anagram of brat

I really enjoyed my afternoon of pizza, wings and football yesterday afternoon/evening over at the McGurks. We hadn't seen them in a bit, it was shitty outside and the mild bug I'd had last week seems to have moved into my chest to morph into a lovely cough with laryngitis (I sound like a phone sex operator with a 30 year Newport habit right now), plus I had plans to yarn up my head so pretty much the choice was plop on my own couch and watch hours of TV by myself or plop on someone else's couch, eat yummies and watch football with good friends. Yeah, hmm lemme think about that, lol.

( blah blah blah sportsballs )

Today I'm spending a quiet Martin Luther King day at home finishing up my hair, cudding cats, nursing my still-shot voice and reflecting on the past year in conjunction with King's legacy. We ain't at the promised land yet, y'all, Much work still needs to be done. I took about half an hour to reread "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" this morning; I invite everyone to do the same. It is quite resonant in the dust of the last year's events, and it's important to really sit down and read King's words as they were written/said and not the easily digested and oft regurgitated soundbites we are spoon fed every January.


*Interestingly, the Pats are the only MA-local team I've adopted as a New York transplant, which is funny because aside from the Cowboys and the fucking R*****ns they seem to be the most hated team in the league. Still here for the Nets, Mets and Rangers tho. I bear the Celtics and the Bruins no ill will but if anything, living in MA has soured me even more on the Red Sox because my GOD their fans. >_< Big Papi could get it, though.

I got the usual amount of antsy after finishing up the Seuss library a few weeks back so I started a big castle build a ways north of the Library.

( cut to spare the UGGGH MINECRAFT types. Also picture heavy. )

[Error: unknown template qotd]I've got a fair bit of West Indian in me, so of course I love dancing. :) I don't remember concretely the last time I danced for real (bopping in my desk chair at work doesn't count) but it was probably to amuse the kids or something. Last time I went out dancing was to the local goth night a few months back - I need to do that again soon.

[Error: unknown template qotd]Its kind of a good thing I don't have very much disposable income, otherwise I'd be drowning in American Girl dolls and Hess trucks.

I think if I had to take away anything from this past holiday season, it's that children think I'm awesome. I'm not saying this to toot my own horn or anything, I'm mostly putting it here for posterity because it's something I forget, and indeed something I thought I'd lost in the nearly two decades since I went away to college. Several things have happened over this past Christmas that have assured me that this is not the case, aside from the constant affirmation of this from Kidzilla and Wee Beastie.

When I went down to see the fam a few weeks back, Nuke thought it would be a grand idea for us all to write letters to each other and had us read them out loud after dinner. Most of us groaned over the exercise and it being my family, a good portion of the letters were loving snarks, but it turned out to be really touching and many of us got to say things to each other that we don't normally. And I think all of us were moved by the letters we got from the younger folk in the family. I got one from Spring this year, and when she read it to me, even though she was doing it in a funny voice... well, here:

Dear Andee,

I apologize for my handwriting, I'm sitting on a train.

So when I found out I got you for my letter, I smiled. There's so much I want to say to you. First, I hope you realize that you made my childhood so perfectly awesome. I remember being young and getting to 47 and the first thing I'd do was race Roy up the stairs to get to your room. You were always so much fun! You had so much patience with me and always hung out with us. It was awesome.

It's amazing that we're all so much older now. Which brings me to my next point. You are by far the best mom in the world and I envy those little critters. Now don't get me wrong, my mom is a serious slice of perfection pie. But I know that you're a mom like no other as well. I'm so pumped because I know your kids will have a childhood full of so much magic, laughter and most importantly, culture. I am so excited to see the awesome people they grow up to be just so you know how great you really are. If I could, I'd send all children to live with you because I know your atmosphere is where children's dreams go to take flight!

So to end my letter, I want to wish you a merry Christmas. I wish you and the family a beautiful New Year. And lastly I thank you. I thank you for all of the love you have given me and I thank you for being you.

Love,

Spring

Yeah, I nearly cried. Hell, just transcribing it I'm choking up a little bit. One of the things I constantly feel guilty about w/r/t my family is that even though I desperately needed the distance I put between myself and them in college and most of my 20s, it did also mean that I wasn't there nearly enough for my niblings. Considering Dakota was born my freshman year, I feel like I pretty much missed him entirely, and Gabe... ehh, not so much either, though the last few times we've gotten together have been good times, and he's still only 13 so it's not too late there. But I don't know, hearing that I did have a loving positive impact on Spring... It means a lot. I remember I was hitting the road back to MA that night and I was sitting in traffic on the BQE and realizing with horror that I'd left Spring's letter behind, so I called Ruthy to ask her to drop it in the mail for me.

I discount the near constant assurances from Drew that I'm doing right by his short stacks, but I really shouldn't. Between the Thanksgiving trip to New York and their damned awesome Christmas if I do say so myself... I don't know. Even above and beyond that, I think all three of them recognize I'm trying my best with what little time I have with them, rewarded in tight squeezes, still slightly slobbery kisses and Kidzilla telling me I'm awesome. It does make the groaning, stubbornness and Wee Beastie insisting that I must hate him whenever I enforce rules worth it, lol.

Other little stuff that's underscored this to me were interactions with various not-my-kiddos over new years. I finally met coureton and stormslegacy's baby New Years Eve and again on New Years Day when they surprise showed up for Storytime. My own babycrazy and angst aside, I did spend a fair amount of time specifically doing silly things at him just to get him to burble and grin at me. Which he did. A lot. And inle_rah brought her family with her to Storytime as well, which included a toddler (who immediately lit up when we pulled out the bendy racetrack and light-up cars Beastie got for Christmas) and a newly minted teenager into Everything Nerdy who declared me awesome upon learning that I'm into Foxtrot, Calvin and Hobbes, RPGs, videogames and Minecraft. I let him tool around the world I've been building and I think some of my structures about blew his mind. So yeah... that was pretty great as well.

I angst a lot about not having my own spawn, and I'll probably continue to do so on some level, but it's really really REALLY good to know that I did do and am doing right by the kids associated with me and mine. Atmosphere of dreams and magic indeed.

[Error: unknown template qotd]Installments, definitely. I'd also try to get away with telling as few people as possible, because no one needs to know how much money I have, really. Next I'd pay off all my debts, both personal and credit-score affecting. I'd get a good sturdy tank of a new car, set up trusts for my stepkids and niblings, give a chunk of it to various charities, anonymously fund some gofundme type things, and put the rest of it to work for me via investments so me and mine can be comfortable in perpetuity.

Christmas has sailed on by, and it was all good. Between the whirlwind day trip down last Saturday to gather around the table at the House with the family, yankee swap up some gifts, and just all be together at home for a day, the bell performaces the day after and on Christmas eve (which mostly went without a hitch, and the big stuff came out pretty perfect) and then Christmas Day first at the Chiassons for Christmas Lasagna, then at aersi and verbena76's for fuck-it-I'm-making-a-Christmas-Ham, and lastly with two short people descending on their piles of gifts like starving crazed weasels after an afternoon at their great-grandparents... yeah it was pretty awesome. Those kids made out like absolute bandits this year - if they were the sort of kids that believed in Santa, I'd have made up some silliness about how his sleigh ran smack into a Nintendo truck. Hooray for a Christmas when Andee and Dad have actual money to spend on it, I suppose, lol.

But yeah IDK, I've had such good holidayish things this month with friends and family. I think I needed a little more Christmas than usual this year to offset health stupid and The-Wider-World-Continues-To-Be-Awful-If-You're-Black shit going on this month. :P I'd been thinking about why I get so into the holidays a lot lately because it seems like the very sort of thing I should disdain, but I don't. I think a lot of it is just handed down from Dad, he loved Christmas so damn much. Like, he'd start planning and shopping in July for it level loved it. So some of it is definitely a little bit of that. Another big chunk of it I think was summed up in this recent Cracked article and echoed in the latest Doctor Who special about how every Christmas is kinda the last one. Not to be dark about it, but... yeah.

Anyway - Two last stops on the Holiday train for me - Wednesday esoteric_scribe is hosting a new years eve gathering, and then Thursday I'm throwing a New Years Day movie marathon. NOT Lord of the Rings. Gods. I have survived a New Years Day of Extended Editions once, that's all anyone needs lol. Instead I present 80s fantasy movies! Ladyhawke! Labyrinth! Legend! Neverending Story! The Princess Bride! So some massive housecleaning is in order for the next couple days lol. And then a long dark, cold January after that. Hooray? :P


Healthwise I'm doing reasonably okay. Still on steroids, but tapering down one little pill per week so New Years Eve I get to go down to three. Considering I started with six... yeah. Survived endoscopy prep (it was somehow not as bad this time around), swallowed a camera, and had the film come back... nothing stupid horrible is going on, just a lot of Crohnsy inflammation, according to my GI, so once I taper completely off the prednisone, I have to go back on Humira. Bleh. Meantime eating actual food is still a revelation, though I have to get on top of the extreme munchies if I want to stay in the nice new winter pants I bought myself last month, and a newfound obsession with Gardetto's Special Request rye chips is not helping lol but OMG they are so good. Essentially, you know the random bread chips they have in bags of Chex Mix and how they're the best things in the bag and oh yeah, they're only like five of them in the bag? yeah these are an ENTIRE BAG of just those and they are DELICIOUS. I curse my husband for finding those, lol.


And now for something completely different: if you haven't seen Into the Woods yet, dear fates. "Agony" just by itself is worth the price of admission and I'm still thinking about it and giggling maniacally. But the rest of it was breathtaking, the cuts were understandable (and not much missed) and overall it was just fan-fucking-tastic. I also can't say enough good things about the two kids that played Little Red and Jack, they nailed it. Want to see it, like 9 more times just so I can get that orchestration through theater speakers again.

Finished up that build of the Geisel Library in MCPE today. Jeez, only took, what, a month?

EDIT: wellp that didn't work. Click the picture to see the whole album.

Ugggggh this week.

( TL:DR : went to the ER on Tuesday night, hijinks ensued, was released )

So about that whole taking better care of myself thing... ~_~

Things I need to post about:

The New York Trip
The state of the world, racism, and how depressing it is
A longish essay on some hard realities of being a black stepparent to white children, especially with all this going on
Christmas anxieties and how somehow actually being able to afford some damn gifts is just as hard as trying to get some on a shoestring.
General headnoise, worries, etc.
One year since Dad passed. His birthday was Friday.
SQWRRL and actually working on it again
Other craft projects in the pipe.
Burlesquey stuff.

I really need to get back into the habit of posting every night. Even when there's nothing to write about, really. Then I wouldn't have weeks where everything happens at once and it goes unrecorded.