*, I swear.

* if you do not know, do not ask, do not google, and for the love of God and sanity if you must google, do not click on any video links.

So I told Child about the entire gall bladder/surgery/removal, and two things came up; one I expected, and one that....

Child: Can I go with you and watch?

Me: Sure, you get the doctors behind that, go for it.

Child: Can I have your gall bladder afterward?

Me: ...I honestly should have seen that coming.

Child: Is that a yes?

...I kind of didn't. And yet, in retrospect, I am surprised that wasn't the first question. The normal response should be what on earth would you do with a gallbladder? but the thing is? He probably has a list somewhere and I don't want to know.

He keeps randomly coming in to poke me in my presumed gall bladder area and then asking me curiously how big the stones are.

How much usable DNA could someone get from a gall bladder anyway? It's not that I think he could build a gene sequencer and cloning chamber out back with some twine and a hairclip, it's more why take that kind of risk?

Poor Horace. You have no idea what you were risking with this stones shit, I have to say.

This comes from insomnia; go about your normal business.

Child: What slash pairings have you written?
Me: Merlin and Arthur, Brian and Justin, Adam and Kris...
Child: Adam? Lambert?
Me: Who else? Clark Kent and Lex Luthor...
Child: Superman????
Me: Duh.
Child: Can I write NC-17?
Me: ...and that's unexpected.

Later:

Child: I feel sorry for Captain America and Wolverine. They were best friends and Captain American died!
Me: He'll be back.
Child: *sighs*
Me: *pats his back* How...good of friends?
Child: *eyes me suspiciously*
Me: No reason.

The thing is, his sex education was kind of brutally frank and lacked euphemisms. If he goes this direction (doubtful, he's not quite there yet), this is going to be like, a cross between a Disney romantic comedy, Nightmare on Elm Street, and like, IDK, Gossip Girl. We're talking like, post-apocalyptic Beauty and the Beast with the word breast used to be edgy. Maybe.

And people wonder why I think the future is going to be awesome. There's an entire generation of fangirl spawn coming up to flood ff.net with badfic and reinvent the wheel all over again.

He has a twitter, a facebook, and a DW account that he got for his birthday, he's almost able to password lock me from the three gmail accounts he knows I know about and the five he thinks I don't, along with three yahoo and several messageboards and all his online games. I know how to reset all of them and disable his computer and he's going to figure out how I do that soon. It's like the most awesome arms race ever, and I have five years of this to look forward to.

Ladies and gentlemen, my son, age thirteen. I did say once I hated to be bored.

ETA: Child henceforth wants to be known as Serpent when I write about him. He left in a huff when I couldn't stop laughing.

Just posting to say, Child, after irritating me about my warnings on going to certain sites, was finally given a deeply vicious, verbal, explicit description of goatse while I hovered the mouse over the image file and waited for him to break.

He's still in the closet. Quite literally, even.

Me: 1, Child: 0

Game on.

Profile

seperis

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Page Summary

update on my life (boring)
goal orientation
i hear bells
this is history and we win
to do or not to do, that is the question
right, this will end well
it's a wonder to behold
these are the days of our lives
life with child
seriously, i have no idea where this came from
movie: flowers in the attic, very short
the gift that keeps on giving
it's way too early to be awake
drive by recs, kind of?
still watching for a snake, but in the meantime
because this is my fault in the end
today in texas and in the united states
i'm not entirely sure a subject line would cover this
thoughts are a menance and should be better regulated
you try and you try and you try....
meta: the jingle bells war by child
there is historical precedent for this
there is something wrong with this picture
god, i need sleep
child and i watch teen wolf
this is not a moment in history
a day in the life of
parenting means not worrying about standards when you rec fic
you and your audience; livestock comparisons may be questionable
just for information here
supernatural brings people together
i'm at an apocalyptic crossroads
today in a life
awake in texas with a fear of musicals
child has teeth, so far
child: theoretically, Child graduated eighth grade, so....
these are the times that try a fangirls' soul
i feel...conflicted
this is very, very cool
home is where piles of new things are waiting
not my life, not my life, not my life
i had to work today, but this made it worth it
two things that don't go together, or so you'd think
i resent science a lot today
there is not much really
i miss random afternoon naps already
i don't believe this is a conversation i actually had
things that put stuff in perspective
child, age thirteen, satisfying curiosity
this is how you start a war

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Quotes

If you don't send me feedback, I will sob uncontrollably for hours on end, until finally, in a fit of depression, I slash my wrists and bleed out on the bathroom floor. My death will be on your heads. Murderers
. -- Unknown, on feedback
BTS List
That's why he goes bad, you know -- all the good people hit him on the head or try to shoot him and constantly mistrust him, while there's this vast cohort of minions saying, We wouldn't hurt you, Lex, and we'll give you power and greatness and oh so much sex...
Wow. That was scary. Lex is like Jesus in the desert.
-- pricklyelf, on why Lex goes bad
LJ
Obi-Wan has a sort of desperate, pathetic patience in this movie. You can just see it in his eyes: "My padawan is a psychopath, and no one will believe me; I'm barely keeping him under control and expect to wake up any night now to find him standing over my bed with a knife!"
-- Teague, reviewing "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones"
LJ
Beth: god, why do i have so many beads?
Jenn: Because you are an addict.
Jenn: There are twelve step programs for this.
Beth: i dunno they'd work, might have to go straight for the electroshock.
Jenn: I'm not sure that helps with bead addiction.
Beth: i was thinking more to demagnitize my credit card.
-- hwmitzy and seperis, on bead addiction
AIM, 12/24/2003
I could rape a goat and it will DIE PRETTIER than they write.
-- anonymous, on terrible writing
AIM, 2/17/2004
In medical billing there is a diagnosis code for someone who commits suicide by sea anenemoe.
-- silverkyst, on wtf
AIM, 3/25/2004
Anonymous: sorry. i just wanted to tell you how much i liked you. i'd like to take this to a higher level if you're willing
Eleveninches: By higher level I hope you mean email.
-- eleveninches and anonymous, on things that are disturbing
LJ, 4/2/2004
silverkyst: I need to not be taking molecular genetics.
silverkyst: though, as a sidenote, I did learn how to eviscerate a fruit fly larvae by pulling it's mouth out by it's mouthparts today.
silverkyst: I'm just nowhere near competent in the subject material to be taking it.
Jenn: I'd like to thank you for that image.
-- silverkyst and seperis, on more wtf
AIM, 1/25/2005
You know, if obi-wan had just disciplined the boy *properly* we wouldn't be having these problems. Can't you just see yoda? "Take him in hand, you must. The true Force, you must show him."
-- Issaro, on spanking Anakin in his formative years
LJ, 3/15/2005
Aside from the fact that one person should never go near another with a penis, a bottle of body wash, and a hopeful expression...
-- Summerfling, on shower sex
LJ, 7/22/2005
It's weird, after you get used to the affection you get from a rabbit, it's like any other BDSM relationship. Only without the sex and hot chicks in leather corsets wielding floggers. You'll grow to like it.
-- revelininsanity, on my relationship with my rabbit
LJ, 2/7/2006
Smudged upon the near horizon, lapine shadows in the mist. Like a doomsday vision from Watership Down, the bunny intervention approaches.
-- cpt_untouchable, on my addition of The Fourth Bunny
LJ, 4/13/2006
Rule 3. Chemistry is kind of like bondage. Some people like it, some people like reading about or watching other people doing it, and a large number of people's reaction to actually doing the serious stuff is to recoil in horror.
-- deadlychameleon, on class
LJ, 9/1/2007
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Fan Fiction is John Cusack standing outside your house with a boombox.
-- JRDSkinner, on fanfiction
Twitter
I will unashamedly and unapologetically celebrate the joy and the warmth and the creativity of a community of people sharing something positive and beautiful and connective and if you don’t like it you are most welcome to very fuck off.
-- Michael Sheen, on Good Omens fanfic
Twitter, 6/19/2019
Adding for Mastodon.
-- Jenn, traceback
Fosstodon, 11/6/2022

Credit

Base style: Open Spaces by seperis
Theme: New Green by seperis

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