Day in the Life of an Idiot

 A lot happened since I last posted, however.  Mason and I went down to Mankato, Minnesota, on Thursday night. We had a fun time traveling together as we always do.  We ended up stopping early for "road food" in Burnsville.  Shawn laughed pretty hard when I called from the "Old Country Buffet," given that we hadn't even managed to break the exo-suburbs before pulling over.  To be fair, Mason had had one slice of pizza for lunch (one of those school fundraising things) and I was just generally starving, too.  Of course, the food there was.... meh. I always make the mistake of thinking the taco bar should be okay. (It's not.)

We only got turned around a couple of times once we reached Mankato.  The in-city map was printed very small and there was the classic confusion of is Stadium Road the same as Highway 58 (or whatever)???  Turns out it was, but we at least figure that out BEFORE we drove too far out of town.  Yes, there is great irony in the fact that we got LOST ON THE WAY TO THE GEOGRAPHY BEE.

We spent out hotel time doing geography quizzes based on Trivial Pursuit cards, which was our fun way of studying.  Mason did bring along some atlases and such, but it was much more fun to read the questions and think... is the answer going to be the USSR? Or some other country that no longer exists because this deck was printed in the early 1990s???!  We laughed a lot, which, IMHO, is the very best way to study.

On the day of, we got up early (too early in my case. I woke up precisely when the cats normally would rouse me: 5:45 am.)  We were too nervous to do much constructive, so we at at the hotel (passably okay) and then thew everything into the car, checked out, and headed to the bee, which was being held in the Student Union of Mankato State University, about four or five blocks away.

Here's another attempt at a picture:



This is a picture of a smiling (smirking?) Mason holding up the classic yellow National Geographic magazine's frame around his face.  He's wearing a blue plaid shirt and you can see his official geography be name tag over the right pocket of his shirt.  The wall behind him is marble-esque and has some letters carved into it, which make up some part of Mankato State University, I suspect.  

After some brief discussion, it was decided that I sit out the preliminary round. Two of his teachers were there--Ms. Lesser and Ms. Croone.  Ms. Croone was there as one of the judges, but Ms. Lesser went in with Mason to root for him.  I would have done the same, but we decided that me being there might make Mason more nervous. If you can't tell, one of the big themes of this trip for us was that we really, really wanted this to be as FUN as possible. No stressing about how far we made it in the competition, etc.  Just to accept that it's really pretty damn awesome that we made it this far--because it is/was.  Mason had to beat out not only his whole class, but also the other two grades that were eligible (there were some 6th graders in the competition: Mason is in eighth.) Out of the 500 people who got that far, only the top 100 scorers on the written test advanced to state.  

Out of those 100? ONLY 10 advanced to the final round.

Mason wasn't one of those. But both he and his teacher thought that he did very well in the preliminary round, but he was eliminated. You have to get a near perfect score (only one wrong is allowed, two wrong and you're OUT) to advance.  

We stayed to watch the final elimination round and it was INTENSE.  There were a couple interesting things that happened.  At one point, in the second round of questions, you could hear someone in the audience give the right answer. What I found fascinating is that, though there was an admonishment from the National Geographic judges to the audience, that question was allowed to stand (no re-take) and the person who answered that question went on to be the final-place winner.  I'm not sure how I feel about that, but the judges decided to let it stand.  I'm really surprised that they didn't give that particular competitor a different question. But, whatever.

it's also interesting to me that the winner was actually the previous year's winner... and home-schooled.  I've been trying to decide if I feel like homeschooling is an unfair advantage here, or not.

Also, 90% of the competitors were white and male.

As Mason wondered out loud, "Why? What about geography has a gender bias?" Outside of institutionalized sexism and racism, I have no idea. Two of the ten finalists were obvious PoCs, but they were all male.

Other than that depressing observation, we had fun.  I don't know if there is a high school version, so Mason may not have a chance to do this again, but we ARE planning to watch the National bee when it's aired.  Despite the weird start, we ended up liking the state champion.  Mason called him, "The Han Solo of Geography Bees" because it was very clear that he was making a lot of educated guesses that were turning out correct (you could tell by his occasional SHOCKED expression.)  That made him very likable, so we will root for him in the Nationals.

The drive home was fun. Mason LOVES road trips, so we had our usual enjoyment of watching small towns roll by, commenting on especially creepy rural cemeteries, etc.  We managed to leave behind Mason's school iPad's cord, but that was the only even vaguely dark cloud on the whole trip. (Cue a lot of calling the hotel, not getting answers, and then finally what I think of as a brush off, which was, "Nope we never found it." The next whole rigamarole will be getting a new one either from school, or apparently the Apple store, but that's a whole other headache. Though, it should be noted, ultimately VERY solvable.)

Saturday was Shawn's birthday. She has now successfully leveled up to level 50. When I went out to fetch the birthday cake and coffee on Saturday morning a lot of the people I interacted with asked, "So BIG plans?"  I had to say, "Listen, Shawn is an introvert. It's big enough we're going out to dinner." And, it was true, after the excitement of cake and presents we spent much of her birthday doing a lot of napping and jigsaw puzzling on the porch.  It was so lovely out that I did a little garden prep, but that was about the pinnacle of excitement for us.  :-)  Dinner was at the Indian place in Maplewood, per usual. Shawn and I both really love that place.  Turns out, Mason loves it now, too, so that's extra wonderful.
 

 

 Like a lot of GLBT couples, Shawn and I have made up our anniversary.  It's a fictional date, convenient, easy to remember.  It doesn't mark anything, other than the fact that we're PRETTY SURE we went on a 'date' to Target to do Christmas shopping together.  This was 1985 and I don't even think we were on each other's Christmas lists even, yet. We probably actually met months earlier at one of Michael J. Batman's D&D campaigns, where I remember very clearly telling Shawn she had the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen.  I'd been sketching people's D&D characters for them and Shawn told me to make hers have blond hair and brown eyes, and I said, "No one has that combination!" (Keep in mind I was 17, what the hell did I even know? At that point I was sure Chicago was in Wisconsin.) She said, "I do." And I looked up... and, yeah, I'd say that was the moment fate was sealed.

But, in all honesty, I wasn't even out to myself yet that December. I still thought I was a straight girl (kind of... ask me about how I was already reading Gay Comix I bought at a head shop in LaCrosse my senior year).  Thing is, I would go on after December 1, 1985, to have a couple of more boyfriends and a several girlfriends. Shawn, too, had boyfriends post that fateful meeting.

Yet, we count December 1, 1985 as our anniversary because we were certainly already living together at that point (and having sex).  I moved in, and never, ever moved out.  By the end, my girlfriends would look at me and say, "How can I compete when you're living with the one you love?"  

They were right. I was cheating on all of them with Shawn.

The story would have been pathetic and sad, if Shawn didn't also finally have the same realization when we were living in our first apartment on Franklin Avenue.  After a friend of ours visited and regaled us with the stories of his gay single life and his heartaches, we looked at each other over the top of his head and knew.  We knew it was time to make things official.  Why keep seeking when we'd found love already? If we could remember the date of that day, that would probably be more accurate in a very strict sense.

But, relationships are messy, so why not just count from the real beginning? Why not skip the mess and embrace that first wonderful moment?  So we do.  Your rules do not apply to us.  Or, at least, before we were mainstreamed by marriage, there really were no rules, no sense of how any of it was supposed to work, so we just made things up as we went along.  I think most people do, anyway.  It's just that the majority of people have... well, I guess, traditions and institutions to fall back on.  Marriage dates. First dates.  We never thought to mark any of those, either. I'm sure we eventually picked a date because people asked us how long we'd been together and we had no idea.  

Ask me when Shawn and I were married, and I'll say, "It was a Monday!  Oh, and hot!"  I'm sure it was in August because that was the first month it was legal and we did the official thing in front of a judge as soon as possible because I'd gone over a decade without any decent health insurance. 

Of course, I'm generally terrible about dates.  I feel like I must be the only mom in the universe who hesitates when health professionals ask for Mason's birthday.  I've finally got it down, but for a while I used to switch the last number of his birthday with the last number of the year he was born.  I also have memories like this, "It was hot."  (Apparently important things in my life always happen on the hottest days of the year.)  

So last night we celebrated our made-up anniversary the way we have been for decades.  Actually, maybe more like a single decade, since we started this tradition when Mason was an infant and Shawn and I were too exhausted to even consider dressing up and doing something fancy.  I remember complaining to my friend Ember about how it wasn't going to be romantic with a baby, and she suggested that I surprise Shawn--that I get take out from a favorite place and fancy up the table with candles (and the high chair.) It was PERFECT. I picked Vescio's in Dinkytown.  Vescio's was one of the first restaurants I remember taking Shawn to when we did finally become 'official.'  And, miraculously, it's still there. It's still EXACTLY the same and has the EXACT same menu.  Bonus: Mason loves it and always has, even when he was in his toddler "I will only eat noodles" phase.  

We had a lovely night. 

Here's to another thirty-two years!

We got to the hospital on time and all that and everything went according to plan.... until Shawn's surgery kept going on and on. Mason and I struggled not to be worried. Finally, the monitor switched from "Procedure" to "Closing" and I could finally breathe. When the doctor came he said, "She's fine," but then had us go into a private room which had me nearly hyperventilating with worry. Turns out, half way through the procedure they had to switch from robot-assisted to laparoscopic.

The surgeon was clearly HORRIFIED by the state of Shawn's gallbladder. He could not believe, I think, that she could even walk around give the state of it. He said, "There were several large stones, but the whole organ was... filled with a gritty sludge." He kept saying, "I guess people experience pain differently." I said, yes, Shawn is an exception because of her migraines. She really doesn't know what pain-free is like, so probably this felt minor in comparison. He kept shaking his head. "She's the definition of stoic."

Yep.

For myself, I deal with panic by reading so I read the entirety of ELYSIUM, OR, THE WORLD AFTER by Jennifer Marie Brissett. Turns out, if I *were* doing Tempest's challenge this book would have counted in more than one criteria. The bio at the back of the book tells me that Jennifer Marie Brissett identifies as "Jamaican-British American" (born in London, now living here). The book itself was... very complex. The writing was smooth and beautiful, but you had to pay attention and think through the whole thing. I can very much understand why it might be that Aqueduct Press published it, as opposed to a traditional New York publisher. I explained it to a friend as the kind of book where you spend a lot of time thinking WTF, but you keep turning pages. It's 100% science fiction. It might not qualify to some as "hard science fiction" but there are (eventually) space ships and aliens and artificial intelligences. So, that's skiffy enough for me, thank you very much.

Now, I'm going to finish THE BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE by Meg Elison. I set it aside because I had to use Inter-Library Loan to get a hold of Brissett's book and so I knew I couldn't renew it, if I didn't read it fast enough. Elison's book will disappear soon too, but I got that one from a new Kindle loan feature which gives me much more time.

Also in my possession is the first of the Nebula Award nominees that I'll be reading a book called THE GOBLIN EMPEROR by Katherine Addison (who is actually Sarah Monette). All of the books up for the Nebula this year are available through Ramsey County Library, so I signed myself up on the waiting lists for the rest of those. I'm only going to try to read all the books up this year, so if you're curious what's going to be on my TBR list it will be:


Trial by Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)

Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu ( ), translated by Ken Liu (Tor)

Coming Home, Jack McDevitt (Ace)

Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals; Fourth Estate; HarperCollins Canada)

So, you can see, if you were at all concerned, I will be reading plenty of (presumed) straight, white, (presumed) cis, men.

I've gotten our trip a bit out of order already, because we actually stopped at the historical marker for the Buchanan Settlement (12 miles from Duluth) before we got to Two Harbor's break wall. According to our guide book, this is the sight of a town that has since disappeared--a Minnesotan ghost town, if you will.

Honestly, we didn't even see any part of the remaining town. What impressed us was the beach that was just a hop down from the historical marker:



It was our first real up-close-and-personal with Lake Superior. As you can see, it was a gorgeous day. The sun was bright and the water and the sky were nearly the same color.



It'd been a long trip to this point. Duluth isn't all that far away, maybe three hours (?), but we'd had to turn back after we'd gone a half hour from the cities. Shawn had forgotten the passports. She only remembered them because we kept seeing sign after sign for Thunder Bay and we'd made a special point of getting Mason a passport so that we could travel to Canada on our last day of our honeymoon. So, it was a half hour to "oh sh*t!", a half hour laughing at ourselves back home, a quick call to Bearskin to warn them we might be late for check-in, and then a half-hour to get back where we'd started.

As the driver, I could have been irritated, but I knew that, like the last time Shawn and I and Mason had done this north shore trip, we'd be doing a lot of stops at overlooks, waysides and attractions along the way.

Next up was, as I already posted Twin Harbors break wall. Then, we went on to Flood Bay, a spot we'd enjoyed last time around. It's supposedly some of the best agate hunting along the north shore, but I'll be honest you. I wouldn't know an agate in the rough if it walked up and introduced itself to me. Luckily, the beach just has cool rocks. Tons and tons of Superior flattened, time worn, awesome looking rocks. Shawn found some "sea glass" (which Superior produces, even though it's a lake) and Mason found a rock with a perfect hole in the center of it--a fairy spyglass. He's been wearing it as a necklace since.

Here's what Flood Bay looks like:


Our guide book says "agate picking is good for the soul" and I have to agree. We often spend a huge amount of time sitting on this beach sifting stones. It's just... relaxing.



Much, much more to come, but I'm going to stop here again. Today, the other things I did was have a lovely critique session with my Loft students. It ended up taking the entire class, but I think that the students got a LOT out of it. Tomorrow we only have one person to critique, but I think that will make up for the lack of lecture today.

Also, it's Wednesday so, Mason and I did our usual podcast silliness. This one was lucky number 13, and I felt it was a lot of fun... see what you think.

https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/lucky-thirteen/

Happy Friday the 13th!

I've got a surprisingly busy day ahead of me. I have lunch plans with a friend this afternoon, a book that still needs some revision (though I've been making steady progress,) and this evening we've got both Mason's school's carnival (a fundraiser), AND a special topics class at KSW on "Jumping" for me.

I'd actually forgotten that Carnival was going to conflict with my Jumping class, so this means that the clausterphobic and crowd wary Shawn will end up having to accompany Mason at the Carnival.

So while I don't expect any disasters today, it's certainly set up for some.

Wish me luck.

Before Shawn ended up in the hospital, I'd started a book by Catherine Asaro called THE LAST HAWK. I'm normally a very slow reader thanks to my mild dyslexia and the fact that I'm usually easily distracted by Mason and/or my own writing and life. I brought the book along to the hospital and, because it was much easier to focus on than my own writing, I finished it.

And now I'm trying to decide how I feel about it.

I really loved Catherine Asaro's first couple of books. Though it's been a long time since I read them, I have a strong sense of having enjoyed PRIMARY INVERSION and CATCH THE LIGHTNING.

THE LAST HAWK, however, is from the period in which I remember a lot of my fellow SF fans complaining that Asaro had slid (as in downward - poo! poo!) into romance. I have no problem with romance obviously, but this book *isn't* romantic. (Spoilers under the cut...)

( Read more... )

I think it's simply difficult to write this kind of thing well, unless one's tongue is firmly planted in cheek. Perhaps I'm supposed to have read this as the feminist twist on those horrible Gor novels. As I said, if I told you I didn't enjoy this book, I'd be lying. But, if you look at the situation with a critical eye, it's pretty dispicable.

And now I find out there's a sequel. Do I want to find out what happens next? Kind of... but, am I going to need a shower afterwards?

Does anyone out there know of a book that does this well??

In other news, Shawn bailed early from work yesterday, though she's back at it today. She's still suffering from these weird new headaches that involve stroke-like symptoms (numbness on one side of her body.) So, the medical mystery that is Shawn continues. She's going to contact her doctor today, though, so hopefully, we'll start down the path of figuring out how to manage her headaches more effectively.

Mason has been occupied by the thought that Pokemon's new Black & White game is coming out for the DS in a matter of days.

A quick Shawn update -- thanks to everyone who has offered support. It's been really tremendous that so many people care and are willing to offer prayers, well-wishes, thoughts and support. We're all back home today. Despite the "failed" stress test, the cardiologist is certain that Shawn is in no immediate dangers so they sent us home. She (the doctor) also gave us the good news that the stress test has about a 5 - 10% chance of showing false positives, and, given Shawn's utter lack of family history with heart disease or risk factors, thinks this much more likely the case.

Hooray!

We're stuck waiting around the house, however, because the doctor put Shawn on the schedule for an "echo test" of the stress test (where they do a similar test, but there's no radiation injection. Instead, they run an ultrasound) and we're waiting for the call to see when that will be. They say it SHOULD be today, but in-patients get first priority. And, frankly, I'm okay with that. Shawn has had so many heart tests in the last three days that if there were any other abnormalities something would have shown up by now.

Shawn is, of course, sound asleep still. Hospitals are one of the worst places to try to rest, IMHO, so she's utterly exhausted. It's so great to be home and to know that everything is going to be okay. Because, even if this "reversible defect" turns out to really be there, they have a procedure to fix it permanently. That'll mean angioplasty, or something like that to unclog the block, but it's a very routine procedure.

So I'm feeling really very confident today. Mason has been an absolute trouper through this whole thing. I'm just really glad that he's off school right now on intersession so I didn't have to try to cart him back and forth to school and hospital and everything else. We've just hung out playing video games, like we would if we were sitting in the coffee shop all day. Of course he still got squirrelly by the end of the day (you can only sit so long), but that was about the time when I took him home for the night anyway.

So that's everything for now. I'll drop Mouse into another post. Because I actually wrote a little vingette last night while waiting for the cardiologist. I'm afraid I'm one of those people who gets comfort from "going back to work." Though, I do think that I probably made this next scene slightly less scary than I might have otherwise had not all this stuff gone down with Shawn.

We're at the hospital.

After the kuk soOlympics, Shawn complained of dizziness and upper chest/arm pain. I wanted to just slink off to bed and ignore it, but, of course, these are classic symptoms for a heart attack. Woman of the certain age which we happen to be tend to ignore subtle signs of heart disease and end up dead. So we decided it was time for a trip to the emergency room.

I think we all expected that the folks in the emergency room would solve this mystery quickly and with something simple like "Oh, it was heart burn; you can go home now." But Shawn was admitted. They took EKGs and X-Rays and a battery of blood tests. Then, when she told them about some of the other symptoms including intermittent numbness on her left side, they wanted to rule out the possiblity of a stroke.

So she stayed the night under observation. Mason and I went home last night and came back this morning. She's going to be here at least until Monday, though, because, even though they're PRETTY sure that she didn't have a heart attack _or_ a stroke, they're not sure enough to feel comfortable letting her go home. Especially since they don't know what it is. She's in a 40-minute MRI right now, and then tomorrow they've scheduled a final stress test (just to double and triple check the heart). The doc's suspicion is that this may be a new complication to Shawn's continual migraine problems, but they're all about rather safe than sorry. Which I'm mostly grateful for, though they also sent in an "insurance counselor" to give us the bad news that we've been classified as "under observation" rather than "in-patient" which may cost us a LOT more out of pocket. We're going to check to see what we can do about that, but we might just be screwed.

Wish us luck.

Will keep you posted.

...I'm still with the same woman.

Today is the 23rd anniversary of my relationship with Shawn. We count from our first date (a Christmas shopping trip to Target), because, in the true way of my people, I moved in shortly after that.

I can see why the Christian far right is so worried about allowing people like Shawn and I to marry. Given the track record for most marriages (50% success rate), we'd make 'em look bad. Yeah, they'd better defend their marriage against people like us. We're WAY better at it. We would totally OWN marriage.

So, how's by you?