Ceri B.

I’m so tired I’m slightly dizzy. On Friday, I made my plane tickets to see my parents from June 3 - June 7, amidst conflicting messages from my mother about how I needed to come visit, but that coming to visit that far after my dad’s birthday (May 11) was completely unacceptable, and I should visit earlier. I didn’t mention teaotter and I visiting our dear friends in Oakland from May 16-22, and I will need to lie about this during my daily phone calls to my mom then, because that wouldn’t serve as an excuse, but simply as another reason to attack me, just as she had attacked me for wanting to spend the time around Mother’s Day with teaotter due to her mother dying last year at that time.

In any case, early Friday evening, I was just about to call my mom back and ask her straight out if I should cancel the tickets, and just before I picked up my phone, she called me and complained more about the tickets, so I cancelled them (in time for a full refund, yay). I have no idea when I’ll be visiting either around then or in August, since one of my mom’s threats was saying that I couldn’t come out in August if I didn’t visit in May, meaning I’d need to foot plane flight to GenCon myself, rather than flying to see them and then flying to GenCon and heading home. Flying from Portland to Indianapolis rather a lot of money for me - more than I can currently afford. At this point, I think I’m willing to miss GenCon. I have friends that I like among the various gaming industry people, and I get work there, but I get work in other ways too, and I’m simply not sure that going it worth the emotional stress with my parents, unless that’s the only visit I do this Summer. OTOH, that may work, we shall see.

In any case, I was a complete mess on Saturday, and my awesome partner amberite figured out that handling stuff with my parents, and the fact that I effectively have a separate persona/interaction mode for dealing with them, that had been getting increasingly frantic was the reason I was so messed up. That provided me with much needed clarity.

Then, today, I went over to see my amazing new friend alatefeline, and kept them company as they cleaned and organized their space. After that, I talked about my parents with them, and they were utterly drop dead amazing at providing insights and most of all, much needed comfort. It was a lovely and wonderful visit, and then the two of us went out for ice cream with amberite, which was also wonderful. teaotter was writing fanfic and has been erratic in a variety of ways trying to get her supplements to all function together, and seemed slightly better tonight, but also far from full functionality, which is stressful to her, me, and amberite. Among other things, alatefeline helped me realize that while if my parents weren't rich, and thus an upcoming source of money needed money, I'd cease letting my mom try to control me, and I'd also only call every few weeks and would visit a Christmas and no other time, but that I wouldn't cut them out of my lives, which is not a comfortable thing to realize about abusive parents, but is very useful to know.

I often think of myself as rather morally "flexible", I know that the rules that I live by are rather eccentric, and I often do not consider myself a good person, but after that conversation with alatefeline, I wonder if I actually am.

In any case, I got home many hours ago, and have done little, until recently when I realized exactly how exhausted I am, which I hope is a good sign. My mom has been exceedingly vicious for more than a week, and during that time I haven’t managed to sleep more than 5 ½-6 ½ hours a night – regardless of when I go to bed, I wake up that many hours later and can’t get back to sleep, along with having something resembling hot flashes when I wake up (many medical tests, combined with observation clearly showed there’s nothing going on with me except stress). Both of these serious stress symptoms that first showed up more than a year ago, after I became exceptionally upset about our semi-nazi government, and they got worse whenever I visited my parents and when Becca’s mom died and Becca went to the funeral.

In any case, what was different this time was something I haven’t had for well more than a decade – before now, I wasn’t tired despite not having nearly enough sleep for more than a week. I didn’t feel good, but I felt completely alert, and that’s over. Between help and comfort from amberite and alatefeline, I’m at long last completely exhausted (or am at least aware of this fact). I’m a bit scared to get to sleep because I worry about waking up too soon again, despite what I’ve been taking to help me stay asleep, and I’m also deeply troubled that I need to talk to my mom again tomorrow, but I’m also taking my tiredness as a very good sign indeed.

On the positive side, I’ve been looking for a counselor, and after several places having no openings or no opening for someone taking my insurance, I finally got a call back on Saturday, to call someone tomorrow to set up an appointment, so that makes me nervous too, but it’s also a very good thing (I hope).

Also, not only is one book back for approvals again (crosses fingers), but I also both got my writing on my current project done for this week, as well as ¼ of my writing on that books done for next week, so I’m close to finished, and don’t need to work very hard next week. One ability I’m deeply thankful I possess is the ability to turn extreme stress into solid productivity – I don’t end up any less stressed, but I do at least get necessary things done. In the coming week, I shall work and read novels next week, and attempt to relax.

More than a decade ago, I came up with a prediction for the sorts of action + soap opera shows that the CW is noted for, and that I watch far too many of. That concept is called “TV Bi” – the idea is that once we get past most of the homophobia in both our culture and in producers and writers of mass media, then later versions of shows like Buffy or The Vampire Diaries will have many bi characters, because the potential for romance (and the all too common and annoying jealousy plot lines) will greatly increase, since every character could be interested in every other character. I expect this to eventually catch on in a major way.

I couldn’t find a post about this to link to, but I found this one on stages of media acceptance of subcultures, which is relevant, and based on Vito Russo’s brilliant book The Celluloid Closet.

So, I’ve seen what may be the precursor of this, on the CW now less, with the character of Michael in Roswell New Mexico. He’s a male bisexual character who is interested in two of the other major characters (one man and one woman, who are also best friends), and it’s well done and interesting. The other characters on the show are also well done, sadly, the show is quite terrible. The writers can craft good dialog and the actors are pretty good, but the plot is beyond dreadful – it drags on, it’s dumb as a bag of hair, and if the characters weren’t good, teaotter and I would have stopped watching it.

In any case, acceptance of media subcultures has definitely changed since I wrote the above link in 2003. Now, almost every show I watch has at least one gay, bi, or lesbian character, and I’m watching two shows with transsexual protagonists played by trans actors (Supergirl, with Nia Nal, and Pose, which has several trans characters). It’s nice to occasionally look back and notice the progress.

I'm done with my revisions on the book I have out for approval, but I'll be checking it tomorrow before I send it in. Doing this, and doing my normal workload for the project I'm currently writing has been exhausting, but I'm done and checking it over won't take long, and my part of the Dragons book remains well on schedule, if not a bit ahead.

However, what I'm mostly thinking about is my cat Josie (pictured here). She's not the brightest creature - our kitchen (where all three cats get fed) has 2 doors. The other cats know that if they see one door closed to go to the other one. Josie just sits in front of the closed door - although perhaps this is due to her bossy personality rather than limited intelligence, since I then either pick her up and carry her (a process she enjoys) to the open door, or open the closed door.

However, one of her oddest behaviors is something I've never seen another cat do. When we feed them, they all typically run in, and both Flash and Button start eating. More than half the time, including tonight, Josie stops and stares at the eating cats, then she stares at her food, approaches it, again looks at the other cats eating, and then starts eating. Tonight, she was sleeping and came in late, and the other cats were done eating, and she still stared at the other food bowls and at where the other cats would be.

We regularly joke that Josie is either an alien who needs to be reminded how to pass as a cat, or that she is somehow baffled by the sight of food, despite her being the biggest eater (and largest cat) of our three. We also regularly narrate this process "What are they doing? What's that in the bowls? Are they eating? Oh, hey cat food."