the best imitation of myself

Last Thursday was a really good day! I had a little workout, I looked smashing in my suit, I rocked my job interview. I had a tickle in my throat, but I sucked on some cough drops and powered through. I babysat for the rest of the afternoon, and then I daaaanced for a whole lot of hours with silentfire and E., and we grabbed dinner and drank a bunch, nice job, good show!

In the early hours of Friday morning, I woke up with a fever, a wet, hacking cough, and what felt like ground glass in my throat. I spent the weekend buried under blankets, staring glassy-eyed at the television and not getting called back about the job. My lymph nodes were tender to the touch and my throat was swollen, and I couldn't stop swallowing. I took the cold medication I had leftover from a couple of weeks ago, but it didn't put a dent in my fever, which held steady at or around 101 degrees. I started to sort my laundry but had to stop and lie down halfway through. Saturday night Kansas and M. brought me extra-strength acetaminophen and ice cream and four kinds of chicken soup, i.e. the only things in life that I wanted at that moment, because they are angels, and my fever broke for the first time. Sunday my chest felt tight when I breathed, like I could really feel where my lungs were, trying to inflate, and the bits of phlegm I kept painfully gagging up were, oh, I haven't double-checked my Pantone colors, but I would call it mauve. Yes. Monday morning I took myself down to the doc in the box, where they swiftly diagnosed both bronchitis AND strep and dosed me up with a ten-day course of amoxicillin. YAY DRUGS YAY.

Hooray modern medicine and forcing fluids. My fever was gone by Tuesday, and after forty-eight hours on antibiotics, spent exclusively convalescing and expectorating, I feel loads better, though I'm still super tired, I have zero appetite, and my voice is shot to hell. I'm back at work today, and I've sent a follow-up thank-you email to the prospective employers with an invisible attachment that just reads PLZ HIRE ME OH GOD PLEASE over and over and over again. Perhaps by tomorrow I will be ready for dancing again!

a. I've been in my new place for almost two months, and they haven't even made noises about kicking me out yet! I call that SUCCESS.

b. Remember that time an adorable toddler tipped a glass of water all over my laptop and it stopped working, and then through a combination of seasonal holiday mall shenanigans, the Great Icing Over of 2011, personal transportation issues, and deep denial, it was weeks before I could get to the Apple Store for an assessment, during which I spiraled deeper and deeper into isolation and depression? Well, Apple told me they would happily fix anything that ailed it for a standard flat fee that wasn't necessarily unreasonable, but WAS more than a month's rent—and therefore prohibitively expensive—thereby knocking me out of the fourth stage of grief where I'd been stalled for some time; and THEN gjstruthseeker swooped in like the most bad-ass, technologically-advanced fairy godmother EVER and surprised me with a brand-spanking-new machine. I think I teared up a little as I took it out of the box. I HAVE JUST MET YOU, I told it, AND I LOVE YOU. We're going to be so, so happy together. I hope one day to be able to return the favor a thousandfold. <333333

c. I'm totally going to learn to vid on my new boss laptop, no really, seriously, this time I mean it! I've got a bunch of tutorials to sift through, but so far they all seem to go something like,

1. Acquire source
2. Convert to editing-compatible format
3. Clip
4. Import
5. ????
6. Profit! Export

Is it me, or is there an important part of the vidding process missing, i.e. THE VIDDING. D:

d. If I ever figure out iMovie, my first vid is PROBABLY going to be an ode to methodology and police procedure on Hawaii Five-0. NO, WAIT, I MEAN—what's the opposite of an ode?

e. Hawaii Five-0: I just. I have so many feelings.

f. So last fall I made some new friends (a hilarious story for another day), and one night after hanging out and drinking all afternoon, they were like, let's go to the 3-Legged Cowboy! which is a local gay & lesbian country-western bar in Midtown, and I was like suuuuure, sounds awesome, because I had been drinking all afternoon. And it turns out I LOVE DANCING, YOU GUYS. YOU GUYS, I LOVE DANCING. I didn't know how to do any of it, either the line dances or the two-step, but they gave me the Cliffs Notes version and told me there were free lessons during the week. So I came for the lessons (it turns out that line dancing is exactly like all those hundreds of hours of choreographed aerobics I adored, only WITH BONUS DRINKING; also it's HARDER, because you have to memorize the routines, and there are like a thousand fucking routines, this shit is hardcore), and sometimes silentfire would come too, and I would stay and drink and dance the dances I knew, even though sometimes I felt horribly awkward because PEOPLE OMG, and it's hard to be a human being, but I got to talking with a couple of people, and one of them was like, heyyy do you want to join our dance troupe? Because it turns out there is an actual thing called the International Association of Gay/Lesbian Country Western Dance Clubs, and they host dance competitions; and after being assured that I really didn't need any actual prior knowledge or dancing ability, I was like, what the hell, okay! And now I have paid club dues and everything, and we're learning ballroom dances and jazz choreography, and basically I love every minute of it. Dancing! WHO KNEW.

g. Today I spent several hours in the DMV sitting in a molded plastic chair with my crossword puzzles and some podcasts, along with what seemed like half the population of metro Atlanta, including A BABY THAT CRIED FOR AN HOUR STRAIGHT. I mean, that poor kid, Jesus, but also my nerves are never going to be the same again. But now I have a Georgia driver's license! My picture is totally horrifying, I look like I'm drunk, so I figure all is right with the world.

h. It's my birthday tomorrow! In my time zone, tomorrow happened forty-five minutes ago. :D

i. What would I do without lists? I would never post again, that's what. HI, INTERNET!

GOOD NEWS: Survived my nephew's bar mitzvah and all attendant family functions!

BAD NEWS: M. and I discovered that our parents are waaaay more passive-aggressive and otherwise emotionally dysfunctional than previously believed! Not to mention emotionally manipulative, and willing to drag us into manipulating each other for them. The details are too tedious to get into, but the most bizarre part is that just giving their honest reasons for their actions would be enormously less hurtful and dramatic (also less insulting, and infinitely less mysterious) than the nervous, clumsy, utterly transparent lies they tell instead, all in the effort to avoid confrontation. They're old and unlikely to change without therapy, and they're not likely to get therapy; I would settle for having an accurate sense of how their minds work so we can anticipate and react accordingly, instead of being blindsided all the time.

GOOD NEWS: Assuming I survive their vetting process (not actually guaranteed, my credit being what it is), I have found a place to live! I'm vacillating between being genuinely excited about it, regretting the few downsides, dreading the packing-moving-unpacking process, and freaking the fuck out. All things considered, it's probably the best deal out there for me, and I'm crossing my fingers that it goes through.

BAD NEWS: On Monday the adorable toddler adorably tipped a full glass of water right across my laptop while it was open and running. Having spilled water over my keyboard on two (TWO!) separate occasions while in college, I know very well that proper protocol is to drain, unplug, and allow to dry thoroughly. All of which I did. Except that I had a bad feeling about it even as I was draining it, when I heard the optical drive grind out its start-up sound several times; and when I went to power it down, I found it had already turned itself off. Seventy-two hours of immersion in rice later, I have a sleek, white, 2006-era brick. And rice all over the floor. It might be all the electrical components that are shot; it might just be the power supply, or the on/off button; if nothing else, the hard drive itself will probably be salvageable. I've been mostly numb about it, but every once in a while I'll suddenly burst into tears. I only use it for EVERYTHING.

a. I always find alphabetical lists are easier to read through than big bunches of unorganized paragraphs. They're at least more easily skimmed, amirite?

b. Have gotten my babysitting job back, which is fortunate, since I haven't got any other jobs at the moment.

c. A. has finally served me notice of eviction, in the kindest, most passive-aggressive way possible, so I will definitely be moving into a place of my own sometime soon, probably! Or else!

d. It really slammed into me tonight how much I miss gjstruthseeker. For years I had her within arms' reach (or at least within a stone's throw), and now for years she's been halfway around the world, not even a phone call away. I adore the friends I have here, and I know I need to get better at making and keeping new ones, but I miss her so much.

e. Chanukah came so early this year (and I am in such tenuous and sporadic contact with most of the members of my family) that three of my non-Jewish friends were the first to tell me about it. I should probably put that kind of thing on my calendar. HAPPY CHANUKAH, EVERYONE (WHO CELEBRATES IT). I hope you have all seen this. :D

f. Sometimes I download episodes of television from the internet, and then I watch them! And SOMETIMES I then read massive amounts of fanfiction about it, or about other things and/or people!* One day I will again post about these phenomena.

g. Recently I revisited the Enneagram online personality test and it SPOKE to my SOUL.** Between that and internet research wrt Avoidant Personality Disorder, I have gotten a much better sense of my actual current state of mind and being than therapy ever gave me. Not that it's solved anything, but then therapy never did either.

h. AM SO DRUNK RIGHT NOW WHAT.


* Most of them I bookmark here, though I'm dreadfully behind.
** [Unhealthy] Type Four.

In no particular order:

a. HIPSTER DINOSAURS. This is my new favorite thing in the world. "I remember when this volcano was dormant. This volcano used to have integrity."

b. I have had the most amazing tension headache all day today. The muscles behind my ears are so tight and tender they feel like twin goose eggs.

c. I saw Inception the week after it was released, because I was so excited about it and the cut tags were so full of exclamation marks; I think I can sum up my feelings about it by saying I immediately went home and wrote up four thousand words in reaction to it, but I didn't actually care. I.e.: ambivalence.

d. My main fandom at the moment is Due South. I know, right? This is something like my sixth Due South personal renaissance since 2001. I've just re-watched the entire series (most episodes for the very first time!), and I'm reading (and re-reading) what feels like ALL the fic. Those guys! I have a vid idea that I want to make so badly, I can actually listen to the song on repeat and watch it in my head. Though if it's like every other vid I've ever wanted to make, it will never make it out of my head. :/

e. I don't think I've mentioned the job I've had since April, which is babysitting a (now) 17-month-old during the day while his parents are at work (and their three dogs, whom I loathe; but the kid is great). A partial list of things I have successfully taught him to date: his first word ("hi"); where his nose is; The Itsy-Bitsy Spider; The Wheels on the Bus; how to high-five; to pick things up when he drops them; to cheer for Roger Federer.

f. I'm in the middle of one crochet project and three knitting projects, with half a dozen more in the pipeline.

g. In the space of about two weeks I went from "I still don't get this podfic stuff!" to being OBSESSED with podfic—both the listening to and the recording thereof. I've already begun systematically ransacking the audiofic archive, but is there a good source of podfic meta/discussion anywhere handy? I have so many questions!

h. silentfire and I are playing late-night trivia again tonight, having taken second place three times in the past few weeks. Last week's was a thrilling come-from-behind success story, in which knowledge of—yes!—the names of all the presidents of the United States was the crucial bit of knowledge we had to call upon.

i. It's U.S. Open time! FEDERER OR BUST.

j. I'm meeting up with gjstruthseeker and her husband in Orlando in a few weeks, which should be extremely awesome; and I'm almost definitely going to North Carolina in October for the SAFF with, like, all of my female relatives, about which I am considerably more ambivalent.

k. I don't want to jinx it, but it's been a few days now, and I'm starting to believe that summer might actually be almost over. Oh god, this summer has been so wretched. And that's only taking into account the WEATHER.

l. White Collar! How is that show even REAL?!

m. This morning P. (the father of the kid I sit for) and I were discussing revenge narratives in the literary and cinematic canons, as well as in real life—specifically, ones in which the seeker of revenge is consumed and ultimately destroyed by his own obsessive quest, e.g. Moby Dick. I pointed out that we were finding it harder than expected to come up with examples because we currently celebrate and privilege that kind of story, and it more often ends in triumph than tragedy. I explained the concept of ~manpain. Any suggestions?

SOMEBODY WONDERFUL sent me a giant box full of my favorite LUSH products, oh my goodness. But all I found inside (I mean, APART from all of my favorite and most delicious-smelling things) was a short, cryptic, and utterly anonymous note, so I don't know to whom I should direct my thousand thank yous! Was it you? Was it YOU??

I know I've been utterly silent on the internet and living inside my own head again, etc., etc., I am working on that. Things about which I have not been posting include: a host of fannish meta (including—but by no means limited to!—lurking, appropriation, racism, intersectionality, the Holmes/Watson dynamic, characters of color, the broccoli test, and the state of the fandom), Avoidant Personality Disorder, the fourteen television shows I am following, doping in tennis, current issues in delicious bookmarking, human-computer interface design, and this absolutely asinine article in the Economist that pissed me off really bad three months ago. In the meantime: when you see this, post a poem. Right?

( You Can Have It by Philip Levine )

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for the paid Dreamwidth time, meinnim!! Please excuse me while I upload eighty-five icons. :D

Jonathan Coulton's Chiron Beta Prime: Greatest Christmas song ever?? You decide!

I'm in South Florida and have been since Tuesday. Yesterday was my dad's 70th birthday, so my brother and I flew down to help my mom throw him a party. We cooked and baked for three days, then we stuffed our faces, watched him open presents, cheered when he blew out candles, etc. Later, after the company had left and we'd emerged from our food comas, we ordered Chinese and watched I, Robot, like you do. I hope everyone had as lovely a day.

It is currently 69°F. I'm sitting on my parents' covered back patio, drinking coffee, listening to the waterfalls from my dad's koi ponds, filling in today's crossword puzzle, and reading Yuletide stories omfg. Later I'm going to eat wings and play board games with malelia_honu and her housemate.

And then it's right back to Yuletide.