This Isn't My First Time At The (Dyslexic) Rodeo

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If you got this text, could I count on you to

1. Drop your daughter off at ten o'clock, and

2. Pick her up again around about two-ish?

Well - no surprise to the friends I went to camp with, who were regularly subjected to my mistaking 3 AM for 6 AM and waking everyone up for breakfast four and half hours early, or saying I'd pick them up at noon and showing up punctually at one - I can not be counted on to do the same.

I assumed that Norah was going to be picked up at ten, although I caught my mistake in enough time to arrive at at their house only a few minutes late. 

I was not so fortunate the second time around. Somehow - despite having read and re-read the text in order to check my ten-o'clock assumption - I still thought they were going to drop her off at two.

Instead, this:

Let this be a lesson to you: do not, under any circumstances, no matter how lucid I appear, assume that I will show up at the right time. Oh, don't worry. I'm still very punctual. I promise I'll show up at a right time. It just probably won't be the right time.

Eureka

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Fanfiction. I haz discovered it.

And - lest you think I am fifteen years behind the rest of the nerd-world (my ego just couldn't handle that) - I use the word "discovered" in the "holy crap this is better than I thought" sense, not the "this exists?" sense.

Here's the thing: I think we all think of the same two things when we think of fanfiction: "bad writing" and "smut", and while there's plenty (PLENTY) of both, there are also - for those who care to sift - some surprising...erm...surprises.

This is a particular woe of mine, that most of my favourite shows, or even favourite sub-plots end up dead; murdered by a network, malnourished by lost focus, or indulged into a permanent coma by that peculiar combination of water-skiing and sharks that's usually only recognizable in hindsight. Firefly was cancelled, Sarah got away from Jareth, and Hans is the villain. And let's not even talk about the precipitous departure of the Ninth Doctor, the abortion of a sequel that was Chronicles of Riddick, or whatever "Spock's Brain" was.

(Wow. I'm really letting it all hang out here, aren't I? Quick! Prove that you read stuff: Jane Eyre! Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell! Kurt Vonnegut! "Decomposing SPIAs: Rising Equity Glidepaths vs. Mortality Credits"! [wipes brow])

It's all well and good to imagine what happens next or what should have happened in any fictional universe, but you and I both know that what's in our own heads is infinitely less interesting or compelling or real as reading what's in other people's heads, provided these other people understand (and can execute) the subtleties of character, plot, and narrative.

And - as it turns out - there's a whole group of people that A) love the stories I love, B) want to write about them, C) have skillz, and D) do it for free.

Oh, lord, I do love the internet.

(Also: This is decidedly NSFW, but if you've read Jane Eyre and watched Firefly, this is for you. Leslie, put your tea down first.)

And The Shower Amnesia Set In, And All Was Lost

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You know that feeling you have in the shower sometimes, when you finish shaving your legs or whatever, and you realize that - although [feeling around] it seems as though you've washed everything you always wash in the shower - you have no memory of having done so? Or instead of following the everyday groove of Shampoo, Conditioner, Face, Armpits, Ladybits, Shave Legs, Rinse you skip inexplicably through Shampoo, Conditioner, Legs, Shamp-- before the needle scratches and you wonder where on earth your head's at?

And then you realize that Shower Amnesia has crept soundlessly into other (unrelated) areas of your life? Like when you're on the way out the door and smell A Smell - one that you recognize by virtue of the fact that you have three kids under six who still occasionally wet themselves...only none of them are around. And you remember pulling your pants out of the dryer not half an hour ago, and - hopefully - would have noticed peeing yourself.

And you start to unravel the path you travelled to get to where you were, smelling vaguely pissy, keys in hand, at your front door with no time to change, and you remember moving the wet wash to the dryer, and you remember loading the washing machine with dirty clothes in the first place, but what you don't remember is putting soap in? And then you sniff at your own pants like a weirdo, hoping against hope that you're just suffering from Laundry Amnesia, and that of course you put soap in the washer because you always do, right after closing the door and before turning it on? And then you realize that there's no way on earth your pants would smell like they had been washed in pee and then dried at high heat unless they actually, in fact, were?

And then you go out anyway, because:
          A) Who has time to change? and
          B) Who has more than one pair of pants that fit? 

That.

Seven Months in Seven Words and Two Footnotes

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One
WIIIINTERRRRRRRRR.

Two and Three
Leaky roof.

Four and Five
Insurance claim.

Six
Renovations*

Seven
Mice**

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*In every room of the house, plus some rooms we didn't know we had.
**(Freshly) dead. In the wall.

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You?