woman who reads too much

11:28 pm: Child comes home in despair, says zie is failing at everything important, everyone hates zir, zie wants to die.

You say: you see this really hurts.

You say: the suffering zie experiences is not a good-enough reason to attack zir family members.

You say: if there's anything you can do, you will.

Child is in misery. You can't help. You do not understand.

You say: suppose the worst that can happen happens. If child fails at this, child can do that. No matter what, child will survive. Child will be happy again.

Child says you don't know what you're talking about. Child hates being zirself.

You are at a loss. Child has been triply blessed by being born a first world citizen, in the upper class, to parents who care more about zir happiness than what zie can do for them. Child has been doubly-triply blessed with zir gifts of health, intelligence, and the personality that makes teacher after teacher dote on zir, particularly, out of a class of similarly bright charming UMC children. Child is so lucky to be zirself.


Coincidentally, an lj-friend wrote about her blessed child suffering from a disappointment. I responded:

I'm kind of emotionally retarded, so I don't have any advice, but I can offer sympathy: when you raise kids who aren't afraid to feel what they feel, they feel some really uncomfortable stuff! I find it useful to acknowledge to myself, that I can't fix this, and to the kid, that this really hurts.

I usually say something like, this is the sucky part of being a human being, and not a superhero: sometimes you lose. But the important part is: I get that this really hurts. If I could make it better for you, I would.

My kids are 13 and 17, they're still way more emotionally volatile and expressive than I am, I still find this difficult and uncomfortable. But I haven't frightened them into stifling themselves, so... I think I did as well as I could.

Tags: mothering

10:07 pm: nanowrimo: word count 3102 / 6 * 30 = 15510. Hmph.

Good things: I am watching Calendar Girls. I love it. Everyone should love it.

Bad things: The worst part of being a mom is that when other people are sick, you clean up after them, and then when you are sick, you clean up after yourself.

11:11 pm: news of the suz
NaNoWriMo day 4, wordcount 2645. This is really really good. For me.

House has gutters! and is well on its way towards having interior walls!

Brush pile is mostly trampled and halfway edged, except for the blizzard-relics, which are so big I think I should cut them up for firewood.

Mungo has been leaving the house at 6:30 for Jazz Band, and not getting home before 8:30, because of Theater Group. Meanwhile, Lego Robotics is trying to eat his life.

Nixie is even more overscheduled than Mungo, but manages it more independently. She has applied Early Decision to Reed. With her GPA, ACT, SAT, and AP scores, and her extracurriculars, and her recommendations, I'm... not even wondering about her other options.

My brane is not working well. Every thing I put into it pushes three other things out. I think this is because I have not been using my CPAP, because the mask is so irritating. I must get a new mask.

Good things: helenish posted a story! Neville/Draco, targets a very particular kink which one commenter called "Oh my god, a Harry Potter marriage of convenience regency baking AU!" I love it.

07:30 pm: Halloween
We've lived here for 21 Halloweens without one trick-or-treater, even when there were two little girls next door. That's how it goes when when your driveway is a quarter-mile right-of-way cut out of someone else's pasture. My kids used to go trick-or-treating with friends who lived in town. This is the first year Mungo (almost 14) hasn't gone; he would have gone if his friends did, but they didn't. He did go to a Haunted Corn Maze with them.

I meant to hand out candy at my house, but when I got there I realized that my lack of gutters + the recent blizzard + the current balmy temperatures = melting snow dripping on the heads of those who mount my front steps. So the better part of neighborliness was to leave my lights off.

I did clear away several big branches the blizzard had broken off the catalpa, which were obstructing the sidewalk, and swept up all the wet slippery leaves. Which means my brush pile, which I had been stomping down and hemming in with cinder blocks, has grown out-of-bounds again. Neighborliness is hard.

Nixie is having a movie night/sleepover at a friend's house. Hugh, Mungo, and I are watching the first season of Battlestar Galactica.

I called my mom back yesterday. She told me she had had surgery for breast cancer the day before yesterday. They caught it early and got it all, so no chemo, no radiation.

It's amazing that I've figured out how to have communication and relationships even as well as I have. Amazing, I tell you. I am grateful for all the help I've had from Hugh, Nixie, and Mungo.

I'm going to do NaNoWriMo this year.

Tags: mothering, mungo, my house, nixie, the dacha

11:25 pm: snow day
Snow! and lots of it! PSD schools were closed today and yesterday. Unfortunately, CSU didn't close until the afternoon, so I had to drive Nixie to her math class. There was a quiz, and Nixie isn't doing well enough to skip it.

The math class -- it's basically the second half of Thomas's Calculus -- is surprisingly difficult. Not because of the material. After the lecture on partial differentials Nixie said she had paid attention, but still didn't understand what they were. So I got a vase and a marker, and drew parallel lines on the vase from base to lip. "This is y=0. y=1. y=2." Then I took a toothpick and surfed it up and down one of the lines. "The partial differential with respect to x gives us information about how x changes while we hold y constant." I put down the toothpick, picked up the marker, and started drawing circles around the vase. "This is x=0."

"Okay, I get it," said Nixie. She glared at how obvious it was. "She's such a bad teacher!"

"No," I said, "I'm such a good one." But I think Nixie is right. Her teacher is really not good at teaching.


About the house: I thought I could have at least a virtual housewarming party this weekend, but no. The plasterer will probably be done sometime next week, and then I can move in. This weekend, I am using Samhain's energy to finish things at this house.

Tags: my house, nixie, the dacha

09:00 pm: for the fairest one
House pictures, as Betsy requested.

First, I must tell you I am already in trouble with the city. I got a citation for "Rubbish -- including branches in back yard." Well! The painter and the electrician left a lot of rubbish, which it was my responsibility to haul to the dump, which I did; but the brush pile in the back yard didn't need to be hauled to the dump. It just needed to be ignored while it quietly broke down in place. In my opinion.

The city inspector's opinion differed. She suggested renting or buying a chipper, or hauling the branches out to the place on Prospect that takes yard waste (for a fee) and turns it into mulch or compost. I wanted to let my branches decompose without the assistance of petroleum products. I was all set to become Permaculture Crusader!, but the inspector turned out to be all reasonable. Though dubious, she listened to my description of hugelkultur and gave me a month to make the thing look less like a rubbish pile. So, my house, from the front: The body is the white vinyl siding. The foundation and the window trim are the mint green I object to. Above the front door you can see the two greens: mint-green numbers against the sage-green fascia. From the side: On the right, you can see the pale sage green I chose. On the left, you can see a couple of the odd things the Apodacas left: the Bathtub (without the Lady), and the rockpile supporting a Geode.

brush pile

brush pile

paint job

colors

Tags: my house

01:55 am: The communication thing.
[In which I am talking to my husband about my reaction to the latest communication from the housepainter.]

Me: "Fine! Here's your money! And keep an eye out for my essay, 'How to turn a disappointed customer into a customer who is VIBRATING WITH RAGE, in five easy emails, each with its own special fauxpology!'"

Hugh: Is that what you wrote back?

Me: ...No. I'm not going to waste a line like that on him. He wouldn't enjoy it.


I should write that essay for you, dear readers, because you would enjoy it, but it'll have to wait until I can look back on it and laugh, because with me, VIBRATING WITH RAGE is more like vomiting with rage, and I would prefer not to.


Earlier, I told Hugh, "The human communication thing. I suck at it. I should stop."
He said, "You can't stop. Well, there's one way you could stop."
I said, "OKAY FINE. I should MINIMIZE my exposure to it."

Not seriously. Except for the fact that I suck at it.


Hugh reads my public LJ posts, and sometimes reads the comments. He is impressed by my kind and helpful friendslist. When I write about a problem and get reams of kind and helpful advice, he is incredulous. "Why don't you respond to them?" he asks. I say, "...."

It's the communication thing. I have some deficiencies there. After I write, I am spent. There is a significant refractory period before I can compose anything new.

Terrible metaphor.


Are you offended, disappointed, or hurt when I don't respond to your comments? Would it help at all if I said something perfunctory like 'Thank you'? Can you suggest anything that would help?


I do appreciate you. I do wish to become better at expressing it.

Tags: boxofdelights user's manual

02:28 am: Well, how did I get here?
Can't sleep. Moping.

The house painter emailed Friday to say that he was done, and to send the final check to his house. I went to the house today and was dismayed. It's mint-green. Unnatural mint-toothpaste green. I picked a pale sage green for the body of the house and a dark green for the foundation and trim. I got the pale green, but the dark green was replaced somehow by this bright toothpaste. I hate it.

So, I'm trying to figure out how did this happen? Which has turned into fretting about what is wrong with me, that over and over and OVER, I think I am communicating with another person, I think we have reached an agreement, I do my part (at least, I think so) and I end up with a hideous mess for which the other person is shocked -- shocked! -- that I am not delighted and grateful.

I'm sure it will be useful or at least diverting to track down exactly where the miscommunication happened. But, face facts, the only thing that all these miscommunications have in common is me. So, I wish I knew, what is wrong with me?

09:02 pm: comfort food
I came home from my house (have I mentioned that I have a house?) in sore need of comfort food. So I boiled some potatoes (well, first I dug up the potatoes) and kale, and smothered them with cheese sauce.

Daughter, who is recovering from flu, ate only potatoes with salt. Son, who is coming down with flu, ate nothing. I left salt out of the cheese sauce, so husband could eat it if he chose, but he is not yet back from evening treatments at the Raptor Center.

I told daughter that when I was a little kid, comfort food was creamed tuna fish on toast. Daughter made vomiting noises.

What's your comfort food? What was it when you were little? Do you ever eat your kid-comfort food now?

01:13 am: 70 million favors
I stayed up till 12:30 a.m. helping Nixie study for her History test. This means she reads me her textbook, and I ask, "Now what do you know about Irish monasteries in the sixth century?" and all too often she says, "I wasn't paying attention." I'm sorry, cordelia_v, she has always found history v. v. boring.

Then she said we had to wash her hair. She has a beautiful ($$$) black/purple/green/blue dye job, so we have to wash her hair with special ($$) shampoo and distilled water, in the sink. "No," I said. "I won't. I can't. It's too late. I don't want to. It's not that dirty. I'll help you tomorrow. Nixie," I said, going to the kitchen to help her wash her hair, "you owe me 70 million favors."

09:01 pm: My dog is special.
My dog Kitsu, she worries a lot. She's a nervous little dog in a big-dog body. One way she copes with her worries is by overgrooming. She has had at least one lickspot in all the years I've known her, usually on her feet. We've gotten through two sets of paw protectors. We also use the Cone of Shame.

This summer her lickspots have been more varied and more persistent. Still usually on her legs and feet, but the most recent two are on the underside of her fluffy tail and at the top of her fluffy left hipbone. I worry that this is the only visible sign of a painful underlying disease. I worry that it's a side-effect of my not grooming her enough: it began in the spring shed, which always makes her miserable, since her undercoat is dense, fine, and curly, and mats easily.

This morning she woke Hugh up by vomiting. Yellow froth, three times. This evening I saw her gagging and got her outside, where she choked up a hairball. Hair sausage, really, but: my dog has hairballs.

I think I must ask the vet for doggy Valium.

10:45 pm: you know you've been married a really long time
when you can't remember which side gave you the Cuisinart.

09:10 pm: house!
So, I have a house! Have I mentioned that I have a house? And I've been spending a lot of time there, catching up on what they call 'deferred maintenance', and saying "What the hell?"

If you've ever had to maintain legacy code, you know just what tone of voice I'm saying it in. Not just "Why did you do it that way?" but "I can't even guess what you were aiming for here."

For example, I've been going around the house, removing plants to give the painters access to the walls. In the top-middle of this image you can see the original stone foundation. To the left of that is the cinder block foundation of the addition. Nailed into the cinder block is a small piece of plywood. What? What the hell? Why?

Tags: house!

01:25 am: happy-making
1. Home-grown potatoes for dinner.

2. Congresspeople who vow to reject a healthcare reform package without a public option. I have no money for politicians, but look at those faces! They look like a representative democracy, don't they? Extra happy to see John Conyers still kicking ass and taking names.

3. urban_homestead. I admire this woman so much. She lives on a teeny-tiny lot in a big northern city, with no car, and exploits what she's got for beauty, for pleasure, and for food for her family. She writes a lot about food, gardening and cooking. You probably know locavores like Stuart in Dykes To Watch Out For? "You'll get used to it." urban_homestead demonstrates every day how sustenance can be sustainable *and* a source of delight. And the way she writes about her children's eating gives me vicarious pleasure without shaming me for having a picky eater. She is many kinds of awesome.

Tags: good things

12:51 am: house! can has! also save the date
I asked for $6000 in lieu of fixing all problems with house. They offered $5000. I said yes. So, house! Will be mine on September 1.

Now I am scheduling people to fix problems. The most interesting question is, when I pull off the very old carpet, will the extremely old hardwood floors be usable? If everything goes perfectly, I will get the HVAC, the rewiring, the insulation, the exterior painting, the gutters, the grading, the fencing, and the flooring done in the first half of September. And then I will ove in.

Whether or not everything goes perfectly, I am planning a housewarming party the weekend of Friday Oct 30 to Sunday Nov 1. If you can be in Colorado that weekend, come!

Also, my Nixie is home! She had a wonderful time at Camp Rivka. And if any of you have teenagers who would like to explore Colorado, I will gladly pay it forward.

12:24 am: Thanks to vito_excalibur I know that David Levine has thought more about RaceFail09 and come to different conclusions.

First, and most important: Taking seriously the possibility that you might be wrong is praiseworthy, and I praise it.

Also, I agree with David Levine that human communication can only be understood in context. I said earlier that PNH's participation in RaceFail09 was like a guy who walked into a room of people who burst out laughing at him because they had been talking about Repo Man and he was carrying a plate of shrimp.

And I contend that this viewpoint-neutral way of talking about communication in context is true. But it isn't complete.

Most people don't get to assume that their context is the context. If you do (and anytime you argue that what you meant is what matters, you do), then your privilege is showing. And you should pull your pants up. Nobody wants to have to look at that.

12:13 am: Inspection objection deadline
We saw the house again.

The inspector got into the attic, where he found 1.no recent leaks, 2.no insulation whatsoever, 3.knob-and-tube wiring.

The furnace and AC work when you find the hidden thermostat. The gas fireplace works when you light the pilot.

The electrician said there's no way to install GFCIs with this ancient electrical panel. Also the 'double-tapping' the inspector noted is seriously, uh, problematic: they've got the 20-amp AC wire tapped into the 100-amp main circuit breaker.

Bids from the electrician:
$1950 for
- new 100 amp electrical panel
- Kitchen & bathroom GFCI circuits
- 2 wired-in smoke/carbon monoxide detectors at bedrooms, 1 wired-in smoke detector in basement stairs
- bathroom exhaust fan
- Fix wiring in basement
- Change exterior box to new weather-proof box

$4000 to replace knob-and-tube

Bid for the HVAC:
$194 to
- Clean and service furnace and A/C.
- Add a 6" firestop to flue, fix top door on furnace.

Bid from the plumber:
$0. He diagnosed a clogged filter, unscrewed it, cleaned it, put it back on, and refused to charge me anything.

Bid for the gutters:
$1391.60 However, he said, if I clear away the vegetation on the house and replace the cove molding with nice flat 2x6, I should call him back to get a lower bid.

This weekend, the sellers plan to make several dump runs. Monday we'll get to see inside the garage and shed, and we'll get bids for insulation and exterior painting. Then we have to give the sellers our request-to-fix.

Beth (my REALTOR®) proposed asking them to fix the sliding door lock, make the wood windows operable, and credit me $4000 in lieu of fixing everything else.

Hugh thought I should at least ask them to pay for all the electric. He said I should find out whether the knob-and-tube (with one not-up-to-code splice) would prevent another buyer from getting a mortgage.

Beth called her mortgage guy, who said the knob-and-tube might be a problem, depending on the appraiser, but the lack of gutters and peeling exterior paint would be a problem.

So I'm thinking of asking them for $6000 in lieu. Hugh says the worst they can do is say no. But what if they'd say yes to $4000, but $6000 makes them say no?

07:03 pm: the thermostat is a lie
The reason why the furnace and AC do not respond to the thermostat is that the visible thermostat is not connected. There is a real thermostat hidden in a cupboard so that the woman with dementia won't play with it. You'd think they might have mentioned.

12:40 pm: house inspection
House has no gutters, negative grade (toward the house) and trees/shrubs/vines right up next to the walls. Therefore has moisture problems, including some foundation cracks and peeling exterior paint.

Sewer drainage is clear. Sewer drain is clay pipe except for one section which has been replaced by cast iron.

Plumbing is mixture of copper and galvanized pipes, but is all good except for one sink which has no water pressure.

Electricity is 100-amp and maxed out. Either thermostat does not work or circuit board is damaged, because inspector could not get either furnace or airconditioning to start.

Many windows, including bedroom, are wood and painted shut.

New gas fireplace's chimney is in good condition, but other chimney is unused/unusable, and may need repointing so it doesn't fall down. Furnace is vented out the side of the house through a wood panel which is a fire hazard.

Crawl spaces need vapor barriers.

Inspector could not get to the attic access because too much stuff was piled in front.

Smoke detectors not working. Carbon monoxide detectors not present.

Foundation subsidence has caused floors to slope significantly to the north. Inspector estimates 2-inch difference in height from one side to the other.

Fence is propped up by sticks.

Outbuildings are inaccessible because locked.

In conclusion: old house is old.

12:36 am: To do tomorrow
1. Get up.
2. Nixie's laundry.
3. Plant cotoneaster.
4. Plant basil.
5. Sow peas, lettuce, spinach.
6. Water everything.
7. More Nixie's laundry.
8. ALL WEEDS EVERYWHERE to compost pile.
9. House compost to compost pile.
10. Manure to compost pile.
11. Pesto?
12. Bath.
13. Make to-do list.

Yay! Nixie passed her driving test.
Not so yay! We have to add her to our insurance.

09:45 pm: owell
I got ahold of my mom today, and I... flinched. She started crying when I told her we were going to live apart, and asking for comfort and reassurance from me, and I flipped from asking to giving. So. Owell.

12:23 am: motherlove. money.
My mother used to tell me, "I love you, but I sure don't like you." By the time I was ten, I knew she was lying. She didn't love me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

For decades, I believed that this was because I was a bad person. Then I had a child.

My mother was 'accidentally' locking me out of the house before I was five. I know that some children are a lot harder to love than others. My school reports and the stories my mother tells imply that I was an abnormally good or at least obedient child, but even if I weren't: no five-year-old deserves to be locked out of the house.


I'm thinking about this because I'm about to ask her for money. My older brother and younger sister have had lots of handouts over the years, but I've never needed anything. Even when I did need money--

My parents divorced when I was fourteen. The divorce decree said they were each responsible for half of our undergraduate education expenses. Also there were trust funds, set up as tax shelters when we were much younger, which my mother and one of her brothers controlled. Somehow, my older brother and younger sister got a complete free-ride education at Notre Dame out of this, while I got in-state tuition at the University of Michigan. For living expenses and textbooks, I had student loans and minimum-wage jobs.

So now, I want this house. Hugh will give me $180K, which is half the market value of his house. The seller wants $225K. Zillow says it's worth $211K. I'm going to ask my mother to lend me $30K, which I will pay back in nine years (when my kids are through college) or when I sell the house, whichever comes first.

12:55 am: The good news:

One of the tunes Mungo is learning to play on his euphonium is the Monty Python theme song, a.k.a. Sousa's "Washington Post March".

Nixie scored 800 on her SAT math Subject Test.

10:44 pm: Okay I figured that a REALTOR® would have to be a person who liked to talk to people[*], but aiee! I don't know if I can do this.

Today I got to look at a house. All the other houses I called about were already under contract. All the realtors I spoke to asked lots of nosy questions, of course, in order to help them find other houses I might like to look at, but today's realtor -- the first who could show me the house I called about -- was also the first who asked, in that initial conversation, (1)what kinds of dogs I have and (2)what my children's names are.

She isn't free during Mungo's summer Band class, so we meet right after Band, so Mungo is with me. The first thing she says is how nice my voice sounded on the phone; it made her think I'd be the nicest person she ever met. I smile politely and say no, I just have a nice phone voice. Then she turns to Mungo, greets him by name, and exclaims, "You have great eyes!"[**] Neither Mungo nor I know how to respond to this. "How old are you?" she asks. He admits to being thirteen. "That explains it!" she says.[***] "Pretty soon, girls will be telling you that all the time."

To cope with two people who don't talk much, this realtor talks enough for three. She doesn't know how old the roof is, or what the crime rate in this neighborhood is, or how much the house next door is under contract for, but she can find points of commonality even with me. I tutor math; she tells me about her professor -- who she's still friends with -- who teaches teachers to teach math. She admires my "calm energy". She asks if she can give my contact details to a friend of hers whose daughter can't graduate from CSU because she can't pass algebra. She asks, again, what kind of dogs I have, and exclaims, "I love that you have mutts!"

A few hours later, she calls to tell me that her office has received an offer on the property I looked at. I don't call back.

I agreed to meet her on Wednesday to look at three other houses. Part of me wants to cancel. Another part wants to go, with a tape recorder, to collect samples of a character who, cheerfully and with all goodwill, would drive a character like me insane.


[*]although I can see an empty market niche: REALTOR® to introverts! No unnecessary communication! As much as possible, all communication through email! When face-to-face meetings are unavoidable, I only speak in response to your questions!

[**]This is not as insane as it sounds. He does have startlingly beautiful eyes.

[***]No. It has nothing to do with being thirteen. Perhaps the realtor comes from a culture where it is polite to give a compliment on meeting; for Mungo and me, personal remarks from strangers are the opposite of polite.

11:18 pm: self-pity fail.
+ New computer came!

- It doesn't have a modem. I didn't realize dial-up made me a Special Interest Group.

+ I can install a modem,

- using up one of its card slots.

- I was thinking STRUCK BY LIGHTNING meant involuntary hardware upgrade, but no. The only involuntary upgrade I got is

- Microsoft Vista.

I do not yet know whether new computer can run Microsoft Vista and chew gum at the same time, because it doesn't have a modem.

11:51 pm: First pesto!
OM NOM NOM

Summer goes by, and you eat pesto every week, and it's always good: you don't perceive any decline in pleasure. And then winter comes, and you eat the pesto you stored in the freezer, and you know it doesn't compare to the picked-chopped-eaten pesto of summer, but that was summer and this is winter, and it's still good. Then comes spring, and you plant new basil, and then comes summer, and you take the first harvest, and Oh! My! God! suddenly those arguments that misery exists so that we may appreciate happiness seem to make sense.

12:00 am: the spirit of next month
So much seems to happen in so few days, these days! Also we have had some weather.

In the four days I was away the grass grew knee-high, the weeds grew hip-high and flowered and set seed, the magpie babies hatched, the potatoes needed hilling, and and and.... There was a toad in the driveway when Nixie and I got home. Its eyes were open and its mouth was opening and shutting, but it didn't move, even when I wrapped my hands around it. It may have been laying eggs, or thinking about laying eggs, or just exhausted and confused by hopping through the tall wet grass. I carried it to a recently-weeded flowerbed near the house, where it hopped away.

We continued to have some weather. The surge protector failed to protect my computer. When I get my new(-to-me) computer, I'll see what I can salvage of my old data, but most likely, if you sent me anything in the last week of May, it's gone.

Then Hugh and Nixie and Mungo went to North Carolina, where they stayed in a lodge that only hikers, llamas, and, in emergencies, helicopters go to. They hiked to the top of what's called a mountain on the East coast, but could not see anything but fog. They visited Asheville and the raptor center in Charlottesville, where they were scandalized to learn that they name their educational birds.

I did really amazing amounts of work in the garden. I come in when it's too dark to tell weed from desired plant, whining, "But I just got started!"

Garden pics and details will follow.

11:22 pm: Y HELO THAR CAPN OBLIVIOUS
I just realized that when [attractive person I only talk to at Wiscon] said that their [relative] lives in Denver and they really should visit them, I could have said, "If you're ever at loose ends in Denver, I'd love to hang out with you."

L'esprit du mois prochain, c'est moi.

11:10 pm: Shiny happy Wiscon
Don't know what to make of this dream: I was in a small group of people having a Wiscon wrapup discussion. A woman was expressing strong opinions in French and English. A man was condescending to her. He shrugged dismissively at her and turned to ask me about something she'd said. She was very angry. She leaned over him in his chair, getting into his line of sight, demanding that he respond to her. When he continued dismissing her, she bit off the tip of his nose. He grabbed her and a pair of scissors and snipped off the tip of her nose. I started crying. I picked up their nose tips to give them back, but I mixed them up. Then I was running down halls and escalators, sobbing, trying to get them bags of ice and transport to the hospital.


The real Wiscon was wonderful. It's always the high point of my year, but this was the best yet. There was a certain amount of needing to be Nixie's mom instead of enjoying myself, but it was more than outweighed by the pleasure of sharing something I love with someone I love.

I was anxious about moderating my first panel but it went very well. The only difficult bit was a panelist who didn't know how to stop talking. I helped him find stopping points, using several of the techniques suggested by wild_irises, and he thanked me for it afterwards. I got positive feedback from hobbitbabe, kalmn, piglet, and Nixie, who decided to attend after I promised not to point at her and say, "That Girl can tell you whether I walk my talk."

Now I am all RAWR! Give me the panel on "Male Genital Mutilation: Religious Freedom or Human Rights Violation?" I can moderate anything!

I expect I will come to my senses before panel sign-up comes around again.

I was gnawing my fingers off at the Mod Squad panel on Friday. Then the person I sat next to said, "Oh, you're boxofdelights!" We had a brief intense conversation about whose comments threads we knew each other from (jonquil) and the LJ to Dreamwidth transition, and then I said that I had to meet people for dinner, but if he'd like to get together later to continue the conversation, and he looked flustered and said he had to meet his partner. Ha! All the rest of my life I am perceived as a sexless being; I forget that at Wiscon it ain't necessarily so!

Shiny Wiscon people, I know that my delight in your conversation seems very much like flirting -- probably because it is very much like flirting -- but I assure you: no matter how much I like you, I will not imagine that you want to do with me anything other than talk.

Tags: nixie, wiscon

12:57 pm: signal boosting
If you identify as a person of color and as a science fiction/fantasy fan, this LJ comm would like to know.

Thanks to schemingreader for the pointer.