sundries

The most egregious of the March deadlines has been met. And so have a lot of the other ones. Not everything fell into place perfectly, but disaster has been avoided and I feel reasonably proud of myself (to feel truly proud of myself I would have to never sleep). All of this means that I can start catching up on emails and PMs later today.

Told my mother my father has to get a scooter. The result of this was hearing about some neighbor dude they've made friends with who is showing my father how to use the weight machines in the building's gym and my mother says it's making a difference. I said he has one month, because it's unnecessary for him to be housebound and unreasonable for her. I can't always engage my parents on emotional issues because we're all nuts and my sense of boundaries are much stronger than theirs, but I can do logistics, and they need to just let me do it.

Also in the realm of my parents, there's been this ongoing clusterfuck as regards getting my father moved from my mother's health insurance to Medicare Part B since her retirement. We think it's resolved now. I also told her to write to Obama; it'll make her feel better. Also, it's insane enough to make me feel less suspicious about the ongoing Why Do I Have Two Different Birthdays Drama, although she still won't talk to me about it.

I am judging a fencing tournament on Saturday. This is good.

Patty comes home Sunday. You know this because I mention it nearly every time I post. The anticipation is ridiculous and I'm in, trust me, no position to bitch about it. But it's like the emotional equivalent of edging, and I'm starting to go a little insane.

I've recommended The Art of Manliness before. And while I continue to have some reservations (but many fewer than I could) about the site as a whole, their fashion stuff remains awesome. Today's entry links to several recommended men's style websites including a fantastic blog for short men, a great site looking at how the styles of the 1930s - 1950s continue to play in current fashion, an interesting guide to style for men of color and a nifty etiquette site. As usual, I'm looking at this stuff with many different thoughts in mind, but of use to men (duh), female crossplayers, costumers and writers, among others.

accessiblehouse is a community helping to raise funds for two LJ'ers facing foreclosure. The situation is especially complicated because one of those people is living with a disability and the house has been customized for those needs. If you're interested in helping, please visit the community. This tip is from laurel.

I've heard about lilly_rose from several LJ'ers. After having a series of seizures, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and swiftly had surgery. The good news is the rumor is successfully out and was benign. The bad news? Her job did not offer health insurance at the time of the incident, and now she's facing a lot of debt. She's made a post about what she's trying to do and her needs here.

A bit ago I linked to a great essay here on LJ. Sadly, I can't remember how long a while ago was, or who wrote it, although I'm betting someone out there in the brain trust can help me. It was about the way no one stays at once job or lives in one place for long anymore, about how our lives are all about chosen family, constantly shifting and supporting each other because that's the only safety net we've got, while our parents' generation looks at us and sees irresponsibility, because they haven't automatically adjusted to the broken promises of government and corporations in the same way we have. Ringing any bells?

Anyway, I've been thinking about it since I read it, both due to its beautiful language, but also for the truth of it, and what it implies to me about the path from 50 years ago to 50 or 500 years hence; it seems very true and something I have thought about constantly in my writing of fiction lately -- how do we create a world that has logically evolved out of our own? How do we plausibly make family structure, relationships, housing different? How do today's "alternative" (*snerk*) arrangements become the future's "norm"? While not an essay on world-building at all, it's been the thing that's most informed my world-building since I read it. And I wanted to rec it all to you, but I have to find it again first. Help!

ETA: kalichan in with http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/417489.html for the win. Go read it.

Tip: Don't friend random people you don't know because they're in a band you dig two days before April Fool's or you might get taken in by their pranks for about a second and a half; robert_from_ap, I'm looking at you.

The world is filled with terrible things. Sometimes they happen to and around the people we love. And then we say to ourselves, "oh, god, this makes my problems sound petty" or something similar. The mallet of perspective only solves so much. At the end of the day, awful things befalling other people generally make us no more capable of dealing with our own misfortunes. At best, they just make us desirous of trying harder.

National Poetry Month: 1

For a year I rode the E
downtown
to World Trade,

Worked at Lehman
and wore suits with big shoulders
in soft colors
to prove my worth to men
who wouldn't fuck a girl with short hair.

My desk was on the eighth floor,
low enough to avoid the sway of engineering.

I shopped at lunch,
brown-bagged on marble steps, and
listened to music I didn't even like
amongst fake palms:
status for a desert in which we did not live.

All these years on and
people still go quiet in closed stations,
in our Pompeii.

The human mind is constructed, my mother says, to forget pain.

So when the tourists ask:
"Does this train go to Ground Zero?"
No, I say,
It goes to World Trade.