fox

1. Nobody, boss included, wants this, but it's not impossible I will be laid off in a month's time.

2. My mother's mental acuity is slipping; my brother thinks he may think it's worse than I think it is because I see her every week and he, although he talks to her every day, only sees her in person every few months. Likewise the director of her assisted living facility has just returned from a short vacation and called my brother yesterday to say if they were seeing her for the first time now, they'd think memory care rather than assisted living was probably the best place for her. Put another way, the call scheduled for the three of us tomorrow afternoon is definitely going to be about how it's time to plan to move her over to memory care when a place in that wing opens up. She's not going to like that, of course, but I was surprised by how strongly I didn't like it—the wave of NO that I felt in my whole body, a physical wash of Kubler Ross denial. It was something. Rationally I know it's happening and I know keeping her safe and getting her the best care is going to involve changes and adaptations and so on, but wow, the fact that the ego and superego know that didn't stop the id going MOMMY!

3. On the up side, one of my favorite co-workers came in to talk about a work thing yesterday, in the course of which conversation I mentioned #1☝️, and at the very suggestion that the big boss might let me go, favorite co-worker said "Jeeesus Christ, he's lost his mind." That doesn't affect whether or not I'll keep my job, but it is good for the ego.

4. My brother's mother-in-law is also not well, so my sister-in-law is going out this weekend to help her (because her sister, who lives near their mom, happens to be away this weekend), meaning my brother is going to have to bail on a family wedding; he and I were both already going to leave our families behind, as the bride is our cousin's daughter and our spouses nor kids don't really know almost anyone up there, so now it looks like I'll be the sole representative of my mom's node of the family tree. (The bride's-grandmother's-sister node is often not well represented, I'm sure.) My nephew is almost 15 and would be perfectly safe in the house by himself for a couple of days, but he wouldn't be comfortable with it, and of course it's right for his father not to know that and ditch him anyway. I said "You could bring him with you?"—but a last-minute plane ticket and an extra guest the caterer hadn't known about, nah; I said "You could ship him to my house?" (because the prince would love, love having an unexpected visit from his cousin, oh my gosh)—but even as I said it I went on to say that wouldn't really be fair to spring on Himself, outside of a true emergency—I could totally say "Listen, Nephew is coming to stay with us next weekend," and Himself wouldn't say "Why wasn't I consulted about this?", he'd say "Oh my God, what's happened?!" In short: My brother is staying home with his kid this weekend, which is the right decision but a bummer all around. (The much, much bigger bummer being that my sister-in-law's mother is doing as poorly as she is.)

5. The other bit of up side from yesterday is that when I got home from work and told Himself that my sister-in-law has to go be with her mom so my brother can't go to the wedding because nephew, etc., almost the first words out of his mouth were "He could come stay here?" ❤️❤️❤️ He went on to have a whole text-message conversation about that with my brother while I went to pick the prince up from day camp, and the end result was the same (my brother is staying home with his kid this weekend), but the fact that Himself went directly to "I can take him" without even the merest hint of a suggestion from me made me so happy. SO happy.

6. Only then I went to pick the prince up from day camp, and on the way home I started feeling a sort of light-headed vertigo feeling that does happen to me sometimes—most recently on the way home from grocery shopping on Saturday—but usually just for a split second, which I don't like, especially when I'm driving, but it really is normally less than the time it takes to blink twice and I don't think an awful lot more about it. Yeah but: Yesterday it came on partway home and didn't go away. I was able to see clearly and concentrate on the road, and my reaction time was fine with respect to signaling, steering, braking, all the things you need to do to drive safely, but it was absolutely terrifying and the minute we got home I told Himself about it and insisted that he do the driving this afternoon (and maybe all the driving until I know what the fuck is happening to my head?!). He suggested maybe my blood sugar was low and asked me to eat about a teaspoon of sugar straight, which in his experience is like a shot of adrenaline, so I did, and nothing happened. I ate a little dinner, though I didn't have much appetite, and that didn't help. I drank some water and that didn't change anything either. Took my blood pressure: 128/86. No fever. I emailed my doctor to tell her this whole tale and conclude with "?!!!?!??!?", and Himself said if I wasn't planning to take an Ativan at bedtime he really thought I should.

7. [gestures at the world in general and at our federal government in particular]

8. Someone in one of my Discords mentioned that in a recent protracted panic attack of theirs, one of their main symptoms had been vertigo, which reinforced Himself's Ativan suggestion. I told my usual Tuesday evening dS-watching Discord that I was going to bail and go to bed early, and they offered to punt this week's episode to next week, and I said no need to do that because of me (the responsibility of everyone else's plans changing because my stress levels are making me crazy was also kind of stressful), and they said hey look, everyone who isn't Fox is fine with shifting to next week, decision made, off you go, feel better—and that made me cry a little, people being nice to me, which just goes to show that taking Ativan and going to bed early was the right decision.

9. Reader, I took the Ativan. I made up a little song to the tune of "Sodomy" from Hair, and then I slept soundly for the whole night. And this morning I feel—well, none of the stressy things have changed, but I feel like I slept well and I know I'm going to be making dinner this evening instead of driving on the freeway with my son in the middle of a dizzy spell, so that's a little better.

10. Here's my song:
    
    Ativan,
    Lexapro,
    Gabapentin,
    Buproprion,
    Doctor - what pills am I even on?
    Medication
    Can be fun!
    Join the Holy Order Pharma Sutra,
    Everyone!
    
    You're welcome.

When we last spoke (or—last time before I triumphed over the stack of Postcards to Swing States, that is), my mother had briefly almost failed to recognize me and I had made an arrangement with my doctor to medicate my anxiety as well as adjusting the medication for my blood pressure.

( Then one Thursday evening )

( Then Himself went on a work trip for a week )

( While he was gone )

( MEANWHILE. )

( This past weekend )

AND (a) I mean, look at the world, plus it is (b) concert week—which means three late nights and a full Sunday for me, always a pain in the ass, although we're doing the Brahms Deutsches Requiem, which I love more every time I sing it—and (c) the month of October, which is always uncomfortable for me ever since the time, 12 years ago tomorrow, that my mother told us my father's oncologist said it was probably time for my brother and me to come home. There's no avoiding it: Even in years when I haven't realized where we are in the calendar, the body remembers. Last night I got home from rehearsal and got quietly ready for bed so I wouldn't wake Himself and lay there with my phone screen dimmed trying to wind down by doing the crossword puzzle and reading a few pages of . . . something, I don't even remember what, and I could feel my bite guards clacking together as my TMJ just twitched and spasmed. Making the effort to hold your jaw slightly open so your teeth don't clench is just another kind of tension, of course. I can't win.

From time to time I come back to the YouTube dance mashup mixes that were big five-ish years ago. (You know the ones I mean. Old Movie Stars Dance to Uptown Funk, which clips Old Hollywood dance sequences with Uptown Funk as the soundtrack; Shut Up and Dance, which clips all sorts of movie dancing onto, well, "Shut Up and Dance." There are many others but I believe those are the ones that seeded what may have turned out to be a trend.) I could watch them for hours. The skill of the vid compiler is one thing to admire, of course, managing to line up the beats and tempos of dances filmed 85 years ago with the beats and tempos of a modern song (that "Uptown Funk" has a brilliant "Stop. Waitaminute," for example) - but even more than that, I love watching the dancing. I love watching the dancers.

I have tremendous respect and not a little envy for people who can move their bodies any way they want (and 9/10 of the time look good doing it).* But they also, especially when they're dancing together, generally look like they're having so much fun. Sometimes they look that way in a dance solo (couple of moments where e.g. Astaire catches his cane perfectly in time and grins delightedly before he carries on hoofing it), but when two or three are dancing together? My god, the moment where one dancer looks over at the other - sometimes it's looking at their feet, just checking in that they're still together; sometimes it's looking at their face, just checking in that they're still together. I love it. The communication. (I once went to a folk music jam at a pub where one guy had a guitar and one girl had a blown instrument of some kind - could have been a plastic recorder, for all I remember, I don't know, a pipe or fife or something - and one guy had a violin, and the best part for me was watching that fiddler watch his buddies and change what he was doing based on what they were doing. Like I could see him watching the guitarist's left hand and clock the chord changes and make his own decisions in that tiny amount of time. Brilliant.) And look, I know the face is part of the body. They're deciding what to do with their eyes just as much as they are with every other thing they can move how they want to. Half the time when they're smiling they're probably miserable; half the time when they're smiling at one another they probably hate each other's guts. Some of the grinning-and-checking-in stuff I love so much is, like, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. These are not people who were happy a lot of the time. I get it.

* For this reason, although it's fun that the vidder can make the beats match up,** I don't have a ton of use for the clips that are (a) from animated films or (b) wire work, e.g. "Airplane!"
** This "Shut Up and Dance" has Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer's Ländler from The Sound of Music at 2:29 where the lyric is "Just keep your eyes on me." I'm saying: There's a right way to do this sort of mashup, and this is it.

But I love watching it. I wish like hell I could move my body like that and have the fun they make it look like they're having.

( Meanwhile, my chorus is back to in-person rehearsal as of this evening. )

I want to go, and every time I think about going I immediately feel a very strong throb of what I know perfectly well is anxiety. ( Himself says he knows exactly how I feel )

The thing is that I am also familiar with rehearsal anxiety because I used to routinely feel like I didn't want to go, couldn't possibly, heart pounding, had to drag myself out of the house because I was up against my max absences - and then by the end of the evening I'd be glad I'd gone. Happened all the time in the Before. Sometimes it was the generalized social anxiety I felt all the time around, for example, when my dad died - but other times it was the generalized social anxiety I felt as a confirmed introvert. Don't Wanna + Didn't Wanna Last Time + Turned Out Okay Last Time = Guess I Will. Which is fine, but it also means I can't tell how much of my current rehearsal anxiety is that and how much of it is but plaaague.

Right now my plan is to go to rehearsal tonight. (I asked Himself if he was secretly hoping I would decide not to go and he said "I don't think so." Introspection is hard for all of us right now also.) I guess I have until wheels-up to make a firm decision one way or the other.

On Saturday afternoon, I took the prince to a classmate’s 5th birthday party; Himself stayed home because my doing the party by myself* bought me an evening at my own friend’s birthday while he did bedtime by himself. (*Most kids come to these things with just one parent; presumably the other parent is home or elsewhere with their other child(ren). It’s not like birthday party attendance is a super tough assignment—but it’s probably easier for me than for him.)

Last night about 90% of the way through bedtime, the prince said “I wish Daddy was doing bedtime. He reads the stories much sillier.” I said maybe I could learn to read them as silly as Daddy does, and then the boy said “Oh I have an idea!” and his idea was that his dad and I should take turns putting him to bed.

We’ve been dividing between mornings (dad) and evenings (mom) (when neither of us is out of town), so dividing bedtimes between us means also dividing mornings between us, so I did morning today because the kid wants tonight to be Daddy’s turn for bedtime. I’ll get another turn tomorrow, which is good because bedtime is when I get the best snuggles, so I’m not ready to give it up entirely.

Anyway then I had a slightly frantic day at work, including a giant version control panic at 3:30, when my workday normally ends at 4:30; I stayed online until 5:30 to finish cleaning it up, and thank god, it was fixable. And then I reflected that after dinner I can (clean up from dinner, which is the non-bedtime parent’s job) sit down and go “ahhhhhhhh” and not have to put a kid to bed, which frankly tonight is a giant fucking relief.

Definitely best mom over here. :-)

and of course now I feel like I could LEAP A TALL BUILDING IN A SINGLE BOUND. (I got my first shot a couple of weeks ago in a system that asked me to book my second appointment at the same time. The one I just got him has not done this, but the fact is that the first dose - and I did get him a first-of-two because that was what was available in the dropdown that popped schedulable appointments - is now reported 80% effective at preventing infection all on its own, so once begun is a bit more than half done, thanks and sorry for the misquote, Mary Poppins.)

Baruch atah ha-Shem, Eloheinu, Melech ha-olam, shehecheyanu, v'kiy'manu, v'higiyanu laz'man hazeh. Haec dies quam fecit Dominus; exultemus et laetemur in ea, alleluia. Allahu akbar.

... And other songs of praise.

So I didn't manage to post anything Thursday or Friday, and then Saturday - it's always harder for me to do anything actively online on weekends. I can just about manage passively reading everything on my various lists but that's pretty much it. Anyway it was my turn to do the grocery shopping this weekend, and Himself took the prince over to grandma's for a little masked leaf-raking and apparently some tech support while I was out; they were still there when I got home, but while I was putting things away they came in the door and told me on their walk back the cheering from inside most or all of the houses they passed by had begun, including one neighbor on our street who burst out his door shouting "BIDEN! BIDEN! BIDEN! Hi, [Himself] and [prince]! BIDEN! BIDEN!" - and that's how he, and then I, learned that the networks had called Pennsylvania.

Of course it was like a fist unclenching and letting go of something in my chest. You all know the feeling. This tweet (https://twitter.com/PiaGuerra/status/1325405777402630144?s=20) from yesterday morning pretty much summed it up in the best way I've seen:
[image: Drawing by Pia Guerra entitled Morning in America, showing people doomscrolling from 2016-2020, ending with a person waking their spouse with news on November 7, 2020, and a couple sleeping peacefully on November 8.]

I'm sure I slept better Sunday night than I've done in ages (medicated times included). Then yesterday the kid went over to his grandparents' again and I curled up in an armchair in a sunbeam and had a nap like I used to do before he was born. It was glorious. When I woke up I poked at my phone a bit and then turned over and dozed a bit more. ... A little later I woke up feeling Quite Warm and took my temperature and it was high enough that the thermometer did the different beep to let me know it was a little alarmed. I got 99.5 and then a little later I got 99.8. So not wild about that, although when I was discussing it with Himself I said "Look, what I think is happening is that every self-preservation system in my entire body has been holding on by the fingernails for years and they've all relaxed all at once. The immune system is taking a break." Also I could smell and taste things just fine, which he seems to think is more diagnostic than I think it is?, but whatever. The temperature didn't continue rising, and the feverlet went away within about an hour. Maybe just cooked a little too much in my sunbeam.

This morning Himself woke up with a kidney stone (which the prince pronounces "kid-a-nee," adorably), so that sucked; I had to do kid wakeup and breakfast, which is not my normal task - though I don't mind it as much as the kid minds that I am not the normal Morning Parent - and day care dropoff, which the kid hated, and then hurry back to take the man to urgent care. I'm not allowed in with him these days, of course, so I came home to do some work and went back to get him when he texted he'd been sprung around lunch time. One stone out, another one still in (according to the CT) but not bothering him just now, and he's resting because morphine. Whee.

And it's open enrollment time. :-P

I've been working from home since March 12, but for the first week (March 16-20) we kept sending the prince to day care, because it was open and they didn't have clusters of more than 10 people and the slight veneer of normalcy was good for all three of us. We had some anxiety about it, but. (It was the only place he was going, and I wasn't going anywhere at all once I'd gone to the pharmacy one time; Himself has been doing the grocery shopping alone rather than en famille on Saturdays, and we haven't seen the in-laws since March 8.)

On the 22nd they got the news that a parent of a kid in another classroom had tested positive. The parent nor the kid hadn't been in the place since the 13th (though who knows when the test was administered, for the results to come in that Sunday), but that was the push we needed to finally get all the way out of the pool. We made a child-care-plus-work-from-home schedule and started keeping him home on the 23rd. I've been able to work eight hours a day while Himself looks after the prince, and Himself gets about four hours to himself while I look after the prince. But Himself is starting a new job on April 21 (or, stop presses, maybe sooner), so we'll have to think of something else.

The new Families First act, which expands paid sick leave and FMLA and includes taking care of a minor whose school or day care is closed because of the 'rona as a reason to use those types of leave, kicks in tomorrow, and effective yesterday the day care did indeed close for the foreseeable future. Himself will not be eligible for family leave even under the new law until he's worked at the new job for 30 days, but I've been at my job for five years and haven't used FMLA since the prince was born, so.

And today I learned that while under the new law I'm entitled to 80 hours of extra sick time at 100% of my normal salary (up to some maximum that I think I'll max out, but whatever) - that is, two weeks - and 400 hours of extra family leave at 2/3 of my normal salary (up to some maximum ditto whatever) - that is, 10 weeks - I don't have to take that time all in a block. I knew intermittent FMLA was a thing, and it turns out I can use both the sick and the family leave intermittently as well - which means Himself and I can swap eight-hour and four-hour blocks and be covered at almost all of my salary and definitely all of his new salary for 24 weeks instead of just 12. And if things are still not back to normal by then, well, Himself will qualify for FMLA himself by then? And also, we'll have other problems by then.

Dear god I hope that's long enough for things to be back to some semblance of normal.

I don't mean to be away for that long at a time. I think the issue is actually that I seldom use my laptop at home anymore - I'm on my work laptop at work or when I'm working from home, and when I'm at home not working, I get my internets on my phone, where it's harder to post to DW and much easier to post to Facebook or Twitter. (I'm on the work computer now, of course, because I'm at work. It's not like I can't use it to read and post. But I generally don't, because I'm generally working. Only right now I have done all the work available to me except one project that I really am going to have to dig in my heels before I can face it. So here I am.)

( obU.S. politics )

( Family )

The latest cuteness, was walking home from day care yesterday. He asked me to pick him up at one point, and I didn't argue, so I was carrying him when a neighborhood dog started barking at us from its fenced yard. The prince was alarmed, but he patted my face and said "It's okay, Mommy." ♥

I don't remember who recommended An Ever-Fixed Mark eight million yonks ago, but I had it open in a tab on my phone for many, many months and finally read it. For the benefit of anyone who's further behind than I am, it's a soulmark/wristname treatment of Pride and Prejudice, and that's all I'll say about that except to note that it got me to dig out the 1995 BBC miniseries again (I do love the Netherfield ball scene, before it all goes sideways; in fact I generally like the ballroom scenes in the TV and film adaptations, because the directors pretty uniformly use the scenes properly and achieve what they're going for, as far as I'm concerned, and everyone looks great doing it; I think late Regency fashion might have suited me) and I may one day actually - gasp! - get one or more volumes of Austen down off the shelf and actually read them again.

I sort of miss being fannish about things. I don't consume much new media anymore, because we're not ready for the kid to be watching TV so we don't turn it on until he's in bed, and then there's only a couple of hours at most before we go to bed ourselves, so it's generally hockey or curling or old familiar comfort viewing rather than anything a person would have to pay attention to. Plus Himself and I have different tastes in TV shows; we both like sci-fi, there's some overlap on fantasy, but he's not much of a one for most procedurals (legal, medical, police, political, whatever) and would generally prefer to eat glass than watch a half-hour sitcom from any era or costume drama of any length. (That might be a bit harsh. But he doesn't care for them, and in fact he doesn't watch nearly the amount of TV on his own that I do or did on my own, so if I'm going to "make" him have the TV on in the limited time we're together without the prince in the evenings, I feel it's fair not to "make" him sit through something so far down his list of preferences.) So when I do DVR those, I save them to watch when he's out, which isn't super often. One falls behind. And of course getting out to the movies requires a week's worth of planning these days. We can just about keep up with Star Wars; we might have been able to get a babysitter so we could get to Avengers: Endgame, but we're so far behind on Marvel movies that we're having to do a lot of DVD catch-up before we're prepared, so we're going to have to get that one eventually as well.

No idea if anyone is even reading me anymore. I'd hoped to get back into the posting habit when you all came back from Tumblr, but I haven't managed it well. I'll keep trying, though.

Yesterday the prince was eight months old.

He is crawling everywhere and transitioning easily from crawling to sitting and back again. He pulls himself up to standing effortlessly when he's holding our hands (we're not pulling him - just providing passive resistance) and is working on it using various furniture items, but he's never confident they won't move or his feet won't skid, assuming he can get his feet oriented properly in the first place (50/50). And our coffee table has a lower shelf thing that he can grab and pull himself up most of the way but he usually senses that he's about to bump his head on the top of the table so he stops. (Yesterday he did fetch himself a clunk up there, poor kid. And the night before last he was sitting up and reaching forward for something and before I could see what happened he'd pitched right over and bonked his forehead on the floor. Both of these happened when he was getting tired and probably therefore pretty uncoordinated. Still not so fun for him.)

He babbles constantly and it's probably frustrating to him that we mostly don't understand what he's saying. I think I recall from my college and grad school days that by this age he understands language pretty well and as far as he's concerned that's what he's producing, but to us it sounds like "da da da da da AAAAAA" and that could mean anything from "I love Daddy" to "how many times do I have to tell you there is poop in my pants," so - there's progress to be made. :-)

We have mostly (knock wood) conquered nap time. His naps at home are often no more than about half an hour, but he does at least seem to understand that nap time is a thing, so the epic struggle is mostly behind us. Only took four months. Whew.

No teeth yet. Every couple of weeks he has a medium-strength meltdown that we can't explain so it's hard to solve, but so far it's generally been either an ear infection or an overload from working on a new skill (sitting, crawling, etc.). One of these times it's going to be teething, but it hasn't been so far. Drooling buckets, though. Buckets.

He likes to give us hugs and kisses, but he accomplishes this by grabbing onto whatever he can reach and pulling us toward his open mouth. So I took out my earrings, as I may have said before, because he'll grab a whole ear but his little fingers occasionally got hooked in the hoops and nobody wants that kind of tugging. He grabs eyebrows, so you have to close your eyes fast or get a slobbery thumb right in the eye socket. He noms my chin or my cheekbone (or my knee) as though he were nursing. Or teething. He strokes my hair when he's resting his head on my shoulder, which is sweet, but he grabs it and sucks on it whether it's in a ponytail or not, and I've had almost no success convincing him mommy's hair is not a snack. I may end up cutting it soon after all. (I'm trying to do less "no, no" and more affirmative redirection. "We play with the toys, not with the floor coverings" when he pulls up the corner of the interlocking mat and puts the interlocking bits in his mouth - or when he puts the fringes of a rug in his mouth that has been on one floor or another for 20 years. "Gentle hands" rather than "No no ow." And so on.)

His favorite foods are bananas and applesauce, and he also enjoys pears, mangoes, sweet potatoes, peaches, and peas and tolerates carrots and cantaloupe. We've got prunes in reserve in the basement for when we need them, but he doesn't eat those regularly. (He likes them fine when he does eat them, though.) Next experiment is chickpeas, with which I made a very pasty baby starter hummus yesterday (no garlic, no tahini, just chickpeas and water and a tiny bit of olive oil); if he hates them we'll make hummus out of them for the grown-ups, but I'm optimistic that he will like them fine. And then next: more complex proteins! I've got my eye on chicken.

Once in a blue moon I am monumentally frustrated by this kid when e.g. he bites me while nursing or he keeps squealing and I can't work out what will make him knock it off or he (rarely anymore) wakes up crying at night and can't easily get back to sleep. But mostly he is marvelous. The way he turns toward us when he falls asleep in our arms and tucks his little face into our shoulders is - well, it's what I've always wanted. From time to time I look at him playing with his dad and I could burst into fragments from how happy I am that I have this husband whom I love and who loves me and this kid whom I adore and they are also so nuts about each other. The pair of them are simply the best things that have ever happened to me. I always hold him (the baby, I mean) for a couple of minutes after he's finished nursing at bedtime and just look at him, but sometimes I think I could hold him all night. (NB the times I have considered that I might have to hold him all night have not been wonderful times.) The way he loves us is - literally, according to the actual definition of the word - awesome. When I'm completely exhausted it's sometimes helpful to remind myself that more of the time I'm overwhelmed with joy.

On Saturday I was so progressively unhappy that Himself recommended (that's not quite the right word, but I'm thinking of something between suggesting and insisting) that he drop me at the Metro and I go down to the women's march after all. So he did and I did. He left me at the train around 11:15a and I got home sort of 4ish, I think, and in between I was able to meet up with a friend and randomly ran into another friend on the way to the meetup and tl;dr I am so glad I went. (And so is Himself. I thanked him for being firm about sending me down there, and he said it had obviously been what I needed, because otherwise I'd have been so sad for the rest of the day. He did not say "and I didn't want to be around you when you were in that mood," but I may have understood it. :-P)

Last night I watched the returns in growing horror and disbelief. We were going to go to bed after the west coast came in at 11pm because there was nothing to be gained by staying up and continuing to obsess about it. I couldn't even get up from the couch; Himself held me and patted my hair while I sobbed until about 11:30. When we finally did go to bed, he saw me scrolling at a couple of tabs on my phone and gently asked if I was still trying to make the news be something other than what it was. I put the phone down and turned off the light and started to cry again. Himself, who cannot sleep (nor stay asleep) if anyone is touching him, reached over and patted my shoulder as I tried to breathe evenly, and when I said But you won't be able to sleep if you're holding my hand, he said I know, but I don't want you to have to cry yourself to sleep.

I love him so much.

One way or another, the baby will be here in two weeks. That will be awesome. So something good will have come out of 2016. (Precious little.)

I haven't been around here much lately, it seems. I read all of you every day; I just don't have a lot to say that isn't about how the house still isn't finished. We moved in a year ago and they broke ground for the addition in the second week of January, so either way you look at it we've been living in less-than-ideal circumstances for a long damn time. Measured against the rest of our lives it's nothing, but right now we (and the contractor as well!) are beyond ready for it to be done.

Meanwhile, picked up from everywhere, a meme.

So what have you been up to? / Major life changes? Same old same old?
Last year was super eventful: got married, bought a house, changed jobs. This year has been just the long grind of living through the renovation/addition. We will shortly be going on our honeymoon, a mere seventeen months after our wedding. Hurrah! :-)

What fandom are you in/do you spend most of your time in?
Gosh - I haven't been especially fannishly active lately. I will never not be a Star Wars girl, though. (And I'm in the same quiet corner of Harry Potter I've always been in.)

Where do you hang out online?
Here, honestly (both LJ and DW); also Facebook, to my eternal bafflement.

What are you reading?
Books: I recently read Death Comes to Pemberley and mainly enjoyed it. Unusually, I think the TV movie may have improved it. Alas, 99% of my books are in storage, but from time to time we acquire new ones because we just can't wait to be able to unpack the old ones.

Fic: If someone well known to me recs something it sounds like I'll like, I'll pop over and read it if I've got time. As I said, I seem to be on a sort of fandom hiatus at the moment.

What are you watching?
Only Connect on BBC2 every week like a religion. I do not have words for how badly I want to be Victoria Coren Mitchell when I grow up. The hero worship extends, of course, to David Mitchell, whom I adore on Would I Lie To You (which I'd otherwise never bother to watch) and whenever he appears on QI and so on. Himself and I are mere apprentice nerds in the shadow of their greatness.

There's also a fair amount of Doctor Who on my television, especially now that the new season is imminent; also, mostly by inertia but still not unwelcome, a great deal of Star Trek: TNG. One always enjoys Sir Patrick Stewart, of course, and the general two-dimensionality of everyone and everything else is usually hilarious. (Side note because for reasons I can't remember I looked her up on Wikipedia: am I the only one who thinks that Marina Sirtis has aged into a dead ringer for Patti LuPone?) Lately I've pretty much come to the decision that Worf is most consistently my favorite. I think when I was talking about West Wing I said that about Toby, and now I'm sort of thinking about things Worf and Toby have in common.

What are you making?
Fannishly, I have one more HP story in extremely slow progress. Other things as/when, but this one will emerge someday, I swear.

I am knitting the second of a pair of socks with yarn I bought at the Sheep and Wool Festival.

It is mad busy end-of-fiscal-year time at work, so I am making the things I make there.

SodaStream has recently discontinued my favorite flavor (diet cream soda), so I am going to experiment with making flavor syrup I can add to fizzy water since I do have this fizzer.

I am making a concerted effort to get my weight under control, not because I think it's inherently bad to be overweight but because I personally prefer how I look when I'm a little less so. Also I would like my blood pressure to reliably be lower (which is a separate but related project). Mostly I would like to be more in charge of my health and shape than I have been in a long while. I mean realistically: my father was diagnosed, and then he died, and then I got laid off, and then I got married and bought a house and changed jobs. It's been a stressful few years, and it's not surprising that my (a) ice cream consumption and (b) hormones have got away from me a bit. But the last of those stressors was a year ago now (never mind the fact that we're living in half the house with about a third of our stuff), so it's time for me to be back in the driver's seat rather than remorseless Fate. Also I am hoping soon to be making babies, so I'd like to have at least a semblance of a grip for a short time before I totally lose it again.

What are you squeeing about today?
Siding!

If you could rope old fandom friends into a new fandom, it would be.....
Um.

I should really watch/read/dive into _______ and then come talk to you about it!
You tell me!

What else is on your mind?
Babies, mostly. And the house. And how much worse Metro can manage to suck before something actually gets done about it.