morning burbles

Canada geese flying overhead. I heard the first ones about two days ago, but today I could actually see flocks.

::happy sigh:: I love when the geese come back. Despite being a liittle paranoid that some day I'll experience what happened to my cousin Kitty. She heard them, looked up, pointed, said "Hey LOOK!! It's the Canada geese!!" and was rewarded for her admiration of their beautiful V-formation flying by having one of them drop a turd on her forehead as she gazed upon them.

Kitty moved back to Chile shortly after that.

***

Good news in weight loss: I've dropped twelve pounds in three weeks. Bad news: I am now in a lower weight bracket, which means that for continued weight loss I get to eat less.

Then again, after the first three weeks, if you're losing more than two pounds a week you're told to eat more, so maybe I don't have to worry about it. And I've been eating less than my maximum so far anyway, without much effort.

***

Went to see my mom today. She's feeling a bit better, and is now able to keep down small amounts of jello, Gatorade, and pureed stuff. And her platelets are doing well. Sure hope this trend continues.

***

Marta is cleaning my house today. And doing laundry. YAY for clean clothes!

***

Must go do Property readings. Ick.

Weekend Follies

Re. my diet: after an uncomfortable first few days, I settled right in. I'm looking up healthy recipes, making good choices for snacks (applesauce instead of cookies or cheese), and cooking. Yes, cooking. Chris finally has a real wife ;)

However, I discovered a down side to this yesterday. We went to Kingston for Turtle's birthday party, which was being held in a movie theater. There was cake and soft drinks and popcorn and more popcorn, and then after the party there were perogies, and... I swear to God if I didn't really, really hate throwing up, I would've been able to totally get bulimea last night. The feeling of being way too full, of greasy yucky food, and wanting to un-pollute my body. Ick. After eating fruits and veggies and whole grains in sensible amounts for weeks... yesterday was just gross.

Anyway. Took a gravol and went to sleep. Felt better this morning.

The party itself was great. Eleven little kids (7 girls, 4 boys), lots of presents and cake and movie posters. And the movie (Scooby Doo 2) was OK by grown-up standards and awesome by kid standards, although Justin needed some cuddling during the scarier parts.

For me the best part was being with Todd and Susan and Turtle and Zany. Turtle was in a great little mood, what with being the birthday girl, and Zane has learned some words! He even learned our names - IIss! for Chris and MMEN-ah! for me. Justin, as always, was totally charmed to be near him. That's one of my big regrets in having left Kingston, that Justin doesn't get to be around Zane much. He would've made such a good big brother.

It was also wonderful to see Todd playing with the kids again like he used to. He enjoys being with kids so much, and he's so patient with them. And they adore him. A huge guy who can chase them around and read to them and tell them jokes that they understand? And listen to them and actually be interested in what they say? And trade tidbits and opinions about Scooby Doo and My Little Pony? What kid wouldn't love that?

***

Found out that the lady Chris helped on the road back from the sugarbush on Saturday died shortly after arriving at the hospital by helicopter. I guess she really was a lot worse off than anybody thought. Also, she was 79 years old, so there may have been some underlying health issues that made the accident fatal. Her husband was being held for serious injuries, and the couple in the other car was OK. There was still no conclusion as to what happened or who was at fault.

We also read that the elderly couple was thrown out of their car and into the ditch, which we had gathered because the first people on the scene said they found the woman underwater in the ditch and the man half-submerged. I guess they weren't wearing seatbelts.

Found out something else that was disturbing. ( I'm not a nurse, but I play one on TV. )

***

On a totally unrelated note: last night I read a few comments to my post (Republican Code of Ethics and 11 Admonitions in Leviticus). I went to answer them - and erased them instead. I think one was from senza and one was from noir_moll, and I think there was one other. I have no idea how I did this three times in a row.

I would like to take this opportunity to advise everybody "Don't Drink and Surf", except that I wasn't drinking. This was just my own natural dorkiness shining through. I am such a spaz. Sorry, guys.

Remixfic

I don't think I've ever posted fic directly onto my own lj, but after having seen some other people post onto theirs, I started to wonder why the idea had never occurred to me before.

Hm. The power of mindless inertia is awesome.

So. Here's my contribution to the Remix Challenge that tobiascharity set up. The idea of a remix is that you get paired up with another writer in the challenge, they write a companion piece to one of your stories, and you write a companion piece to one of theirs. A different ending, different point of view, different feel... whatever is inspired by your partner's stories.

My partner in this ended up being daygloparker, and the story of hers that I chose to remix was A New York Minute, an AU "what if Claire hadn't been killed in the accident at the end of Aftershock". Common enough idea in L&O fandom, done in a most uncommonly realistic and powerful way. This is a companion piece, from the POV of Claire's husband. Title and subtitles taken from the lyrics to A New York Minute by Don Henley. And a million thanks to cassatt for encouragement and sounding-board-ness ;)

( Everything Can Change )