An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
One of the 12-year-old’s friends is having a birthday party in a park. We did not let them go; they understood but have been understandably gloomy.
But now, they’re ecstatic because the friend is letting them FaceTime into the party and they’re not the only one attending that way.
For years, I’ve blamed myself for being too shy or cowardly, and not trying hard enough to network back when I went to sf/f cons… but DAMN, watching all the threads in sf/f twitter today, that was not my fault. It wasn’t that I was too shy…
I just had an obvious husband with me (who was supportive but not really into sf/f); so as a young woman I was basically invisible to a significant fraction of the men who were setting the tone at social events. Continue reading “Being Invisible”
The book I’m writing was not supposed to drip so heavily with symbolism!!!!
I planned this book last August, and the main characters were always intended to end up on a water-filled space station where they’d need breathing masks. Continue reading “Accidentally Predictive Fiction”
My Leos came! They’re named Sunny for “Ecto-Cafe” and Mazel for “Nexus Nine.”
The seven-year-old is explaining to me that they’re going to build a robot: “First, I’ll need to give it a name. Then I’ll get some tape and put its name on the tape, and put the tape on it. Then I’ll turn it on!” Continue reading “Plush Lions, Robot Friends, and Button Collections”
When I start ranting about how Speed is the same movie as Twelve Angry Men (they’re both a group of people stuck in a stressful situation together, revealing their personalities, while figuring out how to cooperate on getting out!), it’s probably time for bed.
Let’s talk about why Toy Story 4 is awesome!
The main points of this talk will be:
—Toy Story 3 had a terrible end Continue reading “Toy Story 4”
Twelve-year-old: *appears in my workspace at 10pm, instead of being in bed*
Me: “Hello. What are you doing here?”
Twelve, wielding pen and paper: “I’m here to draw you an otter.” Continue reading “Drawing an Otter”
My dad is an emotionally abusive jerk. My mom spent twenty years sublimating her own needs to protect me and my sister from him.
From this, my sister seems to have learned that mothers should be self-sacrificing saints with no needs or feelings of their own.
I have kids now… you do the math. Continue reading “Unfortunate Family Dynamics”
The twelve-year-old: “You know how there are those detergent packets you put in the dish washer? And then after the dishes are washed, it’s gone? The whole thing is gone? Where does it go???”
Existential crisis regarding the failure to understand soap ensues. Continue reading “Detergent Packets”
My sister and I haven’t really spoken in 2.5 years, but for the last three weeks we’ve been swapping video links every day or so — songs, movie clips, etc. It’s a sort of free association, representational conversation. Continue reading “Videos In Lieu of Words”