Friday Fun: Memories

[elisem]

(So I'm working on posting more public entries here, and this is a start.)

If you could, please remind me of some fun we had together, or some fun for others that resulted from something we worked on, or tell me about a little bit of fun you've had this past week or remembered this past week?

Thanks in advance.

(This post is brought to you by the Committee for Better Fridays, with support from the Brainweasel Calming Initiative.)

Comments

[sine_nomine]

Meeting you at Penn Station duringvThe Great Train Trip of ????

Plotting the joint purchase of Sidhe Passport.

Bead shopping with the Cubby Car
Service

Airport pickups and droo-offs with the Cubby Car Service.

Exploring the cemetery and looking innocent while you played Ingress.

There are many more where those came from if the brain weasels are still hungry.

[naomikritzer]

Do you remember the Alternity Retreat Weekend when we all went to Peg's sister's cabin? We had 3x5 index cards and wrote up our own Alternity-specific version of Cards Against Humanity, writing new cards throughout the weekend and playing it the last day.

That was SO much fun.

[pegkerr]

That was one of my favorite weekends ever.

[queenbookwench]

It was an out-freakin-standing weekend!

Specifically Elise things, in addition to the delight of finally meeting you in person—your hands always working, great stories, being a very comfortable sort of person to lean against.

Relatedly, Susan & Megan thread brainstorming, terrifyingly erudite lolcats and much much more.

[queenbookwench]

The pendant you made me when I was in the hospital will always mean a great deal to me.

[madgastronomer]

I remember the first time when I knew you and you came to Seattle (for a con? Cat Valente was here, too, I remember) and I took a private wire lesson with you. You were angry when I came in because the hotel hadn't given you a bathroom with a railing for the tub, just some kind of stick-on suction cup handhold, and you told me about it, you were all ready to Do Battle, and then we turned to the beads, and you took a deep breath, and then for a little while it seemed... not like it didn't matter, but like for the moment it was beside the point. You'd get back to it. Right now there were beads, and wire, and a story to find. I still wear the pendant from that. In fact, I was wearing it for the past several weeks, and just switched it out for The Post-Colonial Literature of Elves: Songs of Binding a couple of days ago.

I remember discussing the fine points of Southern vs Minnesota politeness on LJ, and finding both common ground and differences.

I remember the next time you came to Seattle, and I brought you key lime pie and we went out for sushi at that place in Fremont. The person you were staying with that time was a Callahanian, as I recall, and when I dropped you back off you introduced us and we talked about it a few minutes. And it was just a very pleasant evening.

I remember the talk about a Shadow Unit mini con, and you wanted me specifically to be there, but I'd been arguing with people, and you said something about wanting to get everyone together at one table... and I missed it the first time, and you had the rephrase slightly before I caught it and said I'd break bread with anybody there. And I was terribly amused that we'd had a brief moment of failure to translate between Minnesota and Southern. I was remembering that just the other day.

I remember one time you posted asking for stories about quotes that kept people going, and I said Miles Vorkosigan's "Forward Momentum!" had become my battle cry when I was trying to get the restaurant up and running, and sometimes I just wanted to lay down and die (literally), and then I'd repeat that to myself, and get up and keep going. You liked that, and asked if you could share it with your friend Lois. It took that a minute to click, but when it did I went SQUEEEEE! I don't know if you'll remember that one at all, but it was a moment with you that I treasure.

All the Shadow Unit stuff. Shoggoths and Chaz's recipes and Daphne and Hafs and all the LJ shenanigans... There was a lot there, and I can't keep track anymore of who said what when. Playing Polar Bears on the boards. Making up other shows on the WTF Network. Tailless Gecko beads, I remember those, I still have mine someplace.

[radiantfracture]

We don't know each other IRL, so the shared fun comes from reading your posts. I did have quite a good time making my face up to look like a careworn rabbit yesterday, and tomorrow I hope to have fun hauling boxes of books off for donation.

[oursin]

That time at Wiscon with my mother's elephant bead and pendant necklace that you turned into this in icon, and you pointed out that each elephant was slightly different.

[jenett]

I continue to have deep and fond memories of meeting you in person for the first time, and fairly instantly bonding over The Young Visiters. As one does.

[mrissa]

Oh, fun I've had this past week? I went to lunch with a friend at a really good patisserie and had an herbal tisane latte, and then I returned for another latte with another friend 20 minutes later.

<3

[redbird]

A small thing from this morning: eating breakfast at rysmiel's, yogurt with strawberries, and thinking "it's spring" because they were the first fresh fruit--not frozen berries I'd defrosted that morning, nor jam--in months. Ontario greenhouse berries from Marche Atwater, and there will be better in June, but strawberries.

[athenais]

I had the jolliest time going to the American Swedish Institute with you and Simba in December! And it was lovely to talk at length in the kitchen at Carol K.'s party that weekend. I enjoyed that we both wore green outfits.

[stultiloquentia]

The year we worked on Apex Mag together was also the first year I went to Wiscon. I didn't know many people there, and was feeling young and eager and a little nervous. I introduced myself in the dealers' room, and you invited me to come back behind your table, and I sat there and you told me stories for about an hour. Such a small kindness, but such an important part of the con, for me. You were so welcoming and pleased to have company, and so wonderful to listen to.

Here's a story from this week I haven't shared yet:

My parents intend to move from the two-story house where I grew up to an apartment sometime within the next few years, so they're slowly sorting and culling their belongings. Last week Dad found his first teddy bear in a box in the basement. It's bristly, patchy, straw-filled, and as old as he is, so he figured it was time to let it go, and set it out on top of the trash bin in the garage to wait for trash day. He was about to return to the house, had already flicked off the garage light, when he decided he'd better go back and give his bear one last hug.

He said it felt like the bear hugged back. He couldn't let go, and the bear came back inside. And my dad, who is creative in many, many ways, but never before this one so far as I can recall, sat down and wrote a poem about it.

[ckd]

Oh, the length of the list I could post here....

Having you as a friend, listener, and example has gotten me through rough spots and helped me be a better person/friend/sweetie/etc in so many ways.

Specific instances:
Meeting you at the 2004 Worldcon, thanks to Jo mentioning your table as a rendezvous point. (Since that con also let me meet mrissa, rushthatspeaks, and gaudior and re-meet both Mike and pygment, it was a really good week.)

Listening to you read Kameron Hurley's "We Have Always Fought" in the car from the airport to some Twin Cities convention; I don't remember which one, because that wasn't the relevant part.

There have been all sorts of wonderful conversations and meals with you over the years; one that particularly comes to mind is the time we went to Legal Sea Foods for my birthday, and our server came back to double check that we hadn't accidentally over-tipped because she thought it was way too high. We all said "nope, you made a great celebratory dinner even better and we wanted to make your night the way you made ours". The look on her face was "shared joy is increased" made manifest.

Fun for others: the combination of your encouragement and telling me about Lush's massage bars has made a lot of people happy over the past almost-a-decade (WAIT WHAT WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN) and is likely to do so again this coming weekend at Penguicon.

[pameladean]

Not to delve too much into the past, I'll mention the time you showed me bits of "Hadestown" on your phone. Also bits of "Hamilton," a different time. Also our monumental hunt through Marshall's for a winter coat for me. I hate shopping but that was somehow not shopping.

P.

[crazysoph]

I once got to show you an item I'd made - a wire-crown inspired by the Chinese phoenix crown - during a lunch in a pub in Antwerpen, with Jo for company. It was work inspired by the many beautiful things you've made, and you were kind enough to enjoy it, and tell me about a term of art, indicating the trembling of decorative elements on wire lengths.

Crazy(and I remember that moment every time I pass the place where the crown is currently living on my dresser)Soph

[azurelunatic]

Once upon a time I vowed to myself that when I had the space in my budget for a necklace-crown sized luxury item, I would see what was on offer and then get one.

A little more than ten years ago, maybe ten years and a month, a girl who was not quite thirteen walked into a bookstore. She sat quietly, reading, like she often did. Despite having enough money to live comfortably in San Jose and also travel, her birth parents thought books were a needless expense, and she had only a few. So she read.

The book she picked up that day just so happened to be the first book by an author on LiveJournal. The girl was charmed. She went home. That was my birthday. I knew none of this.

She turned thirteen the next day. Thirteen is the magical age when the United States deems children old enough to know better than to click on ads by accident or something, so she signed up for a LiveJournal account that very day.

"Oh, that's nice," she thought. "My new favorite author is having a live chat to celebrate the book. I should join."

The chat was riotously fun, and when the book had been completely and collectively read 18 hours later, people didn't want to leave the chat. They stuck around.

That's how I met my daughter.

All the chatfish gave our babyfish the best possible advice, and perhaps for the first time in her little life, she knew she was surrounded by loving people who meant well. She slowly began to divulge the truth about her home life. It took her three years to tell a teacher about her birth mother's emotional abuse and neglect. I did my best to help her make good decisions. Coax her to do homework. Suggest that she could practice piano. Ask what she was afraid about, if CPS came.

But this is a happy story. The teacher was a mandated reporter. She got an entire summer of respite from her mother, and her mother got enough counseling to realize it was in her best interests to behave. She had, meanwhile, been planning her escape.

Ace high school. Get a full scholarship to somewhere nowhere near California. Ace college. Get a good job??? Become a doctor??? Something. Just never have to live with her birth mom again.

When the social worker asked her if she knew someone who would be an ideal mother, she said she didn't know. That was a lie. She was really thinking about me.

So she went to college, on that full scholarship that she earned, as an independent student because the summer at the shelter meant she had been homeless. She graduated with honors in computer science. She got a good job.

I was so proud. Parenthood is hard. I hadn't meant to acquire a child. It just happened, and I did what I could to make sure she survived.

I had an interesting ten years of it as well. I met many, many people on LiveJournal over the years. One fine day in 2015, I met a person as they dodged a trolley loaded with used tea cups. I congratulated them on the dodge (practical librarian skills) and it turned out we had known each other for years already. When they dropped my keyboard in my plate at lunch, I knew two things: they were ruled by the same gods of comedy that I was, and I might have fallen in love. They also liked me, and they stood by me while my uterus tried and failed to kill me with cancer, and I helped arrange a heist caper to extract them from their abusive ex-partner.

This week my daughter asked me what I wanted for my birthday, now that she had a comfortable cushion of savings and a good budget. We were looking at engagement rings, for the elopement she's planning with the nice young man she's not dating yet. (They're planning their entire future, with spreadsheets and a timeline. Dating is scheduled for review in June. Elopement is about 4 years off.) I didn't quite know. She gave me a budget. "Eep," I said. It was larger than I had expected.

She gave me some time to think about it.
I showed her a few of the things I was planning if my belovedest partner and I were ever in a place to become legally spouses, and she saw some things she liked and added them to her own plans. A few days passed. Her not-yet boyfriend suggested that she also give me a low price for the birthday gift, so I didn't try to ask for something too small. I thought about it some more. We were looking at dresses for the elopement (a nice cheerful sundress, nothing too fancy, and not white) when I saw that my old friend Nora from the Bujold fan list back in the day, had retweeted a thing about a sale.

We know how Elise gets.

"!!!", I said calmly, and sent my daughter the link to the necklace-crown I'd been eyeing on and off for a while. The sale put it in the birthday gift budget.

The box, as you know, showed up on Saturday.

It isn't just beautiful and such. It also means that my daughter survived those 10 years to become the adult she is today, working on computers and not letting large pieces of equipment catch fire, with enough security to get her internet mom a beautiful and meaningful birthday and mother's day present.

Thank you for becoming part of this story. 💙💙💙


Someday, I might be looking for something blue to hold a large piece of lace to my head, and I might think of exactly this thing, with a piece of elastic ribbon. Someday. Perhaps.

[carbonel]

I've often mentioned the lunch at your club that turned into a 3-hour kidnapping. That is such a shiny memory.

There was also the time after a Fourth Street where you had a gathering at your house with some of the out-of-towners. Jon Singer and I went off to an Indian restaurant and came back with bags of food and we had a feast. And we sat around and talked about books and iPad apps and writing and crafting until the hour was very wee. (It is possibly I'm conflating two different gatherings, because memory is like that.)

Also many play-reading evenings, especially the ones with Mike.