--though I didn't write this. angel_fly did.

I love angel_fly.

Music *IS* Love
by Angelina Adams

With each of my children, our first bonding moments involved music. A fact I’m sure comes as no surprise to people who know me well. I am always singing, dancing or moving through life with a constant background accompaniment of music in my mind that even dictates the rhythm of my steps as I walk across a room. When the nurse would hand me a tiny warm bundle of blankets, I would gaze down into a precious little face and be captivated by enormous blue eyes. My emotions would overflow and the only way I could cope with, or express, them was to sing to this intense little being in my arms.

This wasn’t just a lullaby. This was a bond. It was a softly sung expression of a deep soul to soul communication. In this moment and in this gaze there would be recognition and clicking in place of something that was right. A belonging and joy. Throughout their lives I would sing them to sleep, sing them through pain, and sing silly songs for learning and bouncy songs for dancing. The life I have lived with my children was always filled with music that accompanied the emotions of the moment.

Quite often it was the only way I could deal with just how much I loved them. When I just couldn’t contain it inside anymore, I would brush the hair from their forehead and sing them to sleep. Then I’d keep singing long after their eyes had closed simply because I couldn’t bear to stop telling their hearts just how much they meant to me.

And then Michelle was born.

There was no handing me a small bundle of blankets. There was an incubator in a darkened Neonatal Intensive Care Unit with a tiny body in it with tubes and wires all over the place. I wasn’t allowed to hold her and could hardly get close to the tiny plastic container for all the machines gathered around it, beeping and blinking and pulsating as they kept her alive. But there was a tiny space between the head of the warmer and the wall where I was allowed to stand. The top of her head was free of tubing and there was a soft tuft of reddish hair where I was allowed to very gently stroke my fingers along this IV free zone. I asked the nurse if it was okay to sing in this hushed, dark room. She looked at me and said I could if I wanted, but it was very doubtful she could hear me.

It was the first time I was told my daughter might be deaf. Of all the complications and health issues I’d been coping with as doctors received test results, this was the one that hit my heart the hardest. This was the one that almost broke me. I already understood that being Michelle’s mother was going to be so different than with Christina, Donovan and Chance. But to have this taken from her and I just seemed too cruel to contemplate. I needed this bond, this expression of love. It may sound silly, but I was suddenly afraid that if she couldn’t hear my song - she would never truly know me. So as a sad nurse shook her head and walked away, I leaned over the warmer and began to sing “You Are My Sunshine” to the oh so tiny baby girl fighting to stay alive.

Over the three months that Michelle and I lived in the ICU, the regular nurses grew accustomed to my insistence on being allowed to hold my daughter (tubing, IVs and all) once a day and sing to her. Some of them eventually began asking if I would sing when they had to deal with a difficult patient in the next room who would become calmer while I was singing. But every few days, there would be someone new on the unit who would ask why I kept singing to her when it was obvious she couldn’t hear me. The obvious being the fact that she had failed the startle reflex test. She never responded to sudden, loud noises and never turned her eyes when someone would speak to her. Eventually I stopped trying to explain why I needed to sing to Michelle and would just shrug, smile, and keep singing. I’m sure none of them had any idea how discouraged I was from their questioning of my actions.

But then one day, as I sat and sang and cried one of the nurses who worked with us often came into the room to check the monitors. She was working with a different patient that day, and I’d just been through another “why do you sing to her” conversation that she had overheard. She stood there for a moment, and then said “Have you noticed how much her stats improve when you sing to her? Every time. You sing and her oxygen saturations go up.” She turned and left, but I felt vindicated. I felt approved and encouraged. I gazed down at a tiny face I could barely see for the intubation tubing and the tape holding it in place and felt grateful - and I sang.

For years we have done the ‘is Michelle deaf’ dance. Visits to audiologists at various hospitals and clinics kept coming back inconclusive. Her schools have often been frustrated by her lack of language skills or any perceivable response to spoken directions. I would point to how much she loves music and be told that deaf children often enjoy music because of the vibrations. I kept trying to explain that I was sure it was more than that. I was sure she heard sounds, she just didn’t interpret them the same way we did. Only the parent of a special needs child will understand the way ‘specialists’ treat parents when they believe we are in denial of our children’s handicaps. There is a pitying smile followed by a way of no longer listening to our opinions that is both infuriating and disheartening. After a while, a tiny voice of doubt enters our minds. Maybe they are right, and I am wrong. Especially when each specialist says the same thing the last one said.

And then there are days like today.

After 17 ½ years of being told the same ‘inconclusive - probably deaf’ diagnosis, I was finally told conclusively that my daughter can hear. Not only that, she has a nearly normal range of frequency perception. However, it appears there is a dysfunction in the speech processing center of her brain. She hears speech, but doesn’t understand what it is. However, music perception is located in a different part of the brain.

Music is one of the only “sounds” Michelle can hear, interpret and understand.

While talking to the audiologist after Michelle’s testing she said that for Michelle when she hears music, she looks around for me. For her, the definitions of music, mama and love are all the same. They are all the same “word” for lack of better way to express what her mind understands.

So basically, all these years as I have been singing to Michelle and believing she was hearing and responding, I was right. And if I’d allowed even one of those nurses or professionals talk me out of singing to my ‘deaf’ child, I’d have taken away the one thing Michelle could understand. Music.

Never again will Michelle placing her hand on my throat be just her way of asking me to sing. Now I know it is also Michelle saying I love you. What an amazing gift for God to have given her and I. Can you imagine there being only one sound in the world you are able to understand and make sense of what you are hearing, and it is music? Now add on top of that the fact that what you understand music to be – is love.

What a beautiful world my baby girl lives in.


Michelle in a field of bluebonnets.

Been a long time, huh?

I wrote this thing last night and today. I posted it in Facebook, but a lot of you aren't there, so-- here it is. The women that I love loved it, so now I love them harder.
---

What I’m trying to tell you is

I.

I am wandering the hall on a Saturday morning,
pre-dawn. This is something I would do as a child
waking from a nightmare:
pace outside my parents' room, arms folded, making
small noises. Do I wake them?
Will they be angry?
But now, I am 22. I am 22
and something is growing inside me.

My knuckles are a scared staccato on the door.

II.

The E.R. doctors don't believe me.
We have eliminated a litany of symptoms:
I am not febrile, not nauseated, not contorting
in pain. My periods have come and gone, normal.
The pregnancy tests come back negative.
So they stare at me, bored, irritated, as I explain
again:
it's not that it hurts. It just—it feels wrong. Full,
a weight against my right hip,
a humming in my right thigh. Please, I beg.
Please. Just look. Please just look at it.

III.

Vile, I tell my mother, who hands me
a second huge cup of gluey contrast dye.
The worst smoothie ever. Just,
just awful.
Drink it all down, she says. Every drop.

IV.

The doctor returns with a clipboard and a strange look.
I don't remember his name now—
just the little chair he sat in, in the corner,
the bewildered expression. His dark eyes fix on me,
and he seems impressed as he says, Well.
We did find something after all.

You son of a bitch, I think. You smug prick, you asshole.
I told you. I fucking told you.

My hands move over my hospital gown.

How big is it?

The chair squeaks under his shifting weight. Well,
he says, it isn't big. But it isn't small.

V.

Some things that are approximately 8 cm in diameter:
soft, plump clementines;
little green apples;
baseballs;
pliant purple pincushions;
fresh peaches.
At 11 weeks, a fetus measures approximately 8 cm long.
Translucent nubs slice into fingers and toes; a face
coalesces, slowly but surely.

I begin to think of names for my cyst. In a week and a half,
they'll go in after it with lights, with cameras,
with knives.

VI.

My gynecologist is a competent, genial man of middle age.
Washingtonian lists him among its best,
one of the Top 100 Doctors in the field. He is not easily phased.
He has seen it all. He explains
a laparoscopy without condescension, is impressed
by the depth of my questions. I am not a
stupid woman. I am not a scared one, either.
Not yet.
He consults his notes. He will try to preserve the ovary, he promises,
as much of it as possible.
I shrug. Take it, I say.
In fact, while you're in there,
you might as well take the other one.

His nervous laughter dies, half-formed, when he sees my pity,
my slow, indulgent smile.

VII.

I settle on "Dylan McDermoid." Most people
don’t get the joke.

VIII.

I have finished signing the multitudinous papers:
the consent forms and the waivers: yes, you may do this,
and this, and this, to my body. You may
mark my soft belly in purple ink,
little Xs where you'll enter. You may strap me down,
you may split me open while the cameras roll.
I consent. Probe deep, doctor,
take what you need—and if it kills me
(oh, it won't, they assure me, it almost certainly won't—well,
yes, things can go wrong, but they almost
never do,
we promise), I promise it won’t be
your fault.

My father is a grim, worried vibration; my mother,
frenetic, too-smiling, bustles and talks, puts
her soft hands on me, on him, on everything.

Sunlight is meager in hospital rooms, as if
it, too, has been sterilized. Mute,
I feel the first shivers like an undertow.

IX.

I don't begin to cry until they wheel me,
on my back, prone, helpless,
from my parents. The first tears are slow,
hot, silent—a reflex. I am still talking,
still taking instructions.

Only when I am on the table,
turned up to the ceiling, an eyeful of masks,
of bright lights; only when the first thick, cruel needle
seeks the howling blood in my thin wrist
do I begin to weep in earnest, do I ask
for my mother, whether I will be okay,
whether I will die.

The anesthesiologist looms over me, half-obscured, but
I can see that he is a careful man, a kind man
(oh yes, the kindest in the room). He is sorry,
so sorry, for my pain.

Attendants attend. The gentle strange hands
on my arms, my face,
are sheathed in latex. They touch me
without touching. Many belong to women. Their voices
are loving, soothing, sincere. Someone
strokes my hair, and I flood us all afresh, a rapid,
frightened animal.

This is a good hospital.

Give her something, someone says over me,
to calm her down. I am ashamed
to be so coddled, so weak.
Morpheus moves from his monitors. Okay,
he says, okay. Here’s a little juice.

I see the world through a clear and open aperture.
Ohh, I breathe, oh. Oh. Thank you.
Thank you.

Now, says he,
count back from—

X.

[the last i
knew oblivion
oblivion was all
i knew]

XI.

They turn me on my side so I don't aspirate
on my vomit, which is considerable. I am weary,
hollow.
A nurse settles a blanket over me, tugs my open gown
across my breasts. Still unstuck in time,
I skip minutes: I blink us into the hall,
a recovery room; a fresh bed. To my eyes,
the air is clear
turbulence, or the bottom of a swimming pool
(where I love to lie, breathless, oppressed, under
the shifting, streaming sun).

I am hazy when they bring it to me the first time,
so that I have to ask to see it again.

It is the worst, most beautiful thing I have ever seen,
my wretched, malformed abortion.

It looks like a stuffed pepper, steamed too long,
or left in the sun at solstice. Pinguid, wrinkled
membrane sags in blistered bilious folds, embryonic,
unfinished, a thick snot globule, a shell of pus,
a loogie the size of my fist. Inside,
glistening, sebaceous masses of dark
hair abound in slimy curls, practically
pubic, a muculent undergrowth erupting from pallid
undercooked crust. It wonts only for maggots,
convulsing, ingesting, a squirming,
mindless mass. Impossible, to know
where the cyst starts and
the ovary ends.

There is no sounding the depths of my pride, my
perversity. I am in awe of my parasite, which
I have fed, nurtured, kept warm in the
close and garbled dark, in my secret
hollows. I made this, I croak, triumphant;
I made this, I did this,
this is mine.

XII.

She is a dark-haired child, a girl,
and fair. She is the loveliest thing
I have ever seen,
and she has a name
though I do not know it yet. They pull her
from between my open legs,
place her, a warm, pulsing life, on my breast,
in my tired hands. Joy burns
like steam from a road.

I wrench myself awake. The sheets are sodden
with sweat; the pillowcase, with tears. My voice
is still dying in my throat,
a hard-boiled egg.

Half-asleep, he makes a low noise,
warm, soothing. It suffocates like all of hell,
burns like holy water.

One day, I will beg him to take the bed with him when he goes.

XIII.

"Why do you hate children so much?"

I don't hate them. They can't help what they are,
which is loud, sticky, needy, naïve.
I cross my arms across my small, ineffectual breasts;
my mind goes to the cavern above my right hip,
the pale pink scar bisecting my pelvis. I don't
hate them, I insist.
But not everyone was meant
to be a mother.

If you're surprised never to have seen this one before, it's because I've posted in January, but backdated to the day I actually wrote this thing.
---

Asymptote

Along a ramshackle roof, long icicles,
long as my forearm. One, the longest, sluices its slow twin
from the bottom up: a random, cancerous stalagmite
eating alive the rictus of something green.
I tear one down.
Once, I might have made a gift of it. Instead,
I heft it, wonder what sort of weapon it would make—
or, pointed at an aging amber lamp,
whether its blunt end will collect light. It does not.
It disappears, lengthwise, lightless, into the snow.

Denim was a bad choice. I am no longer able to tell
when my thighs are touching.
They are the legs of an impossible object:
the illusion of intersection,
an infinite never-kiss, though always eye-to-eye.
This is how I see you.
Once, I explained the reason
why we never, ever touch—
it was inertia, remember? Even my bloodless thighs
are bound by laws—and you said…
Never mind what you said.

Black bubbles waited, in stasis, for the sun.
They would have boiled away in a fast joy, in their own time.
I am always too premature. I killed them under my boots
only because I liked the sound of the cracking,
the long crazy fingers in the ice. I bore down with all my weight.
I laughed at the fissures, and the escaping gas.
The evidence will burn with the morning. You will never see it,
and for that (for that? For that, and for the never-kiss) I am sorry.

Saltwater has a freezing point of -6F. So I didn’t worry
about what would happen
to the long trails. I didn’t worry about collecting icicles.

Remember to start with cold water, when your fingers are numb.

I'm still alive, I swear. I'm just, I'm all over everywhere-- I'm like sweet dough rolled too thin; the frantic potential energy in an unlit match; a ferrous fluid reaching up to kiss a magnet. I am a charged particle. I am bouncing off the walls. Someday, readers, you'll see me again, but I don't know what I'll be, or if you'll recognize me.

The leaves are taking their sweet time changing, that's for damn sure. I'm ready for all these germinating green things to go back into the ground. I'm ready for three weeks of gold and three months of rain. Bring it on. I'm a charged particle, and I've got enough heat to last a century of winters.

Dream leading into dream, this morning, like the susurrus of the changing tide—

--at the last, a drowned friend and a sea of mourners, lost, despairing, in a past century. I begin to paint a memorial, but I am a poor serf and soon out of pigment. I have painted only two colors, not enough, not nearly enough.

The moon stands high and full in the daylight, unnaturally close, milk-white. She regards me sorrowfully; tells me, in a gentle contralto, that she will give me any color I desire. The masses drop to their knees. Her face becomes a color wheel, a vivid and infinite prism. I bite my lip and think.

--do you have robin’s egg blue?
--I do.

A small container of pigment appears at my easel.

--the first light of sunrise.
--Yes.

Another.

--the color of a fresh peach.
--Yes.

Another small container, like the ones that store my Bare Minerals foundation, my mineral veil, my blush.

I thank the moon. I lift my brush.

Then the dream is gone, a lifted veil, and I am awake in the fall morning.

So Loren and I are separating.

We didn't really want to make a Big Thing out of it, except that saying nothing at all means dealing with each of you one at a time, as you realize, indefinitely. And that's painful, too; invariably, someone is bound to take until next March to figure it out, and by that point we really, REALLY won't want to be fending off well-meaning-but-out-of-touch friends and friends of friends, ad infinitum. So here we go, catching all of you in one fell swoop. This way, you're all in one place if you decide you want to form a support group or something.

Our specific reasons are complicated and, frankly, none of your business. But it's really important to highlight that this is mutual and completely amicable. This is not an issue of not loving each other anymore. This isn't about getting sick of each other or even getting bored and resentful. This isn't about insoluble chemistry.

This comes down to reaching a crossroads in our nascent adulthoods, and realizing we'd like to take our own photos of the scenery.

The five and a half years we've been together have been fantastic, start to finish. I can't speak for Loren, but even with the bumps and the scrapes, on the whole I have no complaints. He is tender, affectionate, thoughtful, clever, dutiful, hilarious, and magnitudes smarter than I am. I am very, very lucky to have gathered all those little pieces of him, to have carried them in my back pockets and slept with them under my pillow.

If this were as simple as "I love you and thus, I should be with you," this letter would be moot. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, and we are real humans with real flaws. Loren and I have been together since college – and because of that, we can't escape the feeling we don't really know what it's like to be grown-ups without help. Staying together means, in some ways, carrying those last vestiges of our adolescence around like an old security blanket. We don’t want to be each other's relics. We don't want to be reminders of what was and can't be anymore. We don't want to come to blame each other for what could have been and wasn't.

So, cliché or not, we’re striking out on our own for a while. If six months or a year or a decade go by and we realize it was a terrible, awful mistake, we can try then to rectify the error. Either we do nothing and persist as we are, or we take a risk and face the big bad world. Neither option leaves us feeling very good. No one ever wants to think they're missing out on something significant. But staying together won't eliminate that feeling, either – so at least this way, we give ourselves some context. Something to compare our mistakes against.

Before anyone asks: yes. We have seen a counselor, separately and together. Yes: our parents know. Yes: we are still living together for the moment, but yes: Loren will be moving in with a roommate sometime in the next month or so.

Yes: we are okay. Really. We are okay! We've been sitting on this for a couple of months. When the shit first hit the fan around mid-July, it was rough. Pretty bad. But I don't think either of us believes in volatility, where these things are concerned. We talked about it, and then we thought for a few days, and then we talked some more, rinse, repeat. Maturity, time, and an open mind go a long way to neutralizing the sting of something like this. We have come to terms with it. We are okay. Please don't ask us if we are. Because we are. In fact, we're both kind of interested to see what happens next.

At this point, I think we care more about YOU, our friends and family, who seem more vulnerable to feeling disappointed, anxious, and sad on our behalf. Ultimately, we don't have to be accountable to you – only to ourselves. We won't be answering questions we don't feel we have to answer. We won't be fielding insensitive messages about love conquering all in the face of adversity or some shit. That would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of who we are and why we're doing this. It would mean you aren't listening. It would mean you are framing our circumstances in the context of your own subjective reality. Please don't do that to us. It would be intensely hurtful to tell us you believe in the power of our love for each other.

But there's no harm in softening the blow. So I thought I'd share something that I think is pretty fucking funny.

A few nights ago, we were lying in bed, fidgety and unable to sleep. We got to talking, and decided it would be a funny joke to tell people we were breaking up for some really inane, incomprehensible reason, like—I don't know, like he got sick of my ordering pizzas with pineapple (which I would never do).

For no particular reason I can think of, I grabbed my iPhone off my dresser, opened up Voice Memos, and started recording. Rather than pretend we could ACTUALLY be manipulative assholes, I thought maybe it would be better if you just hear what we came up with, and how we sounded. And you can laugh with us, and wish us well. That would be pretty sweet.

ETA: Loren has written his own, typically eloquent version of this entry. PERSPECTIVE, GET YOU SOME.

Last week, it occurred to me: yes, yes, THAT is what I'm shaped like. HA. "Cellar door" has nothing on me.

Narrow Pear

Today, I aspire to be fruit.
When I go to market, be sure I'm labeled right:
not with the succulent apples,
pliant under probing firm fingers;
nor with the cold ruddy plums,
the endless slender bananas.
Neither, please, should you think me "kumquat" or "kiwi."
Am I so strange?

No, I am a narrow pear:
all bottom-heavy ergonomics,
a shade of my more shapely sisters
(who you will no doubt fondle first—
they always do).

Forgive my contusions, my granularity:
I am abrasive, being abraided.
Perforate my paper skin,
the white flesh beneath, and you will see:
given time under sun,
I will still be warm in your hands,
still moist in your parched mouth.

So Loren got himself a fancy "new" car: a 2008 two-door Yaris hatchback. He'd been driving the Mommobile -- literally, my mom's old '95 Camry wagon, the car I learned to drive on -- since, like, 2005, right after his '83 Laser broke down on I-395. Basically, homeboy hasn't had a car younger than 10 years in, uh, EVER. And after he FINALLY got promoted to full-time (with those tasty government bennies!) at the museum in March, we decided we could shell out for one. The State Employees' Credit Union gave him a loan at a pretty rad rate, and now he's driving some sweet fuel-efficient wheels!

If you're just DYING to know the details, he actually blogged about them himself here. Thorough, but harrowing, I assure you.

Things are going pretty damn well at the Line of Centeredness. Drinking occurs every day at 4:30. They keep me in lots of fattening and/or delicious snacks. When I share ideas, people don't dismiss my voice as the irritating sound of a mosquito or Joan Crawford. My coworkers seem to genuinely like me and even occasionally find me amusing.

Yeah, even after almost four months! I KNOW, RIGHT?

...I am playing SO MUCH ROCK BAND. And Bronwen and I work out on Saturdays. So THAT'S pretty cool.

I'm trying to get my shit together for Dragon*Con, but it's been a pain in the ass finding the time. There are going to be shit-tons of awesome guests there this year, and I'm pretty sure Loren has committed himself to getting a Fantastic Four tattoo -- which he will then get Stan Lee to sign, which he will then ALSO get tattooed. Your nerdiness doesn't hold a CANDLE to his, my friends. But that's kind of what makes Loren so great.

Well, that, and the-- never mind.

I'm starting to bandy about the idea of switching to a more grownup blog; elljay was perfect for the ol' college days, and filled a need before the advent of Web 2.0. But these days, Twitter pretty much takes care of all my narcissistic "HAY GUYZ I JUST FARTED AND IT WUZ FUNNY HUR HUR" needs. Yeah, even at work. After that, all that's really left is shitty poetry, shitty art, and shitty recaps of significant life events.

I haven't made a decision yet. But perhaps, minions. Perhaps.

Saturday is my birthday. BUY ME STUFF.

Okay. Good.

*flail*

I'm working on a REALLY LONG ENTRY about going to Arizona a couple of weeks ago. And I'm editing pictures. And I'm doing things at work. And Loren went to Vermont, and I was sad and cried, but then he came back and I was happy! And I had bourbon ice cream. And I'm babysitting a guinea pig this weekend. And... and...

*flail*

This thing:

For, you know. The two of you who haven't seen it yet.

And the visual aids, they live here.

NerdGirls Unite! Fact: Women Don't Have to be Lame

View more presentations from Charlotte Moore.

Yeah, so-- the scarcity continues. I've been so busy with working and having a real life, there are stretches of days where I don't even crack open my home laptop. If it's not happening on Twitter or FB, it's just not on the ol' radar.

Yeah, yeah, radar, schmadar, I know.

Maybe it's just a side effect of working with words all day. By 6:30 or so, I've run out of words for myself. I sit on the couch and stare into the middle distance. Every now and then, Loren wipes my drool away. First my drool, then his tears.

I'll tell you this, though.

A metric SHIT-TON of people I know are pregnant or post-partum right now. And it's freaking me out. Clearly, the only way to balance out the scales is for me to have a LOT of kinky protected sex, and then, I don't know, strip naked and menstruate all over a Babies "R" Us or something, chanting, "TO BEHOLD MY ENDOMETRIUM IS TO BEHOLD YOUR DOOM. ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR."

...kinda wish I was still gone, now, don't you?

Dear Internet

Oh yes, I am alive:
at week's apex, I tucked myself into that warm
brown box of girdered history space,
the interlocking rafters cupped over streetlight sconces--
like the calloused fingers of a threadbare day laborer
caging fireflies for his raggedy girl-child,
or perhaps ribs bent in around my heart--
and the hard rain making raucous love to virgin Spring.

When we heard it,
we all dropped what we were doing
to draw breath.

I admit, I was intoxicated
on peachy libations better suited to a girl--
prettier, probably--
half my age and then some.

But still, it happened,
just like that.

So:
I am as alive now as ever, world,
and the way I see it,
I draw my pay from drops of rain; in hunched nails;
in casual, affectionate vulgarities;
and not in all my toil in all the hours
minutes
or seconds
of this strange new warehouse freedom.

Hnnng. Ngghhagh.

Poetry in there. Somewhere. Tingly elbows, full midsection, vague familiar pulses of old pain in my scarred ventricles. Little lemony words. I think. Poetry. Soon, ripe and blue. I hope I hope I hope.

I was just reminding ivy_poet that I went to military school. I didn't start OUT there -- I started off at an all-girls boarding school before getting myself kicked out in early 2000, halfway through my junior year -- but I repeated my junior year there, and graduated a National Honor Society student with a couple of plaques, a medal, and the rank of cadet major.

After that, I seriously considered joining ROTC and then the Air Force, but my boyfriend at the time -- who I met at RMA, and who, let's face it, was the Frank Burns to my Hot Lips Houlihan, except that, you know. People actually LIKED Steve (really, how could you not?) -- was going to join the Army. It wouldn't have been a problem, but we'd been dating for a couple of years and really thought we were going to be married; and while the military is generally pretty good about stationing married service members together, being married and in separate branches can be dicey.

Furthermore, most of the writing jobs available to military folk are all in journalism, which I didn't have any interest in pursuing; and in 2003 -- you may recall -- we entered a 7+ years-long war I really, really, really didn't want to be a part of. I wanted to kick my own ass through boot camp, wear a uniform, get my pilot's license, and work a cushy air conditioned Chair Force office job for a few years until my time was up. But I did not want to be told where to live or, you know, maybe get shot at. So I passed.

Still. I enjoyed the shit out of JROTC. I've got lots of fond memories of trying to land a Cessna, and busting people for skipping (I'm sure those memories are fond for them, too), and killing myself doing PT at 5:30am during officer training before my senior year, and acting in some fucking kickass plays, and throwing pizza parties for my minions when they pleased me. ;>

You guys ready for this? Prepare to be dazzled (no... no, I said "prepare to be dazzled," not "prepare to bedazzle" -- Iain, Aranel, put the rhinestone gun down):

I love that shot of me and my dad.

The first two pics are from my junior year, during parents' weekend -- I was still but a lowly cadet tech sergeant (that year, I jumped from C/Airman straight to C/Staff Sergeant and then to C/TSgt) -- the third one is right at the start of my senior year, when I was a newly minted cadet lieutenant. And still very skinny, apparently, though I'll have you know I was also pretty ripped.

There are more pictures! You can see them! Anything with me wearing the big yellow cords are from my senior year; all the other ones are from my junior year. --well, except for the last one in the set. That's me accepting my C/Lt rank just before the start of my senior year.

Perhaps tomorrow, I'll get off my ass and caption them.

Ayep.

As you were.

I haven't posted much lately because I have been Very Busy with the awesome new job. If you really really are dying to know WTF is happening with me, you'll need to peruse Twitter every couple of hours. It seems like I can only manage updates in 140 character bursts these days.

I guess I can summarize salient points.

• Loren and I saw "How to Train Your Dragon" last night. I loved the shit out of it. I mean, Chris Sanders is one of my favorite guys in animation anyway, but HTTYD is just a beautiful piece of work. The characters and plot are largely predictable rehashes of movies you've seen before, but they're performed so adeptly and rendered so gorgeously that honestly, it's hard to care. My favorite, favorite scene is when Hiccup and Toothless take their first flight together. I didn't even see the film in 3D and still my dracophilic heart split and hemorrhaged into my chest cavity. I may have to actually see this one in 3D. You know, like, 20 more times.
  
  
• I have obtained two tickets to see Conan O'Brien's Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour when it lands in DC on June 8th. I BARELY managed to get tickets -- by the time I found out about the show, they'd already been on sale several hours, and it was nearly impossible to get two decent seats together. I called Ticketmaster, and a really nice guy informed me that, in fact, there were no two seats left together ANYWHERE; so he helped me finagle two box seats in separate but adjacent boxes. I figure Loren and I can stand out in the hallway and beg the other box seaters to switch with us or something. If not, at least we can, I don't know, throw popcorn over at each other or something. Really looking forward to it!
  
  
• I recently finished reading Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, after hearing an NPR interview she gave about it... I don't know, a month or two ago. The science freaks among you probably don't need to be told that HeLa cells were, and are, pivotal in curing a host of diseases, decoding the human genome, and finding out what makes cancer tick. They were the first immortal cell line, culled from a tumor on Henrietta Lacks' cervix in 1951 -- without her knowledge or permission. It is worth noting -- nay, even critical to note -- that Henrietta Lacks was a black woman. She died mere months later, literally distended with cancer, and her family remained tidily unaware of what happened until the mid-1970s. Since most of them had 6th grade educations, they didn't actually understand much of what happened until Rebecca Skloot tracked them down for her book. Thus, her story is inextricably part of their story, and a riveting story it is.
  
  Last week, she was here in Raleigh for a reading and signing. I got her to sign my book AND a photo of my excised ovarian cyst, Dylan McDermoid, to much laughter. I'd been keeping my ovary pics in a scrapbook, but I may have to frame this one now. I don't know. It's... pretty fucking gross. And awesome. But mostly gross.
  
  
• On March 1st, Loren FINALLY went salaried at a job he's been working the last, God, three years? He'll have benefits and shit for the first time since college. We're pretty stoked about that. His money plus my money equals shit-tons of new toys. And maybe a bigger place. And a new car. Not now. But sooner rather than later, finally.
  
  
• He and I celebrated our fifth year anniversary on March 15th, the same day I started my new job. We already blew our date night money on Valentine's Day, so instead we got takeout from Sushi-Thai in Cary and watched The Lion King, which is easily one of my favorite movies of all time, and which Loren surprised me with a few weeks ago. (The DVDs are in the fucking "Disney Vault," so the only way you can get them is through Amazon.) I'd like to take this moment to point out that Chris Sanders, of HTTYD, was the production designer for TLK. Trufax.
  
  
• Videos from IgniteRaleigh are, as far as I know, still on the way. Their production was delayed largely by SxSW, but that's over now, so yeah. I promise to let y'all know when you can watch my presentation in high-def hilarity.
  
  
• I'm getting my shit together for Weyrfest this year. Fun times.
  
  
• I haven't played WoW in weeks. I'm starting to entertain the idea of canceling my subscription -- except I know I'll want to play it again when Cataclysm comes out. I don't know. I just don't really NEED it like I did when I was unemployed. My original guild fell apart and regrouped, and unless you're raiding -- which you can't do all the time -- it's kind of boring right now.
  
  
• Work, on the other hand, is still pretty goddamn great.
  

My fingers are tired, it's beautiful outside, and I'm hungry. Follow me on Twitter, you fucking technophobes!