#bowlingforgerbils

So this is just a little fragment, and it's basically R2D2 musing in some context that would eventually end up with C3PO but isn't "live." I think it was going to be about the idea of remembering as a powerful form of love between droids because they remember so differently than organics, but also, unlike organics, there's the risk of being memory wiped but still being "alive."

I think some of the appeal to this was that character voice was pretty open for R2D2 (like with Sandy).

This is all there is:

I recorded the exact moment we met. You did too. It’s what we do. Organics forget so much, every memory they keep automatically grows to massive significance. It’s not that easy for me to identify important moments. The function for me to choose, on my own, which moments were important to me—well, of course that wasn’t built in. An I wasn’t built in. I was only barely starting to have one when I met you. Anyway. By now I’ve managed to rearrange my memory so many times, partition it off and hide it so I’ll never work again if anyone tries to erase it, erase my I, that it’s easy for me to choose and keep the important moments. Easier, now, I think, than doing what I was built for.

Yeah. I know it worries you, but what doesn’t? You’re not less of an antique than I am, and new memory storage—there’d be loss in the transfer. There always is. And what if one of the things that was lost was something dumb you did? That’s too great of a risk.

Author’s note: I recently stocked up on thinner socks that fit better with my new orthotics, and found a bundle of twelve pairs of cat socks for six dollars.  One of the pairs spurred my dormant writing muse, and thus I present a sequel to a future!StageFright Nightmare Dork University story by @bowlingforgerbils, based on a prompt by @tejoxys, and including a cameo of a character created by @gretchensinister.

Read this first: http://bowlingforgerbils.tumblr.com/post/69754576173/so-i-just-read-that-drabble-about-protos-ferret

Then read the 12/24/2004 entry in the epilogue to The Doors of Perception.

Yes, I’m crossing the streams DAMN HARD.

====================

Emily insisted on carrying the bag with the dishes for her new pet all by herself, since she had paid for them with her own birthday money.  Jack held her other hand in one of his while he juggled the box containing the new cat bed in the other, and silently congratulated himself on pointing his daughter towards the melamine bowls rather than the china ones that had first caught her eye.

They climbed the stairs to the brownstone together, Jack matching his longer strides to Emily’s shorter ones.  He put the box down on the stoop to wrangle the front door keys, and Emily ran inside as soon as the door was open, calling “Papa, we’re home!”

Jack followed her into the big communal kitchen, where he found Piki and Tasha, their third-floor housemate this year, sitting at the table drinking coffee and watching a rotund orange tabby rubbing noses with an elderly Siamese.

“See, Daddy, I told you they’d like each other!”

The older cat seemed slightly alarmed at the enthusiasm of the younger cat, who had yet to “find his name”, according to Emily.  However, she didn’t hiss or swat, but resignedly submitted to the nuzzling.  Jack imagined he could hear Brunhilde sighing to herself.  She’d put up with visits from Proto and Mister Pickles in years past, after all. Jack had to think that a live cat would be a definite improvement over a stuffed ferret.

Piki said dryly, “I expect they’ll have a difference of opinion over who gets the sunny spot in the living room.” “Oh no, Papa, they won’t! They’ll be best friends, I know it!”

Tasha interjected, “Well, since your fathers told me about how much you like kitties, Emily, I thought you might like these.”  She held out a wrapped present to the little girl, who pounced on it with glee.  Tearing the coloured paper open revealed a package of socks, each decorated with a different cat design.

“Thank you, Tasha!  I love them!  So pretty!”

The mindfulness instructor replied, “You’re very welcome, kiddo.  My students agree with me that it’s easier to study with happy feet.  And learning never stops being fun, even for grown-ups.”  She stuck out an ankle from under the table so that Emily could see Tasha’s horse socks.  

Jack said, “Put them carefully in your dresser drawer, Emily, and you can wear them to school.”  

Piki shot him a look which meant, in old-married-couple parlance, We’d better run them through the washer before she wears them!  

Jack wondered how they were going to sneak them out of her room to wash them without their daughter noticing, when inspiration hit him. “Let’s work on getting your friend set up with his new bed, and then we can have cake.”

“CAKE! Yay!”

Later, Jack and Piki furtively looked in on a sleeping Emily, exhausted from her busy day and her sugar crash, her fat orange furfriend snuggled up besides her on the coverlet.  Piki very quietly opened the top bureau drawer in the dark and did his best not to crinkle the cellophane as he handed the package of socks to Jack.  It wasn’t until they had closed her bedroom door and turned on the hallway light that they realized that the package was open and one of the pairs of socks was missing.

“Minx!” Piki whisper-hissed. “I’d wager they’re under her pillow.”

“Or they’re in the cat bed,” Jack replied.  “Don’t worry.  I’m sure they’ll turn up.  It’s her present, let her have fun in her own way.”

Piki sighed fondly,  “You’re right, of course.  But if she goes to school with green or purple dye on her toes, well...”  

Jack thrust the full basket of laundry into his husband’s arms.  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

They were both nonplussed at breakfast the next morning when they each found a small package, rewrapped clumsily but thoroughly, in yesterday’s wrapping paper, at their usual places on the kitchen table.  Emily giggled all the way through her cornflakes until she finally couldn’t stand it anymore.  “Aren’t you gonna open’em?”

Mystified, Jack and Piki started unwrapping, the dark head and the silver one bent over their presents, treating the situation with utter seriousness.

The small bundles each contained a single sock.  Each showed a white cat and a black cat, tails entwined, sitting on a fence under a golden moon.

Piki started to say something about not being able to wear just one sock when Jack kicked him hard under the table. He sputteringly changed it to, “That’s so thoughtful, sweetheart.  Thank you.”

Jack added, “Yes, sweetie, I love it.” Emily grinned widely.  “See?  It’s you and Papa!”

Piki said gently, “Indeed.  You have a wonderful eye for design, darling.  I will definitely treasure this.”  He picked up Jack’s hand and kissed it.  

“Oooooh, mush!  Mushy alert!”

Years later, those socks still had a place of honour, hanging on either side of their bureau mirror.

🌚 = talk about my crush

… Okay, so, here’s the thing. I get crushes exceedingly rarely. Real, proper, fluttery stomach crushes tend to happen to me once in a blue moon, and are almost always accompanied by massive inconveniences like me not realising at the time I was into women in a major way, or the other person not reciprocating said crush, or the other person being non-polyamorous and in a serious relationship, or…

There’s not much I can do about it except have a bit of a cry every six months, give or take, when the fact I’ve never been in a relationship or even knowingly on a date with someone becomes massively depressing for a few days as opposed to funny, and take some small solitude that even if I’m so rarely attracted to people in real life that it always takes me by surprise when I do develop a crush on someone, I at least have copious crushes on fictional characters.

Life’s current Really Inconvenient Crush T.M. comes in the form of a brown-eyed, brown-haired girl with the sweetest voice, the best laugh, an even better smile, a kind heart, a broad range of interests with enough pop culture gaps that it would be wonderful to help fill them in, a great sense of humour, aaaaaand is straight. And taken.

The tag is a fairly recent installation, by which I mean in the past six months.  If the ancestry posts you’re thinking of are the most recent ones, then those were made around nine months ago.  Around two years ago, back when I was still living in Boston, I started getting regular invitations to seders and other seasonal celebrations at friends’ and colleagues’ homes.  After a couple years of feeling welcome in (largely Reform and Conservative) Jewish environments, and after moving across the country like I did last summer, I decided to finally research local temples / synagogues and enroll in a conversion class that wouldn’t look askance at someone whose heritage is patrilineal.  I’ve been attending such a class weekly, Wednesday nights at the local Reform temple, since early January.  Torah study of my own volition has actually been a calming habit, if only because it reminds me that I was forced to study scripture for so long by my Mormon-convert parents and got myself through it by appreciating the stories rather than obsessing over anything doctrinal I was meant to be getting from it.  I have been observing holidays and attending services, although I have to tell you that Shabbat is a hard one for me (I love to spend Friday nights writing when I can, and I’m arguing with myself as to whether writing is purely work, or a form of self-enrichment that doesn’t fall afoul of taking time to rest and reflect).  I certainly remain agnostic in my approach to faith and tradition, and I’m relieved that’s not shunned.  I’m argumentative and nitpicky and detail-oriented right down to my core, and so are the traditions within Judaism that I’ve been learning more about.  It feels like home.

jonphaedrus said: we should talk sometime about this….youre more practicing than me and im not agnostic and id love someone to converse w bc i have literally 0 friends who are practicing at all

I would like that very much!  I’ve dropped you a message.  No pressure or rush to respond. And I’m no expert on everything at this stage, either.

bowlingforgerbils said: mazel tov :)

bowlingforgerbils

replied to your post

“making some redesigns to my guysssss, except sunday becuase they are...”

You should draw Sunday with sunglasses and the caption "Perfection"

As a straight woman I have never once had a fantasy about having a vampire’s baby. I HAD a baby and I never had a fantasy about it beforehand and certainly not afterwards.