(no subject)

[stakebait]

Mom of Mer is home from hospital, and I am home from Mom of Mer's -- though only till tomorrow, when I go back for the weekend. She is fine. (For someone who had surgery a week ago. There will be no steeplechasing, ribbon dancing, or wanton picking up of dropped things for the forseeable future.) I am fine too.

The plan is for me to spend weekends there for the next two months, doing groceries and laundry and shopping for odd bits of archaic underthings to hold her incision together, so if I'm not around, that's why.

I am missing Lunacon this weekend, which will probably make me sad afterwards, but is just as well, as this is not the Social Mer. This is the Mer whose idea of a racy St. Patrick's Day is to put some chocolate in my milk. I don't mind in the least having a quiet evening of cat and book in my own apartment, but I hate to be sedate at what should be a party. It makes me feel old.

Rejection from Feral Fiction, though a very encouraging one. How I wish it was good professional etiquette to reply to someone who says "this is not for us" with "why not?" By which I don't mind "change your mind" or "how dare you" but "I really want to know, why not?" It would help a lot with the figuring out what to send them next time.

Oh, well. Negligible word count, but I did write another poem.

The altogether-too-late-for-the-anthology Red States/Blue States plot bunny continues to churn in my brain. Though actually plot is the one thing I don't have -- all I've got is an increasingly fleshed out setting, a protagonist, and the first two lines. What *is* that, a Setting Ferret? Sooner or later I must corner an SCA person, a military person, and a Pittsburgh native for brain picking for that one, but it need not be now.

Am very tired, which feels altogether too comfortably familiar. Am also in that slightly nerve-exposed state where random phrases strike me with stunning force, leading me to get briefly weepy in the work restroom from reading a Phantom retelling, or stand transfixed by an ad on a payphone. Fear my unflappable composure, it takes an empty plastic bag caught on a tree branch to shake me. (It's not a *bad* mood, if that wasn't clear. It's even pleasurable, in an unsettling way. Just intense, like the muffling is off the world and every touch shudders to the bone.)

Comments

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

This is the Mer whose idea of a racy St. Patrick's Day is to put some chocolate in my milk.

And you will eat that banana, lunchtime be damned!

[snugglehugs] Thanks for the update. If you want to talk I can give you a call after bellydance tonight. One way or another make sure you're talking care of yourself.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

*long hug* deep breaths. Glad to hear from you, glad to hear you are bearing with, am thinking of you and wishing you well.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Hee! I would, if I had a banana. :)

Thanks for the *hugs* I think I might like to talk, if I'm not asleep -- must decide if I'm going to bellydancing myself.

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

I'll give you a ring then =) If you're sleeping, you can just not answer.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Thank you muchly. *hugs* *breathes*

[doeeyedbunny.livejournal.com]

Chocolate milk?! You wild and crazy woman!

*hug* Good to hear from you.
Miss you, and will miss you moreso this weekend.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

That works. Though it might be more fun if I did answer in my sleep. I wonder what I'd say?

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Hee! I'm a wild thing, I am. :) Have a great con! I miss you too.

[buxom-bey.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one who's going to miss Lunacon this year. Although, somehow I still wound up being scheduled for panels, so I'm sending L as my proxy.

"These are not the breast you're looking for."

[valancy.livejournal.com]

*hug* rough time, lady. Pulling through with grace as always, though.

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

"Pudding pops, Gryffindor, blowjob?"

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I think any grace is entirely an artefact of my editing what goes in the LiveJournal, but I'll take what I can get. :)

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I do hope I wasn't scheduled. I did email them. And I'm sorry you'll be missing it too.

Hee!

[dodyskin.livejournal.com]

*hugs you*

I'm glad you're okay, if raw. Raw is okay sometimes.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Bwah!

When I tried to do my Sekrit Fannish Shames (before deciding that if I'm ashamed I don't want to share), one of them was that having spent an entire con trying *not* to say that to James Marsters, I now rather wish I had.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

*big hugs*

I like this Mer too. Don't feel you have to perform for anyone. You are not our monkey (unless you want to be).

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Thanks.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

It's good to hear that things are going as smoothly as can be in the Mom-of-Mer sphere. Here are some *hugs*, boisterous ones for you and some gentle ones for your mom.

Sooner or later I must corner an SCA person, a military person, and a Pittsburgh native for brain picking for that one, but it need not be now.

You can get 2 of those -- SCA and Pittsburgh (though she may not be a native; she lives there) -- in cellio.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. I shall miss you at Lunacon!

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

*hugs and more hugs* (but gently)

I got caught by the empty plastic bag on the tree branch late one night. I couldn't actually see the branch, and it took me minutes to work out what the pale flappy thing floating in mid-air was...

It's funny, isn't it (nah, not really) how this convention has got established, that publishers not only don't have to tell you why they're rejecting your work, it's a point of honour not to and if you question it the sky will fall on your head. What happens if you do ask? Do you go on a blacklist or something?

Look after yourself as well.

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

C'mon. We all know your real shame is kitten!fic.

I'll need to grab dinner when I get home. Want me to eat first, then call, or do you mind me chewing in your ear?

Lack of monkey

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I don't feel I have to perform -- silence is fine (and I tend to get quiet when things are hard or complicated or not baked yet). But I do somewhat feel that if I'm going to perform, I should do it well -- that an entry which is neither entertaining nor enlightening is not worth making. Especially one that has no significance or application to anyone but me.

But there are the people who want to know about me, and LJ is an efficient mechanism for telling them how I'm feeling before I get too tired for repetition and cut my answer to the bone. Thank goodness for the cut tag, which means I'm not imposing on anyone who doesn't, for whatever reason, want to know.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

That was on there too. :)

Chew away! If I'm going to bellydancing I'll probably have dinner with akkasha out, so I may not be back till later anyway, but if you don't mind the multitasking, I don't either.

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a plan. At which point the only up in the air thing is if I'll just reheat something or if I'll go all out and make hamburgers. I kind of have a beef craving. We'll see how this goes.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Glad to know it's not just me. My favorite is when they're not caught on anything, and float high through the air on weird currents, like a ghost. I call them Urban Tumbleweed.

Hee! That'd be a fun game -- the publishing black list and how you get on it. I bet the various editors and agents on LJ and blogs would be happy to contribute suggestions. :)

I don't know what happens. I expect nothing much, except that I've annoyed them and made them feel awkward, which is not the emotional reaction I want when someone sees my name on a future submission.

I can't blame them in the least for not wanting to have to justify what may be a nonverbal gut reaction, or take the time when they need to spend it on editing what they did accept or reading the next submission, or want to risk the likely frequent rages and self-justifying screeds they'd get in response. I wouldn't, if I were them. I just wish there was some way of conveying "Look, if you happen to have the words and time to type them, please do. I won't freak out. No really. Hand to god."