Distracted By Something Shiny

It is my Livejournal ten-year anniversary. Ten years! It seems like forever and also never ago. I sure wish this place was what it used to be, but alas everyone has gone and spread out across so many social media sites that it is impossible to have kept everyone together. Still, I am so grateful to have had this place when I needed it the most — when I was getting sober. And then for all the years after. And for all the people who made this place what it used to be, and what it still is, I say “thank you”. Getting a Livejournal brought me back to fandom and I had not realized how much I missed it or how much I needed it. Fandom truly can be family, and with so many of you, I found that to be true. I am forever grateful to The BFF for setting this up for me, this place here what I never knew I needed or was missing in my life. And, of course, to all of you, thank you and happy anniversary — not just to me, but to all of us who have been here through my ten amazing years. Stay safe out there.

I have been home one week, and I took notes everyday, so gonna try to stick with posting one of these for every day of the cruise. We will see if I stick with it. Photos to come once my sibs & I get our acts together & do a Dropbox share with each other. Also T is The Canadian Nephew & he’s 8, & L is The Canadian Niece & she’s 10,

February 29, 2020...Day One: I’m gonna be straight up you guys, Day One started at 3 AM when I had to get up to get ready to go to the airport - thanks to Uncle B for taking us at four in the morning. Also props to Delta airline for being so disability friendly, helping us out so well, and not damaging either of my mobility devices. I only had to tighten the screws on my walker when I got it back and my transport chair was just fine. I hear Delta is pretty good about these things, but I was still nervous because 29 wheelchairs a day get lost or broken traveling by air. Anyways I only had four hours of sleep and then I went for 20 hours straight. I had a little in and out dozy nap on the plane and had another one in the early evening, but for most of that time I was upright. So I’ll be honest that my body totally revolted in the middle of the night, for about three hours straight everything inside me just broke down. But that’s okay, because in the morning on day 2, I woke up and we were sailing through the middle of the ocean and T was standing next to my bed with the biggest grin on his face just staring at me. Which is kind of how he looked all day on the first day. He just kept saying “I can’t believe we are finally on the cruise! I can’t believe we’re on vacation with you!” And L kept saying “I’m so happy to see you in real life, we only ever get to see you on the screen, we hardly see you in real life.” The TV monitors on the bus ride to the port didn’t work, and I lamented that we didn’t have any cartoons to watch, and L said, “That’s okay, we don’t need cartoons,we are just talking to each other the whole time.” Which was true, L and I sat next to each other on the bus ride from the airport and we talked to each other for the whole 45 minutes straight and that was kind of amazing too. It’s the little things. I was so happy to be with them.

( Under the cut for spaceage. )

I’m going to be straight up though you guys, the dance party, the ocean, Mickey Mouse, warm weather... none of it was anything to that moment in the Orlando airport when we were sitting waiting and then all of a sudden we saw two children running towards us with their arms outstretched. That was my favorite moment of the first day. I’ve never had anyone running towards me with their arm outstretched, so happy to see me they have to run to hug me. I seriously love these kids, oh my God. I love the feeling all my niblings give me, to be honest. I want to marry that feeling.

I let the dog I babysat last week use the cat-video game on my phone, CatSnaps, which takes a selfie everytime they touch the moving mouse. She took 4 good pics outta 50, lol. But that’s true of all selfie taking, yeah? (The final 2 pics are ones I took). Her name is Cheena & she loves to fetch, loves it. Will play until one of us - her or me - passes out from exhaustion, lol. I introduced her to video games on my iPad a few years ago, I have a ton of games for the cats. After that first time, her dad texted me saying, “What did you teach my dog? I can’t get any work done...she thinks all screens are for video games now!”





I always tell Sis that if Cheena’s dad - who is Sis’ boss - dies, I will fight his sister in court for custody of Cheena! She’s my best girl! Diggle does not do bad with his jealousy, but he *will* take all the toys from her because, “These are my toys, Cheena. Even though I have never actually played with this spider toy before today, now that you have it, I want it. Bring your own toys, omg.” Fur!bbs are the best.

It was 10 years ago today that I looked down at the pills laid out in front of me and made a life-altering decision. I had been trying for months to scale back, ween myself, anything I could to get off of the pills. I talked to someone in my family who had gone through something similar for advice. But no matter what I did, I just seemed to keep digging myself into a bigger hole. I couldn’t call my doctor out of fear of being blacklisted for any future medications that I might, and most definitely would, need as my degenerative disease got worse. But I needed to do something. I *had* to do something. I was staring down a very black hole.

On this day 10 years ago a little voice inside of me spoke up and told me that the next choice I made was going to be between my future and my end. My life and my death. And so I chose.

I chose Life.

Today is my 10 years sober.

Just a reminder from Ripley - the best early Christmas gift I ever got - that if you’re looking for that last minute perfect gift for someone, Terrific Tails: Stories From A Pet Guardian is still available on Amazon. A pet lover? A book lover? A supporter of charity? (yep, proceeds still go the local Humane Society). Terrific Tails makes a great gift *and* has a chapter about how Ripley came to us just before Christmas, like the perfect little gift *he* is. Come on, buy one last gift for someone who deserves it - do it for cats like Ripley!



Terrific Tails

Dismal Halloween this year. So cold, like 35F, windy af, wet. And then halfway through trick-or-treats, around 7, it started snowing. Ugh. Last year we had 150-200 kids. This year was 15-20 kids. And for some reason Sis bought a bag of candy where half continued nuts - which isn’t a good idea anyways since something like 40% of kids these days have nut allergies - but I hate things with nuts in them (I like nuts, I hate biting into something & having pieces of something else inside, idk, I’m weird about it) & Sis is watching her sugar intake, so like half the giant bag of candy ended up going into her office even though everyone there was like, “No don’t bring candy into the office,” a policy I think Sis actually started! Anyways I sat in the big picture windows in my outfit, but only one person noticed and it was a dad, though at least he thought I looked cool. Bummer night.




Though my costume was sweet!

But...the weekend before Sis, BFF & I had taken The Niece to her first convention! (Her brother is mad she got to a con before he did, even though his first con will be a comic con and this was just a family Halloween convention, there were lots of cosplayers there though). There was a Killer Car Show, which I was psyched about. There was free candy at every booth almost, which TN was psyched about. I ran into an awesome cool vendor I met this summer at the Festival of Oddities (you may need pics from that at some point to fully understand the crowd and the fare at something called Fesival of Oddities). I may be nursing a small crush on her, plus her art is amazing. The League of Justice cosplayers were there, a charity group that cosplays at events & runs to raise money for various things, and does children’s hospital visits etc. Their Joker let the children kill him over and over and was just as dramatic about it as Joker would be. Though TN was way more blown away that she met Poison Ivy and then Ivy saw her later and called her by name, “Hi, Jojo!” and waved as she walked past. No, that’s not TN’s name but the night before we took her to Target and she got a JoJo Siwa costume, some kids’ popstar I’ve never heard of. But a couple other kids there noticed her costume and shouted, “She’s Jojo Siwa!” and TN was maybe the proudest she’s ever been in her life. “They might think I’m the real Jojo Siwa!” She made everyone call her Jojo all day. They also had a simulation of the Monsters Inc scare training room, that TN & Sis did together to practice scaring kids in their beds like the MInc characters. They had a recreation of the Greedo scene from Star Wars where you played Han Solo’s role...I am forbidden from showing you the video of Sis doing it. There was a magician that had all the kids gathered around his booth while he did tricks. There was a creature creator creating on the spot.

It was lots of fun. I dressed as a creepy little ghost girl with her creepy little doll, and this zombie lady, who was one of the heads for the zombie walk taking place the next day, literally, I mean literally, begged me to come back for the walk. “We need you and this costume tomorrow!” I mean, look at her makeup and outfit? I was honored someone with this skill level liked my outfit. I didn’t wanna kill her buzz by telling her we couldn’t come back because we had my uncle’s memorial the next day.

( Pics of the Halloween con under the cut. )

Anyways, it was an all around fun Halloween convention. I heard about it on FB last year after the fact, so I’d been waiting all year for it. It was worth the wait and even better for taking TN. Hope your Halloweens had better weather than mine, or at least that you got to a fun convention!

Tweeted this earlier, need you all to know my pain...
* Just watched the s8 premiere of Chicago Fire & I cant. I can’t. My boyfriend. Omg. I’m just laying here sobbing & making terrible whiny noises & I’m glad my sister is not home. “Brother, I will be with you always.”
Also I think the shot from where Severide & Kidd were having dinner was right on the same strip where my hotel was for Star Wars Celebration.
And what, the Days Of Our Lives dude is on the show now? He’s a funny character but when’s Brett coming back? *

I went off on FB when I saw this article. And then copied my rant to Twitter. Because why not. Have yet to see how it goes over, other than getting a Like from my dad. ;) He likes all my original posts, even when it’s something we disagree on, because he says, ‘but you write your opinions so well!’.

My venting: “I get that this is an art piece, but I hate stuff like this. Listen, technology is a gd godsend, okay? It gives me a social life when I’m homebound, connected me with writing groups that have improved my writing & helped me get published, it lets me help disabled folks in need of support & advocacy in my free time, it lets me play Dungeons & Dragons & have a relationship with my niblings who live in a whole other country.

People that call out photos of others with devices in their hand as, “lonely or withdrawn or detached” or whatever, without knowing the context of the photos, annoy me to no end. If these photos were real & not art pieces, and they were lambasted for not “putting away their screens”, - as I have seen time & time again, ironically on social media - I’d say, “How do you know what they’re doing?” Those bro-dudes could be looking up how to safely start a charcoal grill. That couple on the porch could be frantically texting loved ones trying to get an update on a sick grandparent. Those boys on the couch could be playing an online video game *together*. That little girl could be watching a cartoon that is teaching her colors with a parent, only to ask, “How many shades of blue are there?” & now her parent is looking it up for her.

I get it’s Art, okay. But it’s infuriating Art, because it reinforces the notion that tech separates us, makes us farther from each other. It can. But it can also educate us, bring us closer together & improve our lives. And articles (and art) saying differently, just makes the person seem like an old disgruntled grandpa waving a broom at all the kids to get off his lawn. It’s 2019, y’all - tech isn’t going anywhere.”

I hate giving QZ the click for this lazy & uninspired article, but whatever, here you go:
https://qz.com/523746/a-photographer-edits-out-our-smartphones-to-show-our-strange-and-lonely-new-world/

I know, I missed the entire summer on here. I missed my birthday post. It has been hectic. Amazing. But hectic. Energy allowing, I'll be back soon to tell you all about it. But for now, I just need a place to drop these cover arts for some fanfic The Nephew wrote when he was six...because we are posting it to AO3. That's right, The Nephew - who you have 'known' since he was four years old - just got his own AO3 account. I have to monitor it, because his parents would freak if they found out I set him up on social media and wasn't paying attention. But still, it's exciting. Right now he just has the 2 stories he wrote when he was little - he mostly writes original stuff - but he has ideas for some stuff and a few things he has hand-written that will need to be typed up, but yeah...The Nephew is on AO3. He is "MightyAahz" and if ya'll could leave him comments, like "I can tell you had a great grasp of plot, even at age 6!" it would mean so much to me...and to him. I'll get his fic up there Wednesday. Thanks, fandom family!

A few Mother’s Day posts from me...

Mom:

You know what I was thinking about the other day? Little Thinker tapes. Who remembers these? Mom bought us a bunch. You listened along with the cassette as the narrator described the journey you were on - “Our submarine is diving down to the bottom of the ocean. What’s that we see? A shark! There are 440 different kinds of sharks. What sort of shark is this? Can you draw a picture of the shark we see?“. Then you would pause the cassette and draw a picture of the shark and then push ‘play’ when you were ready to keep going. Mom would put us at the kitchen table while she did laundry, dishes, made food. And when we were done with our pictures, before we pushed ‘play’ on our adventure, we would show her what we had drawn. It didn’t matter how terrible the drawing was, she always found something to compliment - staying inside the lines, color choices, imaginative type of shark/whatever. She would enthusiastically tell us how amazing it was and then - even though we all knew, us and her, what came next - she would ask us what would happen next on our adventure, as if she didn’t have the tape memorized by heart. That was the kind of Mom she was. And I miss her. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!


Sis:

A second Mother’s Day post from me...there was a little contest on a FB group I follow to write about your mother for Mother’s Day. Like so many on the post, I chose to write about my second mother figure. In my case, my big sister.

My sister has always been a caretaker to me. My parents told her when I was born - & she was 5yrs old - that it was her job to take care of the baby. I came home from the hospital on my third day. My parents laid me in my crib & promptly passed out with exhaustion. And then I began to cry. And cry. And cry. My sister - who had a beloved Betsy Clark doll - crept over to my crib & put her baby doll in next to me. The story goes that I immediately stopped crying. That was the first time my sister took care of me, but it was far from the last. I’m disabled & when I reached the point of needing a caregiver - 27 yrs after she gave me her baby doll - my sister didn’t hesitate to suggest we live together. And these days she’s my best friend. And that baby doll - that I dubbed DD as a toddler bc I could not say the word Baby? Well, I still sleep with her every single night. She’s on her 8th body & missing most of her hair, but she’s as much a comfort to me today as she was the day my sister gave her to me. So you see why I took this chance to write about my sister.



Me & my baby doll, DD, circa 1979.


Random internet pic of a Betsy Clark doll, showing what DD would have looked like when she started out as Sis’ doll.


This is my DD today, looking as loved as she is.


Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, big sisters, aunts, female caregivers, foster moms, female teachers, female mentors & mother figures out there!