Momo and I went to see Ninja Assassin last night. Here's the review.

Friday night Momo arrived. Yay! We went and got pie at Heidi's Pies in San Mateo (she had pumpkin cream cheese, I had chocolate meringue) then we came home, played with baby rats, and watched Project Runway.

Wait. Back up.

I have new baby rats. Their names are Twister (because he has a perfect little dark grey tornado emblazoned down his spine) and Toto. I got them Thursday night a week ago, the day after they were weaned. At the time they were five weeks old. TINY. I've never had rats that small before. They're awesome. Completely hand-tame, completely adorable. These are the friend-of-a-friend rats I mentioned several weeks back. My friend told me her friend's daughters' new pet rat had turned out to be pregnant! Uh oh! So they had a surprise litter. I helped them get in touch with the local rat rescue, gave them advice on caring for the mama, her sister, and the new babies, and said I'd take two of the males when they were ready to be weaned. So here they are! Twister and Toto, a pair of smooth-coated, standard-eared probably Russian Blue (but may darken to black) hooded rats. Pictures soon. Maybe tomorrow.

( So that was Thursday. Then came rehearsals, cooking, seeing friends, and did I mention cooking? )

Wow, Thanksgiving. It's kind of awesome. Really awesome. For the first time since my friends Raymond and Susan moved away to England, I feel like I have a proper Thanksgiving again.

But it isn't just having friends to share a meal with that makes Thanksgiving such an important holiday. When I reflect on all the blessings in my life, I am most thankful for my community of friends, both near and far. You are my inspiration, my solace, my context, my strength. Each of you embodies the light and love of the Divine in my life. Truly, to know that love is to know Goddess-God-Eternal Spirit-Source. I am deeply, richly blessed, and I love you all.

Today I am thankful for having had "one of those days." Sounds a little bass ackwards, doesn't it? We all know what "one of those days" is like. This was mine:

• 8:45 AM - Awakened from mildly disturbing and emotional dreams by an alarm clock that rang at just precisely the wrong moment to leave me feeling rested.
  
• Didn't get to write with the friend I'd gotten up to write with for perfectly understandable reasons.
  
• Mid-morning stomach cramps and diarrhea for no obviously understandable reasons.
  
• Tiresome and convoluted comparison of travel sites attempting to find the best deal on tickets for messypeaches to fly up Friday, since she can't drive due to her car being totaled by an asshat who doesn't obey stop signs.
  
• Biting the bullet on the fact that said asshat just cost us a bunch of unexpected cash for said plane ticket.
  
• Emails and IMs about plans for tonight being canceled because one friend has a memory like a seive.
  
• More emails about plans being possibly rescheduled for tomorrow, necessitating me making changes to tomorrow's existing plans.
  
• Frustrated IM ranting from the other friend being affected by the changes.
  
• Disappointing email about how Friday's plans are going into the crapper as well.
  
• 3289534 phone calls that aren't very important, from well-meaning people who don't deserve to be snapped at just because my mood is foul.
  
• Lingering headache and sinus issues from the Cold That Will Not Die.
  
• Lengthy failure to communicate with Julissa, trying to understand her Spanish, and getting absolutely no writing done as a result of her frequent interruptions (but at least I have clean laundry and a clean kitchen and bathroom.)
  
• Realization that I have failed to do the church secretarial duties I was supposed to have finished, and that I have now run out of time to get them done before evening.
  
• Long line at the bank, followed by the need to get a photo taken for a new ATM card, on a day when I look like a serial killer who has never heard of shampoo.
  
• Boneheaded move right in front of a motorcycle cop while trying to drive Julissa and her daughter home and being completely lost. (I acknowledged the boneheadedness of my move — a last minute right turn when Julissa was shouting at me in Spanish, "turn here, turn here!" — and got away with a stern warning, thank god. Nearly died of embarrassment right on the spot.)
  
• Exhausted grumpiness when I realized I had just failed to call my girlfriend when I said I would, coupled with a certain knowledge that if I did call her right then, it would go poorly because I was seriously on the edge of having to banish myself to the island Where the Wild Things Are.
  
• Apologetic text message to girlfriend explaining self.
  
• Angst over strange chemical smell coming from somewhere in the living room, possibly up from the apartment below.
  
• Self-exile as described, except to the couch instead of the island, where I watched NCSI and reveled in the violence until finally...
  
• Evening sometime, well after sunset - darksideofstorm called and cheered me up.
  
• 8:30ish - Managed to get the church stuff done. Caught up on my f-list. Didn't catch up on my email. Wrote this. Didn't write any fiction. Stayed in hibernation. Still have the headache. Chemical smell remains. Need to clean the rat cages.
  

So it was just one of those days. Not a horrible day. No new car wrecks. No new deaths of pets or friends. Nothing, really to warrant me being Oscar the Grouch all day, but I was. And you know what, I'm grateful. I'm grateful to have a life where I can have a not-so-great day. I'm here, I'm alive, I have friends who love me.

I'm still staggered by Mikey's death. I was doing the church attendance sheets from Sunday, and there was his name on the roster. Do I delete the line? Which is worse, to keep seeing his name, week after week, and know I'll never put another tickmark next to it, or to delete him from the roster altogether? Do I delete his cell number from my phone's address book, or leave it there as a memorial? Can I stand to see his smiling face peering up at me from the photograph on the cover of the program from his memorial service, which is now tucked into my choir folder? Can I bear to take it out?

And as trying as my day was, it was nothing compared to what Wiley's day must have been, as he woke in a too-large bed, in an empty apartment, dressed himself from a closet still holding Michael's clothes, ate breakfast alone, and went back to work for the first time since Michael's death.

So I'm grateful for my crappy day. So very, very grateful.

So much stuff happened in the week I skipped. Here it is, cut into bite-sized chunks.

( My sister visits, we have fun, she is awesome )

( I hang out with friends and see a candidate for Worst Movie of 2009 )

( Dark has a birthday and yet somehow I'm the one who ends up getting a present )

( Church and Michael's memorial service )

More stuff happened. I picked up amethyst73 and her huz from SFO Sunday night late. Momo got in a car wreck this morning, but she's okay. Wayne and I had lunch, and then Cody joined us for yogurt. I had dinner with Amethyst and Huz. I talked to Momo at long last, and got some details on the car accident. I read a gagillion FB posts, 120 LJ f-list posts, and an uncountable number of emails that I'd been ignoring while the week happened. I wrote this.

I'm thankful. I'm thankful Momo wasn't hurt. Thankful for my friends. Thankful for my family. Thankful for the Love which surrounds me. Tomorrow things get to go back to normal. A little. At least a little. Maybe I'll even get some writing done.

If you ever feel like you might be having a heart attack, call an ambulance. Even if the feeling passes, even if you think it's embarrassing, even if you're afraid people will call you a hypochondriac and tell you it's just heartburn or a panic attack, call an ambulance.

If my friend Mikey had called an ambulance, instead of trying to drive himself to the hospital this evening, maybe he'd still be here.

Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe that's not what happened. We don't know.

All we know is that his husband got a call early this evening that Mikey had had a heart attack. He was found in his car, stopped in the slow lane in rush hour traffic on one of the busiest freeways in the Bay Area. Someone called 911, but by the time rescue personnel and the highway patrol got there, he had already stopped breathing.

He was one exit away from the hospital.

They raced him to the ER and tried to revive him, but it was too late. They were unable to do anything for him. At forty years old, Mikey died in his car of a heart attack, one exit from the hospital.

Mikey sang bass in my church choir. He was a larger than life person in every way: 6'4", with giant hands and feet, barrel-chested, blond, and bearded—a bear's bear. He was also the gentlest, sweetest man you could hope to know. He was an expatriate Southern Pentecostal, owned a knick-knacks shop, arranged silk flowers, and always called me 'honey.' "Hi, honey," he'd say, and kiss me in greeting, with a beaming smile. He made me feel like someone special.

He made his husband Wiley feel like a prince.

He'd cooked Wiley breakfast this morning. Talked to him on the phone at lunch. Had just booked a room at a Russian River resort for a romantic getaway weekend for the two of them. When Wiley finally got home from the hospital, he found dinner prepared: toast in the toaster, chicken stew on the stove.

Mikey left dinner cooking, we don't know why. He left dinner cooking and got almost to the hospital. Almost isn't even close.

I can't believe he's gone. I can't believe I'll never hear him call me honey again. Can't believe I'll never be engulfed in one of his hugs at church, or eat one of his gourmet lunches after the service. Can't believe I won't be sitting next to him at choir rehearsal Tuesday night, listening to his rich bass voice.

My friend Wayne and I drove over to Wiley's and sat with him. Tracked down our pastor for him. Cleaned his kitchen, and put away that last meal Mikey had cooked. Didn't leave until two more friends of Wiley's arrived, to stay with him through the night.

I can't believe he's gone. It doesn't seem real. It doesn't seem fair. The world without Mikey is a darker place. An emptier place. A place I don't quite understand.

I can't even imagine how it must be for Wiley.

If you ever, even for a moment, think you are having a heart attack, call 911. Call an ambulance. Call someone. Just call.

I didn't mean to adopt another rat so soon. I really, really didn't. I knew I'd be taking in a couple of babies in a few weeks, because a friend of a friend sent me a desperate plea about how a female they'd just adopted turned out to be pregnant and had eleven babies. So I said I'd come help separate the sexes and adopt a couple of the boys when they were old enough to be weaned, which is the week of Thanksgiving.

But I didn't mean to adopt a SUPER GIANT ADULT MALE right now.

What I meant to do was go to Petco and buy some rat food. Momo and I went and looked at the fish and the reptiles (where I inspired two ball pythons to do some seriously erotic intertwining, which if you recall was a power I had when Momo and I visited the San Diego Zoo last spring.) Anyway then we went to look at the rats. Aww, how cute, young rats.

On the side of one cage was a sign saying they had an adult male for adoption (as opposed to purchase) and to please inquire. ( I resolved not to inquire. )

Sano continued to deteriorate, and despite aggressive treatment, including the vet draining off five milliliters of fluid from the pleural space, he died late this afternoon. Momo and I went to the pet hospital in the early afternoon, and I was able to hold him and sing to him, and tell him I loved him one last time. He was cool when I held him, despite having been in a warmed oxygen cage, and very weak, and I felt then that he had been waiting for me to come to see him one last time so he could say goodbye. I tried to tell myself he wasn't going, but I knew in my heart that it was only a matter of hours. We saw him at 3:00, and at 4:30 Dr. Nakamura called to say he was dying, there was nothing more we could do, and the kindest thing for him would be to help him cross over.

About a half hour after I got the call that he was dying, I knew he was gone. I felt him tell me he was sorry, and I feel so bad about that. I know he tried his best, and that he loved me and knew he was loved. I told him it was okay, and I know he will always be with me. As I sit here typing this, crying, I feel his spirit so large around me, much bigger than the small body he was contained in while he was here.

Even knowing he crossed over when he did because he was ready to go, I am heartsick, and though I don't think there is any way I could have been more responsive than I was, I will always second guess myself: What if I had come home earlier on Friday evening and noticed he had become ill sooner? What if I had noticed the abscess rupture sooner, or put him in oxygen sooner? How on earth did he develop such a severe infection in the first place?

Sano was the feisty alpha boy in his group, and the prettiest (a curly-coated dark siamese dumbo), and one of the sweetest rats I've ever had. Six months of life, five months with me, was far too little time. Far too little.

Sano really seemed to be improving dramatically, but then on Tuesday evening he seemed to be breathing hard again. By this morning he was in really bad shape despite continued antibiotics and nebulizer treatments. I took him to the pet hospital this morning, and he is in ICU, on oxygen. They took an x-ray and found free fluid in his chest cavity, which the vet said must have come from an abscess that ruptured. That would explain the improvement (abscess formed, walling off the infection temporarily) and rapid decline (abscess ruptured.)

They aspirated some of the fluid and have sent it for cultures, but looking at it under the microscope the vet said it looked like a coccus bacteria, probably strep, and that the antibiotics he was on weren't particularly good for strep, so they are switching him to azithromycin and baytril. They are adding nebulized gentocin (another antibiotic) to the albuterol breathing treatments I was giving him, and giving him more subcutaneous fluids. And, as I said, keeping him in a warmed oxygen cage.

I can't even pet him, since obviously I don't want to take him out of the oxygen. I held him and told him how much I loved him before I put him into the oxygen cage. He did eat a tiny piece of avocado this morning, but he's lost weight and feels skinny.

It's bad.

It's not hopeless yet, but it's really, really bad. When I called to check on him this afternoon, the vet said there had been no improvement. But also no worsening, so I guess that's the best I can hope for at the moment.

His usual vet, Dr. Nakamura, will be back tomorrow, so he'll be transferred over to him, which makes me feel a little more comfortable, because Dr. Nakamura knows me and I feel I can trust him. Not that I really distrust the other vet, but there's a rapport there, since I've had so many rats see Dr. Nakamura over the years, so he trusts me, too.

All I can do is wait and pray, and hope that the antibiotics work. I'll go see Sano again tonight, I think, even if all I can do is visit through the window of the oxygen cage. I'll bring his snuggle cubie from home, so he can have that to hide in.

My poor boy Sano.

This blog I like to read, Beauty Tips for Ministers (and no, I'm not a minster, but I enjoy the blog. What can I say?) has an entry about the author's ten essential grooming and wardrobe elements, and a bunch of readers have responded with their lists of ten as well. Reading through them I was struck at how poorly my list would resemble theirs. Now maybe part of it is because I'm not in a position where I need to look "professional" the way a minister would, but still. They all had things I consider kind of insanely girly. And yet they aren't, they're just normal badges of femininity in our culture. Things like perfume, makeup, lotions and potions, skirts and shoes.

So I decided to try it. What are the ten personal hygiene and sartorial items I can't do without? It was harder than I'd expected to list only ten.

1. Levi's 501 Dark Stonewash Original Fit Button Fly Straight Leg Men's Jeans.
2. A nice leather belt to hold them up: current fave is the smooth black one with the black metallic buckle.
3. Black long-sleeve button-down shirt with a black tank-top underneath
4. L'Oreal QuickBlue bleach and Jerome Russel Punky Color Turquoise hair dye
5. Black no underwire cotton knit bra
6. Black leather jacket
7. Ariat boots
8. Ring for my right ring finger
9. Old Spice Swagger deodorant
10. Really good conditioner for my hair

The bra almost seems like odd man out, as it were. Odd woman out? English has almost no gendered nouns: ships and what else? But it feels even more transgressive to refer to a bra as male than it does to call myself a prince.

What are your ten?

Sano is amazingly better. He's not quite a hundred percent, he's still a little lower energy than his brothers, but he's almost back to his old self. He's eating, drinking, grooming himself, interested in life. I've nursed a lot of sick rats, but I've never seen a rat get that sick and survive before. I'm calling it proof that sometimes prayers are answered "yes".

Momo is coming to visit on Thursday for a long weekend, and we are going to game with Wayne, and go to Yaoi-con, and see JB, and eat ramen and pie, and cuddle when we want and be quiet together when we want, and laugh and laugh until I need my inhaler.

I got to write some awesome stuff with darksideofstorm and sna32 today, and get to write with fireinflight tomorrow, and maybe with jbmcdragon soonish, and I love writing for Fallen Leaves. I love writing.

I have new antibiotics that are going to work this time, and this sinus infection is going to get beaten back to subclinical.

I am singing some amazing music that owldolatrous has written, including this awesome, syncopated, chromatically challenging solo. The fact that Wayne thinks enough of me musically to give me such a difficult piece is a huge ego boost. I am going to do it perfectly, in order to repay him for his confidence.

On Sunday I was running late and got to church five minutes before the bell. So I'm sitting there in the choir chairs right up in front of the whole congregation, worrying about having been almost late, and the minister catches sight of me, and she gets this huge grin on her face, and gets something out of her backpack and hands it to me. A book: Butch is a Noun. I'd mentioned I had a friend who was doing her dissertation on the concepts of butch and femme, and we'd sort of talked about it, had talked before about how I'm not exactly sure I consider myself female, genetics and genitalia notwithstanding. I love my minister. I love my church. I love how well they get me.

Life is good.

When I got up this morning, I found Sano awake and sitting up! He's still moving slowly, but he greeted me with interest and he took and ate a piece of bread!

Last night I'd manage to find a 20cc syringe I'd stashed in with my "assorted medical supplies" box, and had given him a 7cc subcutaneous infusion, along with his antibiotics, more energy work, and another heart-to-heart talk about how important he is to me and how much I wanted him to stay with me. As I held him, I felt him make a decision, and that it was out of my hands.

When I put him in bed, he was as limp as ever, but somehow, as I was lying in bed myself, I continued to feel calmer, and that he'd agreed to stay. Then my inner skeptic told me I was being an idiot, and not to get my hopes up.

But yes. Yes! When I woke up I thought, "He'll be here." and he is!

He's still got a long way to go, and unfortunately the antibiotics seem to be giving him diarrhea, but I don't think we dare take him off of them. I'll call the vet and see of there's a different one we can give him.

Thank you for your love and prayers.

Thank you loving Goddess-God-Creator, for hearing my prayers and helping Sano turn the corner.

Since I'm staying up late nursing a sick rat, I thought I'd finally finish a story. I swore I'd never write another baby ninja story after First Kisses. Promises, it seems, are made to be broken.

Title: Boys Born in Summer
Author: Nezuko
Genre: Humor, Slice of Life
Rating: K
Characters: Genma's mom, Raidou's mom, Genma's older sister, Raidou
Status: Complete, Worksafe
Wordcount: 1929
Link: On FanFiction.net — Boys Born in Summer

Summary: Ninja motherhood, summer pregnancies, going back to work, toilet training, and a stolen frog are all part of the conversation when Genma's mother, eight months pregnant with him, meets two-year-old Raidou and his mother in the park.

For darksideofstorm who asked for "something involving young Genma and Raidou"

( Boys Born in Summer )

My little six month old rat Sano has crashed and crashed hard. Friday morning he was healthy, lively and running around, Friday evening he was listless and breathing hard. I rushed him (and his two brothers, who were sneezing a bit) to Adobe Animal Hospital last night, and got them all on Vbramycin and Baytril.

The vet said he looked pink so he didn't need oxygen, so I brought him home. About an hour after I got home, though, his breathing worsened and he started to gasp. Since I have a nebulizer for my asthma, I gave him a nebulizer treatment with levalbuterol and ipratropium (the two medicines I'd use on myself for distressed breathing) and that seemed to help, as he settled down and was breathing easier. I have given him breathing treatments every six hours since then, with no further signs of severe respiratory distress, but things are not looking good.

The other two boys are lively and energetic, but Sano is continuing to do really poorly. He is lethargic to the point of limpness. He won't eat or drink, so I've been syringe-feeding him Yakult (a sugary, probiotic drink made from yogurt) and pudding, neither of which he'll take willingly. I am worried about dehydration, and have given him two CCs of subcutaneous Ringer's lactate. I'd like to give him more, but the largest syringes I have are one CC, and I don't want to have to give him lots of needle sticks.

jbmcdragoncame over today for lunch, and she did some energy work on him, and I've been giving him energy work, too. She said he feels like he's at a crossroads, and I hate to say it, but I agree with her. I've been telling him over and over how much I love him, and how much I want him to fight this infection and stay with me, but I just don't know how much good that's doing.

I have no idea what else can I do for him besides keeping him warm and in calm surroundings, and letting him know how much I love him. Should I be forcing more food into him with the syringe, even though he fights me? Should I give him more subQ fluids? If any of you have ideas about what to do, tell me. I know some of the people who read this LJ have nursed other sick animals, and maybe you'll have some ideas I don't.

If nothing else, please keep Sano in your thoughts and prayers.

October September 24 is was National Punctuation Day, or so says Sylvia. Who am I to doubt? To (belatedly) honor the day, I suggest you make a vow to use apostrophes correctly in possessives and contractions, observing the tricky intersection of the two in the well-known it’s/its conundrum*, plural possessives**, and possessives of words and names that end in S***.

If you're feeling even more fervent, you could try using correctly typeset quotation marks and apostrophes, “like this” and ‘this’. You could even get fancier and use proper em dashes (—) and ellipses (…) though that takes looking up the codes or playing around with your keyboard until you find them. And really, it’s kind of a pain in the ass to put correct curly quotes in. Unless I’m typesetting something for print, I usually don’t bother.

Now if only I could convince sign makers that quotation marks do not give emphasis so much as lend irony. There’s a service station near me that has a sign: We “now” offer smog checks! Which of course begs the question, what exactly are they being ironic about? An ironic now is an interesting thing: do they really mean perhaps in the indefinite past or future? Never?

It probably says something worrisome about me that this bugs me as much as it does. But then you already know I have concerns about the usability of punctuation and can be something of a geek on the topic.

Happy Punctuation Day! Only a month late…

*It’s/its conundrum: it is or it has = it’s; belonging to it = its
You can remember this rule more easily, perhaps, if you consider that other pronoun-based possessives such as his, hers, theirs, and ours also do not take an apostrophe.

**Singular vs. plural possessives: a single cow’s calf; multiple cows’ calves

***Possessives from names that end in S: Hades is the Greek god of the dead. Hades’s domain is the underworld. (It is also considered correct to drop the final S, and say Hades’ domain, but I have a preference for using the duplicated S.)

On November 10, 2007 I started a collaborative writing community called Fallen Leaves. This isn't quite the second anniversary yet, but it's close, and I've been needing something to give me a sense of accomplishment lately, been feeling a little down, so here's something amazing!

At current count, there are approximately 240 individual threads listed in the thread index (with a handful more not yet posted.) If we use a conservative assumption of 10,000 words per thread (since some are shorter, but some are far longer), that makes over two million four hundred thousand words!

That's twenty-four longish novels! (Or thirty-eight short ones.)^*

In the twenty-three months since Fallen Leaves started, we have produced better than an average of a novel a month, and, excluding backstory threads, covered five months of in-game time. (With backstory, we've spottily covered five years.)

Are you astounded yet? I sure am. Twenty-four novels in twenty-three months, from the collective keyboards of twelve writers, eight of whom are currently active members of Fallen Leaves. Congratulations, writers. We rock!

( In other FL news: Genma and Raidou have finally kissed! Plus other developments... )

I still am astounded at the volume of material we've generated. And it's quality material, too. Looking back, I can see improvement as we've gone along, but we started with the premise that Fallen Leaves was a community for professional-level writing, so it's always been something pretty amazing. At least that's my not so humble opinion.

Any Fallen Leaves readers out there reading this lj? Let me know! Got ideas for ways to mark the upcoming anniversary? Let me know that, too.

^*Many genres seem to have succumbed to supersizing. A mass-market western, mystery or SF novel used to run to 60,000-70,000 words. Now they're more likely to hit 90,000 words. Fantasy novels seem to be about 125,000 words—per volume, with some series going on and on. Mainstream fiction can be anywhere from 55,000 words (about the length of many mass-market romances) to ten times that.

—from Writing Fiction

Jeans. The American national dress. Jeans have transformed the color blue from a primary into a neutral that goes with everything. Jeans have migrated from the gold mines and cattle drives of the Old West, through Dust Bowl cotton fields and the fruited plains and amber waves of grain of the heartland, gone to college with beatniks and hippies, been the uniform of Silicon Valley and the computer revolution, and made it all the way into Wall Street board rooms. When conservators cleaned the giant American flag at the Smithsonian, the original Star-Spangled Banner that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen our national anthem, they found it contaminated with dust and lint including blue cotton fibers, presumed to have come from the blue jeans worn by many of the over five million annual visitors to the museum.

I remember the first pair of real jeans I had when I was four, and the fantastic white leather belt with a two-pronged buckle that went with them. It was 1971, and I was stylin! It's safe to say I have worn jeans my entire life. I feel comfortable in them, ready for anything. I feel at home in them. I've sledded in jeans, climbed Mt. Lassen in jeans, watched an Atlantic sunrise and a Pacific sunset in jeans. Done almost all my writing in jeans. Fallen in and out of love while wearing jeans. Made love while wearing jeans. When I am wearing jeans, I am myself.

( But for most of my adult life, jeans and I have had a sort of awkward little not-so-secret secret... )

Poll #1472993 Jeans
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34

Are you wearing jeans right now?

Will you wear jeans tomorow?

How many pairs of jeans do you own and regularly wear?

What's the best color for jeans?

Free association time! I say "jeans", you say...

Today I received this review for my long neglected and unfinished, yet nevertheless very popular story It's Nothing. I give it to you exactly as I received it:

"what is your problem this story is awesome and you just give up on it i'm beyond mad hey i understand taking time off or personal problems have came up but this is awful for 3 years straight you've left this story hanging you can't do that i was in love with this story and then you just leave it along with Homecoming can you at least tell me why you are not finishing this story"

( I sent her a message in reply, and then I updated my user profile to say the same thing, only with better editing )

So here's my dilemma: I mean it when I say those stories need rewriting before I can continue, and I've got other things I'm more interested in now. On the other hand, I do feel like I ought to finish them. On the other other hand, I quail at the thought of the amount of work it will take to rewrite. On the other other other hand, don't I sort of owe it to myself and my stories to complete them, and to make them good? Do I owe it to my readers, who are still asking for more? The author of that review is far from the only reader who has written me borderline angry letters about the unfinished state of those stories. What would you do? And please don't say "Do what makes you happy." That's kind of a non-answer.

Comments and critique appreciated

First Pacific Storm of the Season

A typhoon is here, they say.
Or almost here,
blown in from Taiwan or Indonesia.
What's left of a typhoon, anyway.

Grey skies, raw wind,
and tomorrow, they tell us,
torrential rains.

A typhoon? Absurd.

Aren't the ashy shreds of cloud,
tinted gold and mauve
as the sun sets,
the same rich grey of every autumn storm?

Doesn't winter always begin this way,
with a careful cat's paw
thrust into October?

One storm, to test the waters.
One redwood tossing, sea heaving
monstrous roar
of pelting rain.

One trumpet blast heralding
long nights and dark days,
cold as a grave,
to make us shut our windows at last,
and pull black leather close around us,
whimpering at unaccustomed chill.

This is the first Pacific Storm of the rainy season.
Pacific.
The irony of Magellan's name
for this ocean
tastes fresh and salty
as the waves crash in, dull as sea glass,
dark as the coming Solstice.

Today is National Coming Out Day! A day for lesbians, gay men, bisexual people, transgendered people, and those of us who just call ourselves "queer", to take a step forward and be visible. Not because we want the world to think about sex when you think of us, but because when we are real people — neighbors, doctors, singers in church choirs, grocery baggers, tenants, landlords, animal trainers, professors, pet lovers, parents, children, sisters, brothers — when we are no more unusual than any other five- or ten-percent subset of the population, then we are not demons. We are not scary. We are human.

I am out to all my family, all my friends, my doctors, my apartment manager, my neighbors — to whoever wants to know, really — but there are always further steps to take along the road. Further conversations to have. This is my conversation from the heart, to all of you.

First, I want to say thank you. Thank you to all who have opened their hearts and minds to me, to the ones to whom my being bisexual was no big deal, and to those who have had to overlook serious misgivings to remain friends with an openly queer person. By accepting me for who I am, you teach me to be a more accepting person myself. You are truly the wind beneath my wings, as corny as that sounds. You give me courage to face a world where LGBT people can still be, and are regularly, in some places, condemned, persecuted, denied legal rights, tortured, and even put to death.

For my LGBT friends who still hide their true selves from the world, won't you open your closet doors just a little? Have one heartfelt conversation with one person you can trust. The liberation that comes with being honest about who you are is unparalleled. When I was finally free to tell the world I was queer, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me.

Just as it takes courage for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to come out, I know it also takes courage to come out as a straight supporter of LGBT equality. For my straight friends, will you stand by me and be vocal about your support for equality? It's the heartfelt conversations we have every day that change hearts and minds. It's the courage to come out as an active voice for LGBT equality that will result in real political and social change.

And for those who don't support equal rights, but nonetheless consider me a friend, will you look in your heart and consider this? In every world religion there is one law that comes through clearly: treat others as you wish yourself to be treated; do nothing to others you would not want done to you. If I am equal in worth to you in the eyes of God, as all people are, then am I not worthy of equal treatment under the law?

For more on National Coming Out day, check out the webpage and videos by the Human Rights Campaign – Conversations From the Heart