kiya

Are

a) not to get covid for it
and
b) I ordered myself some new chirp wheels so I could do even more productive rearrangement to my vertebrae


Look, for once I did this post not hideously cryptically!

Summary: despite all of its efforts, KLM did not prevent KJ and me from returning home. Our luggage was less lucky.

I will try to do actual rest of trip commentary at some point but this bit needs out of my brain. Also making this one public for the sake of the dramatic whingeing.

( The whole thing. )

Pollworker: Thank you, good sir!
Me: [nods amiably]
Pollworker, doubletake: Or, uh, good lady.
Me, channeling as much South Shore heritage as I can muster: Whatevah!
Pollworker: ... you were wearing a mask is all and .... Would you like a sticker?!

I cleaned two and a half boxes of stuff out of my office and bought a lamp.


... man I can't remember why I have this icon but it's the correct one, I think.

ETA: I found the context for the icon and I am profoundly entertained by the relevant timing.

Okay so yesterday involved going to the falconry class and encountering pointy murderbirbs and then puttering around Northampton briefly before returning home and briefly hiding before being called upon to help manage the Well of Infinite Drama (otherwise known as 'the monkeys').

Today was another up-early day to run to church, where the Coming of Age kids were giving their speeches, and opened up with the hymn that was the ... basically the theme song to the religious education module that I happened to assistant-teacher those specific kids, so I have a sort of warm fuzzy about that. "Something I did somehow made an impact on those kids! Which ... well, I wasn't sure it did at the time because the 12-13 year set is, um. Well, it's hard to tell if one's making an impact...."

After the service was the church picnic which was supposed to have happened last week but was called off for different weather. KJ and I performed "Stand By Me" at the 'parishoners sign up to do a five-minute gig', I have a video (taken by FM) that I haven't done anything with yet, the tent we were under attempted to depart partway through due to wind which led to me grabbing it, slamming it back onto the ground, and proclaiming "stand by me!" before several helpful gentlemen arrived to seize the relevant poles and hold the thing in place. There was much chatting. A polite I-read-a-book Wiccan enquired about the symbolism of my hat, which ... well, she's got decent instincts there. (Also I came up with an excellent summary of the core problem of IRAB paganism chatting with her.) The kids ran around making giant soap bubbles and playing in a sprinkler on the town common and eventually we went home (and made the relevant children change into dry clothes).

After about 40 minutes downtime we packed up and all went out again to a cookout at some friends' new house, slightly complexified by a plague exposure at work but we are dealing and there was masking. ER apparently picked up heat exhaustion while running around earlier and spent much of the evening asleep on an ice pack. Seeing friends was good.

I am very tired. Also I sunburned the tip of my nose yesterday and it's remarkably distracting.

Long story short (ish):
( I am absolutely cutting this, the short version of the long story is immense. )

Anyway as you might imagine I am hiding in my room now.

( This is placed behind a cut tag for covid content, whingeing, and omphaloskepsis. )

Oh, add to that for the hilarity - that is how the week was and somewhere in the middle of that I sold the story mentioned in previous entry and you must understand that my reaction to doing this thing involved about ten minutes of shattered laughing because having that dropped into the middle of [gestures upwards and I didn't even mention all of it] was just. Just. Too much.

First of all, the Recognize Fascism author roundtable at Nerds of a Feather has gone up.

I was at virtual Boskone and finally figured out how Zoom fatigue works, wow my brain hurt so much. KJ also attended, and feels that it was not as good as the con proper but also says "There's next year" perkily, so. (Boskone is her birthday present every year.) I need to do minor repairs on my hat because my antlers are drooping and I disapprove this.

KJ has been measured for the first step of orthodonture in an attempt to make her canine teeth come in (at all). So that's going to be exciting.

My cat is intensely irritating and wishes to gnaw on my hands while I am typing, argh. Um. Other things are also intensely irritating, really, but whispercricket and I had lovely conversations about Turkish lamps, heh, as she appears to have independently developed the same mild obsession.

I feel like I had more to say once upon a time but mostly I am intensely tired and burned out so I have forgotten it all.

ETA: Oh also attempts to get a new toilet are slightly stalled on the difficulty in finding plumbers who return phone calls.

It's not that things don't happen (everything happens so much) it's that I am too worn out by things happening to comment upon the happenage. Mature wisdom also apparently resembles not posting to DW.

The last of my 2020 submissions extant has come home with its rejection note, so now we are on to the grand new world composed entirely of 2021 rejections. (This is the joke; the actuality is that 2021 has also brought me now two holds, one of which I vaguely know when I'll hear back on because it's for a CFS that's still open, for which they are making no final decisions until they have seen their entire pile.)

I am probably not having a depressive episode anymore but I am existentially exhausted nonetheless, which is not assisted by having a vague and near-perpetual case of mild to moderate nausea. (Also I am nearly out of Pepto tablets.)

I am making mild progress on another story in Rory's universe, which does not involve Rory at all (but I do know where the narrator is adjacent to bits of Rory's plotline, because that is the sort of thing I like to know). It writes well except when it just bloody well doesn't, and such is life.

The younger children are in a deeply recalcitrant phase and ER in particular seems to think that all consequences are a grand lark up until she realizes that no, she does not like what is happening and what happened to her fun game? I am looking forward to her maturing out of this.

In other excitements, my toilet, which had been erratic, and then repaired some time ago, went back to erratic and then to 'would not stop running'. It was determined that the problem was not the flappy thing (as had been the previous issue) but something in the refill loop which, when artan attempted to fiddle with it, merely got more vigorous about wanting to blow water forever. It has been shut off at the valve and I need to figure out how to buy a toilet which is simultaneously 'this should be trivial it's a fucking toilet' and 'OMG how is this so complicated?!'

I may have gotten distracted by Turkish lamps instead.

Also having the least-used toilet in the house broken is hilariously complicated so I guess I'm glad it wasn't one of the other ones, but also it does not play nicely with 'vague sense of nausea all the time'.

On the absolute up side I got to play Danny tonight and it was a session about 80% driven by Danny wanting things and going and doing them and he is a very happy feral bard who now possesses a magical fiddle, a book about fairy contract law, and a plan to trade favors for a book on truth in bardic magic. He is well pleased with his world and we have had a fine time.

ETA: oh also the US Army has failed in its most recent attempt to kill my brother; his covid test came back negative. I need to figure out who to scream at.

The world is mostly pushing me in the "crack dark humor jokes and carry on" direction, which is probably the best coping mechanism I've got. Worried about my people in DC, but there's not a damn thing I can do usefully about that, so I gesture helplessly and keep going.

Finally got the rejection for the thing I submitted in August (with apology for taking so long), and I turned it around and sent it out again. I have nine things in submission right now (eight stories, one poem) which is more than I've ever had at once, and I made a sort of resolution to average a submission a week this year. Thus far I've done five, so I'm good for January. ;P (I did three today.)

I am constantly deeply unsure what day it is, but at least today I managed to wrangle myself through an entire wake period without putting on pants. I feel that this is a reasonable ambition.

(I need to set up a wiki to start actually putting all my Fog and Brass notes somewhere other than "somewhere in the text, augh" so I have it usefully referenceable for editing and further shorts, and I will do that Real Soon Now and then probably proceed to ignore that I've done it for a month because I can't time at the best of times, which this is not.)

I finished the edit on the next Celia Lake book, though. So she can get that out to betas before release. Whee.