The ships or their passing, the fog or its drifting

[sovay]

Aside from the rather significant action of voting, yesterday was chiefly marked by a supermassive headache, which is why it is much nicer that today was chiefly marked by celebrating my birthday with the rest of my family. First thing, I raked a giant pile of dead leaves in my parents' side yard so that my niece could run and jump into it with a cry of "CHAAARGE!" and then paddle around as if in a crunchy maple-curling wading pool. After that, my brother cooked steaks for dinner and my father made them a sauce with shallots and brandy and for dessert my mother had baked an almond-flour cake with mandarin oranges and whipped cream and candy corn and pumpkins, the latter of which I was completely not expecting. I am now in possession of paperback copies of Forrest Reid's Denis Bracknel (1947), Rodney Garland's The Heart in Exile (1953), Barbara Hambly's Dead and Buried (2010)—for which I had been unsuccessfully scouring used book stores for four years straight—and a CD of Anna & Elizabeth's The Invisible Comes to Us (2018). Also a fabulous red-and-gold-and-black dragon T-shirt that my niece heroically did not steal. She was scrupulous about making sure that I took home my birthday balloon—she clipped it carefully to my computer bag. sholio has written me wonderful autumnal, everybody gets rained on Torchwood team fic for my birthday: "Stormwrack." As for National Coming Out Day, if people have not noticed by now that I'm queer, I don't know what else I could do, put it on my business cards? I'd have to get business cards. My brother took a picture of me with the cake.



It has been, actually, a really nice birthday weekend.

Comments

[sovay]

Someday you will have to explain the leaf thing.

They fall off trees? They smell nice? Small children enjoy launching themselves into piles of them and having to be de-brackened afterward?

Look at that CAKE! It’s absolutely 1976-ly unironically glorious and celebratory and festooned with MELLOCREME PUMPKINS!

My niece really loves Halloween.

Birthday-weekend love.

Love.

[selkie]

At the risk of reminding you I was raised under glass to be fit only for intellectual pursuits and parental exploitation, but why though? They have leaf on them. You then get leaf on yourself. Who lets children know in the first place that it is a fun thing?

Everyone even moderately awesome loves Halloween. Come on.

[sovay]

Who lets children know in the first place that it is a fun thing?

I think it's a spontaneously occurring gravitation, like cats to fresh laundry.

Everyone even moderately awesome loves Halloween. Come on.

Even moderately awesome people don't all have a Halloween tree!