My Nail Beds Are Full of Splinters

My mother's visit has taken a bit of the wind out of my sails, but I did manage to do laundry, verify that the car insurance payment was received, and clean out my inbox, so today wasn't a total wash. It just didn't seem as bright and gentle as it could have. My mother has always had that effect on me; her mental claustrophobia and emotional terrorism has poisoned and colored so much of my life and exacerbated my own insecurities and flaws. She's fed on the former and gleefully pointed out the the latter for years, and it's so wrenching and draining. I shouldn't have to wonder if I'll have to wait until my mother dies before I can draw a free, clean breath. When mothers are good, they are wonderful, the bedrock upon which you can always rest when the shit gets too thick, but when they are bad, they are terrible, rotting, clinging hands that drag you into the muck instead of pulling you from it, or heavy, cloying dust that settles on your skin like a shroud and slips into your mouth and nose and lungs to suffocate you from the inside.

Still, I'm trying to keep my chin up and my eyes on the distant horizon. Roomie and I have begun reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. I together, and I'm steadily fiddling on Part XVII of Sprache, which might well be the longest chapter I've ever written, a novella unto itself. I thought about breaking it up into smaller chapters, but it just wouldn't flow as well if I did. Besides it's fiction, not Short Attention Span Theater, so if people think it's too long, an indecipherable, unpalatable wall of text that stands unbroken by flashing macros, then they can just exercise their rights and their atrophying scroll finger.

My birthday draws nigh, and as is our mutual custom, Roomie and I keep an eyeball out for prospective gifts. I've dredged a few glittering nuggets from the Walmart clearance bin and ordered Supernatural S6, and Uncle Stevie is on order, but he won't arrive until after Roomie's birthday. I found Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting, a Bobby Singer-centric tie-in novel as well, but in truth, nothing has well and truly greased my skids. Roomie keeps muttering that the Rammgents should give me a birthday present by releasing their greatest hits compilation by then, but hopes are fading, and as he put it rather plaintively as we were driving to the laundromat, "You know when they'll put it out? My birthday."

And for those who are wondering, yes, we do the same for Roomie's birthday. We save up for our birthday sprees all year, and then when our birthday months roll around, we splurge, a word which here means a few DVDs, books, and CDs. In years past, we included video games, but I haven't played seriously since the move, and Roomie is content to play old sports games. We might play more if we had a place to hook up our XBox360, but the lone TV hookup is claimed by the tank of our Xbox, which doubles as our DVD player, and anyway, neither one of us is willing to spend seventy dollars per game. I confess, however, that I would totally buy Fable II and the last three HP games. I don't care if they're for children, those games are fun, and some of the few I've ever managed to beat.

My Nail Beds Are Full of Splinters

My mother's visit has taken a bit of the wind out of my sails, but I did manage to do laundry, verify that the car insurance payment was received, and clean out my inbox, so today wasn't a total wash. It just didn't seem as bright and gentle as it could have. My mother has always had that effect on me; her mental claustrophobia and emotional terrorism has poisoned and colored so much of my life and exacerbated my own insecurities and flaws. She's fed on the former and gleefully pointed out the the latter for years, and it's so wrenching and draining. I shouldn't have to wonder if I'll have to wait until my mother dies before I can draw a free, clean breath. When mothers are good, they are wonderful, the bedrock upon which you can always rest when the shit gets too thick, but when they are bad, they are terrible, rotting, clinging hands that drag you into the muck instead of pulling you from it, or heavy, cloying dust that settles on your skin like a shroud and slips into your mouth and nose and lungs to suffocate you from the inside.

Still, I'm trying to keep my chin up and my eyes on the distant horizon. Roomie and I have begun reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. I together, and I'm steadily fiddling on Part XVII of Sprache, which might well be the longest chapter I've ever written, a novella unto itself. I thought about breaking it up into smaller chapters, but it just wouldn't flow as well if I did. Besides it's fiction, not Short Attention Span Theater, so if people think it's too long, an indecipherable, unpalatable wall of text that stands unbroken by flashing macros, then they can just exercise their rights and their atrophying scroll finger.

My birthday draws nigh, and as is our mutual custom, Roomie and I keep an eyeball out for prospective gifts. I've dredged a few glittering nuggets from the Walmart clearance bin and ordered Supernatural S6, and Uncle Stevie is on order, but he won't arrive until after Roomie's birthday. I found Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting,, a Bobby Singer-centric tie-in novel as well, but in truth, nothing has well and truly greased my skids. Roomie keeps muttering that the Rammgents should give me a birthday present by releasing their greatest hits compilation by then, but hopes are fading, and as he put it rather plaintively as we were driving to the laundromat, "You know when they'll put it out? My birthday."

And for those who are wondering, yes, we do the same for Roomie's birthday. We save up for our birthday sprees all year, and then when our birthday months roll around, we splurge, a word which here means a few DVDs, books, and CDs. In years past, we included video games, but I haven't played seriously since the move, and Roomie is content to play old sports games. We might play more if we had a place to hook up our XBox360, but the lone TV hookup is claimed by the tank of our Xbox, which doubles as our DVD player, and anyway, neither one of us is willing to spend seventy dollars per game. I confess, however, that I would totally buy Fable II and the last three HP games. I don't care if they're for children, those games a fun, and some of the few I've ever managed to beat.