Up and Up and Down

Friday was great. I met Elizabeth to go see ParaNorman -- it was really cute and fun, though probably too scary for my kids, so I'm glad I saw it without them -- and then we went to Ichiban for sushi. Mmm, sushi.

As I was leaving -- literally, as I was opening the car door to head home -- my phone rang, and it was Braz, wanting to know what I was doing and if I wanted to hang out and see what he's doing with his place. So I did, and got to meet his new girlfriend in the bargain.

Saturday morning, I put up a border in the dining room for my soon-to-be Mexican theme:

(The lovely thing about a Mexico theme is that, not only do all your colors not have to match, it's actually better if they don't.) I was going to start hanging the art pieces as well, but my stupid cough was getting in the way, and all the dust I was stirring up wasn't making things any easier, so I decided that was enough for one day.

As previously mentioned, I had a date Saturday evening. He turned out to be neither a serial killer nor a creep, and he agreed that contrary to what certain older co-workers of his had feared, I didn't seem to be a psychotic black widow murderess. either. Though, of course, I could just be biding my time. We had a nice dinner, then sat at the Barnes and Noble cafe and talked until the store closed, and then we walked over to Sweet Frog and got yogurt and sat outside and talked some more until it started raining very hard, so we waited for a lull and then called it a night.

Sunday should have been a marvelously lazy day, but instead I woke up in a bit of a funk that I couldn't seem to shake off. I decided to distract myself with a movie, but like an idiot, I put in my waiting Netflix, which was a romantic comedy, exactly the wrong thing for my mood. It's a good thing I have a strict rule against drinking when I'm alone, or the maudlin Twitter posts I made would've been oh dear lord so much worse, or even more horrific, turned into drunken maudlin emails I would have regretted immediately upon hitting Send.

I did manage to mostly pull myself together enough to go out to meet up with the GM of a local RPG I might join. He explained some of the rules of the system to me; it sounds pretty similar to most of the other games I've played, so I don't anticipate a lot of problems getting the hang of it. So I'm going to come up with a few character concepts and shoot them his way, and he's going to juggle schedules to try to get most of the players together for a character creation session sometime in the next few weeks. It sounds like getting the schedules lined up is going to be a real trick, though, so I'm not really holding my breath on this.

So, all in all, I want to say it was a pretty good weekend, but it's hard to do when it ended on a down note. For no apparent reason. Stupid brain.

Activity!

I am, as they say, keeping busy.

I have an appointment with my therapist today. Those are sometimes painful, occasionally actually fun, and almost always draining.

Tomorrow, I'm meeting Elizabeth for a movie and sushi. There was a Groupon a little while back for a local Japanese restaurant -- $20 for $40 worth of food. Which is a great deal for a restaurant I love eating at... but there's no way I can eat $40 worth of food on my own (especially within the limits of these sorts of coupons, which generally stipulate you have to use them in one visit, and alcohol is not included). So I said something on Twitter about being willing to split it with someone, and Elizabeth took me up on it. So yay, girldate! If we can both get out of work early, we're going to see ParaNorman; if not, we're going to catch Bourne Legacy.

Saturday's project is to start redecorating the dining room. I decided a few weeks back that I was going to gather all my Cancun stuff in there and give the room a Mexico theme. I found a border sticker that's not blatantly Mexican, but has that same sort of bright color going on for it, so that's my step one -- putting that up. Then I'll work on rearranging the artwork.

Saturday night, I have a date. I'm hoping it goes well. Or at least, better than the lunch date I had on Tuesday, with a gentleman who was very nice and ridiculously smart but not a terribly good conversationalist, so there were a lot of awkward silences. (Yes, for my concerned friends, appropriate levels of caution are being taken such as meeting in public places and not giving out more personal information than necessary. And at the other end of the caution scale, yes, I've got condoms. And no, I am not going to blog about their use, or lack thereof.)

Sunday's excitement, beyond the usual chores (whoo! chores!) is a meetup to see about possibly joining a local gaming group for an Ars Magica campaign. It sounds like schedule might be an issue, though, so I'm not holding my breath.

Now, if I can just bludgeon this stupid damn cough out of existence, I'll be ready to take on the world. (Yay, Happy Fun Cough Syrup...)

Social-ism

My weekend: let me tell you it.

Friday, I left work at noon (god, I love working part-time -- even when it's just one day every two weeks, or a couple of half-days, it's nice to have that flexibility!). I went home and ate lunch and changed clothes, and then I stopped at the storage unit to empty out the last couple of things, and then I went down to my parents' house.

I sat and talked with my folks for a little while, and then Dad and I went up into the attic. The mess he'd recruited me to clean up was way smaller than I'd expected -- really, it took less than half an hour to clean all the spilled insulation up off the floor and put it back in the attic, and half that time was spent climbing up and down the ladder. (Er, I'm using "attic" a couple of different ways, there, aren't I? There's an unfinished room over the garage that gets used for storage; and then over that, there's the space between the ceiling and the roof that's nothing but lumber and insulation. You can probably figure out from context which one I'm referring to at any particular moment, because "room-over-the-garage" is a little too unwieldy.)

I did most of the work, but Dad helped around the edges. Which is fine, because a) like I said, it wasn't that big of a job anyway; and b) I wasn't going to let my nearly 70-year-old father climb a ladder carrying a bucket to dump spilled insulation back into the attic; and c) doing this job was the price Dad had claimed for my storing stuff in their space.

And it turned out that when he'd said "rearrange things to make room", he hadn't meant we were going to actually clean the attic/storage area. He'd just meant that the enormous ex-pingpong table they have up there had been moved away from the window so the workmen could get to the attic, and we had to put it back. Which was also not that big a job; it's just that the table is like ten feet long and it's not so much a table as it is a couple of boards loosely attached to some legs, so it can't just be pushed or it will all come crashing down (along with all the Christmas wrapping and decorations stacked on top of it). So we had to get on either end and pick the whole mess up and scoot it back over to the wall. And then re-align the legs, because they hadn't really wanted to move. Took less than five minutes, but it was not a job a single person could have done, and my mom definitely couldn't have lifted one end of the table with the arthritis in her shoulder.

So I'm glad to have helped, and as a bonus, my Christmas tree and yard reindeer have a dry, relatively spider-free place to live for the ten and a half months of the year they're not decorating my house.

Then I changed back into shorts and a t-shirt and sat talking to my parents until dinnertime, and then they invited me to stick around for pizza, and how was I going to turn that down? So I had pizza with my folks, and headed home not long after that.

***

Saturday: I paid some bills and ran some errands. The only one worth mentioning was when I went into the storage unit office to close it down: the lady behind the counter looked up the unit number, then said, "What's the name?" and I told her Matt's name, because he's the one who set it up. She looked at me and said, "Are you his mother?"

Oh, yes she did.

(To be fair... this is a college town, and school just started back up, and I am, in fact, old enough to have a kid in college who would keep his stuff in a storage unit over the summer. But still!)

We got it worked out, and she said that technically I couldn't close the account because Matt hadn't put my name on it, but the act of cleaning it out and removing the lock was sufficient to do the job anyway, so she'd make a note of it on her evening rounds and it would get closed. Which is all I wanted, really.

***

Saturday afternoon, I had a ticket to go see Jesus Christ Superstar at the community theater that's right by our house. (Really. Less than half a mile. I walked there, even in a skirt.) When I got there, I discovered my friend Caren sitting right next to me! But then we realized she'd read her tickets wrong and was in row G instead of row C. Alas. But the woman who took her place was really nice and friendly anyway, and we chatted a little before the show started. (Lookit me, bein' all social!)

The show was... well, as Caren said when we were talking afterward -- not as bad as we'd feared, not as good as we'd hoped. The guy playing Judas was really good, but their choice for Jesus was... Okay, look. Jesus should be in his 30s, and for this particular show at least, he should be world-weary and tortured. The actor they had playing him was maybe in his 20s. Maybe. And they put sparkly pink lipstick on him. Add to that his short, slightly poofy hairstyle, and he looked more like Justin Bieber than Jesus. He was a pretty decent singer (though he didn't quite bring the pathos to the music) but a mediocre actor, and... honestly, if I'd been directing, I'd have switched the actors for Jesus and Peter.

But all in all, I'm glad I went, and I'll be checking out some other plays as the season runs along. (I do need to remember that the stage is MUCH closer to the seats than the diagram on the website suggests, and to pick something a little further back next time.)

***

Saturday evening, I did something completely and astonishingly out of character for me.

I went to a meetup of board gamers. I voluntarily walked into room full of people that I had never met before. And talked to them. And played games. And joked around, and...

As if it wasn't crazy enough for me to walk into a room of strangers and swallow my fears and be social, I brought my Cards Against Humanity deck. Including the brand-new, still-in-the-cellophane second expansion. And suggested we play a hand or three. With seven strangers. At that point, we'd played a couple of other quick-spin games, but I figured... what better way to break the ice? I mean, either they'd be utterly horrified and I'd know this wasn't the group for me, or they'd love it and I'd feel more comfortable actually being, you know, me. (Or a mix. You know. Everyone's different.)

But it turned out really well! We only played three rounds, because it's a slowish game and there were a million others to try. But no one seemed actively disgusted (well, many people were actively disgusted by individual cards, but in the best kind of "oh, that's so foul it has to be the winner!" way) and everyone had fun with it.

There was a ton of food there -- stew and fruit and cookie and ice cream -- and so I ate (the stew was amazing, once I'd come down from the meeting-new-people nausea) and played... I don't remember, at least five or six different games, over about five hours. We had to vacate the clubhouse at 10, but the sponsoring guy was all about moving the party to his place and continuing. I couldn't quite bring myself to walk into a near-stranger's house at 10 at night, so I went on home at that point, but the whole thing was just amazing.

If you're not an introvert, it's probably not weird for you to just introduce yourself to people. You probably don't dump hours of energy into trying to figure out what to talk about that won't sound self-centered or potentially offensive or horribly inane. You probably don't feel like throwing up as you wonder whether people are only talking to you to be polite while wishing you'd just go away. But that's pretty much my entire social experience. If I haven't known someone for a long time -- I mean, years -- then I am pretty much always wondering if they're just tolerating me. That niggling doubt doesn't disappear until that person actively seeks out my company... and if they don't initiate contact for a while, the doubt comes back.

But my situation now is completely flopped. If I'm going to have a social life, I'm going to have to swallow the social anxiety and the nausea and get out there and meet people.

A bad first experience would have turned me off to the whole idea. So I'm relieved -- intensely relieved -- that this meetup was so good, that these people were so friendly and actively inclusive. That I wasn't an unusual person -- I wasn't the only girl, nor the oldest, nor the youngest, nor even the fattest. I fell into the middle of the group in nearly every possible classification, and that was comforting in and of itself. It not only made for a fun evening, but it will (hopefully) make it easier for me to do something like it again. Or at least, not harder.

*** 

As for Sunday... Sunday I mostly stayed home. Being social and meeting people was good and awesome and fun, but I am still an introvert, and being social is something I need to recover from, even if it's good. So I stayed in. I tried a recipe I'd been meaning to try, I read a ridiculous number of comics, I organized my closet a little, I planned some decor changes for the dining room, I  played doofy computer games, I watched Leverage. I rested and I processed.

And that was good, too.

Run Around

Crazy busy weekend.

Hung with the Hedge as usual on Friday. We had Pierce's for dinner (damn, but I should eat there more often) and played some Rock Band after the kids were in bed. (I even managed to keep my drumming scores over 85%. One of these days, I will actually figure out the timing on the effing kick pedal.)

Saturday morning, Penny helped me frost/decorate some black forest cupcakes. (I used this recipe, except instead of the glaze, Penny gave each cupcake a white icing base frost, then I piped a chocolate frosting ring around the edge, and then we filled the ring with cherry pie filling. The white base made the pie filling stand out bright and pretty.) I don't usually like cooked or processed cherries (maraschino cherries make me gag), but this was Jenn's specific request for her birthday party. What the birthday girl wants, the birthday girl gets.

So Jenn took us and the Hedge out for dinner (we decided on TGI Friday's as being family friendly, and got the Best Gay Waiter Ever) and then we went back to the Hedge and had the cupcakes (everyone said they were wonderful, and we introduced Alex and Henry to the concept of shooting whipped cream straight into your mouth from the can, which was awesome and I wish I'd had my camera ready to go) and then after the kids were in bed, the rest of us gamed until somewhere around midnight.

And then Sunday, pretty shortly after lunch, we took the kids down to Chuck-E-Cheese for Henry's birthday party.

I know it's not cool to like Chuck-E-Cheese if you're an adult, but I kind of do. I even like their pizza, which you're really not supposed to admit, but it was damned good pizza. I downloaded a coupon for extra tokens, and found out that if you bring in a recent report card, you can get extra tokens for good grades, so I dug up Penny's latest report card (5 As and a B!) and stuck that in my purse, too. The kids got big ol' handfuls of tokens to play, and there were even plenty of leftovers for Matt and I.

I donated a few of my tickets to Ripley so she could get a toy she wanted, and then I gave the rest to Alex, who didn't really grasp the whole "trade tickets for prizes" concept and was -- silly kid -- picking rides for the fun of them! (Yeah, that's sarcastic, and yet I expect if we'd prepared to leave and he'd realized his sister had gotten toys and he hadn't, there would have been trouble.)

Anyway, both kids had a great time, and they were really well behaved considering they were short on sleep, and now Alex is talking about maybe having his birthday there. (His birthday is eight months away; I'm taking it with a grain of salt for the moment.)

Anyway, both Alex and I went to bed a good half-hour or so earlier than usual last night. It was a great, fun weekend... but a tiring one.

Gamed

Friday was supposed to be a D&D game, but one of our players was recovering from surgery, so neither she nor her husband could make it. So we decided instead to introduce the girls to a sort of D&D Lite via a free module that Matt found a while back.

Not Very Scary Monsters

It's a brilliant system, to be honest, a great introduction to some of the concepts of tabletop gaming without overwhelming you with choices. There are five pre-built characters to use. Each character has a number of hit points, an armor class, a speed/move rate, one "normal" attack, and one special ability. And that's pretty much it. Each player needs only two dice: a d20 and a d6. They roll the d20 to hit. Successful attacks do 1 point of damage. (Unless their special ability changes it, or they roll a natural 20, in which case they do a d6 damage.)

That's pretty much it. It's just enough game mechanic to get them used to moving around the game grid and rolling dice to attempt things and begin to understand some of the strategies of teamwork. Because it's aimed at kids, the artwork in the module is downright adorable. ("I want to be a girl!" they insisted when we started handing out characters. Thankfully, the names and character pictures are generic enough that they could be either gender, so we assured them that no one had to play a boy.)

The math is fairly simple -- basic addition and over/under comparison -- making it perfect for our 6-to-10 age range. To avoid squabbling over who got which character, we had them draw blind. Emma drew the elf wizard and made a gasping squee noise. "I'm an elf mage! That's all I've ever wanted in my life!" Penny drew the human fighter; I was worried she'd find it a boring choice, but she promptly dove into the character and began demanding blood and death from every opponent. (She also demanded to know what the damsel in distress looked like, and while I know her motives for asking were not along the typical fighter's line of thought, it still amused the hell out of me.)

"I want to spill blood!"

 Matt ran the adventure as it was written, with Braz sitting in to play the fifth character and Adin hovering nearby to help Ripley (who didn't really need help after the first few rounds, but was tired and therefore believed she did). I dashed back and forth taking pictures and live-tweeting it from my cell.

Aah! Scary monster!

Penny's fighter was swallowed by a bulette -- there was much squealing and "ewwww!"ing, but we promised her that the best kind of gaming events were the ones that you could tell awesome stories about later. (She survived the encounter, I promise.)

They cottoned on to simple strategy more quickly than I'd expected. The adults were gritting our teeth in frustration that they would flit from monster to monster instead of concentrating on one until it was dead, but they did quickly realize that they should try to arrange themselves to make it possible for Sarah (playing the rogue) to use her special backstab power (for which she had to be positioned directly opposite a party member), and Penny eventually started positioning her character to allow her to use her charge power.

When they successfully completed the module, Matt sealed their fates: he handed out a "hero badge" to each player that he had printed out for them to keep. They were so excited, it took us nearly an hour to get them calmed down and to bed, despite it being past 10pm.

The next day, all four of them demanded another game. So Braz wrote up a quick module, and this time he ran it while I played the spare character he'd played the previous night. He hammed it up for his audience with larger-than-life gestures and appropriately silly/gross touches like having Sarah's rogue attack hit the troll in his butt. Emma busted out a Princess Bride quote early on -- not just a TPB quote, but an adapted quote. "Hit it with the axe!" We swelled with pride.

Once again, everyone got an actual, physical reward for successful completion of the game -- this time, a penny that represented a token promising a favor from the town's mayor.

The girls would have demanded a third game on Sunday, but we told them more or less immediately that it wasn't going to happen, the adults having actual things to do. But we promised them another game soon. I guess it's my turn to write and run one.

Who'd have guessed that gaming with a bunch of elementary school kids would be so much fun?!

***

I also spent part of the weekend sanding and staining our new entertainment center/bookcase. There's not much to say about that. I planned marvelously for the actual sanding and painting, and made sure we got a dropcloth, and a tarp to put over it so it could stay outside overnight while it's drying, and everything... but didn't even think about cleanup. I had to call Matt and Penny back from an errand they were running on Saturday because I had polyurethane stain all over my hands and couldn't get it off with any cleaning substance to be found in the house. Matt kindly ran to the store and got some mineral spirits and Lava soap for me, and also some disposable gloves so I wouldn't have the same problem again for the second coat. Ah-heh.

At any rate, I got the shelf sanded and put two coats of stain on it over the weekend, and though my whole body still hurts this morning, I'm looking forward to getting it into place soon! Admittedly, it doesn't look like a professional job (either the carpentry or the finishing), but neither does it look bad. (It's those little imperfections that point to a handmade item, anyway, right?) Oh, well, whatever it looks like, it's going to do the job that our old entertainment center no longer does, and then we'll be able to hang our TV on the wall and get back the chair it's currently propped on!

***

And finally, a momentous moment for us: Matt and I took our baby boosters out of our cars this weekend. Alex is now officially, full-time on the regular booster, and Penny is now officially, full-time sitting on the car seat like a big kid!

Projected

I went to bed at 9:30 last night, and Alex stayed in his room this morning, so I got a solid eight hours of sleep, plus about half an hour of dozing. I feel much better. Not quite up to snuff, yet, but definitely better.

Naturally, I'm going to blow it on gaming tonight.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to sand and stain our new shelves that Brian built so that the stain can dry overnight and we'll be able to put the shelves in place sometime on Sunday.

That's pretty much my entire plan for the weekend, which I'm hoping means that I'll get in a nap sometime, as well.

That's about it. Yay for a mostly relaxing weekend!

(CrA)^z

I'm currently editing three projects for Torquere: two novels and a novelette. One of the novels isn't due out until June and is already in the proofreader's hands and is therefore well underway. The novelette has had its first round of edits and is back in the author's hands. The other novel just hit me over the weekend... and thanks to a communications backfire, its schedule is extra-tight, so I have, essentially, one week to finish my first round of edits.

I also just got sent another novel to proofread (that's easier than editing, but still pretty time-consuming) that's on another tight-ish deadline; I've got about two weeks to get that one done.

My latest release, "Assumption of Desire", will be coming out from Torquere tomorrow. Obviously, that's complete now, but I've got some online publicity/marketing gigs to line up and execute, because that's part of my obligation as the author. (Speaking of which, if you're interested in winning a copy of the story, today is your last day to enter the contest!)

April's calendar is already nearly filled to the brim: Spring Break (including an Art Day for Penny and a day at Busch Gardens for everyone), Easter, a D&D game, Matt's and my anniversary, a kids' birthday party, two doctor's appointments, and a weekend at Diabetes Camp. And at some point after the show finishes I need to drive down to Hampton to pick up the art I bought. Plus several adult friends having birthdays. And KT and Kevin may be moving somewhere in there.

The Day Job's insanity includes a stack of paperwork that's currently twice as tall as the inbox, and an electronic "stack" nearly twice as tall as that, plus several new responsibilities that I need to remember to fold into my routines.

Plus all the usual stuff like making meals and taking the kids to school and trying to keep the house from completely falling into a slimepit. And occasionally trying to get to the gym.

Things are crazy, and are going to stay crazy for the next month, is what I'm saying.CRAY-ZEE.

On the plus side, I'm really going to appreciate the assorted vacations that are lining up for late summer and early fall.

Frogs and Paint

Good weekend, yay!

We gamed on Saturday, and it was awesome. There was grilled meat, and bags of chips and salsa, and boxes of cookies. There were obstacles to work around and party tactics to formulate. My character got to mutter the sotto voce line, "I'm working with a demon and a werewolf. Mother would be so proud," (which is very funny if you know that my character's mother is Zoya). I got to unleash my big daily power and roll 6d6 for damage. Booya! And! And! Three party members were eaten by giant frogs. Could it get any more awesome than that? No. No, I don't think it can. (...They got better.)

On Sunday, while Matt was taking a much-needed nap, I took the kids to the new Paint On Pottery shop that recently opened in Williamsburg. Alex's dinosaur is fated to look like something from the Black Lagoon, I fear, but both kids had a fantastic time and can't wait to pick up their creations next weekend.

And I made black bean soup for dinner. Now that I've figured out the proportions of the ingredients that works best for me, I could eat this soup until it starts pouring out of my ears, I swear.

And then last night, after Penny went to bed, I sat down with my latest story, did a read-through and edit, and emailed it in! Submission: accomplished!

If there was one thing detracting from the weekend... At several points in the last few days, I've been driving along and looked down the road and thought, "Wow, it looks really smoky down there. Is there a fire?" only to realize, half a beat later, that it wasn't billows of smoke I was looking at, but billows of pollen. Seriously, billowing. Like smoke. It's incredibly thick this year, and we're not even to the really prime pollen season yet, which doesn't usually hit until the first couple of weeks of April. (I'm hoping this is just an early spring, due to our mild winter, but I probably should not count on it.)

A Real Character

If I hadn't mentioned it previously, Matt has started up a 4th Edition AD&D game. He's GMing, and we're playing with Braz and Adin and my friends Jenn and Brian, who are apparently desperate enough to game that they're willing to drive all the way down from the far side of Richmond for it.

I was a little dubious about the system, but we're all new to it except Matt, so we're all dragging through the unfamiliar rules together. So far, my impression is that there's a lot to keep track of and it's oodles less realistic than the 2nd Ed I'm used to, but it's so much more well-balanced.

Anyway, we're playing in Forgotten Realms, which is where the Meadehall was set, so on a wild hair, I sort of... well... Shall we say my character has some very interesting family, back home? And then, of course, I had to write a back story for her. Because that's what I do, you know. (I swear, I should post an advertisement offering to write character stories on commission...)

But Matt really liked the story I wrote, so I thought -- hey, a lot of my readers are old Meadehallers, and this isn't really a story that belongs over on my writing site (no romance here), so I'm going to share the story with you! Here's her character description:

At first glance, Zoyanne seems quite normal. She's tall -- about 5'10" -- and thin, but not excessively so. Her skin is pale and creamy, her hair a rich auburn, her eyes an unsettling stormcloud grey. Her clothes are well-made but undecorated and utilitarian, linen and wool and leather. There is a dagger in her belt, but its immaculate sheen suggests it sees little use. The staff is more worn, but is likewise unremarkable. She speaks Common with a Cormyrian accent and is a surprisingly earnest and capable drinker: she admits to a taste for Sembian brandy, Moonshaen whiskey, and Dwarven ale, but is happy to drink whatever the house has on tap -- anything except meade.

She carries several books in her pack, each lovingly wrapped in oilskin and studded with bits of foolscap to mark significant passages. Her fingers are often inkstained, and she often spends her evenings in reading and study. Sometimes, instead, she writes letters. Some of those are bound for her hometown of Marsember, to assure anxious friends and family of her continued well-being. Others have more mysterious destinations in store, being addressed to locations all over the world, each more exotic than the last: Candletown, Kara Tur, Maztica.

Inside her tunic, wrapped in paper and felt and oilcloth, Zoyanne carries four locks of hair, each tied with a bit of colored string: several long strands of snow white; a short, curled lock of chestnut brown; a thin braid of mixed black and copper; and most curiously, a finger-length lock that must have undergone some strange mishap to turn it that shade of grass-green. She does not particularly try to keep these secret, but she doesn't go out of her way to show them off or speak of them. In fact, though she talks readily enough, she rarely actually says anything.

And here's the story:

"Mother?" The girl's voice rings out in the still silence of the hall, but the woman does not turn from the window, does not even move to indicate she has heard.

The woman's waist-length braid is as white as driven snow, her thin shoulders bowed with age and long years of being hunched over her books and experiments. Her hands are still as they rest on the windowsill, her eyes seeing something that cannot be there.

"Mother!" The girl stamps a foot, impatient with her mother's daydreaming.

Finally, the woman turns, and the grey eyes, so like the girl's, focus once more. "What is it?"

The girl holds out a book, accusation in her every movement. "What is this?"

The woman takes the book, affecting not to notice the girl's anger, and flips through a few pages. "It looks like one of your father's old journals." Involuntarily, her eyes seek the window again.

"It says." The girl pauses to take a deeper breath. "It says he was in Seng Wa, in Kara Tur, during the White Lotus slave rebellion."

"Ah." The woman knows, now, what the girl has come to say. To ask. "Yes. He was." She looks down at the journal so that she will not have to look at her daughter's face.

"That was in the spring. And I was born that winter."

"So you were."

"He's not my father." The girl's voice breaks.

"He loves you, very much."

"He's not my father!" the girl yells, angry that her mother has not denied the charge, explained away the inconsistency with some tweak of fate. She eyes her mother's midriff -- too thin, as it always has been -- with suspicion. "Are you even my mother? Or am I some foundling that you took in because you--"

"Stop." The woman holds up a hand to underscore the command, and her eyes flash. "I know you're upset, but there's no need to descend into melodrama. Of course I'm your mother."

"But not Father," sulks the girl.

"No," the woman sighs. "No, he didn't come home that time until you were nearly crawling."

"And he left here at least a year before I was born," prompts the girl.

The woman nods, watching her daughter from the corner of her eyes. She is coiled, ready to contain an explosion.

"Gods." The girl eyes the journal still in the woman's hand, as if wondering whether it might hold the answers she seeks. "Does he know?"

"He can do math as well as you. Maybe even better."

The girl rolls her eyes. "I mean, does he know who my real father is?"

"No."

"Do you even know?" She means it to be impertinent and hurtful, a lashing punishment for her mother's having kept this secret from her. She is startled to see the look of resignation that comes over her mother's face, and then horrified. "You don't know!" She backs away.

Angry now, the woman gestures, and the door slams shut of its own accord, blocking the girl's retreat. "If you will ask the questions," she says, folding her arms across her thin chest, "you will hear the answers. Sit down."

An hour later, the door opens and the girl emerges. Her eyes are red, but no longer weeping. "I'll leave in the morning," she says.

"So soon?"

"Why wait?"

The woman gestures helplessly toward the window. "Your father--"

"May be home tonight, or next month, or a year from now," the girl interrupts. Or never, she might have said, but didn't, and in that omission, her mother knows that she is forgiven. The girl's eyes linger on the window, but then her shoulders square and her mouth sets mulishly. It is in this mood, her mother reflects, that she looks most like her father.

Whatever her parentage, the girl came by her wanderlust honestly. The mother was younger than this when she embarked on her own adventure. Can she really blame her daughter for wanting the same? Especially now? She sighs and bows her head in assent. "If you need anything," she begins, but the girl is already gone.

The woman returns to the window and her vigil, but she is unsettled now, memories stirred that she had thought long since faded into dust. It is a long time since she was even a footnote amongst the machinations of the gods, but that dubious honor has crossed her threshold once more. She had not much enjoyed the implacable hand of Fate when it rested on her own shoulder, and she had hoped to spare her daughter from its weight; but it seems that is not to be the case. After a time, she leaves the window in search of her cloak, and for the first time in months, company.

What do you think? I quite like the way it turned out. There was some further information that I gave just to Matt, as the GM, but I don't think you have to know it to get the story. Heck, I don't think you really need to know the 'Hall character here to get the story, though that does rather enhance its meaning.

Obsessions

This blog is for me to meander about whatever's on my mind. Right now, that list is pretty short:

• Alex's lack of success with the no-pullup thing since last week
• Penny's general surliness
• A co-worker's very serious and sudden illness
• Boring work crap
• Assorted dorky iPad games

So now you will appreciate it as I launch into a quick review of my latest game obsessions.

Plants Vs. Zombies - An oldie but a goodie. I loved this enough to plunk down cash for both iPhone and iPad versions of this, but I'd played it through multiple times and got all but the most difficult achievements, so I thought I was pretty much done with this game... until about a month ago, when the iPhone update for it included the Zen Garden. Zen Garden is like crack cocaine, apparently; I've played the rest of the game through at least twice in the last month just to earn cash to buy plants for the garden, and hoping to get chocolate bars for the snail. (If you don't know what I'm talking about... just trust me when I say it's got me re-hooked on this game.) Well played, PopCap. Well played. Now, if you would just put it on the iPad version, I'd never stop playing.

Except to check on my Pocket Frogs. I blame this wholly on Elizabeth, who mentioned it offhand on Twitter one day. I looked it up just to see what she was talking about, and bam! hooked! How can I resist? Cute widdle fwoggies! Fun color combinations! Decorative elements! Achievements and requests! I'm about this close to signing up for an account so I can trade frogs and items with Elizabeth and Adin (likewise hooked), except that having an account allows for device synching, and I don't know what that would do to Penny's frogs on my phone. I particularly love that, even though it's built on the freemium model, there doesn't appear to be anything at all that's unavailable to non-paying customers -- you just have to wait longer to get it. And there are free, in-game ways of speeding things up, though my play is slowing down a bit now that I'm reaching the higher level stuff that takes up to two days to complete.We shall see if my patience eventually forces me to drop actual cash and, you know, support the game developer.

I'm also checking into Dragonvale a bunch of times a day. Now that I'm past the game's opening stages, it's slowed down a lot -- it's another freemium breeding/building game, but unlike Pocket Frogs, there's nothing I can do to speed things up without spending actual money. It's also mildly frustrating in that it requires an internet connection to play and is very slow to load, so I don't know how much longer it's going to last. But it's dragons, so that earns it an extra dozen or so free passes for me.

Like PvZ, I thought I was done with Kingdom Rush, too -- I'd gone so far as to put down the dollar it cost to get the premium content and play the new level. But then they released it for the iPad and it's hard to beat this game for fun art and great gameplay, so of course I'm working my way back through it again.

As I mentioned a few posts back, I recently completely finished Where's My Water -- tri-ducked all levels, found all the secret levels, tri-ducked those. There's just a few achievements left to work on, and then my interest in this will probably slip some. But that's okay, because it looks like they release fresh levels once a month or so, so I'm looking forward to the next update of this!

So overall, my hooks tend to be cute art, and gameplay that I can access from multiple directions. I like puzzle games, but I'm often weirdly bad at them (games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, which ought to be right up my alley, have both stymied me by being too hard for me to complete the free versions -- which doesn't entice me to buy the paid versions) so Where's My Water? is something of a standout on that front.

Con Report

So, MarsCon? Awesome.

Penny and Alex were not (too) whiny. I got to wear my costume with the leather corset I bought last year. I saw musical shows. I got to hang out with friends I see all too rarely, and made a couple of new friends. I bought stuff for myself and for the kids, most of it pointless and silly. (The beaded cell phone bag, though, was all but necessary. Why didn't I make that stupid skirt with pockets?) I ate junk food and stayed up late and plugged my books.

The weekend is something of a blur, but let me (try) to start at the beginning.

Friday night was Rock Band Night at the Hedge -- the usual Friday night crew, plus Elizabeth and Lorenz and Jenn and Brian. Braz put the boys to bed and told them that if we had to come up and tell them to be quiet, we would separate them. The threat worked, and though I don't think either of them went to sleep until well after 9:30, they stayed in Henry's room and were at least quiet enough we didn't hear anything over Rock Band.

After the boys were in bed, we told the girls to go upstairs to play, and I slipped in this suggestion: "You know, if you stay upstairs and don't come interrupt us, we might forget what time it is, and you'd get to stay up late." The bribe worked, and we didn't see hide nor hair nor hear a squeak from the girls until Adin realized it was time for us to do Penny's 10:00 blood sugar check.

And the adults...? Well, we rocked.

Until after Adin had to leave for work. Until after Jenn and Brian realized they had an hour and change drive home and reluctantly left. Until... until Matt realized that it was coming up on 1 in the morning and we really should get the kids home.

The next morning, we got up and ate breakfast and took showers and got dressed (more or less in that order) and eventually (near lunchish) found ourselves at MarsCon.

We found KT and Kevin right away, and Penny and Alex and Jess spent a while playing in the huge pile of Legos and getting their faces painted.

Then KT and I left the kids with Kevin and Matt and went off to a writer's workshop, where I joyfully also ran into my brother. I've wanted to do this workshop for years, but it's always conflicted with something -- other panels, childcare, etc -- that took precedence. It was a lot of fun; a closed panel where everyone present wrote the opening few sentences for a short story. The hook, in other words, and the panel judges offered up critique to help us hone our writing styles and do a better job of genuinely drawing in the reader. (One of the panelists said the very nicest thing about mine, which was "Every single sentence had something I wanted to ding you for, but somehow you made it all work." I all but squee'd. I may share it with Wednesday's post to the writing blog, if you're interested.)

While we were doing that, Matt and the kids went to a puppet show that sounded like oodles of fun, then had lunch up at the Con Suite. (MarsCon has the Best. Con Suite. EVAR..)

We took the kids to a workshop on drawing cute creatures. Alex was showing signs of needing a nap, though, so Matt took him over to Braz and Adin's (as we had arranged previously), and I left Kevin to keep an eye on Penny while I dashed up to the Con Suite for my own lunch, where I was fortunate enough to encounter Pickleman!

When the drawing workshop was done, we took the girls to the Hysterically Correct Pirate Show, at which Penny and Jess became apprentice pirates. Then we took the girls to another workshop to make little felt zombie dolls. (I may be getting things out of order. The whole day was a bit of a blur.)


In the meantime, we bumped into dozens of rarely-met friends and took lots of pictures of people in costumes. (Those links include a fantastic Chel from Portal, including a gorgeous portal gun, a collection for four different incarnations of Doctor Who, and the obligatory Slave Leia.)

We spent half an hour in a musical concert from Jonah Knight, who writes and performs... I don't want to say "filk" because I think of that as music about existing franchises, and this mostly wasn't. Let's call his stuff steampunky short stories set to music. Sometimes spooky, sometimes silly, but definitely fun. KT was obsessed with his fingering; I was fascinated by his awesomely well-worn guitar.

We went out to dinner with the Hickses, our old college friend DJ and his son, and Vicki, and that was awesome, too -- we put the three kids in a booth to themselves and the grown-ups had a grand time talking about all kinds of stuff.

Then Matt and I dropped by the house so I could change out of my costume (it was fun, but the lack of pockets and the continual need to, er, "adjust the girls", so to speak, was getting annoying) and then we split up again. He took Penny over to Braz and Adin's to hang out and go to bed, and I went back to the con to go to a panel on GLBT in speculative fiction. (Matt also went back to the con after he'd dropped Penny off. I think he went to the Coyote Run concert along with KT and Kevin.)

While I was waiting on the panel to start, one of the panelists came in and it turned out to be JM Snyder, whom I'd met back in September in Roanoke, so we sat and chatted for a while, which was awesome. The panel (more of a panel-moderated discussion, really) was fascinating, too. It was followed by another panel-moderated discussion about repopulating the planet in the event of an apocalypse -- elements to consider, things that might or might not happen, how best to ensure the survival of the species -- that was super fun. When that was done, there was a reading from four authors where it looked for a while like I was going to be the only person in the audience, but eventually the room filled up.

I ended up talking for a while with another one of the audience members who I've seen before but not spoken to, and she was really nice, so I'm looking forward to seeing her again next year. I gave her one of the free copies of "Of Sound Mind" I had with me for promotion purposes, and she promised to read it and pass it on to friends who might like it.

When that broke up, I thought about wandering down the hall in search of one of the dozens of ongoing room parties, but it was nearly 1 in the morning and I had to drive home, so I made my farewells and headed out. I figured Matt would have been home long since (he'd come to the door of the panel and waved at me at least an hour before) but when I got home, he had only arrived a few minutes earlier and had just finished bringing the kids in and tucking them into bed.

We went back the next day as well -- had lunch in the Con Suite and wandered around a little, chatting with KT and Kevin some more and making a last sweep through the dealer's room before we headed home. KT and Kevin followed later to hang out with us some more that afternoon before they went back home.

It was a super weekend, and I'm sad it's already over. Matt and the kids have today off for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but I'm stuck at work. At least it'll be quiet, since all our government customers will be closed.

We're talking about getting a room at the hotel next year -- it's great living so close to the Con, but we were getting sick of having to lug our coats and bags around all the time, and it would've been nice to have a spot to eat and rest and regroup. We're also juggling the notion of going to another con up in Richmond in April -- the writer GoH is Glen Cook, and I'd love to get my ancient and battered copy of The Black Company signed. Alas, their website is not very helpful in determining whether they have any child-friendly programming, so we're not sure whether this is something we can all go to for the weekend, or if it may be a Mom-Only Day Trip. We'll see.

Many Parentheses and Exclamation Marks

I know it's going to be a great day when my two kids have three crying jags between them before 8 am.

So there's that.

But hey! It's Friday! We're doing dinner and Rock Band tonight with the Hedge! (and Elizabeth and Lorenz!) (and Jenn and Brian!) And Jenn promised to bring her lasagna. NOM.

And tomorrow we'll be at MarsCon for most of the day, so I'm really looking forward to that! I decided this morning that I should pack my gear for the day into my Bag of Holding that Karen sent me for Christmas. Because what could be more perfect for a geek con?! Nothing, that's what. (Note to self: Sharpie my name on an inside flap, just in case.) And yes, I will be wearing the leather corset I bought last year. There may be pictures. If you ask nicely. Will I be buying other fancy goods? It's entirely possible -- I've got Christmas money to spend, after all! And Braz and Adin promised they'd take the kids for a while so Matt and I could be adult geeks. (Though looking at the programming, we may drop Alex off with them in the early afternoon, and then let Penny stay at the con until after dinner. We'll have to sort that out somehow.)

And! And! AND! Alex went all night last night without an accident! That's two nights in a row! (I'm wondering if the potty training is making him sleep a little lighter than he's usually prone to, and that's why he's been so cranky and touchy for the last couple of days. No way to tell, really. He'll figure it out eventually.)

Also, I have finally tri-ducked every single level on Where's My Water, even all the bonus levels! And all the levels (including bonus ones) on the free version! Which may seem like a lame thing to be excited about, but it's nice to find a game that I'm actually good at, after watching all my friends completely blow past me without even trying on all the other games I've enjoyed. (I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but I'm not exaggerating even a bit there. The only other game of any sort I've played and been better than any of my friends at was Minesweeper.)

So in the face of all that, what's a few hysterical crying jags over stupid stuff? (Seriously. Alex's first jag was because I made him wear a warm coat. And buttoned it for him. Truly, I must be in line for the Evil Parent Of The Year Award.)

Busy is Relative

Compared to the previous weekend, this last one was positively indolent.

Jenn and Brian came down on Friday instead of Saturday, so we took them with us over to the Hegemony for dinner and a round of Cards Against Humanity.

I'd meant to be productive Saturday, but Matt took Penny out to run some errands while Alex was napping, and I had a headache, so I went to lay down, too. I had to get up twice to answer the phone, but I crawled right back to bed and the next thing I knew, it was 5:00 and the whole afternoon was gone. So we ordered a huge order of Chinese and took it over to the Hegemony again. This time, we played Trivial Pursuit. I've always sucked at the game, but I got a fantastic selection of really ridiculously difficult questions, so eventually I gave up even really trying, and just enjoyed watching the other three jockey for the win.

Sunday made up for my indulgence Saturday, though. After I'd gotten up and done the grocery shopping, I set about clearing the kitchen of a wide assortment of items that need to be pre-prepared: I roasted five winter squash from our CSA box that have been waiting. I seeded a pomegranate. I peeled and roasted a whole bunch of root vegetables (sweet potatoes, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, and carrots). I made a batch of apple-pumpkin soup. The kitchen got cleaned not once, but a couple of times. So I felt pretty good about all that. The only things left to do on that front are another pomegranate and a batch of peanuts to be shelled and roasted.

I also took Penny out shopping to get some new "fancy" shoes to go with her Christmas dress, and I stopped by Target to pick up a new pair of jeans and a pair of leggings, and I found a couple of new shirts while I was at it. (Kudos to Penny for suffering through all my trying things on and bemoaning re-gained weight; she just sat on the floor in the dressing room with my phone and held the room while I ran back and forth getting things in various sizes.)

After our dinner of pumpkin soup and roasted vegetables, we had to drop Matt's car off at the dealership for some routine maintenance, so as long as we were all in the car anyway, we took the kids down to drive through the Newport News Park's Celebration in Lights. I was driving, so I didn't take any pictures, but Penny had her camera, and delighted in taking both videos and snapshots. (I'll be interested to see if any of them turned out at all.)

The timing worked out pretty well -- by the time we got home, we were only slightly late for Alex's bath and bedtime.

This coming weekend ramps things back up. My book club Christmas party is Friday night. Matt's D&D game is Saturday. Sunday, Matt is taking Penny to see the Nutcracker ballet, after which we'll convene at my parents' for Alex's birthday party.

Improvements

I've been mildly addicted to playing Words With Friends lately. It's essentially a smartphone/iPad equivalent of Scrabble. At any given time, I'm in the middle of games with five or six different friends. It's interesting to see variations emerge in the ways different people play, and it's fun even when I'm having my ass handed to me (as a couple of my friends do on a regular basis).

It could be better with some variations, though. For example, games with more than two players would be nice, though I suppose it's possible limiting the game to two players may be one thing that keeps the game from infringing on Scrabble's trademark.

Mostly, however, I want dictionary editing options. Braz tried to play "oxen" the other day, and the game told him it wasn't a word. Um, yes it is! I'd like to see, for example, an option to submit a word to the other player(s), possibly with a note of explanation -- if they agree it's valid, then the word can stay; otherwise, the play counts as a pass. Yes, it's a system that could be abused by the approving player, but they might want to submit words of their own at some point, so they'd have to be careful.

And it could make for theme games that ignore the usual rules: allowing the names of famous people, for example. Or permitting fictional words from your favorite sci-fi and fantasy franchises, say. (I want to watch Braz and Jeremy go toe-to-toe on a Lord of the Rings game, right now.)
 

Pros and Cons

So this past weekend was MarsCon, and it went almost insanely well.

Penny had her swimming lesson on Saturday morning, so while she and Matt went to the Y, I took Alex over to the con and got myself registered with a day pass, and I got him a badge and lanyard to wear as well, mostly just so I could put a "If lost, please call..." note on it.

We wandered around for a bit, and stopped in the Con Suite for a little snack. Alex was enchanted by the MarsCon aliens; every time he saw one, he'd spend the next ten minutes pretending to be an alien, which is to say he'd walk around stiff-legged saying "Mineh mineh mineh!" It was adorable.

Then I herded him down to the main programming room where we found a "fair" in progress, which is to say they'd set up about a dozen large tables and had a bunch of different groups showing off their stuff. One table was doing "explosive" science -- if Penny had been able to come that early, I think she'd have gotten a kick out of it -- and there was a video and Q&A going on with the CNU Quidditch team, and lots of other stuff. On one side of the room was a big area dedicated to the local Lego fan club -- they had a long buffet table covered with their creations, and then they had a round table covered with loose bricks for anyone to play with. And there was a big blanket on the floor also covered with free-for-all bricks. So Alex and I sat on the floor and played with Legos for probably a good half-hour or more.

While we were doing that, the local Humane Society chapter came in with some dogs and cats up for adoption for people to play with and pet. Alex gravitated toward the kittens, and when Matt and Penny caught up with us a bit later, Penny lost her mind over the dogs.

Then Penny sat down at one of the craft tables and made a mask -- they had dozens of plastic domino masks and all kinds of paint and glitter and ribbons and stuff to decorate them with. Some of the kids at the table were making really elaborate and beautiful things. I wish I'd thought to take a picture.

Then I took her up to the Con Suite where Matt and Alex had already headed to get lunch. We met up with KT and Kevin and Jess, and sat in the hallway to eat and talk. Just as we were finishing up, Braz sent me a text message to let me know that he and Adin were in the area shopping, and did we want them to swing by and pick up the kids? Well, sure! So I took Penny down to the dealer's room so she could pick out a toy, and by the time she'd picked something out, Braz and Adin and crew were there; we all stood around in the lobby and talked for a bit, and then handed the kids over to Braz and Adin.

And then Matt and I were on our own. At the con. It was wonderful. (Yes, Matt and I are geeky enough that being at a con together without the kids counts as a date.) We chatted with KT a bit more (she was standing in the line to get stuff signed by Jim Butcher, the con's guest of honor) and then went into the dealer's room to look at stuff. Without the kids along, we were able to actually, you know... look at stuff. Examine things without having to be interrupted every thirty seconds. I wound up getting corralled by the leather fashion lady who exclaimed that she had a couple of pieces I just had to try on... and without the kids along, hey, why not?

At one point, a friend wandered by and I said, "Hey, Greg, what do you think? Like it?" Greg said, "If I liked it any more, Matt would punch me." And then KT came over and I showed her the one I was leaning toward, and she said, "Do you still have that skirt you made back in college? It would look fantastic with that!" And well... yes, I do still have that skirt, and she was right, they would go perfectly together. So, um. I bought a corset.

A couple of things in particular make me very squee about it: the front buttons are hand-cast pewter on a steampunk theme (steampunk is the big fashion rage amongst the geek set right now) but are loose-set on screws so I can change them out with something completely different if I want, which makes the thing lots more versatile. And those buttons fasten with... hair bidgies. No, I'm not joking. And it's perfect. They're just the right size, can be color-coordinated to match the other clothes, and provide enough elasticity to keep the costume comfortable.

Now I need to plan on going to more cons, just so I can wear it.

We also tried one of the leather lady's jackets on Matt, and I must say he looked quite dashing in it. We got someone to take a picture of us together, but that was on Matt's camera, so I don't have a link to share yet.

After that, we split up so I could go to a discussion/Q&A panel on science fiction and romance, which turned out to be very interesting as well. And definitely not something I could've sat through with the kids in tow. I even talked to the panel authors a little afterward about marketing and giveaways and such.

Speaking of romance marketing, I took a bunch of leaflets for Of One Mind along with me and left a few on every flat surface where I thought people might pick them up -- on the table outside the elevator, outside the con suite, in the con suite, etc. Matt told me later that KT had told him she'd seen someone reading it and exclaiming that they thought it sounded fantastic and they were going to have to buy it! So yay for marketing, and I hope that person wasn't the only one!

After that, Matt and I went to the big Q&A session for Jim Butcher. I've only read a couple of his books (his big claim to fame is the Harry Dresden series, and while I mostly enjoyed the couple I read, I'm not that much into urban paranormal or detective stories, which is what they are) but he was a really entertaining speaker, so it was a fun panel to watch.

After that, we decided to head home. KT and Kevin and Jess came with us, and Braz and Adin brought the kids over shortly afterward, and all of us sat around and chatted, and then we got Chinese takeout for dinner and sat around talking for a while longer.

After KT and Kevin and Jess headed home and we got the kids put to bed, the plan was for us to game with Braz and Adin, but it never quite gelled. It's been a couple of months since we'd all just sat and talked, so that's what we wound up doing. Which was fine, as that was fun, too.

The next morning, Matt took Penny back over to the con for some kids' activities. (I stayed home with Alex on the theory that there really wasn't that much to draw a 3-year-old's attention, and there were chores to be done anyway.) They met back up with KT and Kevin and Jess, so they wound up staying until after 2 and having a grand time.

And then after Alex woke up from his nap, we went down to my parents' to celebrate my dad's birthday. I made two pies (key lime and peanut butter) and everyone liked both, and Dad was happy with his present. Since Matt and the kids have today off from school and work, we stayed a bit longer than usual after dinner, and I'm really glad we did -- both kids wound up in a pillow fight with my dad and my brother, and while John and the kids obviously were enjoying themselves, and Matt and Sam and Mom and I had a grand time sitting on the sidelines (mostly) and watching it, I think the real winner there, in terms of sheer enjoyment, was my dad. That pillow fight was probably the best birthday present ever. (Though I'm quite certain he slept Very Well last night, after all that.)

So we really had a fantastic weekend. The only fly in the ointment was that Matt started to develop a sore throat on Sunday, so he's at least got a case of the Con Crud, if not the strep throat that Adin was battling last week. So he's probably in for a rough day today, alas. But the weekend... the weekend was awesome.

Scum

I've started running a plot for the MeadeHall. Well, for the Scum, and not really on the actual MeadeHall, since that's pretty much defunct any more.

But this is a plot I've been making notes for in the back of my head for going on four years, now. The focus of the plot has completely changed multiple times, and the catalyst character's entire personality has been rewritten a couple of times. But from the moment I'd started planning Dusk's death, I knew it wasn't real, that he'd come back.

It's only been running a couple of days, so we're still into the opening scene. Still, I'm enjoying it immensely. My characters are all awake in my head -- WIDE awake -- and not just talking, but ranting and raving and stamping their feet all over my brain. It's distracting, but it feels good, too. I haven't had vocal occupants for a while. I can only hope this will help my writing, as well.

Weekend

So it turns out that I'm not expected to write Grandmom's eulogy; what my uncle asked and my dad initially misunderstood is that they want me to write her obituary. Which is actually a much easier task, especially since I won't have to try to read it aloud.

I kind of like the draft eulogy I wrote, though, so I might save that and post it here the day of the memorial. We'll see.

***

We had a really good weekend.

Saturday morning, I took Penny shopping for some school clothes, and also so I could find something appropriate to wear to Grandmom's memorial service. Poor Penny dragged along while I tried on about two-thirds of the black dressed J. C. Penney's had to offer, I think. (I finally gave up on dresses entirely and bought a very pretty long grey skirt and a black shirt to wear with it. I waffled for a while over whether the grey was appropriate, but they didn't have it in black and I was really running out of options.) Penny was so patient and good, I bought her a cute fluffy sequin-y skirt and some silly-bands as a reward.

Saturday evening, we met Braz and Ripley and Henry for dinner (Adin was at work, so Braz was babysitting her kids) and ate on the deck of a local Mexican place. All four kids were really well-behaved (you know, with allowances for age and personal quirks) and we had a great time. Then we went back to our place where the kids played until Adin arrived. We got all the kids laid down to rest, and then the four of us... played D&D.

Wow, was that fun.

Seriously. Wonderfully. Adin did fantastically well -- she's never gamed before, but aside from a lack of familiarity with the terminology ("What's a THAC0?") and the tools ("Which one is the twenty-sider?") you'd never have known it. She jumped right into the role-playing part of it with both feet. Pretty much literally. ("I'm going to jump out of the tree onto the goblin's back. What do I roll for that?")

Mind, we're playing old-school. Our cleric doesn't have any spells yet and my character only has 3 hit points and Adin's only has 2. I wound up unconscious after the second round of the goblin fight and I'm pretty sure Braz fudged two of every three rolls he made for the rest of the fight to keep Matt's and Adin's characters alive...

But it was still awesome, and we'd have played a lot later if Adin hadn't been up at 5am to go to work that morning. As it was, we packed it in around 11, and they carried Adin's kids off home.

Sunday was dreary and rainy all day, but after Alex's nap, we took the kids down to my parents' to talk over some logistics for the memorial and travel and such, and we all had dinner together -- I had two enormous eggplants from our CSA delivery last week, so I made a pasta bake sort of thing with them that turned out quite good.

I think my parents really appreciated getting to see the kids and their unrestrained enthusiasm and silliness after the last few days of dealing with old people and death and sadness. So I'm glad we did that. It was definitely the right thing to do.

Writer's Block

I need to make time to write.

I keep saying that, and I keep not doing it, and I don't know why. I have three or four stories that are planned out enough that I should be able to work on them. I have several more lurking in the background.

Last night should have been a perfect night for it. Matt was watching one of those shows on ESPN where they take all the leftover interviews and footage from last year's 10-minute spotlight segment and stretched it out into a repetitive hour-long special. I had less than zero interest in the thing, and it should've been easy to unplug my laptop and go upstairs to the bedroom and write for an hour or so. But I didn't. I played Portal instead. (The cake is a lie.)

I'm really, really looking forward to my Writing Retreat with KT, next weekend. If nothing else, that will help me figure out if the problem is simply distraction and willpower, or if there's some larger, deeper thing to be addressed.

Borrowed and Lent

I mentioned on Twitter that I was thinking of giving up something for Lent, this year.

"But you're not Catholic. You're not even religious." I got that from several different people.

And as far as it goes, that's true. But let's face it: I'm pretty sure most of the people celebrating Mardi Gras yesterday weren't Catholic, either. And just because I'm not religious doesn't mean I'm not spiritual. My borrowing Lent would hardly be the first time that a religion's observances and rituals have been co-opted for some other purpose.

That purpose, for me, is to try to examine some of my habits and figure out which ones are not merely unnecessary, but actively harmful. To remind myself that I can do without some things that I tend to treat as vital -- and might even be better off without them.

I considered a lot of options. Several of them were in support of my diet: junk food, or soda, or snacks after dinner, or red meat. Some of them were in support of my workday productivity: Twitter or Gmail chat or webcomics or blogs. And some of them were in support of my personal productivity: Facebook games or television or books that I've already read (as opposed to ones I'm reading for the first time).

That's a lot of options to consider. So how do I pick? How do I even narrow it down?

Well. The point is to stretch myself, to prove something to myself. Most of the things on that list are things that I already know I can do without. Intellectually, of course, I know I can do without any of them. I'm talking about that inner knowing -- if I consider cutting something out, how much does it bother me?

My strongest reaction -- by a lot -- was to the notion of dropping my Facebook games. Which kind of surprised me. I mean... stupid Facebook Flash games? But when I first thought about giving up Facebook entirely for Lent, my initial reaction was not, "But I'll miss all those status notes and links and pictures!" It was, without hyperbole, a moment of actual panic for the lost opportunities to earn pretend money with which to buy pretend stuff.

And if I'm experiencing panic over that -- however fleeting -- then maybe it's time to draw the line and remind myself that they are stupid games and that the world will not end if I fail to collect my daily "pay" or happen to miss a month's special items or even let my pretend baby animals starve. So I may still be checking Facebook from time to time and using it as a communication tool, but between now and Easter, I'm not playing any Facebook games. Not the ones I'm already embedded in, and not starting any new ones.

(I'm also giving up evening snacks. Doesn't matter how many points I have left in a day, if I haven't used them by 7pm, they're gone. But that's less of a spiritual examination and more of a horrified reaction to what I saw on the scale this morning, and it's only strictly in force until I've lost the weight I gained this week, whether that takes the whole length of Lent or not.)

Unrest

I had, actually, a really fantastic weekend.

Saturday, as I'd mentioned, I volunteered a few hours for the JDRF "Hope Floats" fundraiser at the Fresh Market. I had expected it to be somewhat hectic, which it was. I hadn't expected it to be fun, though.

One of my fellow volunteers worked for the Fresh Market; the other was the father of a diabetic. Both of them had brought their kids and friends, so there were six or so preteens hanging around the whole time I was there. They had far more energy than anyone else, but they were great kids. They begged for drinks and hot dogs, but didn't whine about being bored or having to put in this time as volunteers. They squabbled with each other over whose turn it was to get to make the floats, were more or less polite to adults, and they helped out with a will when things got busy. They were also unfailingly funny, even if sometimes unintentionally.

The dad had a sharp, sarcastic sense of humor that I enjoyed, and when Matt brought the kids up for a visit, he tried to talk Penny into some interest in an insulin pump. (No success, but I appreciate his trying.)


Though I have to say that my favorite donor was the man who walked up, dropped a check for $25 into our donations jar, then harassed the kids to make sure they put extra ice cream and plenty of root beer in his float. He was a hoot.

I was scheduled for two hours, and actually stayed for three. Surprisingly, my feet didn't give me any trouble -- they ached when I was done, but not horribly, and they were fine after I was able to sit for a while. My hips and back are still a little sore today from all the standing, though.

That night was our monthly D&D game with Jen and Brian and Braz, and that was lots of fun, too. We had tacos for dinner beforehand, and snacked on chips and salsa while we gamed. (Okay, my weigh-in this Wednesday might not be all that much fun...)

Sunday, mostly, we just sat around and relaxed. I did run a box of books out to the storage unit, and a couple of boxes of my old, too-big clothes up to the thrift store. (And learned that the thrift store is accepting childrens' things again -- they have to send them up to HQ to be tested for lead, but at least they have testing in place now! So now I can clean out the several boxes of outgrown kids' clothes from the storage unit, whoo!)

But other than that? Sat around the house on my behind and tried to imagine getting caught up on sleep.

This week will be slightly hectic -- lots of weird stuff going on at work, including an assortment of "this is going to go out soon but we won't be able to tell you exactly when until the day before" deliveries. And Matt's taking the week off from work, so I'm trying to fit in a day and a half to take off with him and help him organize the kids' junk a little. (That's not all he's doing with his vacation, but that's my top priority for the time I'm taking off.) Depending on how those last-minute deliveries fall, it currently looks like I'm taking tomorrow morning, and all day Wednesday. We'll see if it actually happens that way, but if it does, there may not be entries from me for a couple of days.

Wish me luck!