We are the Dreamers of Dreams

First off, my latest Geek Girl Navigating the World column is posted at Boomtron. This one is about comic book movies and how much I love them. And no, it's not all about Beefcake for me there.
http://www.boomtron.com/2012/05/geek-girl-navigating-the-world-the-avengers-and-why-i-drink-the-comic-book-movie-kool-aid/

If that's the only thing you want to read on this post, that's totally cool. I had a bad day today at work and to be honest, I've never felt so much like bashing my forehead into a wall in my entire life.

My day kicked off with dealing with an allergic reaction because I was an all-you-can eat buffet for horseflies and deerflies on Saturday. It appears that rather than being a repellant, DEET turns out to be extra-special Super Secret Sauce laced with a heavy dose of crack. My legs don't just itch, they ache and the tendons tighten and pull because the flies were biting deep and drawing blood.

Once I got into work, I was asked if I could come in for a meeting in the morning. Essentially, I got told that the person who approves or denies that promotion that I'm supposed to get has a personal vendetta against the department where I work and told the people that went down to file the proposal on my behalf (which according to the rules THEY have to do) that the department that I work for is a bunch of whiners and that they have a lousy reputation. So, clearly, this person is a CONSUMMATE professional and is capable of clear and rational thinking as well as considering matters in an objective manner. There's still a possibility to get me bumped up one paygrade (they were actually shooting for 2 Classifications, which would have netted me a pretty decent raise), but they were already prepping me for total defeat on that end and saying, essentially it wasn't going to work and we'd get denied, even though, and this is a direct quote from the guy who's helping with this process "you're doing the work of three people right now."

I didn't completely lose my marbles in there, but I was furious. I've been DOING this job for the last eight weeks, stepping in to step up while they were getting all of this sorted out with the people who are supposed to make the decision. And now, they want me to say "Oh, yeah, sure. That 3% you're offering me is plenty." That's a load of freakin' crap and they ALL know it. I pointed out that yeah, my job now includes supervisory duties WHICH I HAVE BEEN DOING. My job now includes all kind of review duties and when my boss is gone I have to freakin RUN THEIR DAMN DIVISION! Which I can do. Even when the excretement from the rotating blades was drowning me this morning, their phones got answered, their paperwork got processed, their Noobs got trained, and their faxes got sent. I was on top of all of it even though all I really wanted to do was shout "Screw you guys, I'm goin' home!" and come back and kill Centipedes for a couple of hours on TV while listening to loud angry music. Naturally, they wait to have this little meeting and make this little announcement until my boss is gone for the week. Not that I suspect that crap was planned or anything.

To outside appearances, there was not a thing wrong back in my little world. You know why? Because I rock like that. I freakin' take care of the business because it has to be taken care of and I'm damn proud of that. I know what the hell I'm doing and it shows. And you know what? I deserve to be compensated for that, and I deserve for that compensation to be fair.

I had some good news happen over the weekend, a couple little leads on some interesting stuff that I might get to do, and if that works, which I hope it does, then that will be awesome. Of course, at this juncture, I can't really talk about it, either.

There's writing, too, of course. So much writing.

At this point, I don't know what I'm going to do. I know I need to talk to my boss. From there, maybe we'll get something figured out, but I don't know what that will be at this point.

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: "Blue on Black" Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Always

We're visiting my parents and he's in the kitchen, digging through the refrigerator. He wants a snack and I'm pretty sure that he has something specific in mind but he can't find it at the moment. I stay out in the living room for a few minutes before I decide that I want a glass of water and that I should probably see if I can help him locate whatever it is that he wants to eat.
The light is on in the kitchen and I'm not paying as much attention as I should be. As soon as I get around the table, my little toe connects painfully with the legs of one of the stools. There's a thunk and I let loose with a loud string of cursing while I stand there. He jumps when he hears me yowling then turns around.
He raises one eyebrow as he takes in where I'm standing and the slightly askew stool. I haven't even started to relax my face from the grimace of pain.
“Toes broken?” he asks, cautiously.
“No,” I grunt.
He heaves a sigh of relief before he says, “You always do that, every time you come around that table. You're dying for the day that we throw those suckers on a bonfire, aren't you.”
“Yes,” I answer as I hop towards the sink.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: "Stay" Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs

Today, despite the first moped ride of the season, felt like this:




I'd scream. I just don't have the energy. Instead, I will hope for better things to happen very soon.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Long Year" Todd Snider

In the Beginning

I decide that I want to show him one of my favorite places. Surprisingly, it has almost nothing to do with books. I do know that it won't shock him completely. He knows what I'm like, so he probably should have at least expected this to happen at some point. Even though admission isn't strictly required, I put money in the donation box and we go inside.
I lead him down a hallway and we end up in a room that doesn't have much light in it at all, except for the light from the exhibits along the walls. They give off a pale blue light. Installed in the floor are the ancient remains of a pleisosaur and on one wall a slab of rock is mounted. It contains the bones of a bulldog terrapin. It seems as though the fish contained thousands of bones. They are a deep burnt umber against the warm sepia of the sandstone containing them. He smiles as he takes in the marine fossils exhibited in the room.
There are mastodons rising high above our heads, enormous tusks brushing against the ceiling only a couple of rooms away. They have their own hall, and while they are inspiring in their own right, they are not my favorite creature on display. I don't rush him, though. He wants to look at them, wants to see this world the way that I do. The rapture that I feel seeing these giant bones and imagining what the Earth must have been when they were still living, still walking, still breathing shows on my face.
While the process of fossilization holds no mystery for me, since I have been keenly interested in fossils, paleontology, and geology since I saw my first illustration of a trilobite in a book when I was three, I still understand the awe people must have felt, pulling these objects from the ground. I feel it every time I find a fossil. And while I have a better understanding of comparative anatomy than those early paleontologists, it's still so easy to see why they would have imagined great dragons raging over the planet to explain these strange remains. The wonder has persisted in me, even through my education.
We turn from Elephant Hall and go down another hallway, this one brightly lit from both natural and florescent sources. Despite the old, flat, brown carpet that has worn thin from so many footsteps and the smudges along some of the glass, or, maybe because of it, it feels a bit like coming home to me. We stop in front of one particular creature. I look up at him, taking in his expression, just as I do every time I introduce him to an old friend.
The animal is unwieldy, naturally armor plated and round. It is not a handsome creature. It isn't cute. Somehow, I still find it beautiful. It is a natural armored tank, perfectly evolved to wander amongst a world full of large-scale predators eating plants. I have always wished that, just once, I could have access to the display and be allowed to just lay my hands on it once, to feel that spheroid, plated shell and know the roughness of that fossil.
“What is it?” he asks me, knowing that I will be able to rattle the name of it off without even checking the neatly printed black and white tag nearby.
“It's a Glyptodon,” I answer him, “they're ancestors of armadillos.”
“Cool,” he says in response.
I know, then, that while he may not feel the same passion for fossils that I do, he gets it. He gets that I like it and that if I ever found one on my own, I'd probably never shut up about it. The best part is, though, that he's okay with it.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: "Who Wants to Live Forever" Queen

My latest fictional Junk-Food-O-Rama column is posted now. It's about Batman!http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2012/05/09/geek-girls-fictional-junk-food-o-rama-the-greatest-batman-stories-ever-told/

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: "Batman Theme"

It seems that my boss has made it official that I have gotten my old supervisor's job by posting my job internally so people can apply. Of course, there hasn't been any official word on how much my raise is going to be so I still haven't really been offered the job yet.

Today was the first day without my former supervisor. For most of the morning, I just felt like pulling an Opus and going wide-eyed, putting my hands up in the air and yelling "AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Eventually, I reminded myself a couple of dozen times that I've been doing the job for the last six weeks or so, the only difference was that my supervisor wasn't there at his desk so I could ask him questions. Then, I spent most of the morning playing "What is this and how the hell did it end up on my desk?" Naturally, I then had to figure out what to do with all of it. There were notes, but i still had to spend some time figuring out what needed immediate attention and what could be shuffled aside in favor of more immediate issues.

Still, the week has had a promising start. I found a copy of Todd Snider's new CD, which has been out a couple of weeks now. I was starting to get worried that I was going to have to order it. Hal Ozsan guest-starred on "Bones" tonight. It was still in the usual vein his roles seem to run, but I got to see him in something, so that was good.

Free Comic Book Day was good, there'll be an article about that on Boomtron here soon from me. Unfortunatlely, just like I knew would happen, my local comic book store did not get any copies of "Muktatafaht" to distribute. I was really disappointed about that, since that was easily the book that had me the most curious. I am hoping that the comic book subscription service that I joined will come through for me and I will get a chance to read it.

I got all of the pens for my bandolier, along with labels to put on the pens. I figure that if anyone walks off with a pen, at least they'll know who they swiped it from. I also picked up some playing cards for a couple of projects that I want to make.

Now, I need to find someone who will drink Crystal Head vodka. It comes in a very cool skull shaped bottle that will look awesome as a lamp. This is not to say that the traditional square Jack Daniels bottles don't look cool, but the skull would be great. Ideally, I'd need to get several of the bottles so that I could make multiple lamps. I can think of at least five friends who will desperately want one as soon as they see them. Initially, I tried to contact the company and see if they'd just sell me bottles, since I don't really drink. They were very nice about it, but no, they don't sell the bottles without alcohol in them.

I also realized today that Robin, my Daoine Sidhe character, would, in all likelihood probably end up as upper level management. Why? Well, he's very charming, he doesn't do a whole lot, he has several things that he's very good at that have absolutely nothing to do with work, and when he does try to help out he usually ends up making a huge mess of things.

Other writing is, of course, going on. Some of it is surprising, some of it isn't. And some of it, I'm just not sure of at all.

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Music: "Keep off the Grass" Todd Snider

Wild




The world happens around me. Sometimes, I engage with it, become an active participant, and let myself become part of the experience. Sometimes, all I want is some quiet and a book and some time alone with all of the characters living in my head, clamoring for attention, begging to be released as type or ink on a page. I am, sometimes, far more aware of them than of anything else that's around me. It's part of who I am, and I accept that. The presence of my stories, the weight of the ideas, and the voices of my characters are what I carry with me constantly, though I would never classify them as a burden. To be rid of them would be like stripping myself of my soul. I wouldn't want to do it, even if I could.

Then, of course, there are the times when the world intrudes upon me. Interactions are not necessarily unpleasant and I can deal with them as they occur, but I find after a while, that I need to recharge and reset, to find my balance again and reestablish who I am and where I fit. My sense of self doesn't dissolve or even start to get blurry. Instead, it feels more like a slow submergence of thought. The more that I try to grasp at threads of story and inspiration the faster the tide carries them away from me. Calm bubbles away, bursting towards a sunlit surface that I struggle to reach as ideas fracture and break like waves above me.

It is that feeling that propels me to find someplace where I can regain my equilibrium. To get away from the swirl of frustration, I grab headphones and my MP3 player and unleash a playlist to shore up my brain and redirect its course. Then, I walk. I do not set out to consciously seek a direction. There is no goal in mind. Instead, I let intuition guide my feet until I arrive somewhere that I feel like I want to be. It's not always a physical place. It can be a moment of epiphany, or a brief moment of unexpected beauty, or, even, just a feeling that comes over me.

Usually, it helps me to just be outside, to see plants and a few animals. Watching the path of a butterfly as it flutters away or seeing a pair of squirrels quarreling over some bit of food or territory can change my entire outlook. Finding a nice patch of grass to sit in that is somewhere quiet without people surrounding me.

The walks are something that I have to do on my own, because I don't really know what it is I need to get back to my equilibrium until I find it. It's harder to listen to yourself to figure it out when you have company. Fortunately, he has seen how much good these solitary ventures are for me and he understands that when I need them, I need them. All he asks, when I need to venture out into the wild, is that I take my cell phone with me, just in case.



Storm








When we go to visit my parents, it's a completely different world for him. He has grown up in cities all his life, so, for him, he's out in the middle of nowhere. He is not used to a community where everyone knows everyone else, where if someone sees you walking down the side of the road they stop to see if you're okay and offer you a tow home or a ride to go get parts for your vehicle, or, for that matter, where a trip to the lumberyard in the morning means every neighbor with five minutes of free time and a hammer casually pulls into your driveway to see what you're building. It's a world where backyard cookouts around a fire pit just happen and there are always cold cans of something available to hand out on demand, a frosty, aluminum encased “thank-you” for help you never even had to request. We can stand on the back steps of the house and see for more than forty miles in any direction and the river is close enough to walk to, if we wanted. It's a place where people make their own fun because cable doesn't reach here and the reception for digital or satellite television is spotty at best.



He has discovered the joys of an old cobbled together dirtbike grumbling its way across a hayfield to go check the irrigation water and having his arms elbow deep in a tractor from the early part of last century to put the battle scarred old veteran of plantings past back into service again. The sleek efficiency of the shop where he works, with its organized racks of tools and customers desperate for the return of their expensive toys gives way to a dim, grungy and cavernous corrugated steel shed with trouble lights hanging where they're needed and a workbench made of railroad ties stained black with age, use, and automotive fluids. Despite the lopsided grin that ends up plastered on his face the whole visit, it is always a visit. He's too shy and reserved to tolerate the transparency of small-town living for very long. It's something that I can understand, because it is a part of my hometown that I don't find myself missing very much.



The front porch of the house is a large cement affair, with a three-foot tall brick railing around it and faded, corrugated fiberglass to roof it. He found a folding loveseat that's meant to be for camping and insisted on buying it, even though I wasn't sure why he wanted the thing. He put it in the back of our vehicle and kept it there until we went to see my folks.



The second day of our visit, the day dawns brutally hot. A murky haze drapes the horizon as far as the eye can see and the sky is a cloudless, pale-scorched blue. The air is heavy and oppressive even though it doesn't seem to carry a single wisp of moisture. Despite the weight of summer around us, we have things that we have to get done. The temperature climbs as the day wears on. Towards afternoon, the sky begins to crowd with clouds that grow and spread, turning dark. He watches with interest.



Once we finish with everything that we had planned for the day, we go back to my parents' house and he pulls the loveseat out of our car. I follow him into the yard, but as he turns towards the front porch, he asks “Hey, Sweetheart, you mind getting us a couple of drinks and some popcorn?”



“Sure,” I answer.



We could both do with something to eat after all of the work we've put in and heating up the house making something seems both pointless and masochistic. I grab a Mexican Coke and get him a beer while the microwave hums along, waiting for that magical turning point when the popping stops and I need to take the bag out of the nuker.



When I come outside, he's set the loveseat up so that it's facing west. The sun is starting to set and the light has gone to rich orange-gold. The clouds have become iron-gray anvils marching steadily towards us. He's sprawled indolently in the chair, legs apart and out in front of him, heels resting on the concrete, taking up space while he radiates a sense of both peace and belonging. One arm rests lazily along the back of the chair, the other is hanging over one armrest, his forearm dangling down beside the chair. As the front door clicks shut, he slowly turns his head my direction and gives me a slow smile, motioning me forward with a languid flick of one of those big, long-fingered hands of his.



He takes the beer from me with the hand that was dangling off the armrest. I settle against his side under the arm that's over the back of the chair and let my head fall back against his shoulder. His shirt is a little damp, but so is mine. It tends to happen when you're helping out on a farm. I had dumped the popcorn into a bowl and I balanced it on his thigh.



A cool breeze starts blowing as gray tendrils make their way to the ground. It starts as only a few streaks with no discernible pattern, but steadily, the swaths of rain increase in number until the horizon becomes a wall of deep charcoal punctuated by jagged, purple-white flashes of lightning. The storms are rolling in from more than a hundred miles away and we watch them build and swarm together as the distant growl of thunder rumbles steadily towards us. Lightning jumps from cloud to cloud and to the waving prairie and the cool, clean smell of fresh rain, wet dirt, and sweet grass prairie swells into the air.



We just sit there, tucked together in the safe haven of that canvas loveseat on the brick porch with our popcorn and our drinks and we watch. Even if the rain did touch us, it wouldn't matter, sitting with each other listening to the pattering droplets against the house and the porch is all that we need in that moment.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: "War on Gravity" Poets & Pornstars

My newest column is about why I think Sci-fi has such a difficult time finding an audience on television:
http://www.boomtron.com/2012/04/why-sci-fi-struggles-on-tv-geek-girl-navigating-the-world/

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: "Dream a Little Dream of Me" Mama Cass Elliott

It seems like every time I find something that I really like to use to wash my face that doesn't completely freak out my skin, that product suddenly becomes extinct. I wish I was just being paranoid or conspiracy minded, but, the simple fact of the matter is, I've got a running history of this being an issue.

I'm very blessed in that I only have one food allergy and it's very, very easy to avoid. It's also not a life threatening issue, it just makes me severely uncomfortable for a few days. Also, it's one of those food things that wouldn't be a "hidden" or "sneaky" ingredient. It's either in the food or it isn't, and if it's in there, the people who made it will definitely know.

On the other hand, frangrances and artificial dyes in cosmetics and other health and beauty products (or just about anything that comes into contact with my skin) give me fits on an almost constant basis. I end up having reactions ranging from sniffles to outbreaks of blisters. So, often times, experimenting with products is far more trouble than it's worth.

For a while, Avon made a face wash that came in a tube that was made with Yucca and Aloe. It was fantastic stuff. My skin loved it, it didn't smell icky, and, most of all, it worked beautifully. Two months after I discovered it, Avon suddenly discontinued the product with no notice. It just wasnt' available any longer.

Trial and error ensued. Mostly, it was a whole lot of error.

Bath & Body Works is a store that I cannot go into. At all. No, seriously. Walking into one of those stores will result in my hands puffing up to more than twice their normal size and getting bright red, my sinuses immediately congesting, and my eyes swelling shut and watering. It's a miserable business. However, I had a friend who worked in one of the stores. I mentioned the woes I experienced with finding face washes and she suggested "Good Clean Foam" which was a grapefruit and aloe product. At that point, I was willing to try just about anything, so I sent her with some money and she bought me a bottle.

It was fantastic stuff. It smelled nice. Really nice. I don't eat grapefruit. I think they're pretty much the most evil fruit in the universe. Why? They're deceitful. That's why. Traitorous. That's the word that I'd use to describe them. They smell great. Then, when you try to eat them, first of all, they attack you with an accuracy that's practically supernatural. If ever the armed forces could figure out how a damn grapefruit can get a person in the eye EVERY time and apply that kind of target-seeking technology to weapons, they'd become the most deadly force on the planet. Second of all there is not enough sugar anywhere to make that taste good. It's just a mouth full of brain-liquefying, face-melting sour. So, I do not eat grapefruit. Or at least, I only fall for their Citrus Mind Tricks about once every five years and try eating one again to see if maybe, this time, their general policy of assault has been abandoned. So far, those efforts have all been in vain. They hate me and I'm not especially fond of them. I still like the way that they smell, though.

The Good Clean Foam smelled like grapefruit, but not in an especially overpowering way. It was a moisturizing face wash and, again, my skin really liked it. It worked well. It smelled nice. The only issue I had was that I could not go into the freakin' store to buy it. Fortunately, I could stand at the doorway of the local Bath & Body Works and wave over a clerk, explain the situation with my allergies, slip said clerk some money, and they would bring back the foam, my change, and a receipt. I'm sure it all looked very furtive and suspicious, especially since I am one of those people who does not look like they'd ever step foot in a store like that. I know I'm not an especially girly girl. I'm good with that. I'm a woman and I am the woman that I am and I am happy with that, too.

I actually got to use that one for about three years or so, until, one day, the clerk told me that they had the stuff on clearance DIRT CHEAP. My stomach sank. I bought all of it that they had. When that supply ran out, I had to find something else.

Noxema came out with a deep pore cleanser in a tube. It would make a decent foam, didn't smell horrible or chemically (though it did smell faintly of Noxema) and didn't have any of those hideous little abrasive micro-pellets people seem to think are "scrubbers" or "exfoliators" or whatever special technical term they use for them so they can be trademarked and copyrighted and lawsuits over branding can take place at a moment's whim. Whatever they are, they're bad news for me. It worked great. I could tolerate the smell. My skin loved it. Guess what they don't make any more? The new stuff has those awful crunchy bits in it and I can't use it anymore because the formula has changed and it now seems to be some kind of hyperintensive acid peel that has no business being performed by amatuers in their home showers. I'm still hoping that my skin might see fit to recover at some point in time.

It is now to the point where I am getting desperate. How desperate? I'm starting to research the feasibility of just making my own. Nope. Not kidding. At least if I figure out something that I can use that my skin likes that I can make at home, I never have to go through the difficult and often painful process of finding a new product that they're just going to be rid of as soon as I start buying it regularly.

Current Music: "Bye, bye Love" The Everly Brothers

Marathon

It's the first nice day of the year, the sun is shining and it's warm, though there's a light breeze so it doesn't quite feel like summer, yet. The grass is just starting to turn green and it's time to dig ourselves out of the debris of winter. We both put on our grubby work clothes and on the way out, I plug an old radio in out in our garage, bringing it so it's sitting just in the front corner of the garage, just opposite all of our yard tools.
He's wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt with stripes from the shoulders to his forearms. It's got a motorcycle logo on the back surrounded by a swirling pinstripe design. He's also in jeans that don't have knees any more and are dangerously close to losing the seat. I don't say anything, instead, I just resolve to make sure that he doesn't do a whole lot of bending over in the front yard.
I'm wearing similar clothes, an old pair of jeans that just don't quite fit and a plain red t-shirt that has spatters of paint and a few smears of ink. There are a couple of little holes in the front of it, down by my hip where I caught the shirt on a nail, but didn't ruin it. I'm also wearing a pair of Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars that have holes in the bottom, right over the balls of my feet from putting my feet down when my moped stops.
He's got on work boots that I'm starting to believe may, in fact, be thoroughly indestructible. They have the patina that only comes from repeated and significant exposure to dirt, grass, automotive fluids, mud, and being worn daily by a guy who likes to try to fix things himself, first.
We're both wearing work gloves. Mine are a pair that I've had forever. My dad gave them to me for when I helped him cut wood and carry gated pipe. His are new because his work gloves don't seem to last all that long. They're made of heavy leather, but he tends to be rough on them. Usually the seams of the gloves give long before the leather does, which means that I end up getting nice, heavy pieces of leather that I can use to make things with. I keep threatening him that one of these days, he's getting a beanbag made out of old motorcycle seat upholstery and ruined work gloves. I'm not sure it's actually a threat when his face lights up and he tells me “Cool!”
We start by picking up the big sticks and pieces of trash that have ended up in the yard. Then, we rake up the leaves and the dead grass. I weed the flower beds and cut back the overgrowth that I've left in place so the ground didn't get too cold. He trims back some of the shrubs and a few stray tree branches, then helps me bag up all of the yard waste and set it out onto the curb. We started mid-morning and by the time we get done, it's starting to get dark. We've worked all day, and we've taking breaks for water and a few drinks, but since we were on such a roll, we didn't actually stop to eat. We just downed a couple of granola bars and went back to work.
Once we were finished and looked over our now groomed yard, he puts an arm over me, heedless of how damp his shirt is from sweat. I don't say anything because I know mine is just as bad as his. He pulls me against his side and rubs his still work-gloved hands over my shoulder.
“We worked hard today.”
“Yup,” I agree.
“We deserve a reward.”
“Probably,” I answer.
“Shower and then Red Lobster?” he suggests.
“Absolutely,” I say.

Current Mood: good
Current Music: "Mambo Italiano" Dean Martin