Sunday sleep
Just spent a huge part of the night wandering Windsor castle looking for a pencil sharpener so I could write the queen a note that I had accidentally left something there when I was working there and now that I was going to be working in China’s government could she please send it over when she found it.
Then she showed up and found it and we all had Christmas dinner together – me and my husband and the queen and Prince Phillip and two princesses and their husbands who took care of the kids mostly and honestly it was like having a girls night out with people that you barely knew and at the same time you felt like you always knew.
I hope I visit the queen in my dreams again.
Minecraft chickens got no bones
What I wrote in 2016
It has been pointed out to me by numerous smart people that authors who post what they wrote have a better chance of seeing them picked up for awards lists. Also known as: yes, I should write an eligibility post.
So this is me, setting that precedent, so I have to stick with it later in the future when I’m actually writing and getting published more prodigiously.
Short stories published in 2016
The Death of Chaos, published by Unlikely Story in The Journal of Unlikely Observances. This anthology was a collection of stories about April Fool’s Day, and The Death of Chaos is a creation story.
Sunny’s months were tranquil and calm. Plants grew, plants were harvested. Sheep lambed, lambs grew, sheep were slaughtered. Summer was rhythmic progress.
Seth’s madness was predictable in its unpredictability. Two years before, it rained green-bellied newts for a whole week. Four years prior, the clouds belched flowers, but only on the women. No one will talk about the Year of the Canned Beans. In the winters, anything could, and did, happen, and there was no question of why.
Unlikely Story’s on hiatus in 2017, but I look forward to their return, because their publications have lots of great work.
Other stuff
If you’re more of the User Experience or Design wonk, you may be interested in:
- Once Upon a Time on A List Apart, where I discuss using the fairy tale framework to better communicate with co-workers
- My list of posts on The Interconnected, where I’ve published numerous articles on UX, Design, and being a human in the internet age.
This is what we call a failure to provide a clear taxonomy
?All of these categories are just like the others… all of these categories are goddammit the same?
Stop and do what now?
Stop drop and roll? In my car?
Out of network
This morning an acquaintance and I were discussing a medical issue and she suggested, “You should probably go see a geneticist.”
And my brain (being my brain) replied, “No, see, I can’t, because she’s dead.”
And that’s how three years on grief still occasionally kicks you in the teeth.
It turns out there are hundreds, probably thousands, of people who have medical degrees and specialities in genetics who could answer questions about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), all of which drift right on the edge of being good explanations for some of the wackier hijinks I’ve gotten into… but none of them are Aunt Ginny.
That specific combination of DNA genes and chromosomes, nature and nurture, experience and reasoning that I identified as Dr. Virginia Proud is not currently available to advise me on matters of heredity. I will have to suffice with some other MD and geneticist who, while not my aunt, can fill in the gaps of my knowledge, and who — I hope — is loved as fiercely and would be missed as long as the geneticist I would prefer.
She’s not really gone. She’s just moved out of network. Some day I pray my insurance will be upgraded, and I’ll see her again.