Hi and everything. Hi.

It's not all HBP all the time, for me, you know. Sure, I'm spending more time than I strictly should basking in afterglow, picking up my copy to read the bits I love one more time, thinking idly of things to write about it that I know perfectly well will never get written, scanning images to make icons for me and my friends. But I do think about other things, sometimes, too, and since it seems that this journal has become regrettably Pottercentric for those of you who don't have the slightest interest in HP, I feel it's time to catch you up so that you don't start wanting to kill me. (I am optimistically assuming, of course, that you didn't already want to see me dead.)

1. Okay, this is sort of Potter-ish, but so on crack that I can't seem to stop myself: following fandom wank and watching the HBP fallout. Is it just me, or is it particularly messy this time? Histrionic leaving-the-fandom announcements, sure, but also petitions demanding comprehensive apologies from JKR, campaigns for collecting enough money to run a full-page ad in the NYT (for the record, a full-page cross-country ad in the Sunday paper costs $145K or so) telling her how disappointed in her they are, and my personal favorite, a plan to rewrite the entirety of HBP according to their specifications. And that's just the Harry/Hermione shippers! Holy shit, dude. Holy shit, people are crazy sometimes. I mean. Holy shit.



2. Seeing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was so creepy and funny and faithful to the original that even the added plot framing everything didn't bother me too much. I have always been Roald Dahl's bitch and had really high expectations going in, and was possibly the most gratified I've ever been, going in to a movie adaptation of a book I love. Even including The Secret Garden, which I absolutely adore. (I am not even going to start on why Agnieszka Holland would make a great Harry Potter director, because that would just be trying your patience too high and this post is supposed to be not about That.)



3. Eating Cheez-Its. They are the world's most perfect food. Do not argue with me on this point; I know I am right.



4. Bring asked out by, as per usual, people who would not have the slightest bit of interest in me if they knew me better. It's like this: I am quiet and sympathetic and really reserved with people I don't know well and dress pretty conservatively and am ultimately a backgroundy, forgettable sort of person, and so people tend to think I am a sweet Pollyanna of a Christian girl. I am not, though. Okay, yeah, I am reasonably kind and considerate, but I am also a porn-reading socialist agnostic neurotic potty-mouth with a temper and an inappropriate sense of humor. And so when some nice God-fearing man asks me where I go to church and do I want to have dinner with him sometime, I have to say no, because do I want to hear about the spiritual journeys of near strangers? No, I do not. Do I think sometimes about my own spiritual journey? Yes, I do, but it ain't nobody's business if I do. Do I want to be proselytized? Witnessed? Fellowshipped? FUCK NO, MAN. If I were to go out with someone at all, and frankly the chances don't exactly present themselves every day or anything, I would just want somebody to hang out with, someone who reads books and goes to movies and likes at least some of the things I like and does not care in the least that I have not been to a church on matters unrelated to birth, death, or marriage in twenty years. I would not think it would be too much to ask. But it really does seem to be so. Or maybe, as coco has claimed, the Ghost of Pope John Paul II really is trying to tell me something.



5. Falling upstairs in front of a roomful of people. Ouch. In more ways than one.



6. Not cleaning my house. I am like a seven-year-old boy avoiding a bath, in that my elaborate attempts to avoid thinking about or, you know, actually doing any cleaning are much more time-consuming than simply getting around to picking up the box that Flannery shredded off the floor and putting my shoes back in the closet and washing the hand-wash shirt that's been sitting in my clothes-hamper for about six weeks now. And sweeping and mopping and dusting, and cleaning the bathroom, and--okay, maybe I'm not spending more time avoiding than it would take to clean. Woohoo, back to avoidance with a clear conscience!



7. Getting birthday presents together but not actually mailing them. One day, I will admit to myself that I am fearfully bad at mailing out packages for people, and just start sending everything from online. But this, as Aragorn might say, is not that day. My apologies to bowdlerized, coco_palmolive, elynrae, and onthecontrary. You are not the only ones, but I figure as long as I'm apologizing, I'll single you out. And it's not that I don't love you, because I do. It is mostly just that I suck.



8. Buying PC games, namely Myst III and American McGee's Alice. I don't know precisely why, years after these games first came out, years after anyone else stopped caring about them, I have been suddenly stricken with the urge to own them for myself and spend all my time playing them. Possibly it is because buying them both cost me about ten dollars on half.com. Yeah, now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure that must be the reason. Now I just need a dirt-cheap copy of the Sims, I guess, and then you'll never see me again.

And there are more important things, too. News of my grandmother continues to upset. My dog continues to have Cushing's Disease and need boosting and carrying up and down stairs, need cleaning up after, need three trips outside per night. I am lending sympathetic ears to unhappy friends. I am having existential crises over being the sort of person who can be blown off or forgotten without warning or explanation, because for your own future reference: there are few repercussions when you blow me off or forget me. Some nights, I don't get too much sleep. Some nights, I have vivid nightmares (I thought they were thanks to my going off meds, but they seem to be settling in comfortably). I live my little life of quiet desperation and take my happiness where I find it, because who knows when you're going to find it again? Like most people, I guess.

So how are you? Hanging in there?