anagram of brat

So I mostly "wrote" this post with the Dragon Dictate app on my phone. I downloaded it at the recommendation of Ruthy, who apparently uses it for everything. Since she swears by it, I figured I'd give it a go. It'll be interesting because I speak very differently from how I write... I sense there will be a lot of editing in post. (ETA: Oh dear gods yes wow my spoken rambling makes NO sense written down, lol.)

So, what's been going on... Ferguson. *sigh* It's been really upsetting me, for reasons that should be pretty damned obvious. I don't really want to write too much about it, honestly, both because upsetting, and also because people out there and on the ground have already written, tweeted and livestreamed quite a bit about it in the past couple of weeks as everything unfolded. But yeah, it's... it's been bringing me down, so much that I can only take twitter in small doses now. It's also deeply affected Drew - the other night we had a talk about how he came to the realization I'd been kinda carrying since Trayvon Martin was killed - that if by some miracle (or if we accepted Nuke's still standing offer on paying for a vasectomy reversal) we had a kid, that one day it could be them dead in the street for little to no reason at all. Needless to say, it threw him for a loop, and he got further thrown realizing that I've lived with this constant threat all my life. It's funny, almost anyone else I'd be all *raised eyebrow* yeah, welcome to my life, have a T-shirt, it sucks. Not so much this time - I guess what I'm feeling regarding that discussion is less the usual racial schadenfreude and more of a "ohh, he actually really gets it." I mean, yes it sucks major balls carrying the knowledge of just how much the world sucks around. They're not kidding about ignorance being bliss. (And judging by some of the shit I've seen online, there are a lot of very blissful people out there.) At the same time, it's on some level a relief knowing he does think about it and understands some of it. Not going to lie, it's a nice change from several years ago and him being irritated by the very idea of privilege and how it applies to him.

In other life and adulthood suck news, lol... actually I have some reasonably good news on that front. Reasonably because money still sucks and is going to temporarily suck a bit more than usual, but the suckage will be in service to money ultimately NOT sucking in the reasonably near future. I know, that was clear as mud, and how about I say reasonably a few more times? I guess lets just say I'd been avoiding handling a particular chunk of financial stupid and it had been feeling like an anvil about to drop on my head, but I finally gathered my gonads and dealt with it this week. Again, the dealing with it is still gonna make life annoying for a little while, but at this point I will willingly take being slightly annoyed and inconvenienced over the weight I'd been dragging for the better part of two years. So go me? I guess? Ugh. After rolling around in the relief of finally getting that handled I fell into a sulk about the various little ways my life has been slowly spinning out of my control lately. In slightly less melodramatic turns, even before this week I've noticed there's been a gradual uptick in anxiety/avoidance/self-sabotaging behavior on my part this year. Well, really since about when Dad passed, but its lately gotten to the point where if it hasn't already, its gonna start marching up my pants leg to bite the inside of my ass. So I need to get a firm handle on the plates I already have spinning, safely remove a few, and then seriously sit down and start looking for therapists again. Because fuck this shit.

There has been Massive Monkeyspace Drama on Facebook this week too, which got to such a patently ridiculous level that it looped into hilarious. I'm sure modern incarnations of the purity tests we used to forward around in college have a question concerning "have you ever lost a friend in an online fight?" and I'm also sure I'm down that point as of Monday night, but honestly considering how things fell out I'm okay with that. While the actual drama itself was eyeroll-worthy at best the aftermath seems to be causing some old previous relationship scars to flare up again which just adds some delicious flavor to the mild suck soup that is my head right now. But, eh, it will pass and I will deal with it. I don't really want to get into it much further than that.

It's not been all suck either, but a lot of the not sucky things I can't put into a public post and I also have to go put the laundry in the dryer and return to the massive pile of work that still needs to get done tonight, boo. So I will just leave you with the high point of last weekend, which was cosplaying Carmen Sandiego for Bon Appetit Burlesque's "Around the World in 80 Twirls" show:



I can't remember the last time a costume made me so fucking happy. I've been a Carmen Sandiego fangirl since the game show used to air on PBS and I'd watch it with Roy Jr when he was wee tiny. Hell, I can still sing most of the theme song from memory, but that might have more to do with me also being a Rockapella fangirl. If the wig and the hat weren't so bloody hot I'd just be Carmen Sandiego all the damn time, though I am woefully incapable of pulling off national landmark level heists. I got a lot of compliments on the outfit. Desrvedly I think... I apparently can rock a red trench coat. :)

But back to life, back to reality. *sigh* *hatred*

Temperatures for the next little while are expected to stay between 60 and 70 F. There are peeper frogs out at night. The cat is going more apeshit than usual and spends hours either at the open back patio door or in the newly de-plasticked living room window. Or trying to make a break for it when we open doors. Expecting her to resume her rocket powered charge through the patio screen at any moment.

Met with Lesley Arak last night to talk wedding photography. Have some lists to make.

It's pi(e) day. I don't think I will get any tasty pie today, but it's only 10:30am, who knows what lovelies the day might bring.

I took a mental health day yesterday to rest up and deal with the brain weather, though that was quickly explained by the onset of ladytimes. Feh. Thankfully the cramp fairy has the month off, but her spot seems to be filled by the EAT EVERYTHING fairy. I tell you what, this whole having an appetite thing is awful. I just want to eat ALL THE THINGS all the time. I would appreciate a happy medium between pig out and nonconsensual fast.

I baked cheddar biscuits though. Nom nom nom.

Anyway, the brain weather seems to have settled a little bit, though I clearly still have some ex-related angries that need to be either put to bed once and for all (not likely) or cheerfully beaten back into their little boxes until later (probable). No real point to stressing myself about it until I find some way back onto my wellbutrin.

Somehow after swearing that I wouldn't freelance anymore I found myself helping one of the campus cops with his photography web site after work on Monday. Oh well. Extra money is never a bad thing.

I have a date tonight with CuteGirl - we are seeing The Artist. We'll see how I do w/r/t terrified lesbian sheep tendencies.

Still struggling with creative projects and the actual working on of them.

I have accidentally an aloe plant. One of the techs upstairs was putting this pot of aloe shoots out with a "TAKE ME HOME" so I was all what the hell, I used to be really good at growing aloes. Actually I have to get cracking on this year's gardening projects. Now that it's warming up I need to empty out and wash out last year's pots and decide what things I want to grow besides tomatoes. Also repot Spidey, he's looking a little sad.

cell23 and I are into the fourth season of Breaking Bad now. OMG this show. I can't even.

I have also broken my resolution to only have three books out from the library at a time. I met Lesley at the Jones last night and the temptation was just too great. Right now I have parts 3 & 4 out from Bujold's Sharing Knife series, Justine Larbalestier's Liar, Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest*, and Justin Cronin's The Passage out right now. Also reading Stolen continents : the Americas through Indian eyes since 1492. Occasionally I have to break up all the YA and fantasy stuff, and this book so far is pretty good. *sigh* because I really have oodles of time to read. Feh.

I feel like I need to use the time between now and PAX hermited up until I get more stuff finished, or at least until I feel like I have. Except the damn weather's all COME OUTSIDE AND SPEND TIME IN ME. I suppose I ought to enjoy these precious few days of springtime before the trees all wake up and start filling the air with their abominable itchy fornications.

* intrigued, as this series seems to have the same cover artist as the first three Kushiel books.

• While I'm glad to have an explanation for the bad crop of brain weather I've had for the past few days by way of rather dramatic UTERINESPLODE yesterday, there's always a part of me that's always viciously annoyed by how my hormones affect my mental state. I hate comforming to stereotype. Probably don't help none that I crave fried greasy chicken like hell while I'm PMSsing. Pretty much all I need is some damn birkenstocks to complete the stereotype trifecta. Growl.



• It's been a Studio Ghibli heavy weekend. Saturday night's movie with Kidzilla was My Neighbor Totoro, which Kidzilla didn't remember watching as a very small child (but nevertheless loved anyway). Yesterday we went to see The Secret World of Arietty, which we both enjoyed, probably for very different reasons, mine having more to do with taking in the lush, painterly quality of the animation and backgrounds and bursting into giggling at the commentary being whispered by extrajoker and friends, into whom we ran at the same showing. But seriously, I think it was cell23 that observed how after seeing trailers for all the current animated offerings trying to outdo each other in terms of style and cleverness and then you see one for a Miyazaki movie which instantly makes everything else look, well, amateurish. Not just that. Cartoony. Bah. Well, while I have no interest in seeing the bastardization of The Lorax, I'll probably go see the Aardman pirate movie. It looks just silly enough to appeal to me, and well. It's about pirates. I'm kinda required.



• I'm not sure what I'm doing right, but things seem to have taken a turn for the better with regard to my everyday gut complaints. Things still hurt, but not like as often or as bad, and I'm a little bemused to note my appetite seems to have rebounded, so I'm eating slightly more than normal sized portions of things again as opposed to my tiny little bites of meals I'd been confined to before. I also seem to have put on weight, but that could well be ladytime bloat, so I'm not going to put that much store by it. Really the only change I've made diet-wise is trying not to eat too much in the way of candy (the only thing I can definitely say sets things off) and just basically eating more in general. I think just having more of everything - calories, nutrients, what have you - available for self-repair is probably the key.



• We have the kids a couple extra days owing to school vacation this week. Pros are yay kids, and getting more time to hang out with them. Cons are Lil'Beast being four and actually having to deal with that. He had a DAY yesterday that made both cell23 and I want to curl up with a bottle of Mr. Jameson's finest offerings at varying points of the day, though this was contrasted with him curling up in my lap and telling me how he wasn't actually angry when he threw tantrums, just sad, and didn't know why. Also with his periods of being a little gigglemonster. Poor kid. It's rough being four. Once again I'm reminded of a passage from Peter Pan when it's remarked upon that fairies are so small they only have room for one emotion at a time. I think the same could be said for very small children.



• We're having a spate of gorgeous early-spring weather these past few days. Warm (by which I mean high forties/low fifties) and, well, that sort of not-quite cold that's fresh and clean feeling, not merely freezing. Crisp. Like an apple. It's delightful AND incredibly strange, it being not even March yet. I mean, we had a picnic on Saturday. Outside and stuff. In February. What is this madness?



• Also been doing a LOT of reading lately to the point where Goodreads says I'm on track again for my 75 book challenge. I have five books out from the library plus I finally got past the initial hurdle of the first few chapters of Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife series and subsequently demolished my way through the first couple of volumes. Nothing like as good/fun as the Vorkosigan saga, but readable nonetheless. I enjoy authors that can create believable character interactions despite or even because of their circumstances/setting, goodness knows internal character bickering have kept me reading some series long after they jumped the shark into soap opera-y dreck (*cough* Black Jewels, Kushiel Legacy *cough*). Aside from that, I'm also enjoying Laura Gilman's Paranormal Scene Investigations series and The Child Thief, Brom's cracked take on Peter Pan, though I did have to get over my initial disappointment that it wasn't a graphic novel. Somewhat less engaging was the second volume of Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths, which had way too many passages that bored me silly between the actually interesting bits. I'll probably pick up the last two volumes at some later point, but I don't quite have the give-a-fuck to push through them right now, especially as most of the conflicts set up by the first novel have pretty much been dealt with.

Wellp, that's pretty much me.

• I'm getting better. The whole forcing myself to eat until my body stops treating food with suspicion seems to be working. Balancing it with lots of fluids, which seems to help. Small snacks instead of actual meals also seems to be the right way to go, especially since my stomach still likes to be all like NO after ten bites of anything. Not exactly 3 meals a day friendly right there.
  
  Surprisingly so far what has been pretty well accepted right now is cheese. I would think it would be something that would make me feel horrible but apparently this is not my week to be dairy-sensitive. So the last few days one of my primary nibbles is chunks of hard sharp yummy. grinninfoole treated me to a small brick of Gruyere on Thursday and today at the farmers' market the lady at the Chase Hill Dairy Farm stand gave me the remainder sample chunk of her sold out Queso Veijo, so for right now at least it's an easily indulged craving.
  
  
• Speaking of which, I did indeed go out to lunch with grinninfoole on Thursday, though considering my digestive issues I opted to have chicken noodle soup instead of Bueno y Sano. I do enjoy our lunch dates, it seems to be a nice check-in/how are we doing for both of us and have some frank discussion about depression, recovery, efforts at being more social/adult/goal oriented and how all that's going for us. Other than my health issues, we both seem to be on an upswing at the same time, which is excellent.
  
  
• D&D went decently on Thursday night; after a group consensus that combat and general gameplay needed to be tightened, I think overall we all did better. Apparently putting a chart down on my combat cheat sheet listing all my dice roll values helped me a lot - a fair amount of what slows me down during game, believe it or not, is trying to figure out what 17+26-4 is. We seem to be approaching the end of our campaign, and while I like playing Mare and enjoy the band of characters we've got going, I think I'm in agreement with avalon616 here - epic tier is kinda rough and aspects of it are starting to poke me in the "this is why you never liked endgame raiding in WoW either" place. Starting to. They haven't quite gotten there yet. We'll see how we progress.
  
  
• Work is actually pretty good now that back to school rush is over and the work study minions are starting to know what they're doing. The bad part is that my layout's been accepted so now I'm on the profoundly unfun bit of website design where I have to translate pretty shit in photoshop into CSS. Eugh. And I still have Other job stuff to do so if I can find a bit of time to work on that this weekend, next week should be nice, money wise.
  
  Oh and yesterday (well actually today, but never mind) was my boss's birthday. Apparently most of a slice of red velvet cake doesn't disagree with me either, go figure. ITS does not scrimp on the baked goods, seeing as besides the red velvet there was this cake called "to die for" that looked too much like diabetes on a plate to even want to get near, but damn. Also ITS has a fair amount of Polish folks. There was a rousing chorus of "Sto Lat" as the cakes were getting cut.
  
  
• Kiddos are here, and for the most part, behaving themselves. Kidzilla's missing front tooth is ridiculously cute when she giggles:
  
  
  
  See? Oh here, since Lil'Beast decided to butt into the picture taking have a bonus.
  
  
  
  We had a nice visit this morning from their grandparents (chirping_monkey's side) who dropped off a kitchen playset for them. Lil'Beast kept coming down the stairs and serving us invisible cakes. These are the moments that keep me from eating him, I swear.
  
  Every so often I have an "AAAAH TOO FAST STOP GROWING" with them. Between Kidzilla's facial window, having to raise her bike seat this afternoon, and the fact that Lil'beast is now too big for his PJs, tricycle and almost his sandals... yeah. They've both changed so much in the two years I've been regularly part of their weekends on this end of MA. And yeah, I realize it's what kids do, lol, come on, I'm still having issues with my nephew being legal to drink and getting tattoos and macking on women cause he tall and cute. Somewhere in the back of my brain he stopped growing around 12 and his siblings and Alejandra all stopped accordingly as well, no matter what their facebook statuses say. One of those things, I guess.
  
  
• We also managed to make it out to the farmers market, as I mentioned earlier. Came home with ingredients for some ghost pepper chili (which I will not be eating, thank you) and I've been bugging cell23 for two weeks to make potato leek soup, so he got stuff for that too. Noms are afoot. And the kids got maple candy and cheese and cookies so they as usual made out like bandits. I didn't personally get too much this time around, but I'm thinking next week I'll stop by the astarte farms tent, buy up a whole big bag of their end of season tomatoes as well as any I get off Icky and Sticky in the next week or so, plus a few other bits and pieces and try my hand at making an army sized batch of tomato sauce in the crock pot.
  
  
• New eggs in the cave today! I know I know "you still play that game? lolwut?" yeah yeah shut up.
  
  
  

Yeah, that's kinda life as I know it right now. In a few hours it'll be time for me and some of the crew to head down to Northampton for burlesque, and then tomorrow I think there's apple picking happening since we didn't get to go for Kidzilla's birthday. Definitely creeping on up to Fall... cannot wait...

The fun thing about life changes for me is that I suddenly am filled with the hunger to DO ALL THE CREATIVE THINGS. Which is hilarious, because generally when my life takes a shift like that, it generally means that I have less time for creative stuff, not more. But for the little while where I have the shiny happy New Thing Energy*, I get ideas for projects and desires to do things. Granted these rarely come to any sort of fruition due to a lack of focus, but for a few weeks at least I actually want to do stuff as opposed to just feeling meh about everything.

I've got creative stuff on the burner, of course. I still have to cast The Witch off the loom, and soon because I want to start the next project and it needs to be done by Kidzilla's birthday, and that's not including her other birthday present which I've started working on as well. But on top of that I've been feeling the fever. I want to dance again, like not just go dancing, but go back to belly dance class and start really working on that again. I want to take moar pictures... and of other things besides trees, cats and kids. I'm finding I miss having someone willing to let me point a camera at them on a regular basis that's well over the age of seven, but considering the grief people have given me in the past for wanting to take their picture and my own lack of confidence in my abilities/camera, I'm kinda too self conscious to ask anyone I know about taking pictures of them (though I do seem to remember standing offers from aersi and htl_1126, which I'll have to cash in on sometime).

Oddly enough, something I've been turning over in my head is a partly overheard conversation between a few members of our company before burlesque about acceptable male body types, where it was posited that there are in fact only two that fit the criteria of "pleasing" either the skinny willowy gothboy type, or that insanely jacked cut-muscle beefcake type. See Joe Manganiello from True Blood or Chris Hemsworth from Thor. I think I know one guy that looks like the latter, but he's a dancer and is in the gym or the studio quite literally all damn day. I know maybe one person that conforms to tall willowy goth boy, but again, there was a lot of overzealous gym work to maintain that. (Being in the Air Force don't hurt none either.) Pretty much the rest of my male associates have/have had every single body type in between, though for the most part they tend to burliness of varying density. Some are widely considered beautiful, as it applies to guys anyway. Others aren't quite but have either a combination of compelling features overlaid with a cubic shitfuck of charisma. Still others still have something about them, but have alas been relegated both by outside voices and internal monologue to the ugly box. All this said, I can't think of a single person I know personally (that includes all of you reading this, by the way) that identifies as male that didn't have something I considered beautiful/aesthetically pleasing about them. A lot of you are handsomer than you realize, you know.

It was very much a concept that stuck in my head while watching the burlesque show, actually. I was on some level paying attention to the crowd reactions to the various acts and I've pretty much concluded that boobs seem to have universal appeal, no matter the size and shape. The two acts by the male guest performers, as expected, got somewhat less of a crowd reaction, considering the straight male contingent of the audience for the most part seemed awkward about expressing... appreciation? for their acts, and if they did it was for the humor of them and less for the physical attributes of the men performing. (Not that there was anything wrong there. Sirlesque ain't exactly my type, but they were pretteh.)

I don't know, I'm sure there's an argument for masculine body types/image, but it's gonna take someone far more eloquent than I to express it properly, I think. The entry got away from me a bit, honestly. At this point I kinda want to go watch The Full Monty in a fit of pique though.

I did have a greater point here, tying back to my whole CREATIVE EXPRESSION = VERY YES thing, but what I'd love to do is both find and take pictures of men. Not "models" or the type that Planet Fitness cheerfully derides as "lunkheads," just regular, real guys that still have a whole lot of a certain something that someone managed to catch on "film" or is willing to let me try. Alas, I'm quite sure the former is ridiculously hard to find, and the latter, well. I have yet to meet one of you male-identified types that wasn't also viciously camera shy, for all of the reasons poorly expressed above. Also see the part where camera = nerd repellent.

Eh, it was something twirling around my brain today, since I did promise yesterday that I'd post about it at some future point.

In other news, its cold and rainy in MA today, neither of which I'm complaining too hard about. Rainy means happy tomatoes, cold means happy Andee that doesn't mind getting glomphed at night. And the fact that it's this cold in August feels like a rare delicious treat. Also I had to nip into Target for a moment today and MY GOD IT IS BACK TO SCHOOL SEASON BAN ME FROM STAPLES NOW FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY.



* Its actually not entirely unlike New Relationship Energy actually - the spillover effect is much the same.

Having a brain day of indeterminate weather, and dealing with it by working my way slowly around the house in terms of attacks with broom, scrub brush and if warrented, chemical concoctions. I rather like the sort of grumpy that inspires house cleaning - while it doesn't help with whatever's annoying/worrying/angering/upsetting me at least I have a reasonably clean living space by the time I'm done.

Other than a bell concert Sunday morning (which doesn't really count as it's happening before the threshold of Actual Awakeness) I seem to have a commitment free weekend coming up. I've kind of resolved to spend it in much neglected creative pursuits, such as finishing the bead project I started this time LAST year (sigh - I got 90% of it done in 2 weeks, the last 10%... fuck me) and some personal web stuff I've been avoiding. I also want to spend a little money on something sweet and strong and spend one of those evenings purposefully scrambling my neurons. I feel like the time to do that is long overdue.

So yeah, those are my goals/rewards for the week. I just have to get through the rest of it more or less in one piece and get what needs doing done in the meantime.

In random observation news, I think if someone had sat me down and flat out told me that omelette = essentially egg crepe, I might have figured out the trick to making them a lot faster.

~~

Wellp, back to cleaning. Can't say it isn't the season for it.

Had an interesting twist on the old dream where you show up to a final exam to a class you never went to, in that I was preparing for a trip overseas that was happening in a few days and only just realized I never got my passport. The part where it got weird is as I tearing about The House frantic about this my mother (who often shows up in these dreams alive and well) calmly told me to stop freaking out and go look in the freezer with the rest of the Important Papers. Right, okay. Not sure what all my subconscious was trying to impart to me there, but felt it was just off the wall weird enough to note for posterity.

I've never had a passport, incidentally. I should fix this. I'd like to GTFO of the US for a while someday. Still unsure as to where I'd go, but it'd be nice to go somewhere.


I have solved the mystery of why I fell out of the habit of getting up at the ass crack of dawn, seeing as I have started doing it again. Hungry cats. Lily has figured out that the quickest way to wake up her humans is to kick my glasses off my nightstand, the sound of them falling to the floor instantly rouses me. Dick. Also the soporific effects of warm glomphy bedtime companion do nothing for my early rising abilities, especially as he routinely fails to get out of bed until fifteen minutes before he has to be at work. But yeah, apparently kitty needing foodins is a far more effective alarm clock than anything else I've tried. We'll go with that.

I started watching Community with the boy last night finally. Two eps in and it is cute, snarky fun, not to mention another opportunity to ogle Joel McHale. I can't get over how old Chevy Chase is. My mental picture of him is from Christmas Vacation, what the hell happened? Oh, yeah, 20 years, right. I'm still a little O_o about that, honestly, that it's been almost two decades since a whole lot of random pop culture and music I remember loving/watching/listening to. And then I remember I was a kid 20 years ago. And then the whole "20 years ago" thing hits me and my brain just kinda melts a little around the edges. I'm not sure how/when I got old enough to say "20 years ago" and have that refer to an actual period of sentience in my life. What. Just bring me the Geritol and Dentugrip now.


Today is Stan's birthday. Also today is when Dad gets out of rehab and goes home with Ruth thereby to terrorize her for a couple months while we all finish tending to The House. Looks like phone calls will make up a significant portion of my day.

I've been all thinky this week. Some good. A lot bad, honestly. Mostly neutral. And deeply thankful for the handful of things in my life that are going very very right and keep me going through the rest of it. One of which is STILL ignoring his alarm clock and snoring behind me, lol. I should go kiss him before he lumbers out of bed.

As I dragged my still sore carcass out of bed for the second time this morning (I was briefly up at 5am having myself a merry little crohn's attack) it occurred to me that maybe the way to stay sane is just to remain constantly nigh unto soul crushingly busy. This week has just been go go go from the second I got here and between the hoofing it around the city, work, and various bits of family errandry I haven't really had the time or energy to mope, feel sorry for myself, or generally feel like a useless lump of crazy - it's just DO ALL THE THINGS from the second I wake up until I pitch into bed wiped out. This is also to a certain extent true of kid weekends, since they need constant running around after and crisis management. Again, no time to really get lost up in my own head.

Now granted I can only sustain this kind of pace for so long - I fully expect that I will spend the vast majority of the five hour trip home on the bus dead asleep, not to mention much of Friday and Saturday. But it's something to think about in terms of taking a lesson learned down here and trying to figure out how to apply it up there. The first thing is to figure out how to motivate myself to just keep going with all the things that need doing at home, cause here most of my to-do list is other people generated and I tend to do a lot better with staying on task if the impetus comes from something outside of myself. So there's that.

Anyway, I kinda slept late this morning so I have to do some super extra hustling this morning. Later, nerds. Keep Kidzilla's dragons from dying while I'm off, k?

I finished reading Seed to Harvest last night, which is the new omnibus edition of the Patternmaster series. I randomly ran across it in the library on my last trip down and thought what the hell, it's been long enough since I read these, and I need a break from the Giant Brick of Amber.

I've always loved Wild Seed. I still have my copy downstairs, signed by Ms. Butler herself in 2004 when she came to Smith to give a guest lecture on writing science fiction. I'm normally pretty meh about meeting famous people, but I remember going up to ask for her autograph that year and nearly peeing myself with frightened fangirl excitement. I think I blurted out not was she my hero, but that she was the second author ever to give me nightmares. (It's true. Kindred, which incidentally I can't find my ancient-ass copy of *RAGE* still scares the ever living crap out of me whenever I reread it.) She laughed. :)

I digress though. I loved the first half of the series (Wild Seed/Mind of my Mind) the first time around. I was less enthused about Clay's Ark and Patternmaster, I think because I couldn't relate to them the same way. They were both much better this go 'round. I probably had to grow up a bit more to appreciate them properly.

I was trying to explain to cell23 last night why I liked her writing so much, and I think my main argument was that her books are not comfortable reads. They are never happy fluffy tales of sunshine and roses; generally her main characters start at fucked and end up in oh shit!superfucked and what makes the story interesting is how they deal with their circumstances, either by fighting or accepting them. I can't think of a single story of hers that has a true happy ending beyond the protagonists finding some kind of inner peace, or victory or something, though the victories are often pyhrric. The other thing is when she writes about aliens interacting with humans (and a lot of her books do indeed deal with that) the aliens are ALIEN. They don't think like us, they are not driven by the same motivations, they are pretty much rational, talking monsters with their own agendas, and many of her novels end up exploring how humanity changes, adapts or stuggles to stay the same in the face of that. All pretty awesome things, I think.

I'm still upset that she died when she did. Aside from the weird irrational grief that happens when your idols die, it always felt like Fledgling was the start of something rather than a stand-alone story, and I was interested in seeing what further spins she'd put on the vampire genre. Of course, maybe that's a blessing in disguise, considering the ascension of the Sparklevampire.

Anyway. I'm still going through Amber, but I have also picked up Parable of the Sower to reread. It's another one I didn't particularly care for the first time around, I'm gonna see if my opinion has changed in the interim. And I need to make a mental note to pick up copies of the Xenogenesis series, which I don't have. Probably not the Lilith's Brood edition, as I liked having them in separate books. A perverse part of me wants to see if I can get my hands on the first editions of them with the horrible 1980s! Science! Fiction! typesetting and that insanely WTF cover for Dawn. Because there are so many white women with Farrah Fawcett hair named Lilith Iyapo. *giggle* Man. I would have loved to ask Ms. Butler what she thought of that after I read it. Alas I didn't get to that series until after she'd died. Oh, whitewashing.

But yeah... Butler's novels make me uncomfortable in another way that has nothing to do with her style or her stories. I get the same feeling of discomfort when I read Nalo Hopkinton or Tananarive Due, just this sense of "There aren't enough of us out there. Join Us. Write something. You can you know, you're just lazy." Seriously, it's sorta like Luke being constantly hounded by the blue ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi whenever he feels like whining about his life. Except I'm being haunted by the blue ghosts of black female science fiction/fantasy writers. No mean feat considering only one of the ones I've mentioned is actually dead, and the other two are on my twitter feed. Between that and Stanley basically telling me for the umpteenth time to get up off my proverbial ass and write stuff other than my constant "this is my life" drivel... yeah about that.



In other news, oh hey what's up snow. Also: Love me, love me, say that you love me.


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