anagram of brat

cell23: bussing home at 5... if you bus downtown when you get out i bet we could meet up like a pair of stupid lovebird teenagers.

And lo, here I am, sitting in Barts, inhaling the maddeningly delicious (and frankly, homesick-making) smell of the halal cart in front of the Amherst UU which yes, I can smell from in here, waiting for my husband just so we can go home together.

Its the silly little moments like this that make my life kinda wonderful.

It's good to be home.

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Once upon a time I would have said yes. But I find that these days I don't really mind it and am more annoyed by OMG IT WAS TOTALLY INVENTED BY HALLMARK. Really? If you believe that you probably also believe that Coke and/or Macy's invented Santa and that Hannukah was hyped up from a minor feast into a major thing so that Jewish kids could have a "Christmas." This is totally my judgey face. Sure it's over-hyped and commercialized (so is Christmas), but under the diamond ads, florists losing their shit and heart shaped boxes of chocolate what on earth is wrong with dedicating one day to love, and how can people object to that?

I realize my entire view is colored by the fact that Valentine's Day has never really been a super-romantic holiday for me. Sure, I took valentines to school (and I made them for everyone long before school ordered you to), but for me, Valentine's day was a day that Dad would often take off from work so he could come home and spend the evening with Mom and I and whomever of the siblings were around, since usually he was working 4-12am and I didn't see him much during the week. Sure, there was the ridiculous flower arrangement on the dining room table for Mom that she would audibly complain about but secretly loved, and sometimes a trip to the Godiva store for me after school (which was awesome because I got to pick out my own truffles... I'm extremely picky about them), and funny oversized cards for everyone (Dad always had a knack for picking out cards). But it sort of was beside the point. It was more... I don't know. Dad's ways of showing affection came in odd fits and starts and he only loosened up as he got older, which makes a bit of generational sense. But Valentine's Day was always the holiday when he was always no holds barred all about being with and spoiling his wife and kids. I'll honestly never forget my amusement/horror/squish when I went to the mailbox my first year of college to find Dad had sent up a box of chocolate big enough that my entire floor at Lamont had to come help me eat it. It's gotten less so since Mom died and all of us are gone, which I kinda miss. But I plan on calling him and the sibs today to wish them all a happy VD day per usual. Well, I won't wish Dad one. :) He'll get a regular Valentine's day greeting.

Also Valentine's day was really really fun at school too. There was usually some kind of hearts and cookies festival being thrown every year for the smaller kids and the high school had the Valentine's Day Assembly, which were the teachers in each department putting on skits, and it always culminated in the Media Lab's big production of the year which was us camera and computer nerds running around interviewing kids and staff about love and friendship and Valentine's day and some of the teachers answers to things were just off the frakking wall. It being UNIS it was interesting getting a bit of a not-US perspective on the whole thing, which is probably why I came away with the idea that it's more about all kinds of love rather than just the romantic type.

I guess with that sort of upbringing, it's very hard for me to be cynical about it. Sure, I audibly disdain it as much as the next devotee of the First Church of Cynical Hipster, but really? Life is hard enough as it is, and I'm totally about a day to celebrate love, be it romantic, filial or even just friendly. So no, I wouldn't get rid of it. I'd like it a little less sponsored by DeBeers and Zales maybe (not gonna happen), but the holiday itself can stay.

No, cell23 and I aren't planning anything too special other than him cooking dinner and us playing with the cat. After the craziness of last week and the past weekend, that is just about my speed. :)

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.

Interestingly enough, these are both from comics.

1. 
   
   This is a panel from Jhonen Vasquez' I Feel Sick, also known as Fisher Price® My First Comic Book™. (Well, the first one I ever actually liked.) Way back in '99 my then boss and friend Jim handed me the first issue of this (it was a 2 parter) saying "oh hey, this isn't really my style, but I think you'll really like it." Years later, it's still one of my favorite things ever.
   
   What's happening at this point is Devi (in the purple hair) has been nagged, cajoled and generally pain-in-the-assed outside by her best friend Tenna after a long period of shutting down and hiding in her apartment consumed with work (and not being able to complete it), fear/disappointment after a string of guys have all tried to kill her in some bizarre way on the first date, and what turns out to be a parasitic force living in/feeding off her head, preventing her from creating/working.
   
   Yeah, that sound ENTIRELY too familiar right now.
   
   It's funny, when I first picked up the comics a decade ago, I identified more with Tenna than with Devi. Now it just seems like I get Devi's position a lot more these days. So the task of finding and beating up the psychotic doll using my brainmeats to become real becomes obvious, eh?
   
   As a side note, I almost didn't find this image. Way back when I built a fan site for I Feel Sick, and when I was thinking up answers to this question I tore up EPEEN trying to find a backup of said site, seeing as it's been offline for years. I finally found it wedged in a folder on a folder in a folder in the wrong folder in a folder, and browsing all the panel scans made me go downstairs, yank the now falling-apart issues off the shelf and reread them. Hasn't lost any of its punch years later. Just my perspective's changed. Also made me nostalgic for the site itself. Jesus, all that work trying to accomplish an effect with tables and slices that HTML 4 and CSS could accomplish now like nothing.
   
   
   
2. 
   
   Poking around on DA, I found this fan sketch of Fucshia and Criminy from Sinfest. Their weird but sweetly adorable "girl from the wrong side of the tracks plane of reality falls in love with boy stuck in self erected fortress of solitude" story arc has been a slowly developing subplot in the comic for a while now.
   
   The surface connotation/analogy and why it is OMG RELEVANT TO MAI LYFE should be pretty damned obvious, and if it isn't you haven't been paying attention to my icons much. ;) I do have to admit I'm charmed by the less obvious parallels between their relationship and mine with cell23, not least of which being both the near simultaneous timeline and the courtship via books (though the one I gave him ages ago didn't then try to devour him and everything/one else). Needless to say, I'm shipping them super hard and hope they ultimately work out.
   

Speaking of which (and obvious connotations) the coincidental timing of this isn't lost on me. On 12/15/08, on a whim and a spirit of "fuck it all, I'm doing this" I blew off the second half of my workday to go first out to lunch, then on an ill-advised adventure with a certain young man. Quite a bit happened that afternoon, but one of the bits that stands out in my head was stopping in the side doorway of Thornes after getting ice cream and kissing cell23 for the first time after wanting to for longer than I'm willing to admit. Even though I wouldn't own up to it until later, that was pretty much the moment I lost my heart. Two years later and the pain in the ass still hasn't given it back. Which is okay, I've got his. Nyeh.

Life is so goddamn WEIRD sometimes. The day I met him back in 2004, he and chirping_monkey were a) together b) parents of a fresh baked baby girl that liked having her toes played with (and still does) c) giving me the side-eye for being Janra's stunt cunt. If someone had told me where I'd end up six years later... yeah, about that. It took a lot of hellfire, heartbreak and disaster for both of us to end up here, and I still occasionally catch myself looking at him and thinking "Wait, what? How did that happen?" Not that how matters all that much anymore.

Anyway. Two years later and we haven't killed each other yet. Here's to getting to 3, 5, 10 and forever. <3


- (The four at the end are Kidzilla's. Yep, she's started her own scroll. XD )

Guys, I think I've found my calling in life, or something, because I apparently throw bitchin parties. 'Course with the crowd of people that showed up to our house to properly usher cell23's fourth decade in last night, it's quite hard to have a bad party. Hell even the people that couldn't come but sent well-wishes via twitter (you were there in spirit, Mr. Berube!) helped, so yeah. There were also Muppets, Batman, Castlevania, and Mario Kart assisting. :) Special guest stars: cell23's now infamous Gay Bar Dance while he beat the shit out of his princess pinata (aersi helped). The terrifying pin the tail on the donkey game that oneforellis brought that looked like a donkey staring worriedly at his ass as red liquid appeared to pour out of it (it was supposed to be a target painted on, but it looked way too much like severe intestinal damage). THE MOTHERFUCKING INDIANA JONES CAKE WITH WORKING BALL. That's right you heard me. That cake was BOSS.

But yeah, you know how you know it was a good party? 2 reasons: 1) I just stumbled downstairs in search of breakfast (by the way, aersi? you're a motherfucking genius, thank you for the bagels) saw the horror my living room and kitchen are after everything... and grinned my face off. 2) The part where towards the end of the evening, cell23 (who tends to detest having a big thing made of his birthday, so yes, I threw him a party cause I'm a bitch like that ;) ) was being glomphed by all the remaining ladies present, and while cackling maniacally, declared that he should turn 30 every year.

I clearly win at everything. Including hangovers. I had quite a bit of "kool-aid" (hawaiian punch, sierra mist, tangerine vodka and slushed ice make great punch, btw) and then another_murray brought over pomegranate liqueur and i was just done for afterward. but I only have a bit of a headache this morning and that may well be because I forgot to make/get coffee. Yeah, I know.

But yeah, thanks guys. And happy birthday cell23. I love you, and I think it's safe to say so does everyone who was in attendance. :)

Lovebug is running back and forth between the bedrooms screaming/singing "WIGGLE IT... JUST A LITTLE BIT."

This is entirely my fault. I started singing this because Kidzilla has Fisher Price® My First Loose Tooth™, and pretty much both kids have taken it up as a battle cry. I feel like I should be appalled, but this is entirely too hilarious.

Anyway, we're rather expecting the Tooth Fairy tonight. Just in case I already went to help her out by getting half-dollars from the bank. By the way? nothing squees out a line of bank tellers harder than explaining exactly why you need half dollar coins. Truefax.

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No idea. If someone answering this writer's block knows, let me know? ;)

I kid. Obviously the diplomatic answer is however long you need, using whatever methods you deem necessary to cope. I've gained plenty of amusement from the so-called "bad advice" of "the best way to get over one person is to get under another" because in a lot of ways that is exactly how I deal with heartbreak, even if I know that's not exactly healthy. And yet I also know I completely fail to thrive on my own. There's a lot of stuff I sealed off and shut away from the last relationship meltdowns that I couldn't deal with until I was at least 95% sure cell23 and I were stable and he wasn't going to be freaked out by me being crazy, and there's some other stuff I probably won't unpack until I'm about, oh, 172% or more. Just how I roll, I guess.

There's a dramatic part of me that wants to say you never recover from such things, but that's not true. I say this while peering down at my belly button, or more specifically the scar bisecting it that only now, two years and change after it got there, is beginning to loosen its grip on the surrounding skin, soften, and fade. Two years though. And it'll never go away, not completely. The landscape of my abdomen is altered forever. But it's less a disfigurement and more of a badge of survival, even though getting it hurt like hell. Scars on the heart and soul are much the same, really. They heal and leave you stronger for that healing.

Incidentally? I still have staples in my intestine. Truefax. What, it's not like they could go in and pull them out like they could with the outside. But they're there, I've seen them in the VCE footage, embedded in pink tissue like bits of the Titanic plowed into the ocean floor. It's got the same kind of creepy eerieness. But yeah, stretching the metaphor until it snaps, it amuses me sometimes to imagine this strange stitches-and-staples covered, Frankenstein-like beast in my chest rather than the reasonably (or so I'm assuming/hoping) healthy actual heart patiently keeping my ass alive. 'Least it makes me smile when it's hurting.


I'm faced with an OMG DO ALL THE THINGS sort of day today since this weekend was hijacked with books and lazy. No real regrets, but today and indeed this week, I need to get stuff done. In the meantime I've blown through Naamah's Kiss and of course enjoyed it quite a bit (Jacqueline Carey is purely fluff reading, but at least it's engaging/sexy fluff reading!), but I'm going to be good and not start book two for a while. That whole needing to get shit done thing. Gods, so many irons in the fire this month! Oh well.

It occurs to me that little things make me inordinately happy. Caramel cream cheese on aersi's spice bread, listening to cell23 sing in the shower in the morning, squares of warm sunshine on an otherwise freezing kitchen floor, crawling into a pre-toasted bed at night (that electric blanket was probably one of the best presents I'd ever been given, seriously), how the inside of a not exactly new but new enough hoodie feels before it goes all balled up and felted from washing.... And then there was yesterday when I asked deliriumdeva if I could borrow her sifter so I could make pancake flour before the kids show up next weekend, and mysteriously after she runs into cell23at Target, he comes home with one for me. Eeeeeeeeee.

Well. Today and all the things within aren't going to do themselves. Behave, netmonkeys.

Congratulations again to Jon and Aura. Not that they read this or anything, but hey, considering most of my day has pretty much been all about their wedding, it needed to be said again at the end of it.

Have I mentioned I love going to weddings? How could I not, really, at their best, and I've only been to two or three... I won't say bad, but I will say drama-filled ones, you get to see two people who love each other start the rest of their lives together, and then attend a party afterward where you don't have to pay for the food and if you're really lucky you can get drunk on someone else's dime as well. What's not to like? ;) No, seriously, I think I like attending them because while they're all a means to an end (actually getting married) no two are the same and it's always fun seeing what sort of spin each couple takes on the whole idea, what traditions they follow, which ones they do not, what music they firmly tell their DJs not to play, that sort of thing. This one was a pretty traditional white dress church wedding with the standard reception afterward, and oddly enough, it's actually the first wedding I cried at since I was a kid, though I managed to hold off until the father/daughter dance. But yeah a good time was had by all, including myself, which was something of a feat as cell23's +1 at a Geoffroy wedding, though I am getting the hang of a few of chirping_monkey's cousins at least.

Moment of hilarity for the night: Aura and Jon's officiant said a blessing right before dinner was served (by the way, the Look Park Garden House? I now understand why it's so damn expensive. Swanky.), which apparently confused the hell out of the Lovebug, as right after everyone said "Amen" he exclaimed rather audibly, "but this is not church!" Oh, three year old boys. Both he and his sister were dressed up all super cute, and other than that outburst (which had me laughing hard enough to hurt my sides), were both reasonably well behaved. Also? Dancing to the B-52s while holding a giggling little boy is really REALLY fun.

You know what else is fun? Dancing with said little boy's Daddy. *blush* Gah, my facial capillaries got themselves a workout this evening. Eeek. Combination of the usual reasons and it being a super rare thing for me to actually be dancing with someone else like that - my exes might as well have been Quakers given their attitudes towards dancing, so I just never really expect to be asked anymore and I get all giggly and awkward and high school and eeeeeeeeek. *shakes head* I think that man likes me or something....

So yeah, good times. I tweeted some color commentary on it earlier, I'm sure that'll get posted later on. And now two of this fall's weddings down for cell23 and I, one to go in two weeks, then thankfully we're done with that for a while. Like I said, I love weddings, but three in two months is a wee bit much for anyone!

Packing: Everything that needs to go in a box is in a box except for computer cords (those'll go over near last) and random items I'm still using.

Furniture: bed is taken down, spiders found living in the frame summarily dispatched to dustier environs. Depending on how antsy I get in the next hour or two I may hit the kitchen table next.

Floor: vacuuming is half done - will do all of it when all my shit has exited the room.

Other cleany type things: eh. Will get to them when Cara leaves and I can break out the lysol. Also I should empty the recycling one last time, it's getting unruly.

Mental state: Tweaky about the fact that I still can't quite get things from point a to point b yet, but using the resultant antsy to get things a bit more organized for the next three days. Have the nagging feeling that I'm forgetting something in all of this, but I think that's just me being neurotic. Mostly as stuff gets broken down and consolidated and organized, I'm mostly just getting excited and also being just all kinds of ready to go go go on the rest of this. Plus in between all the aaaagh and the running around and the snags and the cleaning and the packing, there's been some really nice hang out and omg we're doing this and together wtf squeeeeeeeeeeeee time with the Manbeast. All things considered, while the leadup to it has been insanely stressful, the process of actually moving so far has been weirdly serene so far. We'll see if that keeps up when we actually have to pick up and move all the things, but eh. I've got a feeling that when all gets moving, this is going to go super quick and easy and then it'll just be unpacking and the day to day process of one not lovingly stabbing the other in their sleep.

So far so good, tl;dr.

Also I shake my fist in impotent, yet pleased rage at TJ09. A new egg release to distract my ass was not what I needed today.



Should probably stuff something snacky in my craw (eating is good), drink water (its hot and moving is thirsty work), then psyche myself into another round of Do All The Things (cause you know, I should and stuff).

This week, thankfully is shaping up much better than last.

Monday morning I drove home from PA leaving just late enough so that traffic was smooth sailing all the way back to the office. Most would balk at the four and a half hour drive; I embraced and reveled in the journey. I need to make the trip out to PA again when the leaves start turning, I imagine the Delaware Water Gap and the hills around and underneath I-287 are gorgeous in the fall.

The Tappan Zee Bridge still terrifies me. Don't ask me why, it just does.

Four hours of driving did much to mellow me out after Sunday's bit of lecture and revelation - spent the drive musing over things in my head. Still not quite done processing it all, honestly, but it should make good background headnoise as I start getting fully in gear to move.

Monday evening cell23 and I finished up season 1 of Torchwood and then the rest of the evening was getting thoroughly petted and spoiled in unabashedly adult ways, which was lovely considering I hadn't seen him all weekend and all last week I was too much of a tweakmonkey to even have him around me, which says something. No matter, lost time was duly made up for, and Tuesday night was the first night in a while I slept like a log with no dreams as commented upon to amusing effect in head58's LJ yesterday. Apparently Batman is guarding my dreams or something.

Yesterday was taking care of some grown up business in the morning followed by work, and today I think will be much the same, as I do have some AAAAGH RESPONSIBLE ADULT errands to run this morning, though I'm taking a break from the commute today, seeing as all the driving did come with the cost of seriously ouchtastic shin splints. But I had a decent workday, if a late one. Followed it up by what I realized was my last personal grocery run before the move, after which I came home and defied the hot humid evening by firing up the oven and cooking orange juice chicken and rice. The nice thing about never quite learning how not to cook for 4+ people is that I have tons of leftovers for the week even after feeding both myself and the Manbeast. Also since I got flour there was bread too. Mmmm bread.

Started up Series 3 of Doctor Who. Other than a few moments at the beginning of the first episode where I winced in sympathetic recognition over Martha Jones' squabbly and clearly very West Indian family (seriously, just change the accents around), I've rather liked the season so far. Plus seeing Leonora Crichlow from Being Human pop up in "Gridlock" was a treat.

Today, like I said, is going to be Responsible Adult type errands, plus one treat, seeing as on the list is to stop by Cinemark and pick up tickets to Scott Pilgrim vs the World this Thursday night. Seriously you guys, I haven't been this excited about a movie in forever - in fact I can't actually remember when the last time I went to a midnight premiere was. Plus I get to go with cell23, which is a rare treat seeing as it takes a lot to get him to go to a movie, let alone be actually excited about one. It better not horribly disappoint us, though all reports so far say it won't. Also the soundtrack so far is perfect; it's streaming here if anyone wants a listen. (Anyone else going, out of curiosity?) But after all that's done, home, work, cleaning and packing and cheerfully succumbing to the call of the deadly to-do list after two refreshing days of avoiding it.