Save the Queen (original) (raw)

Okay, I'm not all that sick, just a soreish throat... but it's annoying because I sense that I will soon be losing my voice AGAIN.

...

So, my social life. I spent a large part of the day yesterday (well, large for me) texting Hayden. Texted Kim the other day. (My efforts to get her to update her freaking Livejournal have so far been unsuccessful.)

Also, apparently we're going to a party next week. On an aircraft carrier. For Dave's work. I get to wear a purty dress and be arm candy for the evening. This is actually fine with me. I know that in the past I've resented the whole arm-candy implication, but I seriously don't mind this. Not sure why. Might analyze this later, don't feel like it right now.

Then, apparently we've been invited to Mike's for the Super Bowl. ...I don't know jack about football. ...I could probably care less about it, too - though actually caring less about it would require great effort on my part. But this could be fun anyway - I've spent very little time around Mike, but I know that Dave has told him of my sarcasm, so this could be fun. Though Mike's wife and kids will be there, so I should probably be on my best behavior so as not to scandalize them. Meh, I'll wait and see what happens.

...That is all.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Why me?

Posted on 2013.01.23 at 11:03

A normal person would be seriously considering the idea that, if every human contact they have results in drama, that they are the cause of all this drama.

But this can't possibly be the case. Right?

Posted on 2013.01.19 at 13:12
Tags: dave, sappy entry is sappy, story mode

She's writing her memoirs again. Before the reconciliation with her mother, she had to stop - it was all just too painful, the memories sending her into a deep depression. But she finds it to be far easier now, to write - even though she still has this odd feeling of surreality about her past.

She pauses her writing - what is that word she wants? it's right on the tip of her tongue - and looks over at her husband. He's contentedly surfing the internet. She forgets for a moment her hunt for that perfect word and just stares. It's easy to forget, to take for granted how much her life has changed over the last six years. Easy until she reads back on journal and diary entries from ten years ago, reads back on how miserable and depressed and alone she was.

She sits, her husband's face filling her vision, and wonders. How a life that seemed to have nothing in it at all could be changed so drastically. How a meaningless existence now has some purpose. It's entirely astonishing to her.

You make my life better just by virtue of being in it, she thinks to herself. Never has she been able to say this about anyone before Dave.

In rescuing her from her life, in bringing purpose to her existence, in loving her despite her flaws, he has also given her hope that maybe, just maybe, she isn't entirely unlovable after all.

"Yar."

Posted on 2013.01.18 at 16:50
Tags: story mode

"It's almost like you have a social life or something."

She considers this, turning it about in her mind. It doesn't take her long. "Yeah. When I was talking to Mom and Jess - not last Sunday, but the one before - and I told Mom that if I didn't just start talking to her all the time, not to take it personally 'cause I don't talk to anyone?"

He nods.

"I thought about it later. That's not good. I can't just do that."

It's true. She tends to withdraw - it's easier. Easier than putting oneself out there, making oneself open and vulnerable. Easier than dealing with people and their drama. She likes her own company. She might get on her own nerves occasionally - okay, a lot - but that's still easier and somehow preferable than dealing with other people getting on her nerves.

But she feels lonely sometimes. And guilty. Like she's ditched all of her friends and family. She imagines what it would feel like in a reversed situation - and doesn't like it.

She doesn't now and never has liked the friendships most people seem to be interested in having with her - the kind where she's the only one making any sort of effort to keep the friendship alive - but she also recognizes that any friendship requires both parties to make an effort.

And so she's been making an effort. Baby steps, but at least it's something. And when babies learn to walk, it is only baby steps at first, but it becomes steadier and easier and pretty soon the baby's a kid who's running.

She'll never be an extrovert, never a social butterfly... but maybe she'll stop being quite as withdrawn as she is now.

I feel like such an asshole when the endo acts up and I have to take it easy. Which means basically sit around on my ass and do nothing because it hurts to breathe, much less make dinner or do the dishes or pretty much anything useful. And then Dave comes home from working all freaking day and he's exhausted and I'm all hey hon, I'm too much of a useless mofo to help you out at all so you're on your own for dinner. And it just sucks and I'm tired of doing this to him.

I'd say /self-pity but we all know there's no end to my self-pity. I'm an eternal font of it.

Liver!

Posted on 2013.01.15 at 19:03
Tags: ew, liver, lol

So on Sunday we bought a cow.

Well, half a cow.

Well... a quarter of a cow. Technically.

...

We go up to Temecula...

...I really didn't intend to tell this story right now - someone remind me later - but long story short, we have half a cow's liver.

Let me illustrate something for you here. Half of this cow's damn liver is about the size of my head. What the hell do cows need such ginormous livers for, anyway? All they eat is grass. Honestly.

ANYWAYS

So it falls to me to slice this thing into nice thin slices for consumption. I suppose I could have asked Dave, but... nah, I got this. Except it's really slippery. And unwieldy. And there's still a vein here...

I spent the next half hour hacking this thing into pieces with a running commentary, which Dave found highly amusing, but since he won't get a Twitter all of my hilarious little quips are lost to the sands of time... or something.

Long story short - wow, that was difficult. And gross. And unwieldy. But the organic grass-fed beef is tasty.

I hear that Dave is on the phone, and I suspect that he's talking to Carly.

I remember the days when I was all Overly Attached Girlfriend regarding Carly. I still think she was up to no good, but I'm not all nutjob paranoia about it now. The very subject of Carly amuses me... because I'm pretty sure she's insane. Seriously, I hear the name 'Carly' and I want to get a beer and some popcorn and settle in because I know the story's going to be hilarious.

And! It's Lying Monday! How appropriate!

But I won't complain about a window sale. At least, not this one.

So. I have been in a foul mood all day. Largely because it's so freaking cold in my house. There are other reasons, but that's a big one. Hard to be cheerful when you're freezing your ass off.

I've played Secret of Mana for most of my free time today. Don't feel like Mapling - I don't like the Angelic Buster, I'm bored of my Kaiser, and I don't feel like leveling my Phantom or grinding levels on my Luminous or Mercedes right now.

I think I'll go back through my Livejournal and de-privatize some of (most?) my old entries. Because so many people read my journal now, and out of all those people, like all of them would totally go back and read crap from ten years ago. I'm such a narcissist.

Posted on 2013.01.12 at 18:48
Tags: amusing conversation, lol, via ljapp

*watching Arbitrage*

Me: "One does not simply leave Susan Sarandon. She turns into an alien beast when angry, and noms on folks."
Dave: "I thought that was Sigourney Weaver."
Me: "No, she's the one that kills the aliens."

I'm a nerd. Also strange.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Damn, damn, damn.

Posted on 2013.01.11 at 09:23

Wow. I am like totally miserable right now. Good job, dumbass - way to make yourself feel horrible about something that happened four years ago and that you can't do anything about now.

...

Posted on 2013.01.11 at 08:48
Tags: miscarriage, raisin, sadface

Four years.

Four years ago today.

This time four years ago...

...This time four years ago, I was laying in bed with my husband, calling my family in between bouts of crying. Listened to the sympathy pouring out from the phone. Feeling... so alone, like a piece of me had vanished into thin air without any warning.

Four years ago today I lost the Raisin, my little tiny baby. Felt it pass from me with pain I imagine to be that of actual labor - mingled with the pain of loss, of grief. So much possibility, so much potential... gone. Little Catherine would never watch me water marble my nails and beg me to do hers as well, or ask me why Princess Garnet ran away and would she ever go home? I would never get to watch Dave teach little James to shoot a free throw, or watch Hayden impress his small half-brother with parkour and kung-fu, and teach him how to do vaults as well. Little parkouring basketball-playing Jimmy. Never.

Never...

Such a powerful, small, final word.

I had the Raisin with me for a rather short time - I was only aware of him for two months - and yet in that short time that tiny little life became a huge part of my life. I would sing (badly) to it, talk to it, think about it and wonder and hope. And all of that was brutally ripped from me, leaving me bereft, confused, devastated.

I honestly don't know how I dealt with it. I remember that pain, that grief - far worse than when my grandmother or father died... worse than when my beloved Elayne died. (I know Elayne was a cat, but she was my cat... and I think I imbued my hopes of childhood on her.) Like... again, like part of myself had been ripped from me without any warning.

It's been four years, and I still think of the Raisin frequently. Not every day, but lately... a lot. The pain is still there, but it's different now. Faded. A memory of pain. Almost like the entire miscarriage happened to someone else... but I remember it too closely for that to be true. If for no other reason that the endometriosis that has infiltrated my body, a reminder that yes, you were pregnant, and you screwed that up too and hello there! I'm the consequence.

But of course the memory goes way beyond that.

I know people have asked, and probably still wonder, if I'm ever going to try again. The answer is no. No, because the probability of carrying a baby to term with endometriosis thrown into the mix is slim. No, because I don't want a baby... I want the Raisin. No other baby will do. Little Kitty or Jimmy, that's all. No, because I'm afraid of it all happening again, a Groundhog Day of failed pregnancies. No, because... because two people have filled that ache in my heart, the void that the miscarriage left. I know Hayden and Linz are someone else's kids... but I've come to love them as my own, in every way but having given birth to them myself. I know I've only known them a relatively short time, but in that time they've also become part of me and soothed the wound that the Raisin left behind.

That wound, once so open and seething that even seeing another baby would send me into tears, has faded. It's not any longer a pain that makes me want to crawl into bed and huddle into myself and stare at the wall with blank unseeing eyes, or drink until I can't feel anything at all. It's a kind of... wistfulness, almost, a wistfulness that makes me look around the house and think, Three and a half years old. What would little Jimmy be doing right now? And all I have to think about is what Jason and Melanie's Serenity was like when she was three and a half. Would Jimmy/Kitty have been similar? It's a wistfulness that makes me smile a little sadly at babies and small children and their mothers. I was almost you.

Wistfulness does kind of hurt, but it's not the soul-wrenching agony of fresh grief. I'm thankful for that. Because while having the grief fade kind of makes me feel like a bad person, like I should emotionally flagellate myself daily to, I don't know, somehow make up for my body's failure... no one can endure that level of pain for very long. Much as I think I should, I know I couldn't.

And so I feel that wistfulness, and I endure that.

Posted on 2013.01.08 at 15:33

I keep expecting to feel this great surge of emotion, the shock of what has transpired hitting me. I keep expecting to break down in a puddle of relieved tears, she finally apologized! She finally admitted that she was wrong!

...But, nothing. Nothing but vague surprise. I wonder why this is.

Posted on 2013.01.07 at 18:00
Tags: angst, conversation, little amara, mom, story mode

"Why didn't you believe me?"

It comes out small, sad, and plaintive - a surprise to her, as her voice for the past forty-five minutes has been calm, cool, dispassionate. The fact that she's said it at all surprises her - she certainly didn't intend to say it, didn't intend to go anywhere near the topic at all. She hadn't written it down on her list, hadn't even thought of it. Even if she had considered it she probably wouldn't have written it down - too touchy a subject. Which is somewhat laughable, considering the touchiness of everything else on her list. But she chose to shy away from it.

A choice that was remade without her even thinking of it.

She recognizes the small, sad little voice - Little Amara peeking out from her fortress of pillows. That adorable, innocent face, that bowl-cut hair, somewhere between blonde and brown... those sad, hurt little green eyes. All she's ever wanted to know was why Mommy didn't believe her. She sees an opportunity to finally have her most important question answered, and seizes it in her chubby little hands.

"Why didn't you believe me?"

Her voice cracks somewhere around "believe", which is another surprise to her. Those five words cause her more pain to utter than she would have believed, had one told her about it previously. She's never asked it. Never brought it up, that great unspoken shame that has always lurked between them.

She listens to her mother's answer, hears the pain in her mother's voice, the relived fear. It's nothing surprising, nothing she hadn't assumed was the answer before. There was really only one answer that could have been. But somehow hearing it from her... doesn't quite ease the years-old pain, but it... somehow soothes Little Amara's sad, broken little heart... and starts to heal.

...

Posted on 2013.01.06 at 15:56
Tags: mom

I feel a little embarrassed, like I should delete everything I've said in the last like thirty six hours or so. I won't, though.

Long story short - the conversation went extraordinarily well. There were a few tense moments, and one point where I was pretty sure everything had gone to hell, but Jess talked Mom down, and...

I kind of want to say that it's all okay now, but that's inaccurate - but it's better. Mom and I will never have the kind of superclose relationship we used to have, but I don't feel like I have to keep myself distant from her at this point. The past is still the past, but she's owned up to her unpleasant part in it and apologized... and I think she actually meant it... and that helps a lot.

And now I shall have a beer.

I need more userpics.

Posted on 2013.01.05 at 16:50
Tags: cosplay, fou-lu

So. In an effort to calm myself down from my paranoia-induced spazzing, I have decided on something. I love cosplay. I love the idea of it, I love looking at great cosplays, and I want to do some myself. And for a while I thought that the first cosplay I was going to do was Steena. And don't get me wrong, I still want to do a Steena cosplay someday. Steena's awesome. But who's more awesome? That's right, the God-Emperor Fou-Lu. I hadn't previously considered doing a genderbend cosplay, but - come on, it's freaking Fou-Lu.

I mean, look at this BAMF.

I'm sure you see my point.

So here's my plan:

- Get rid of the endo
- Get a job
- Buy materials and whatnot
- ???
- Be awesome

( Other characters I want to cosplay, no particular orderCollapse )

Not all that helpful. Must calm down. Ugh.

...

Posted on 2013.01.05 at 14:39

That awkward moment when you haven't really finished writing and you feel the need to write more but you've said everything to have to say and further writing would only be you repeating yourself ad infinitum. Is it too early to start drinking?