Five questions meme

[grammarwoman]

kass asked me five questions. The questions and my answers are below the cut.

If you want me to ask you five questions, leave a comment and I will do so. Then you get to post your answers in your journal along with this same explanation.

Onward! Warning: this got wordy. Really wordy.

1) What crafty project are you proudest of?

Huh, that's an unexpectedly tough question. The cheating answer would be all the finished ones, because I have so many ideas and supplies waiting in my craft closet (and drawers, and bookshelves, and boxes, and...I have a lot of stuff) that I feel guilty about never using, so when I actually power through to the end of a project, the combined sense of relief and accomplishment is pretty damned great. I think I could pick out my top three, though, which coincidentally are just about the last three major projects I worked on:

• The tree skirt I made for my Space Battle tree, because the Christmas plaid of the default skirt never fit the theme. I bought the fabric a couple of years ago, a gorgeous shimmering navy with tiny crystals glued to it and a backing fabric of plain navy. I sewed it up last Christmas and it came together perfectly; it looks like a beautiful field of stars beneath the tree, twinkling under the strings of lights.


• My TARDIS dress for Vividcon, because it came out exactly like I had pictured in my head. I obsessed over that for WEEKS, and I'm really proud of the way it turned out. Plus, I got tons of compliments about it. :)


• My son's Halloween costume this year. He wanted to go as the Lich from Adventure Time, which is not a costume you can buy off the shelf, though I was able to purchase several parts of it. The biggest, most visible components were the grayish-greenish robe and hood. I took the Emperor to the fabric store with a copied page from the graphic novel and got his approval on the fabric. I wound up sewing the robe from a pattern, freehanded the layout of the hood from an online source, bought the mask, horns, cape, and skeleton gloves, modified the mask and horns to match the Lich, and created the jewelry clasp from a couple of dollar store jewels, craft pins, and Sculpey. My favorite part was the tiny bones strung between the jewels, because they looked amazing when they were done. The whole costume turned out fantastically, and the Emperor was happy with the results. I should post the whole process sometime.

2) What fandom is making you happiest right now, and what is it about the fandom / characters / whatever that speaks to you?

I feel like I’m consuming a lot of media, but I’m not in a fandom for most of it. It might just be that I’m harboring guilt about committing a majority of my squee to anything until my Festivids entry is done. So…I guess right now my home base is still the extended Marvel Universe, primarily the movies, with a generous helping of comics canon.

I really appreciate the scope of what the Marvel film division is doing in building this universe. It was a big gamble for them to take, stringing together a bunch of seemingly disparate origin stories (at least for a non-comics audience) to crescendo into a massive team movie with "The Avengers". Boy howdy, did it pay off for me and a ton of other fans. Marvel as a company also seems to be vastly more respectful of its current and potential fans, unlike other groups (*cough*DC*cough*), in bringing in more female characters beyond damsel roles and sexpot clothing. My admiration is immense for the female actors, from Scarlett Johansson’s scathing putdowns to reporters who are fixated on her underwear, to Natalie Portman’s efforts in creating a STEM competition for young women.

The size and reach of the fandom reminds me a lot of my halcyon days in SGA. There are so many people participating in a variety of ways that I don’t think I’ll ever run out of media to consume in a form that appeals to what I want in the moment. I can ogle Chris Evans in picspam form, wallow in Steve/Bucky FEEEELS, laugh at Tony and Bruce Science Bromance, watch Black Widow own the screen… It’s such a large sandbox to play in, or rather, a multiverse of sandboxes, because when the comics canon itself on a regular basis gets rebooted or spun off or invaded by another dimension, it leaves a creator with a lot of options.

I also adore the array of characters in the universe, with their spectrum of archetypes, and how their stories weave in and out of the others’. (“Captain America: Winter Solider” cannot come soon enough!) Plus, it leads to a round-robin for shipping combinations, a pairing (or more) for everyone.

It doesn’t hurt that the Emperor has discovered “Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” on Netflix, and looks to me as the expert on explaining the shifting cast of characters and their motives.


3) What have you learned about life, the universe, and everything through becoming a mom?

This is another complicated question for me, because it touches on both the Emperor and my infertility.

I have had the white picket fence fantasy since I was young; I always pictured myself as married with two kids. Ask any of my babysitting clients, and they would tell you that I was awesome with their children. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been a mom-in-training my whole life.

My husband and I never even waffled about the idea of kids; we both wanted them, and we both agreed that two sounded like an excellent number. (I have one sibling, and he has four; as much as he loves his large family, he believes that a one-child-per-parent ratio makes for an easier life, and for me, two kids is the norm.)

Then came the first pregnancy and miscarriage, and things got a lot more complex. I felt like I’d been betrayed by the social contract, that being a Good Girl and a Smart Girl who’d made careful decisions about partners and birth control and marriage and all that should have meant that I had babies exactly on my desired schedule. Instead, there was anguish, confusion, and doubt, and not a single goddamn good answer for what happened. (It was a case of anembryonic gestation, AKA blighted ovum, which seemed to be medicalese for “Sorry your egg sucked, try again,” and led to my husband and me acquiring the blackest of humor about the presumed-male indifference in developing really awful medical terminology, especially when it came to reproductive problems. I mean, “blighted ovum”? “Missed abortion”? Were there committees sitting around thinking of how to rub more salt in those wounds?)

Then came another blighted ovum miscarriage, and surgery to correct scar tissue. I got third time lucky with the Emperor and had a pregnancy that was smooth sailing (the worst symptom I had was puffy feet and ankles), delivering a 10 pound 3 ounce boy who was perfectly healthy. (Several friends who visited us in the hospital went on to accuse me of misleading them into thinking that all babies were born looking like 3-month-olds, and not tiny squalling things.)

I loved being pregnant, even as I got huger and huger; at the end, I looked like I was gestating a Death Star. I loved being a new mom, bonding with my son through snuggle time and breastfeeding (though I could have done without the multiple interruptions every night – I spent the first year and change a shambling zombie from sleep deprivation).

We’ve had a couple of miscarriages since the Emperor, which is wearing at my perfect future picture of what my life was supposed to be. The fertility doc’s “With your eggs?” is still ringing in my ears as I try to make a plan for the next step.

So for the pat summary of what that all has taught me: there are no guarantees or fairness in life when it comes to reproducing. You can do everything right and not get what you want and then have to endure Facebook posts from multiple friends about unplanned pregnancies in their later years.

I am so lucky and blessed in having the Emperor, though, because so many women never even get the one child, and he has certainly taught me a bunch. :)

• No (public) judging. I cannot fathom going up to a stranger and proceed to tell them they’re parenting incorrectly, or leaving unsolicited advice on a post, or whatever. If the kid is not in active danger, then anything goes. (Though I definitely have thoughts about people who take their toddlers to scary movies or shopping at midnight; those opinions stay in my head or get vented to my husband.)


• Related to the above: there is no One True Way of parenting. I may get down on myself for not living up to some idealized Best Mother Ever, who homeschools and makes vegetarian treats and teaches her offspring to be a miniature competent adult right after potty training is done. But I do the best I can with the kid I’ve got, who has my bad eyes and his dad’s sensory issues and both our giftedness, plus ADHD and ASD. Has he been fed and clothed? Are there giggles and hugs at the end of the day, and a roof over his head? Then I was not the worst parent ever. If there were problems, we all can make better choices tomorrow and aim for higher goals.


• Even if you had issues with the way you were raised, your parents can still be a valuable resource, from answering “Did I ever do this as a kid?” to “Please take him for a day/week.” Parenting the Emperor has also been an interesting bonding time with my dad, who’s a Special Education teacher and our IEP champion.


• If the best is the enemy of the good, then the good is the enemy of the kid, or something to that effect. My house will never be clean again; three people and a dog live there, and one person is the reason for at least half the contents of the house. (Hint: he’s 9 and growing like a weed.) At least with his interest shifting away from bulky toys to books and videogames, the incoming stuff is smaller than before.


• Just like in airline emergencies, sometimes you have to take care of yourself first before the kid. For me, this can range from “No, I’m not going to play a game with you before I’ve had breakfast” to “I’m walking away now before I yell at you”.


• Good Lord, I love this kid so much. Sure, everybody says that about their children, but WOW.


• Aside from the above statement, through the countless hours of breastfeeding the Emperor, another thought kept running through my head: “I am such a mammal.” (Did I mention how tired I was all the freaking time? It was really profound to me.) Breastfeeding is such a primal act on so many levels, with skin touch and tension/relief and hormones all over the place. Mother Nature is really sneaky. You don’t even realize that parenting an infant is basically homebound boot camp until you emerge blinking on the other side of having bonded with the tiny drill sergeant.


• I’ve never lifted a minivan off of my kid, but I’m convinced I can do anything when it comes to him. I’ve been elbow deep in a number of bodily fluids. I’ve gone without sleep and other niceties to provide him with what he needs and wants. I’ve overcome my extreme introversion to make phone calls and set up conferences and all the grinding bureaucratic minutiae of raising a human in modern times. (SO. MANY. FORMS.)


• Hugs are the best, especially the ones he initiates. May the day never come that he stops giving and receiving hugs.


• I love watching him dance. I hope he hangs on to his uninhibited joy for as long as possible.


• I wouldn’t give up being his mom for anything.

4) If you could go anywhere in the world for a week, all expenses paid, where would you go and what would you do there?

IRELAND. With a Time Turner and my husband, so we could relive our honeymoon and do EVERYTHING. I had such a perfect and wondrous time there. Food, beer, castles, gorgeous Celtic knotwork, and a tacky gift store around every urban corner that has cheap merchandise with my married name on it. \o/


5) If you were hosting a dream dinner party (or coffee klatsch or roleplaying gathering or whatever) and could invite any five people from any fictional sources, who would you invite to join you at your table?

Thank you for limiting it to fictional, because I think my brain might have deadlocked trying to think of only five from all of space and time.

With that in mind: the Eleventh Doctor and River, because listening to her scandalous gossip and poking sly fun at him for the whole meal would be ridiculous entertainment; Cordelia Vorkosigan, for any tips she might be persuaded to share about parenting an "interesting" child; and John Crichton and the radiant Aeryn Sun, because I want to know what they’ve been up to in the Uncharted Territories and so (presumably as the dinner would be set on Earth) John could [spoiler] his [spoiler] to [spoiler].


Thank you for the questions, kass! Sorry if I TL;DRed the heck out of it.