Blather, rinse, repeat

During the summer, Gavin came over every night and I let Callum stay up super late and we marathoned The Untamed. The last episode was the last Friday before school started and Callum was so upset that he cried: so many reasons, summer being over, our fun Chinese Drama nights being over, sad that he wouldn't see Gavin as much etc. So we said, why don't we continue our Chinese Drama Nights once a week? And now Gavin comes over every Friday and we watch Douluo Continent and Mo Dao Zu Shi, Callum stays up late, we all have an ice cream cone, and then we sit around chatting (Callum goes to bed after the shows are over because he still gets tired around 10 PM,) and we just laugh the night away.

It's wild because to me it feels like we were just picking gavin up at the airport when he was 10 months old. Like... this was YESTERDAY to me and now he's a few weeks shy of 16 and I'm not sure how this happened.

And Callum is right behind him and I just can't cope with that sometimes.

My two boys.

Gavin comes everywhere with us in the summer. I wanted to take him with us to Chinatown for the Lunar New Year next week, but his Mom was too nervous about him going into the city and that's valid. I'm nervous about it myself tbh. I haven't been to the city since the year before Callum was born.

Bazzy and Mason were supposed to come over to play with Callum on saturday, and Bazzy was supposed to sleep over, but Mason is sick now (negative thankfully) and Bazzy still has a cough from being sick last week, so we'll see.

OMG and Miranda turned 17 a few days ago.Zach will be 19 in May. Haven't heard from Zach since before Christmas. :(

Zach, Miranda, and Bazzy are my cousin Celia's kids btw. Gavin and Mason's parents--my cousin Chrissie and her husband Tim--have custody of them. That's a long, unhappy story for another time.

I had a whole other section of this that I was gonna write about, but now I'm second-guessing myself so I deleted it!

When I started writing this, it was still March 10th. Ugh how is it past midnight. I'm going to have to go to bed and finish this tomorrow.

I'm having a moment, because my FB memories came up today and showed that it was this day in 2009 that Haku had his first surgery. And of course it was, because he had that first seizure around March 8th, the day my Gran started to go downhill really fast. I remember that day—that minute—so clearly because, looking back, it seems like my entire life split into two sections the moment Haku jumped up and had that first seizure. Then he went into the hospital. Then Gran went into the hospital and then she died in April. And then my Dad died in August.

And I've been reading all of my old LJ entries from that Spring and Summer, trying to see if there were any signs, or if I had any intuitions that would have told me just how drastically things were going to change. And the disturbing thing is, I feel like I did. Because a few times I wrote “I wonder what will be different this time next year” and “I wonder who will be new to me and who will be gone (no one, I hope!)” or variations on those themes.

And that day started the entire Trauma Conga Line, where everyone in the family was like, “Okay, enough – that really has got to be the end of the bad stuff, right?” And it wasn't, and then my Dad died.

So, now Lao Shir has died, and Haku had surgery on the same exact day that he did in '09, and I am sitting here losing my mind thinking, “This is how it starts.” I can't stop imagining that, a few years down the road I'll be reading this entry, tsk'ing over my clueless past self who had no idea how bad it was going to get.

Doesn't that sound neurotic? It does, but here's something I wrote shortly after my Dad died:

It's real hard going back and reading journal entries from even just a few weeks ago, harder to read the ones from a month ago. I can hardly fathom that I was happy back then; that I had no clue whatsoever what was right around the corner. Still sad for losing Gran, I was also getting on with it, doing my schoolwork, excited about writing, getting ready to go to China, doing Hula shows with my friends and having a spectacular summer.

I always knew—and feared—that life turns on a dime. But knowing something is entirely different from living it. When you live it, you come to see the world differently; someplace that is not safe, where the worst possible scenario is indeed around every corner and behind every door. You start to expect nothing less. I sort of knew it ten years ago when Grampa died suddenly and with no warning, and I always dreaded it ever happening again, but this illogical part of me thought, “Well, that already happened once. What are the chances?” I thought that the fears I always had that every phone call, every noise, every slamming door was the worst thing I could imagine were irrational fears and I was neurotic. But I wasn't neurotic; I was correct.

“I wasn't neurotic, I was correct.” That's how I feel now, like I'm right, and it just has to keep getting worse, until something unthinkable happens. There's that part of me that's like, “Well, now that I've put it out there, it can't, right?” And the other part that says, “OMG, now I've put it out there, that's like inviting it.” There's the rational part that says, “Don't be a twit, you literally have no control over anything,” but the rest of my brain tells that zen bitch to take every seat in the house, because that's exactly the problem.

(Of note: I realized while peeing today that my novel is pretty much about this fear. Main Character is so much of a fearful f'ing control freak that he can't accept that some things are out of his hands. He takes it to the extreme and changes things on a like, 4th dimension level because he has lost the ability to can when it comes to reality and death. Oh my god. he is my fantasy of my most fearful and most powerful self. Jeez.)

And yes, I know that I should probably be talking to someone about this, you know, someone who is not LJ and who is a professional, but the one therapist I contacted, though she seemed nice, worked out of a clinic that got into huge trouble because the main doctor was dealing drugs out of there, so. And like, what is a therapist going to tell me that I don't already know? It's not in my control. The intrusive thoughts aren't rational. Blah dicker blah. But are they really irrational? Because past experience says “No, you're on the right track here, and terrible things are about to happen.”

What also sucks is that I feel like I'm short-changing Lao Shir out of the mourning she deserves, because I'm too busy being afraid of how much worse things are going to get, that it's overshadowing how much I actually miss her. Right before she died, we were FB messaging about how we were going to get together for lunch once she was out of the hospital. I asked if I could send her anything: books, music, a gift card for some movies she could watch on her phone. But she said that, with all the tests she was having, she hardly had time to read or watch anything. But that she would love some flowers. So I sent her flowers, the kind you can take home and plant. (They got lost in the mix and she never got them.) A few days before she died, I sent her a link to the “Girl On Fire” video because, I said, it made me think of her. She never answered and I started to worry.

I had called Gold Dragon to tell him she was in the hospital (he's not on FB) and he kept saying, “It's terrible she's in the hospital, but remember, she's the strongest person we know. She's beaten everything else, and she'll beat this, too.” When I called him to tell him she had passed, he was honestly thunderstruck. And angry. He really thought she was coming home. We all did.

One time, Gold Dragon and I were talking about Lao Shir, one of those times when the cancer had returned, and he had just seen her for lunch a few weeks before. He said he knew she was going to beat it again, because, “it's the light in her eyes, or something about how they shine. Her eyes are really bright.” That really stuck with me. I told her, next time I saw her, of his comment, and she was so pleased. After that, we called her Alohilani: Heavenly Light. She thought that was delightful.

And now we're talking about what to wear to her memorial, since we're going together, and maybe Empress too – should we wear our Kung Fu clothes to honor her? Should we be formal? Do we bring food, who else will be there, who else will show up in Kung Fu clothes, do we bow like in class? Or what? And it boggles my mind—and my heart—that we have to consider these things now. She was supposed to come home. She was going to go back to teaching T'ai Chi.

This was maybe coming for a long time. She had multiple myeloma, diagnosed ten years ago. Usually with that, you get about a year, maybe two. She got ten. But in those ten years, I think we all thought, “Obviously she keeps winning the battle.” It was heart failure, though, this time. At 60, so, you know: very young.

* * *

Okay so I wrote that last night, and I'm trying to see if, by the light of day, this looks any different. Kind of, maybe. Like, rationally, I realize that Haku has actually had 8 surgeries, and only one of them (the one on March 10th) was followed by that entire “life falling apart / death and mourning” year. All the other ones were just bank-breaking. Thinking of it that way really doesn't make the anxiety up and quit, but it takes the edge off, I guess. I'm always, always worried about losing my Mom. And since having Callum, thinking of that kind of thing is a place I really bar myself from going. My brain kind of can't – but it always lurks there like background radiation. For any parent, I guess.

I know that Haku doesn't have a long time after something like this. I visited him today and talked to one of the vets. While all the others were like, “Well, let's wait to see the biopsy,” she said, “Yeah, we're pretty sure it's cancer.” It remains to be seen if it's the really aggressive kind that only gives you a few more months, or if it's the slower kind. It's so obvious to me that it started last July. I kept bringing him to the vets every month, but his blood tests were consistently awesome and no one could feel anything in there. Except me; I felt it all the time, every time I pet him. No one else did, though.

And Sano is 15 ½. So like, I get it; I know my dogs won't be around forever or even for a few more years. That time of not having to think about it is over.

So I don't know, this whole thing has me so anxious and depressed. I'm reading back through all of my 2009 entries, when Haku and Sano got sick, and Gran died, and my Dad died, and my one brother got sick and my uncle died and then my other brother got cancer (but he's better now.) (Although, sadly we don't really talk anymore.) And I just kept saying, “I wish something good would happen!”

And like, so many good things did happen, and it's not like I didn't notice them. I mean, HUGE things happened, like Callum, and getting an agent that I like; things I've wanted since forever have happened in the last 3 years. So I'm not ungrateful, I just wish I could kill this anxiety that the worst possible thing is around every corner.

Another thing I keep noticing in those entries is how much Kung Fu helped me. Like, so much. Kept me sane on some days. I miss it unbearably, and nothing has come along to take its place. (And I can't afford to join any program either, anyway, so.) I mean, I miss my KF family and I really wish it could be like that again, all of those people I loved and still love (and still see, semi-regularly, too. But we're not together 2 times a week, like we were.) It's not like i'm the only one who left the kwoon, and I can just go back, even if I could afford it. Everyone left. There's no one left there out of our group. I keep telling Gold Dragon, “Please decide to teach Kung Fu, please open a school!” only half joking. But, you know, real life.

Whew, what an entry. I hate that I just dumped all of this out. This is not what I wanted for my LJ, so much angst.

And as usual, I really should wrap this up because it's about time for Callum to get up. Well, 3:30 or 3:45 or so, but I still have a few things to do while he's sleeping.

So yeah, sorry for popping on randomly and spilling nothing but neuroses!

Two days ago I wrote this really loooooong post about how I was so frustrated with querying and writing new stuff, that I was about ready to just give it up and go back to writing fanfic for good. Why bother, if I wasn't getting anywhere and never getting any better? The post was full of angst and this really hopeless self-doubt about my writing. I read it back and thought, Wow, that is super angsty, hold back on posting that so you don't flounce out of something and then change your mind and feel stupid later.

Yesterday I got an email from the latest agent I queried, to whom I had sent first a partial, then the full manuscript. She is really interested, and wants to talk to me about the novel, and anything else I have lined up for the future. Our call is set for 2:30 tomorrow afternoon.

SO.

So now it's my turn to tell other authors to not give up/ :)

Of course, you know, it might not work out. Maybe we'll talk on the phone and have completely opposite visions about what to do with this book, or different ideas about my career or writing in general, or maybe we won't click. But, I did get referred to her by another agent, one whom I like very much and she thought we'd be a good fit. So, I'm hopeful.

I mean, hell, I'm way more than hopeful right now; I'm peeing my brand new Target shorts as we speak, have been peeing since last night and will not stop peeing, IDK, probably ever. The Call, you know? It's kind of huge! It gets capital letters when writers talk about it.

So now I'm writing down a list of questions and things to say. If I like her a lot and she likes me, then I'll have to email other agents who have partials (and who have queries, too? I'm not sure?) with a nudge, tell them, Hey, I've had an offer, JSYK. It's the polite thing to do. I have massive phone anxiety, especially with important calls. I stutter and say really dumb things sometimes (and then freak out about the things I said sometimes years later.) So having a list will help; a little cheat-sheet.

And like, work has picked up and we got some good news about a kind of partnership (sub-letting) that I think is going to go really nicely. I might start teaching classes again soon, and hopefully Hula, which will just be even radder.

Gonna try to hit the beach tomorrow.

Going to Disney in about 7 weeks.

Am I going to be this lady sitting by the seaside on a beautiful day, an agented author with a beautiful little son, a nice job, and getting ready to go on vacation? What's next, Tom Hardy is going to come and marry me?

This makes me worried. Doesn't it seem too good? Doesn't something have to go terribly awry now?

(Okay yeah, not all perf, I did lose my car insurance because TWO FENDER BENDERS IN TWO YEARS OMG and because I got side-swiped and made a rather large claim last year. So that's an annoyance and, yeah, a huge chunk out of my finances. And yeah, I wish my Gram and my Dad were here for this, and that's never going to change.)

But cherophobia is stupid, so I'm also going to sit here and worry about what simply must go wrong now, instead of enjoying what isn't wrong. And what could potentially be totally right. Isn't that awful of me? Stop it, anxiety. Stop being a thing.

Oh my god, how did it get to be 3:30? It was just 2:30 a second ago. Better post this and run.

Callum's birthday was another gorgeous day, even if it started out dreary and pouring. It cleared up by around noon. I invited everyone over from 11-11:30. Jeremy and his Mom got there around 11:30, others around noon, and Meghan closer to 1. By then the sun was shining, and we went outside for lunch, cake and presents. Callum was just happy that Meghan was there, LOL. She's “Momo” to him and once she's in the door, nothing else matters.

He straight up loved all of his gifts. It was neat, this year, because he's old enough to understand things, and have things he likes and is really into. Today he went through all of his new toys and clothes, and was still interested in all of them. When I asked him who gave them to him, his answer was “Momo” for everything.

Callum and mason both had to have naps in the afternoon, but Spence, Natasha, and Meg stayed around, and Gavin also stayed to play Skyward Sword. After naps, everyone came back, and then Uncle Don and Jen came for dinner. Spence and Natasha made mashed potatoes – like, actually boiled and mashed and seasoned the whole thing. They are great. :)

And then, of course, Callum was so wired after everyone left, and still wanted to play. He wouldn't sleep until around 9:30.

Today is just gorgeous! About 80 degrees, I think! We had originally planned a walk to the beach with Chrissie and her two boys, but Gavin didn't feel up to going out. So I took Callum to the bay. He couldn't wait to get into the water. Literally couldn't wait; like, went in before I could take his socks off. (I expected it to be chilly at the beach, hence the socks, but nope.) He walked right in with his crocs and socks. Eventually I got them off and let him wade into the waves. He was picking up those jingle shells and throwing them on, so I started to sing Pearly Shells in Hawaiian, which is what I always do when we're at the beach.

As I'm singing, this couple walks by and the woman stops and goes, “Are you singing in Hawaiian?” I told her I was, and she said she had grown up in Hawaii, but had moved her when she got married. She said, “If you ever hear Hawaiian music in the neighborhood, it's from my house!” I laughed and told her we always had it playing, too, because I'm a Hula dancer. She asked if I was Hawaiian and I said, no, but my son is. She said, “He's a little Hapa boy!” Then we talked about Hawaiian bands and such, when they came to play in NY and all.

I mean how neat is it to meet someone who grew up in HI, out here on the beach on Long Island? That's pretty funny.

It actually just inspired me to go look up jingle shell art ideas on Etsy, because I have thousands of those suckers. Yeah, like I have time to do anything like that. ha. I also just found someone on Etsy who sells just straight up jingle shells. Err, okay, wow. Maybe I should do that, too. Huh.

Okay, so now I've sat here rambling and effing off on Etsy for long enough. Should get the laundry done while Callum is still taking a nap.

Only three weeks until Disney! Or, as Callum calls it, “Diz-din.” I've started telling him often, that soon (“Next month, this month, three weeks,” etc.) that we're going to Disney. “Callum and Momma, Grandma and Meghan are all getting on an airplane, way high up in the sky. Then when we land, we'll go to Disney! And there we'll see Spencer and Natasha, Aunt Chrissie, Uncle Timmy, Gavin and Mason, and Uncle Don and Jen. And then we'll see Micky and Minnie, and the castle, and Haunted Mansion, and Pirates. Also a great big ball, and tons of animals.”

When I mention Haunted Mansion, he does the scream. That's because I've been reciting the whole thing to him since he was about three months old. Cracks me up. It's so weird to me that he has no idea what I'm talking about. Like, no sense of the future, that this is a thing that has yet to happen. I wonder if he thinks I'm talking about the Disney Store, or maybe the Disney room at my Mom's.

I'd been fretting, a little, a few weeks ago, because he was only saying five or six words. Then, out of nowhere, in the space of about two days: five more words. And the next week, five more. And then more. All at once! So weird how that happens.

So of course, my biggest stress is boarding the dogs, and leaving my goldfish, The Doctor. I got an automatic feeder thing for him, and I tested it today, and it works. And I'll put his light on a timer, too. But what if something goes wrong, and he doesn't have food for six days? Or light? I don't know, I guess goldies are kind of hardy, but I'd be so upset if he went without food for that long. And, I always hate boarding the dogs. I haven't done it in so long. I know it's going to trigger Haku.

In other news, I started teaching Hula again. I've got a class of six kids, ages 5 to about 10. Okay, I've taught adults and I've taught tweens before, but this is a while different box of frogs. They actually are just like a box of frogs, one that I keep trying to keep the lid on, and they keep popping out. I'm worried, because there's going to come a Monday where my Mom will have to go to work for inventory, and I'll have to bring Callum with me. How the eff am I supposed to teach six frogs, and stop my toddler from getting into everything? I'm stressed just thinking about it. But, it's really fun to teach them. At the end of the first class, the youngest girl ran up and hugged me, saying, “Miss Jules, I love the Hula!” And they all wanted to learn Hawaiian words, too. Which is pretty good, I think.

As far as writing: That one really cool agent still has the manuscript. I even nudged her last week—or two weeks ago?--and haven't gotten a reply yet. She's replied to everyone else who's nudged her (with rejections. :( ) But she is telling people that she's focusing on SciFi now, which is what mine is. IDK, maybe she's getting invested in it, and taking her time? I don't know! My palms sweat every time I check my email.

I've also started another novel. I've actually written tons, tons, TONS of stuff since this one, but either I've kept them to myself, or they've been fanfics, or I've put them on the internet or on HitRECord, and none of them were ever meant for publication. This one is, though. I've only just started it. I might join NaNo this year, even though I'll miss the first few days.

It is cold, cold, cold here today, after a relatively warm Autumn so far. My room was 55 degrees and I put the heat on a little, just to take the edge off. I like the chill, though.

Although, I won't be complaining when I'm in Florida and it's 85 degrees, either, that's for sure. :D

Just jotting some things to remember. Callum took his first steps on his actual first birthday. Then he stopped for a while, and then about a week later, he started doing it again, two steps at a time. Yesterday, he walked across the room. And now, he's walking, turning, and trying to run. WTF, how did this happen so fast?

My wonderful friend Crow-Lady has taken Havoc for a while. He needs a break, I need a break from the 5:30-all day screaming. I've spent a few days scrubbing the floor in the sunroom and generally cleaning it up, cleaning up his cage, etc. (Now that CJ can toddle around, I plop him on the floor with some toys while I clean.) Havoc will come back, probably when it's too cold for him to be outside, and anytime Crow-Lady has to go away on vacations. But I cleared enough space in the sunroom to turn it into a kind of reading/relaxation room. The kind of hipster sort of thing you see on Tumblr, with cool chairs and string lights. I only just started, so we'll see how that turns out.

Big BIG news for my cousins across the street, too. Not something I'm allowed to write about yet due to legal stuff, so y'all can probably guess that they are adopting again, and we'll leave it at that. WOW. And it is happening so fast!

I still have that full manuscript out with the agent who said she enjoyed the beginning. Still have not heard back. It's on my mind every day: What part is she up to? Did she get bored and put it down? What is she thinking if she's reading that section or this one? I know you're supposed to give 3 months for a full, but I want to nudge her every single day. O_O I'll cop to checking out her FB page once in a while to see if she's saying something like “OMG I'm reading the best manuscript ever and I'm so fired up!” or if she's like “Jeez, the first five pages of this one ms were great, but now it sucks.” But she's not saying anything. >_< PLEASE LOVE ME.

Welp, back to staring at Winter Solider TVTropes for a while before putting BB and myself to bed. ^_^

It's Christmas Eve morning (note: didn't get around to posting this till his second nap in the afternoon,) and I'm sitting here with Callum sleeping on my lap, waiting for him to wake up so we can go to the store and get some red cabbage for Fakemas dinner. We did Fakesgiving, now it's Fakemas because everyone can only get together on the 26th. That's fine by me, because hey, extra days of celebration, right?

I'm also typing this on my laptop because my Mac crapped the bed. It took me about two frantic weeks to rescue everything off the dying hard drive. A friend gave me an iCloud type thing as a gift, so it's all being backed up online.

Oh, my Mom gave me a month subscription to Ancestry.com. OMG, the things I found! On my Mother's Mother's side, all the way back to Ireland and Germany. On my Mother's Dad's side, a total dead end. Apparently my great grandmother never even existed. And all records stop after my great great grandfather. The only hint is a slave from Trinidad with the family name. I'm thinking maybe that's why they never discussed anything.

On my dad's side – wow! 4th great grandmother Rebecca Moon, great Aunt Freelove Moon, some people who fought in the civil war (on the GOOD side, mind!) and then, after that, I started going back further when they started turning up in England. England was really good about keeping records. I started to see titles: Sir, Lady, Lord. And then Baron, Viscount, Count... and then princess. It turns out I'm directly descended from Princess Marguerite of Italy, and all of the Capet kings and queens of France. I was really hoping for the British Plantagenets, but no dice. I am French as hell. And no direct line from Eleanlor of Aquitaine, though her husband was my 21st great grandfather. :/ It tickled me about Princess Marguerite, though, because I understand that Margherita pizza is named after her, and that's my favorite.

And there were some slaves on that side, too, from Jamaica. So it's like, Kings and Queens from France and Italy had a bunch of descendants who came to America in the 1700s and married Natives and slaves. And then a second wave of immigrants came from Italy and Germany.

I just wish I could find anything at all on my Mom's side!

Last week I went out with my best pal, Glassworker. We went to see Thor 2. It was my first post-baby movie. I freaking loved it. Best fight scene ever (though it pissed me off, because I have that whole world-bending, gravity-screwed, physics-mess kind of stuff in my book, too.) There were some parts that made me laugh until I was slapping my thighs. And of course Tom Hiddleston never puts a line wrong. I'm glad it was my first movie after having CJ. I mean, I had already had one night out (the TBS concert,) but this was a little less stressful. The movie theater is right around the corner and I went with my best friend.

CJ is still asleep, but once he wakes up, we're off to the store. Then we come home, eat lunch together, (he's super into food, like me,) then he plays with his piano for a few minutes while I do some stuff online. Then by 2, he's ready for another nap. He still naps on a pillow on my lap. I haven't really tried putting him down for a nap. Every little thing wakes him up. One of these days, I'll try it. Then when he wakes, we play together for a while, then take the dogs out, he plays with his Mozart Cube or Music Turtle while I feed the dogs and get his dinner ready. Then he eats dinner, then I eat dinner, and then by 6 he's asleep again and I usually watch something on TV. These days it's Fringe on Netflix. He wakes up, we play for a bit, then his Grammy comes home and she takes him for a while so I can clean Havoc's cage and take a shower. He's usually asleep by 9. He still does not sleep through the night. At this point, he wakes around 5 AM asking for food. But he's pretty good about going back to sleep after I feed him. I like to put him in my bed after 5 AM and let him sleep there for a few hours. He's getting so big now, he hardly fits into the little space he used to occupy. And he does tend to wake me up by grabbing my face or kicking me in the crotch. O_O

Yeah, that's my whole day right there!

He's also started waving goodbye and clapping, right at 7 months. Clapping is right on schedule, waving a few months ahead, I think. He still won't crawl, though I see him thinking about it. I think there's time for that.

Tomorrow is obviously his first Christmas, so we'll stop by Boychild's family across the street for a bit, but the real family dinner will be the day after.

After the holidays I have a lunch date with Empress, Lady Chrysanthemum, Snarklit, Gold Dragon and hopefully Lao Shir.

And then it's the loooong, cold winter.

The day that CJ was supposed to have his hip x rays, we drove way the hell up the damn island only to be turned away because the dr had taken the day off. The receptionist said they'd called us, but I didn't have any messages. And there was another family there, too, who had to turn around and go back.

I think that Dr.s make too much money, and they don't have to care about business and patients. I recently had to leave my Dr of 20 years b/c I switched insurance and the receptionist was just like, "Bye then."

So, now I have to make another appointment, this time going to our usual place, except it's a whole big thing b/c tis one particular Dr does't take our insurance. So now I have to get prior approval, have all his charts faxed to insurance, etc. Ridiculous.

Tomorrow I have two clients, then a Dr appointment myself (just basic yearly stuff.) Next week I have another appointment with a new Dr, and to get this mark on my shoulder looked at, just in case.

But Tuesday is going to rule. I took a spa day for myself, as an early birthday gift. So I'm having a massage and reflexolgy. I can't effing WAIT. After that, my good friend Durga is coming for a visit. She lives in Seattle, and she's coming here to help her Mom move there with her, so that they can live together. I think that's fabulous. Last time I saw her was January. We broke into Tesla's old lab. (It's being refurbished now as a science museum, which makes me very happy. But I will miss breaking into it.)

Also, a few nights ago I ate some baby carrots and then spent the rest of the night barfing them up. This is probably because of the Government shutdown, since the FDA wasn't working and they didn't inspect food for salmonella. Republicans made me puke. Typical.

Every year after my birthday, I start a new blog file. (I write these up before posting them, and save them in a doc file, because you never know when your browser is going to crash and erase everything. Also because I like to keep my blogs on my hard drive.) So this will probably be my last entry for "blog40." So I'll end with some photos and a link to a video.







The other day I was going around the house talking in a POTC Davy Jones accent--don't ask why, I have no idea--and I did this fake tentacle-shaking sound. I don't even know what possessed me to make that noise, but this was the result. (LJ no longer lets me embed videos. WTF.)

And yes, I am willing to do the most moronic and ass-headed things to get him to laugh like this, LOL.

The first time I heard my boy laugh is the first day of Autumn.


I know I know, I'm singing the melody wrong. I was just going to grab him out of his carseat and I was singing it (wrong) to myself and he just lost his crap! So I just kept singing that same melody.

Of course after this happened, he had his nap interrupted by a local fire alarm and screamed for 45 minutes (like inconsolable screaming, the way he hasn't in about 2.5 months or so.) Then he was tired and frazzled for the rest of the day.

I hope this will be funny again tomorrow!

A year ago on the 25th, it was a Saturday, and I went to the fertility clinic where they took me in an hour late. So I sat around watching a show about sea turtles and reading a magazine about Doctor Who. Then I went into the office, where I read Sherlock Holmes while I waited, because, as I told the nurse, if this worked, I wanted to have a smart baby. She said, "I Mama is smart, the baby will be, too!"

I left cautiously hopeful, and here I am today, with a little boy sleeping on my lap.

I try to take Callum somewhere for an hour or so every afternoon. It gets us both out of the house – though we can't ever stay for too long because of Haku. Today I decided to take some DVDs I'm trying to get rid of to the Yellow Barn by the library. But the library and Yellow Barn were both closed, and the drop boxes only accept books. I just gave about 50 books to my neighbor across the street for her yard sale.

So there I stood in the parking lot of the library, holding Callum's carrier on one arm and a huge bag of DVDs and tapes in the other, in the hot sun, when a blond woman in a sundress approached. She was on foot, and the only other person in the parking lot.

She asked, "Are you looking for something?"

I explained that I wanted to get rid o all of these DVDs but didn't want to just leave them there.

She said, "I walked over here from the shelter for abused and displaced women. I hope it's not rude of me to ask, but we don't have a really big video library there and one of the girls was just saying that she wanted to see more movies."

Wow, imagine that?! What great timing! I told her she could have all of them. She said, "How fortuitous! What are the chances?"

I gave her the bag, then offered her a ride back to the shelter, since it would be a long walk carrying all the DVDs. She accepted, and so we talked on the way back about astrology and baby names. (Because she really liked the name Callum. And she got it, too. "That's Gaelic," she said. "Colin is another version of it.")

Then I was going to take Callum for a pleasant walk through the cemetery down the road and take some photos, but I had forgotten my damn camera! >_< So instead, we visited my Mom at her work. Drex was working there too and he came to say hi.

It's funny, originally I was going to go to the store b/c I'm out of chocolate, but I didn't have any money to spend so I decided on the library instead. Neat!

Two days ago, I took Callum out to brunch with Lady Chrysanthemum, Empress and Snarklit. I have been missing the hell out of them so it was such a wonderful day, getting to see them. We haven't trained together in so long. I haven't trained in over a year, Empress is in school AND working at a dental clinic, and she now trains somewhere else. And Chrysanthemum has taken time off to be with her daughter, who was waiting on a baby of her own – who was just born yesterday!
She got in a little Grandma practice first:


And here's the lot of us, the old crew:



We talked—of course—about how much we miss Ye Olde Days of training, when we were all together at the cute, cozy school. When the Gold Dragon was there, and a bunch of really nice kids, and all the other folks who used to train with us. When our Kwon was like a family and we all had some TV Trope-ish role in class. It all kind of started to change when we moved schools, and different people came in and old ones left.

I still want that back. I miss it enough that I'll wait to have it again.

Well, we were all just feeling nostalgic, I guess. One day, Callum will train and hopefully I'll be training again, too. These people will always be my brothers and sisters.

Welp! It's been chilly at night and hot during the day, but you can definitely feel a hint of fall even in the afternoon. It's just a smell on the breeze. Jo-chan's school starts tomorrow, so she'll be living here part time. Can't wait for her to come back! Mom, and Boychild and Boychild's Mommy, and Callum and I have been going for evening walks on Mondays. It'll be nice to have her along, too.

Speaking of, she's having a BBQ later that Callum and I are going to. We're going to discuss the logistics of getting us all to Disney in 2014. :D

And so Autumn is around the corner! Yesterday I was looking at the FB pics a friend of mine posted. She's from HitRECord and she has this beautiful little boy. (He's so cute and smart, he's got his own section in the TV show! Which I'm going to be on, too!) Anyway, she has a pic of her and her son at around 6-7 months or so, walking through a pumpkin patch. Callum will only be 5 months in October, but I can't wait to get a pic like that, myself. :)

He's about to wake up any minute, so I have to cut this short!