entering the whirlpool

42 has been "The Answer" since before I existed, so despite the stated record that it was only chosen as being the number with the least comedic resonance that they could think of, at this point we're kind of stuck with it.

I do not feel particularly answer-like; I stayed up late last night playing puzzle games on my phone because I was feeling unprepared to move on to a day of introspection. (Limited introspection has occurred since. Also sitting with grauwulf as he cycled through all the physical symptoms of a panic attack, tho he got the depressive & panicky bits out of the way earlier, and attempting to retain some sanity in the face of her hyperactiveness who got a laptop of her own for Christmas (grauwulf's idea) & was therefore watching funny animal videos. Also I got to explain to her why "asshole" was maybe not the best word to pick up, and being me this also included commentary on the hypocrisy of adult concepts of who is allowed to use what words, but explaining what it actually meant seems to have put her off wanting to use it.)

So yes, here we are. I wore jeans yesterday, a thing I don't remember doing on Christmas before; it's that sort of year. Despite the best of intentions, I did not send lots of postcards to friends while confined to the house, but I sent a vast number of cards to people assigned me via Vote Forward, asking them to vote in their respective elections. (both the main one, and the upcoming Georgia run-off) And then I gave up trying to interest grauwulf in having anything to do with holiday cards, and the Megatherium was far too busy making tiny fake postcards from one of her my little ponies to invite the others to a birthday party, so I made small cards wishing everyone a happy Tea-Giving, tea bags included, and sent them to people. I have no evidence that any of them have made it through the mail vortex, but it was what I had to say. (If I have your address, I probably sent you one; if I don't and you'd like one, let me know.)

We have outdoors-only socializing with Other Child, her mother, occasionally her grandparents, and the neighbor across the street; we've done a few outside visits with my mother also, though more sporadically due to the hour drive time. Grauwulf does virtual meetings with SCA people, the Megatherium has virtual school, and I try to avoid video calls when possible... Besides running swaps on the craft forum & checking in on twitter occasionally, I've been hanging out on the "Friends of the Space Gnome" discord server, which is lovely and full of people who like rocks and moss and chat about ways in which brains were a mistake and things we are making and silly video games, and also tangentially includes a shared-world letter-sending game in which everything is officially canon. It reminds me of my twitter feed from before the politicapocalypse, but without the invisible friend effect. (I miss the writer-friends who I mostly saw on twitter, tho. And some people I used to know in person & never really shared internet spaces with. I need to send a second round of e-mails asking lost friends for their addresses.)

My goals from last year did not really come to pass, but I hear this is normal for plague years... I have confidence the stories I wanted to write more of will still actually be there when the schools manage to reopen. (They tried to start hybrid models in November, but the case rates went up too much before their projected start date... and their models took into account everything *except* spread through the building's air systems, so probably just as well.) Meanwhile, I am attempting to regain some of the Spanish I put into my brain decades ago on Duolinguo while I remind my child to open her assignments when told to and not sit on the cat, especially during school hours.

One day, there will be space for writing. In the mean time, there are internet friends to type at, meds to keep me moderately functional, and too many books and fiber projects strewn about the house. It is what it is; this is a time of to-do lists rather than goals and I think I can live with that, pandemic permitting. Here's to vaccinations and a government that isn't actively trying to kill people, and we'll worry about the rest of it after.

As of mid-morning, I have now been breathing air for 40 years, so here's to a new year of me and the continued functioning of my lungs and assorted other biological systems. I'm presently curled up into a rather small space by my bed between stacks of unread books and a box of patterns to get rid of (anybody want some women's clothing/costume patterns ~size 8-10?) typing, while my child watches paw patrol somewhere else and my husband (after getting escorted out of the DMV-- sorry MVA, stupid maryland-- for asking multiple times if it were possible to get a replacement title *today* instead of having one mailed from the kiosk) has reputedly gone back to sleep on the couch & thus is not available to decipher the titles of the paw patrol episodes. I said, "sound it out," and her Megatheriosity concluded that it was easier just to watch that episode rather than do work to figure out if it was the one she wanted in advance. This is about normal for the household these days, I guess. ("We have a child for whom 'Cambrian' is a sight word, but who can't read 'ready'," as her father said yesterday.)

Christmas went pretty well (in fact, despite a really ghastly first half to the month, grauwulf's brain has been almost kind to him for the last week and a half) and the Megatherium, who made certain that I knew she wanted gum in her stocking about six times in the last few days, is now half-way through the first of four packs of it. (I said, "Did you tell Santa Claus?" b/c she'd mentioned doing notes to Santa in school since they had an elf-on-the-shelf in the classroom, to which she replied, "I told you!" She also mentioned being mad at her classmates when she couldn't convince them Santa wasn't real, so, yeah, fair enough.) The day before we spent most of the day repeating a conversation where I asked her to help clean up & she said she didn't like cleaning so I should do it, and I pointed out that I didn't like cleaning either but we weren't having christmas until the living room got cleaned up, and everyone was cranky. Eventually grauwulf suggested she could help me by sweeping, and she did and rediscovered Cinderella's lost shoe, which has been missing since the day after she got the doll for her 4th birthday party. This is why we have multiple adults, because that sure hadn't been working for me.

Anyway, that's where we are. I went out to the annex last week and unsurprisingly didn't want to leave again once I got there. I scared some deer, wandered down the hill, took a bunch of unsuccessful pictures and a quite nice bit of video of the little rill leading down to the creek (those on twitter might have seen that), and left uprooted garlic mustard hanging from the shrubs as trail sign. There are a lot of invasive plant infestations, but the garlic mustard on the hillside is actually fairly minimal so far. There are bits of the creek I recognize from the last time I was down there; I still have no idea of the perimeter, but I will be back. So that's one thing.

In a week I can make grauwulf hie himself to the doctors to work on his brain issues, so that's another thing.

In smaller quests, I have far too many library books that I need to read or decide not to read. I have been enjoying journaling, so I hope to continue that. I still want to creep back up on writing, which is beginning to appear possible. I am slowly digging back out of the creep of stuff that got put down places b/c it didn't have a home; I read something a while back about selfie & mom/cooking/etc blog culture leading to a skewed impression of people with perfect lives and make-up and spaces, so I've been consciously posting the occasional picture of the appalling mess my desk has got to or how tired I look today on twitter. It would be nice (in these enlightened days where I take my pictures with my phone, which doesn't talk to my computer since I refuse to update itunes) to figure out some way to get those pictures here, as well.

I-- as I always seem to-- had a brilliant cards-to-send-people idea around the 15th of December. It deserves its own essay, I think (tho... I just turned up two little bits of paper outlining essay posts I didn't write from a year and a half ago) but the gist of it is tarot-style cards with little soundbyte items in the vein of little things you can do that *actually make a difference* to ecology or climate or whatnot. Besides turning off the ---ing water when you don't have anything under it. Most of the big things are at government or big corporation level; misinformation on what helps at an individual level is rampant; even things like cutting corn-fed beef and air travel only help in aggregate b/c they're still going to fly that plane even if you personally aren't on it. But. Even if Baltimore Harbor is awash knee-deep in 20 years, that's still 8-12 generations of chickadees you can make or break by what you plant in your small suburban yard and what you do or don't spray on it. There are Things You Can Do to change lives on a small budget of time or money. Little Good Things. So I want to work on this, and perhaps send some out in February. Or whenever, because plans around here...

Judging from my grandmothers (& my mother's record so far) I hope to have at least another ~45 years of functional time barring the unexpected & disasterous, so perhaps I'll get something done eventually.

(which *cough* stunningly inane bit of doggerel has been floating about in my head for a day or two, but I have managed to resist singing it where my child might overhear and demand that I sing it over and over and over again. As she would. I likewise managed to avoid incessant demands for figgy pudding.)

So, 38. We've got another round of minor sick going around, so I've been more than usually spacey and staring at walls today. Tried to go see Moana, but I had underestimated the mad theater crowds on a post-Christmas Christmas holiday Monday, so I guess I'll go see it with my mother on Friday instead. Which is ok too. Instead I came home and did some more pruning of my winter garden so that all the paths in the backyard are passable and maybe the squirrels won't be able to get to the screen on the dining room window so they can climb up it towards the bird feeders, leaving little scuffs and holes with their claws.

Then we went out for Thai food followed by ice skating. Her Megatheriosity had a grand time sliding about on double-bladed training skates clinging to a stack of buckets, a parent or two, or occasionally the wall. She flips between trying to walk and not trying to balance at all with other people dragging her, but so far so good. Neither grauwulf nor I had been skating in almost 20 years, but we managed to keep our feet and have a good time also. If we do this many more times, tho, I need to look for a pair of used figure skates that aren't built like ski boots & rub holes in my ankle.

Goals for the new year of me... I am backing off of writing for a while because my writer brain is kind of buried underneath a giant pile of introvert/life-stress. (my child went to preschool and then stopped napping. Followed by stopping using the toilet. So my time to be a solitary grownup has noticeably decreased.) But I want to do more projects-- both craft things & naturalist things. Maybe add the naturalist section to my website that was part of the plan when I launched it before the Megatherium was born. Continue donating to causes that make the world a better place. Probably continue pestering politicians (tho my congresspeople are about as with me already as it gets so far) in the hopes that it'll help, or at least get easier to do. Continue trying to balance self-care and productivity and parenting without falling off any of them. Teach the cat to use his new puzzle feeders. Reteach my child to use the toilet always. Eventually relocate my writing brain. Do fun things, do important things, do good things, drink tea, get sleep. We're also considering acquiring some property somewhere a little higher up and farther inland in case the ocean comes for Baltimore sooner than presently anticipated. Live.

Xposty from dreamwidth.

The calendar tells me that I've been breathing on my own for thirty-six years, and I have retreated with the laptop, my tea, and a couple of mint-chocolate-chip cookies cadged out of the giant cookie sampler bag my mother got from her neighbors' christmas eve party. There continues a great humming and tapping of little toddler feet from downstairs.

Things I'd like to do this year include:

-write something. The present plan is to designate Wednesdays as "No, I will just disappear after dinnertime and NOT TALK TO ANYBODY." This may help.

(I also wanted to do a ceramics class again, and there's one for the spring that's not on Mondays (grauwulf's grad-school class day) only it turns out that it's on Thursdays, and he's now going to be teaching a class that day. So, yeah, maybe for summer. Also, while playing with clay is relaxing, the other classmates aren't always, so there's that.)

-a couple cons, by way of keeping a tiny bit in the writer community. Probably Balticon, Capclave, and maybe World Fantasy again, since Syracuse next November sounds almost doable. That's on my list of things to look into today. (Incidentally, Balticon is mutually exclusive with my 15-year college reunion, which could theoretically be fun, but I'm more interested in seeing what Jo Walton's influence & Wiscon's mistakes do for Balticon's writing panels.)

-Work out something in the way of better organizational tools, possibly via smartphone. (that's another post) The HabitRPG thing is still working for some stuff-- the catbox gets regularly cleaned; I've been remembering to floss my teeth-- but it has started *feeling* less new and useful. And I want to organize better motivation for managing dinners. (I've never been good at consistent dinner plans, but having a toddler who is extra wiggly-fuss around the time I want to start cooking, and who is wildly uninterested in eating most real adult food anyway, makes this harder.)

-And then there's a whole cluster of things with being overstressed and cranky and in need of alternative childcare options and some other things that I need to find ways to make less awful. Also possibly a little time to read books that are intended for people over the age of 8, because I've gotten to a point where I stare at book sales & things I ought to want to read and say, "But, I don't read anymore," which is entirely not true. I just read and re-read picture books semi-constantly, and it is not the same thing.

Anyway, I *think* the bathrooms are cleaner than they were last year.

Xposty from dreamwidth.

1) Where to put all the little airplanes my grandparents brought us, because when I said we'd like to adopt one model airplane to put up on our blue-sky bedroom ceiling, they brought them all and a box to put them in.

2) What two people who have far too much stuff already ought to be putting on their wedding "registry" (non-branded) for those people who are not inclined to donate to charity instead, nor sufficiently inspired to make/buy handmade happy-ever-aftery things. (whatever those are, of course...) So far, we have a meager ten things or so, and they include smoke detectors and a fire safe. And while, admittedly, it is nice not to be burned alive, I can think of few things I consider less romantic.

3) Whether I will be unknowingly traumatizing small children elsewhere in the world by the occasional gruesome creature description on the Spore creatures which I am building to send off into the void. (I'm thanate there, too, if you play and want to take a look at my doodles... the names and descriptions are usually the best part.)

4) And the ongoing, existential: Having survived another year, have I justified my existence yet? How would I know if I had, anyway?

and for my birthday, I get to get sick! woo-hoo!

(someone read the obligatory hemmingway quotation on the radio yesterday morning-- you know, the one about it being cold and whatever and the narrator bangs on his ceiling and yells "Hey, it's Christmas!" and she (who presumably lives upstairs) calls down something along the lines of "Horay!"-- and my father heard this and decided that had he done this from the dining room, I would have yelled back "woo hoo!" instead. Of course, when other people point out to me that I've used a word or phrase so much they expect me to do so, I feel awkward about using it again. Except "worthy" which troyfish says gets on his nerves. But that's probably because I got it from heuchera so it isn't really mine.)

but let it be noted that being sick also makes me cranky, and pointless messages of sympathy may prompt me to want to kick people in the ankles. If you must reply, say something entertaining or useful, instead. :)