My heart bleeded, girl

Nic's parents are in town for Sebastian's birthday. They came yesterday and are leaving tomorrow. They're so weird.

Erin's flight from San Antonio - where Nic's parents live, coincidentally - to Detroit last night was delayed, so she rented a car and drove home from Detroit. She got home at 3am.

Which means they are all discombobulated over there, so they're coming over here, which is actually nice. I blame Nic's parents for the fact that he is a raging, narcissistic asshole, but maybe that's not fair of me. :) I guess I can make them dinner.

Erin and Ashley's best friend from high school - well, since 6th grade - got married in October. It was a very small wedding, and the reception/party is tonight in Pgh. Erin was the matron of honor and Ashley was invited, although I wasn't. (Nic tried to get me to go in his place because he doesn't like Meredith.)

It's no coincidence that Nic's parents are here for Seba's first birthday on the night of Merri's party. He worked very hard to make that happen. I hope he realizes that I'm paying attention, that Ashley and Larry are watching, that even Adam is watching from Japan. I hope he realizes that he's not getting away with anything, but he probably doesn't. I don't think anything penetrates the miasma of self-importance and self-centeredness he surrounds himself with.

Dramatic much?! I just - ugh.

I dropped my ancient iPad and the screen is a spiderweb of cracks, although it still works - kind of. My phone contract was up, so I got an iPhone 6+ to replace both my phone and my poor iPad. It's awesome, but the AT&T transfer app not so much. All my texts, contacts added, and pictures from 2014 are gone. From both phones. Everything from 2012 and 2013 is there, but not 2014. So beware of the transfer app, if you have an AT&T contract and you get a new phone.

Sebastian has once more gifted me with daycare germs. I thought I was building up an immunity.

( Sebastian on New Year's Eve )

Okay, wow, the past couple of days have been looooong.

( And this got really long )

I woke up to AO3 kudos on 19 popslash stories this morning, including the Lambs Epic, which is over 80,000 words long. It was lovely, really, and someone must be a speedreader.

We had a buyer lined up for our house in Pittsburgh - the first written offer in 9 months - but the inspection was over 50 pages of dumb shit and they freaked out and terminated the contract. Seriously, the guy applied current code to old construction, which you're not supposed to do. There were things like "too much space between the spindles on the stairway bannister, needs more spindles," "the railing on the deck is horizontal and it should be vertical, otherwise it can be used as a ladder," "the front step is several inches too high" - it's been that way for 75 years!!! There was a lot more of that kind of stuff, along with "there are leaves in the gutter" and "it takes too long for the water in the kitchen sink to get hot." Well, yes, it does. That's age, gravity, and distance. Again, 75 years.

Here's the thing - if you can't deal with buying an old house, then don't go looking at old houses.

So, we have a few legit things to fix, and then I'm going to change the carpet in the living room to make it lighter, and we'll see if anyone wants it. People don't like it because it's dark. I'll admit it is - after we moved I ended up with at least a dozen extra lamps, because I had one in every corner in Pgh. But I liked it like that, although I do understand that not everyone likes dark and cozy. It is the house of my soul, it's in my bones, and it makes me sad to have it go unloved.

Larry is dealing with it extremely well, after bitching all summer about how long it's been taking. We would very much like to be out from under it and didn't expect it to take this long to sell, but someday someone will want it.

Right?

I spent early November moving my stepdad to an independent living facility. Lois and I went down to TN after his gall bladder exploded and I told him it was time. He was very amenable to that, surprisingly. I think he's gotten very lonely the past few years. So I found a place in Columbus, my brother found a place in Atlanta, and my stepsister found a place in Valdosta. Then we made him choose.

He chose Atlanta, which I was both happy and sad about. Then after four days of helping him pack, I was just mostly happy. I have no idea how my mother let him live.

He's pretty happy now, though, so I am, too, and my brother and sister-in-law live close by. I'm planning a trip in January to go see him in his new place. We're going to deal with his house in TN and all the stuff he left there in February.

I also went to Philly to visit my stepmom in her independent living place. It's close to my stepsister and it's quite lovely. My stepmom, who is 93, swims three mornings a week, goes to the gym the other mornings and is up to 30 minutes on the recumbent stair-climber, and when she was showing me around the facility, insisted we take the stairs instead of the elevator. She walks to the grocery store, meets her friends at the pub for drinks every day, and is having the time of her life.

Clearly the key to life is to keep moving.

Which seques nicely into Thanksgiving, when for the first time in I don't know how many years, nobody did any Turkey Trots. It was just Ashley, Larry and I, and we sat around all day, then around 5 decided we should make dinner - we had Cornish hens - and it was the most relaxing Thanksgiving I've ever had.

Sebastian continues to be the cutest baby ever.

I loved SPN's 200th episode. It made me cry.

Also making me cry are the Columbus Blue Jackets. Such hope. So many injuries. Much sadness and disappointment. There were two more long-term injuries announced this week. How does one hockey team have EIGHT players needing abdominal/groin repair surgery in an 18 month period? Add in concussions(2), broken fingers/hands (3), skate blades to EYELIDS (fucking Kesler), knees (too numerous to count), torn triceps (1), degenerative back disease (1) and undisclosed upper and lower body injuries (a lot), and there are only four guys who have played all 22 games this season.

At least there are no mumps. Yet.

Real life would take too much energy to yammer on about, so have a survey. I skipped the last half, at least, of S9, but I'm enjoying S10 so far, enough that I was interested in doing this.



1. Both. Gun to my head, Dean, although that could be due to the Jensen factor.

2. I could have lived happily without any angels ever showing up ever, but the one I find/found the least annoying was probably Anna. At least at first. Or maybe Gabriel, when he was still the Trickster.

3. Meg 1 for sure. I liked demons better back before everything got so convoluted, when demons were a big deal and their meatsuits counted for something, before they were a dime a dozen. And Meg 1 was awesome.

4. YED. The way Fredric Lehne delivered the line about Jake's sister and mother knowing "the chewy taste of their own intestines" was pretty classic.

5. I'm going to have to go with Season 2. That season is the SPN of my heart.

6. Mystery Spot, A Very Supernatural Christmas, Swan Song. I can't really choose between them. Also AHBL2, IMTOD.

7. Sam/Dean all the way. I loved the relationship between Dean and Jo, too, for what it was.

8. Lucifer.

9. Metatron. Boring.

10. Jeffrey Dean Morgan. I love John and am very annoyed at the way they retconned his character, and a lot of that is probably due to JDM.

11. I hope your apple pie is freakin' worth it!

I'm so behind on reading LJ that I'm just going to post instead.

I'm sitting here holding ice on Neville's back foot where he got stung by a yellow jacket. We know this because he came inside limping and when Lar checked to see what was wrong, the bee was still there. >:(

That, of course, has been the least of the events of this past week, starting with Thursday night when we got back from Japan. Lucy started throwing up, which is nothing new, but she was obviously sick, and on Monday she had surgery, where the vet found an intra-abdominal abscess. Those are generally cause by a bowel perforation, usually from eating a foreign object. The bowel had sealed itself off by the time she got in there, and there was no foreign objects, but poor Lucy was in bad shape. Then she got into some heart failure and pulmonary edema from being fluid overloaded, which isn't good in a 14-year old cat. But she had some Lasix, got rid of her IV on her own, and started breathing easier, but then she stopped eating because of all the oral antibiotics she had to take. Now she's mostly fine and came home Thursday. The cultures from the abscess haven't come back yet, so she's still on multiple antibiotics. I have to give her NINE pills a day - thank god for cream cheese, she takes them like a dream. She's seems almost back to normal, although she's having a bit of difficulty jumping up on the bed. She's very glad to be home and seems to think that even though she's better, she still deserves to have canned tuna everyday to entice her to eat. She hasn't realized that I can see her chowing down on her dry food.

Also, $3200. But what are you going to do, say no, don't treat her?

While we were in Japan, my stepdad had his gall bladder out. It was infected and he needs IV antibiotics for several weeks. Every day he calls either me, my stepsister, or my sister-in-law, telling us he needs us to all come to Tennessee. What the hell they were thinking, sending a 91-year old man home from the hospital with oxygen, and IV port, and his 92-year old girlfriend to take care of him, is beyond me. Well, okay, his caseworker told me that they wanted to send him to a short-term rehab facility for a while to deal with the antibiotics but he said no, because in his head, that's a nursing home and there's no way he's going to a nursing home. But today, after my stepsister spent all yesterday on the phone finding someone besides Dorothy to drive him to his IV appointment everyday, he decided a nursing home might not be such a bad idea, since he called 911 twice last night, once because he couldn't get out of his chair, and once because he fell getting from his bed to the bathroom.

He does fine living by himself when he's healthy, but being sick just throws him for a loop. I'm not sure how much longer we can let him live on his own, but none of us are prepared for that fight yet.

Also, Sebastian has pink eye and couldn't go to daycare this week, so I had him. Which was lovely, except now I'm sick and it's probably a deadly daycare germ and not a bug from the flight home from Tokyo. Daycare germs are the worst.

Speaking of Japan, the wedding was lovely, and we had such a nice time in Japan. Adam said he wanted up to see as much as possible in the week we were there, so I feel like I spent a lot "" of time on trains. We spent two nights in Kyoto at a Japanese guest house, or Ryokan, which was awesome. The bedrolls were comfy, whenever you were in the hotel it was fine to wear the hotel-provided robe, even to dinner, (and the food was beyond fabulous) and the onsen was spring-fed. When they explained that there were two communal baths, one for men and one for women, and stressed the words "naked" and "communal" several times, Larry's 74-year old sister was the first one there. She had such a good time, and lots more energy than her much younger brother.

Flying to Japan was much easier than flying to Europe (because I'm such an international traveler!). I think the 12 hour time difference helps, because both when we got there and when we arrived home, it was time for dinner and bed. There was none of that pretending you'd had a good night sleep when in reality you'd napped for an hour on a trans-Atlantic flight and then arrived at noon with a whole day to kill before you could sleep.

Even the fact the flight was 13 hours long just wasn't that awful. The only bad part was that we flew American Airlines, which sucks so, so bad, but it's not like we didn't know that. Crappy food, cranky flight attendants, broken video screens, what more can you ask for? Obviously we're going to have to make this trip on a regular basis, so it's time to find a better airline. It shouldn't be too difficult.

Kae told me that 90% of Japanese weddings are Western style, with five-course French dinners, and her family was surprised that they had a Japanese style one, with Japanese food. She said that's what Adam wanted. They changed from their kimonos after the bride and groom and both sets of parents broke the top of the sake barrel with a wooden hammer, and wore Western style wedding clothes to cut the cake. It was great fun, although there were things going on the interpreter didn't tell us about, while she was very happy to tell me several times that I was holding my chopsticks wrong. I told her I've been holding them like that for years and it works for me, but she had real issues with it.

Adam seems very happy. We went to the bonsai nursery and bonsai museum where he works, which were really beautiful. The oldest bonsai tree in his nursery is 2000 years old and worth $3m. He still can't believe he's allowed to touch it.

Kae's parents were delightful. They went with us to Kyoto, and even though we couldn't talk much to each other, we all cried when we said goodbye. They're worried that Adam and Kae will come live in the US and thanked me for letting them have Adam. I thanked them for taking care of him for me. I miss him, but he does love it there.

The bride and groom. That kimono Kae's wearing weighed a ton. She could barely lift it up to walk.



( cut for many, many pictures )

What do we have here? Something we haven't seen in a long, long time. A fannish post! Yes, I'm posting about something other than my ridiculous children or stink bugs.

(I could talk a lot about stink bugs and how the outside of hour house is plastered with them and how every window has 4 or 5 of them between the screens and windows so that I can't open the windows and how the tree on our patio that hangs over our outdoor furniture is crawling with them so we can't eat outside and how I sometimes feel like Tippi Hedron in "The Birds" and how our new hobby involves Larry and I circling the exterior of the house with cans of stink bug spray like crazed killers and now the table outside is covered with dead stink bugs, but I won't. That would be gross.)

I stopped watching SPN partway through last season, mostly due to all the packing and moving and upheaval that went on from January to May, plus the fact that all the episodes I'd recorded to catch up on were obviously lost when we moved and changed cable companies. They don't have Verizon in Columbus, something I find annoying. We have WOW, which sounds made up to me, and they don't have the NHL Network.

Anyway, the point is that I'm pretty excited about Season 10, which I can't believe is actually happening, and am planning on catching up with S9 at some point or another.

I realized the other day just how long it's been since I've written anything. It'll be two years in December. Someone has been translating the last story I wrote, "You Want Me to Act Like We've Never Kissed," into Russian and had a few questions about it, which prompted me to read it. Aside from all the typos I somehow didn't notice when I posted it, it's not bad. It really made me want to think about writing again. I'm not sure why I stopped, all I know is that whenever I think about it, I can feel my brain skittering away from the very idea at top speed. I can barely compose a tweet these days, and a journal post is hard enough.

But I thought maybe if I read a few more of my stories, I might be inspired to give it a try.

I have two WIPS that I pretty much abandoned after I finished my last story. I've always pretty much only worked on one, maybe two, stories at a time, so it's not like I have a whole backlog of stuff sitting around. One of those stories was supposed to be for j2_everafter and is a J2 version of "Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken," with Jared as the young girl horse diver and Jensen as the horse. The other is a Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews inverted trope story (can't tell the truth instead of can't lie) that takes place during the lockout because that's how long ago I started writing it. I would like very much to finish them both, and I can't think of any reason why I shouldn't give it a try when we get back from Japan.

(I also have a lot of notes for a hockey version of Pride and Prejudice starring Sid, Geno, and all four Staal brothers that I never could quite work out, but I don't think that's going to happen.)

Speaking of Japan, I think I'm packed and ready to go. Lois, Marcia, and Ashley are coming over tomorrow. Lois is house/dog/cat-sitting while we're gone, which is so, so nice of her. Adam and Kae are exhausted from the wedding planning, Marcia is worried about exchanging money, Erin is nervous about leaving Sebastian and about getting to the airport by herself on Monday and flying home alone, Ashley is nervous about getting airsick, I'm worried about restless leg syndrome on the long flight - I have Valium - and Larry is worried about dragging his tux all over Japan. I think we're taking a train five different times with our luggage, so he's not thrilled about the whole tux thing. He has to make a speech at the wedding and the interpreter wants a copy of it beforehand, but I think he's going to make it up as he goes along. We're having dinner with Kae's family Saturday night and there are going to be three interpreters at the table, since Kae is the only one who speaks both English and Japanese, and as the bride she may want to enjoy the dinner instead of translating for sixteen people. I've packed all the toothpaste and deodorant that Adam uses that he can't find over there, plus presents for Kae's family and Adam's boss and co-workers. I have only to water my plants, give Neville a bath, and program the DVR for Project Runway, and I think that's it.

Our Blue Jackets season tickets passes should arrive while we're gone. I hope so, since there's a pre-season game just three days after we get back. \o/! It's only pre-season, but it's hockey. All-Star Game tickets have been purchased, and we're all set for the season.

Well, except for the fact that Ryan Johansen won't sign a damn contract. They've agreed on term, two years, but the team wants to pay him $3.5M/year and he wants $7M. That's quite a gap. Kid, you had one good year. Get your ass on the ice with a bridge contract, and if you're as good as you think you are, you'll get paid. Even other people in the NHL think you're good and they usually don't remember that Columbus exists. Be patient.

I mean, obviously they're going to have to give him $5M, which I think they should just do and get it over with so he doesn't end up holding out of camp. Last month the Jackets had a community cleanup project and I spent 3 hours picking up trash - lots of beer bottles - and there were door prizes. I won a Johansen signed hockey stick, which was fabulous, since I never win anything, but I'd rather see that signature on a contract than in my TV room.

While I may not be writing, I did get to have some input into the most fabulous story. From the moment I started reading fanfiction, I've been kind of cringing whenever there's a story involving deafness. I may not be a member of the Deaf community, but I have a degree in interpreting and worked as an interpreter for many years. It kills me every time someone does it wrong, and most of the time they do. I remember a Sentinel story where Jim lost his hearing and Blair went out and bought The Joy of Signing and voila, they were both signing like native signers in no time. I've avoided writing my own story involving a deaf character for a variety of reasons. It felt weird doing that when I was actually interpreting, and I just really had no interest in making Lance Bass or Dean Winchester deaf. It might be fun to explore what Jim Ellison's other senses would do if he lost his hearing, but I never did think to do that. But I just hate to see it done carelessly or without any knowledge when someone else writes it.

So when I had the opportunity to be the "deafness beta" on a story, I jumped at the chance. The author did the most fabulous job, she really, really did, and I was really happy to have a small part in that. She conveyed beautifully what it's like to grow up deaf in a hearing family, to work in a hearing environment, and on the other side of the coin, to struggle to learn sign language because you care about a deaf person, but it doesn't come so easily to you, because it's hard to learn, especially after puberty. She didn't do anything weird with the ASL grammar or dialogue, and it's just a lovely story.

So, even if you don't read hockey rpf, if you want to read a story that does a Deaf character right, go read Learning As We Go by aohatsu. You won't be sorry.

If I'm gong to complain about Nic all the time, I suppose I should talk about it when he does something that doesn't make me want to strangle him with his own skinny jeans.

He's been spending a lot of time throwing shade at the ASL ice bucket challenge. While he knows it's raising a lot of money, it's a waste of water, Detroit, California, Africa, etc. He's not entirely wrong, but he would think it was stupid even if there wasn't anything about it to side-eye.

Some of his colleagues at work challenged him this weekend. He didn't dump ice on his head, nor did he donate money to ALS. He decided to donate $100 to Planned Parenthood instead.

He was very proud of himself when he told me about it this morning when he dropped Sebastian off, as he should have been.

Three weeks from yesterday, Larry, his sister, Erin, Ashley, and I leave for Japan. Adam and Kae's wedding is on Sunday the 14th in Tokyo. We're very excited, but a bit trepidant, too. (The dictionary tells me there's no such word as 'trepidatious,' but I feel sure there is.)

It was not to be expected, of course, that this trip would be accomplished without drama. ( Erin and Nic drama, to be specific. )

Have some Sebastian. He almost never stops smiling. We call him Mr. Melon Head.


He was laughing, then decided to roar at me for some reason.

( more Seba )

Is it weird to be filled with rage when I go to the grocery store because nothing is in the same place as it is in my grocery store in Pittsburgh? It's the same chain, but man, nothing makes sense. Is that rage a sign that maybe I was a little ambiguous about moving? IF I BROUGHT MY ONW BAGS, DOES THAT MEAN NO, I DON'T WANT EVERY LITTLE THING TUCKED INTO A PLASTIC BAG, TOO?

And omg, the woman bagging my groceries has Down's, so of course I wasn't mad at her. But going to the store shouldn't make me angry to the point of tears because I can't figure out WHERE THE FUCK THEY'RE HIDING THE VINEGAR.

Ahem. Yes, I'm happy to be here in C'bus, why do you ask? Piece of cake. Doesn't bother me at all that there's still a basement full of boxes to unpack and they're apparently FILLED WITH CENTIPEDES. At least we've finally cleaned out the old carpet scraps, pieces of cardboard, dirty sheets, old window screens, gross swings for the old swing set, broken cabinets, rusted fire pits, odd pieces of cable, and parts to the sprinkler system that's no longer hooked up.

Seriously, that does help a lot. Here's how it all makes me feel:



When we moved in, the kitchen was old and brown, brown, brown. We replaced the white, rusty appliance before we even moved in. Then Ashley came to town, stayed a week, and used her recently developed talent for carpentry and renovation to help me paint the cabinets and put glass in some of the doors. She's a miracle, and is spending a week here in July to do the same to the basement.

( here's what we did )

I'll leave you with Brunch With Sebby

I have no idea who I want to win the Stanley Cup. I like the Kings, and Dustin Brown is awesome, but I really, really wanted the Hawks to win it all again this year. I don't dislike the Rangers, even though they eliminated the Pens, because the Pens were obviously a hot mess for which I couldn't blame the Rangers. However, a) Derrick Brassard said unkind things about the Blue Jackets after he got traded, b) Henrik Lundqvist is a smug bastard who tends to oh, so subtly throw his teammates under the bus when they lose, and c) the narrative involving Martin St. Louis's mother has been driving me crazy.

Otoh, Drew Doughty. :(

I lost the Jackets in the first round, the Pens in the second, and the Hawks in the third. I guess I should just appreciate being able to watch the Final without dying with every goal. Can both teams just win?

I'm babysitting for Sebastian tonight while Erin and Nic are at a soccer game. He's asleep and I'm watching him on the monitor. He's such a happy baby, which makes Erin happy, which makes me happy.

( Read more... )