Keyboards are still love. Trying to write a bunch of URL args with a touchscreen is a fool's errand, and one I send myself on all too often. I don't know why.

Bleach wipes are great. Events that lead up to using bleach wipes are nasty but the wipes simplify a lot.

I have Star Wars fanart hanging on my walls. It's framed like proper grownup art and I feel fancy. It's pretty great.

Radiskull & Devil Doll still slaps.

Sleep is better than Mountain Dew, but Dew is easier to get. Also it's delicious.

Pretty sure the offspring is not actually napping during naptime. That will make tonight extra fun.

Wherever does the time go.

Hate hate hate touchscreen typing so will be brief. Miss you all. Miss who I used to be. Heard I can get back to my pre-parenthood self someday. Rather don't believe it, don't dare.

Got a quite decent desktop so hope to be online just a little more. Was what I hoped a year ago, too. It's good to have dreams. Better to have attainable ones.

Desktop has wifi issues because of course it does, but those are related to sleep mode not mid-activity online. Her name is Shelley because she was an empty shell repurposed, and she got put back together out of parts like Frankenstein, which was written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. </geeky> (I do love names that have multiple reasons behind them.)

Looking forward to typing more on real, full-size keyboard. Yummy.

I've managed to seize a few more minutes with a mighty keyboard instead of just a touchscreen, and that means I'm going to see who even reads this thing.

Here's our game: I have done at least one of the things on the following list within the last two years. Guess which in the comments! I'll reply and tell you if you guessed right. Even if you have no idea who I am and somehow found yourself here, feel free to join in! You can't do worse than the folks who don't even try!

Of course, if nobody guesses, I won't have any guesses to reply to, and I'll have a reasonbly good indication that nobody reads here. If that happens, I'll sulk awhile, possibly delete my account since I won't be using it, and stalk off to other corners if the internet. Either way, I'll live.

Have I...
* adopted a pet?
* moved to a different continent?
* gotten divorced?
* gotten pregnant?
* gotten an STD?
* gotten an MRI?
* converted to a non-Christian religion?
* converted to a non-Microsoft operating system?
* converted from paperbacks to an e-reader?

(Grr, that was *supposed* to be a formatted list. I thought this thing supported Markdown but all it did was eat my newlines. Oh well, I'm nearly out of time so asterisk bullets will have to do.)

Have at it, and have fun!

Ugh, I'm so sick of looking at login screens right now. I spent a couple hours today working on my latest pet project: single sign-on integration between a forum and wiki for my writing group. There are still some things to iron out, but I appear to have gotten login-logout tied together at last. I still need to confirm that rights levels are being set correctly and there's a fair bit of cleanup around the auth system no longer in use, but that will have to wait. It's past suppertime and I've not even got something cooking. Probably high time I fix that.

I tried playing the demo of Undertale and found myself firmly ambivalent: I appreciate a lot about what the game is trying to do. Also, I sort of want to light it on fire and watch it burn to ash, then scatter the ashes so it can never mess with me again. It is not coincidence that my experience with the demo sent me running for my most cherished of comfort-food games, one exclusive to Nintendo. Last I knew, Nintendo specifically disallowed the type of gimcrackery that Undertale pulled on me. Link's Awakening is comforting, familiar, safe, loved.... and Undertale is really super not, much as I kick myself for not enjoying it "enough", whatever that means.

( Spoilers follow. )

I've been gorging on spoilers for the game, struggling to find a way that I could play it that wouldn't allow it to drive me bananas, but there are too many variables for me to keep track of. It's hideous. A game with this much heart and resemblance to EarthBound ought to delight me, but it doesn't, and that discovery leaves me troubled and sulky.

Apparently I can remove the demo from my computer, but not from my thoughts.

Lately I've been reflecting on some shit that went down in 2004 or so. At the time, I was part of an online roleplaying group. (Haven't I always?) The group's leader went and founded a second, very similar group, which was trying to co-operatively write a novel (or several) and get it/them published.

When I found out about it, I was invited... to proof their posts, not to actually join. I would be permitted to play in their sole non-novel roleplay area, and nowhere else, so long as I cleaned up their shit and knew my place.

I did it. For weeks, maybe months, I did what they wanted. They posted crazy numbers of posts every day; I dutifully combed through and corrected them. Eventually a virus kept me away for a week, after which I felt the weight of their daunting post count and ran away. How long would I have kept going if my health hadn't stopped me?

I wish I had the vocabulary to describe this accurately. I think that those events hurt me badly enough that something in the back of my brain decided that potential repeats must be avoided at all costs. So when I'm trying to work up the nerve to jump into something that feels too much like that hurtful experience, this piece of myself starts screaming at me "no no no avoid avoid avoid". Because that's supposed to be helpful, see, it's supposed to protect me from pain by getting me to freak out and agonize. Agony being the same as pain, brain, that is not as helpful as you seem to think.

Apparently the next several days are going to be full of non-routine stuff for me. I expect I'll be gibbering in a corner somewhere before Monday rolls around. I think maybe I have one day more before the particularly stressy stuff starts, but I could be wrong about that.

Whatever may come, today I have dried my tears on the sleeve of my most comfortable hoodie, sipped hot apple cider, and found things to giggle about. That's what matters.

It's one of those nights where the words eke out like the last blobs of toothpaste in the tube: they'll come, all right, but they'll make you work to have them. You have to twist and crank and squeeze, and if you don't do it just so, you'll have to start all over, and you may waste what little you were able to get.

I'm frustrated. I wanted to get back into roleplaying again, but so far I feel like I'm mostly making a hash of it. A friend and I got one shared story going again, which was nice. It's a bit stalled at the moment, and I don't want to push anybody to write when/if they aren't able to get into it, but I have a good feeling about it. It make take some more discussion, but I think we can keep things rolling along.

Unfortunately, something in me wants more than one story. As I said, I don't want to push anybody, so I thought it would work if I went to a community I was part of years back that was still going, and just tried to see if I could slot myself into their activity.

That would work a whole lot better if I had the guts to post, oh, frigging anything.

I feel wholly inadequate. These people have this big site and all these stories they've written together, and what do I have to bring to the table? All I've got is sporadic bursts of creativity and a large lump of fear, which situates itself firmly in my throat whenever I so much as think about jumping in. Not that I know where to jump, either, but even if I did...

I don't know what would help, either. A site mentor to guide me by the hand? A boot to the head? A map? A ghostwriter to have my fun for me?

It's not all bad. I can feel my characters again, after years of stillness on that front. I'm not sure what I can do about that, given my difficulties finding enough roleplay to suit me. Maybe they can keep prodding me internally until I finally work up the gumption to do something.

The really strange part is that a new character showed up, name in hand, and informed me that she's a relative to an existing ancillary character and also not the species she looks like. She won't tell me what she is, just what she isn't. I gotta figure out where I can put her to work with her. I wanna find out who she really is!

It wouldn't be roleplaying if the characters didn't frustrate me, I suppose.

This isn't going to fun to write, but I aim to do it so I can move on.

I learned young that friends leave; I could only rely on my family to stay. Come 1999-2000, my parents split and filed for divorce. I was also due to move away from my hometown. I was alone with a broken support system.

That was when I really found SciFiSites, which is long dead now. Back then, it was a revelation. I'd had a account before, but no steady internet service with which to use it. In my new home, I had no friends or family - but I had SciFiSites, where there was always something to read or do.

I made that site my life. I would wake up at night (so I didn't have to see anybody all day), get online, stay up all night, and all day, and all night, and then sleep all day. I was a profoundly unhappy person. I used the site like a drug to dull my pain. It didn't fix anything, but it let me pretend I was okay.

On January 17, 2000, my SciFiSites character was adopted into the House of Elf. It made my day - my month, even. I felt like I had a new family to replace my broken real one. This was right around the time my parents' divorce became final, crushing my feeble hope that they would somehow get back together. But that didn't matter, because I had a new family, a better one that was there for me at all hours. They never told me I was sick and needed help (even though that was true). They "understood" me, or at least they didn't push me to better myself.

This unhealthy behavior lasted until SciFiSites, later theSciFiVine (TSFV), died around 2002. I tried all the imitator sites, but none of them were family to me, the way I wanted them to be. I got frustrated with them, irrationally angry that my coping mechanism had been yanked away form me. Bit by bit, I had to find healthier ways to deal.

I've been thinking a lot about TSFV lately. January 17 became jainajade's birthday. This year will be 14 years since her adoption - even taking her adoption date as a birth date, she would be old enough to drive! (In South Dakota, kids can drive at 14. Rural life occasionally has benefits.) I loved TSFV dearly and bitterly grieved its loss. It took me much, much longer to grieve the death of my actual family unit as I had known it, or imagined it to be.

Over the intervening years, I'd had a lot of frustration with various TSFV successors. Only recently have I realized and acknowledged that this frustration (and sometimes hot rage) has nothing at all to do with the newer sites - it's all me, furious that anyone would expect me to be a grownup and deal with my own demons. I wanted a ready-made online family again, refused to acknowledge what I wanted, and then raged endlessly when I didn't get the thing I couldn't articulate. How dare they. Didn't I have a "right" to have all my emotions soothed, just because I wanted them to be, even if I lashed out in the process?

Oh.... no. No, I didn't; no, I don't; no, it's not okay to hurt other people just because I'm already hurting.

But I did, then. I raged; I took every inch I was given; I strove to take more, as if it were due me.

It was not.

Nobody said so much as an unkind word to me, and I tried to make out like they were mean to me. No, Ree. Nobody was cruel except me.

So I'm trying to consciously get myself over this. I am working to recognize each of my fellow roleplayers as individuals instead of a single hiveminded entity. I've failed this in the past, been called on it, and ignored the well-meaning warnings. This will not stand. I can't let it.

I have started carefully looking around the most TSFV-like site, doing my best to accept what it is and what they offer my account level. I know I have some strikes against me, due to my past shitheadedness. That said, nobody has said a single unkind word to me there, however well-deserved; they have been unfailingly kind. I don't know if I can actually fit into the sort of writing they do there, but I want to try. I want to know that I tried, and if it doesn't work, I want to be able to identify the difference: if I can't keep up with their posting rate, if the writers I fit best with are in timezones/schedules too far from my own, if I skew too PG for their tastes or they too NC-17 for mine. Differences are honest and fine.

Letting myself act like a group of people don't deserve respect, just because they don't want the same things out of writing that I do? That is not fine. That is not honest.

So I am looking around there, remaining watchful lest my past misdeeds try to rise up within me again. If I can't treat the people there like people, then I need to wish them the best and get myself gone from there, 100%. Nobody there has done a single thing to deserve me running roughshod over them.

But if I can comport myself like the daughter my mother raised, a decent human being, then I might actually form some sort of human connection with those people. Maybe even learn something about the drive that keeps them going: new content, every single day; stories begun, stories actually ended and in frigging print - good stuff.

I need to at least try.

I'm trying to figure out how to get over this funk I've been in. I've managed to identify some causes, but they are things that aren't really within my abilities to change, so maybe all I've done is kill a little time.

There just aren't enough hours in the day to play all the video games that would help me unwind.

There's this girl I played with some when we were kids. She was within days of my age and our parents knew each other. I only remember bits and pieces, because that family moved away when us kids were still fairly small, but I remember her. She was my friend.

We hadn't been in touch for many years. I knew she was in poor health, but I thought somehow she'd improve. She didn't. I hadn't recognized her married name, or those of her kids, but the photo with the obit looks so familiar, so much like her mom.

It's messing with my head. Eventually her littlest one won't remember mommy's face, except in the gloss of photos or illumination of electronic screens, won't recognize mommy's voice without the hiss of a recording device. She has a surviving grandparent even - what on Earth must that like, to bury a grandchild? What does that do to a person?

And she was right at my age. I'm planning my wedding and her husband is trying to explain to the kids why mommy...

It's all wrong, somehow.