Know what you want

Of course, if you're a Valentine's Day Grinch, it's for one of two reasons: either you are single, or you feel like you are.

If I am here and pongbrain is 550 km away, it's the latter.

Well, yes, I am technically the one who refused to be together. But hear me out, I still feel I'm right, dammit.

I frickin' hate it when men do their boss's bidding, at the expense of what their partners expect, and then go, "well, what am I supposed to do - say 'No' to my boss?" Huge surprise, pongbrain - the answer is yes. If you're supposed to be here on frickin' Saturday, two weeks after the last time we saw each other (on a weekend that surprisingly and extraordinarily went by without any big trouble), and your boss asks you to stay behind and guard the frickin' factory (from what? being stolen by the homeless?) while he goes to join his family (guess why? because he has one, pongbrain), then:

you do not say yes.

You find a way to go if you promised.

Which you did.

You do not suggest that I get on a frickin' plane on Saturday afternoon and on another one on Sunday morning.

Having spent the interim in the flat that the frickin' factory houses you in. Secretly, because of course you're not supposed to have me in there (which I only find out by questioning you).

Because I will not be hidden away like the mistress of a married man or other such anachronistic shit. That is so fifties.

Leaving aside the fact that I, unlike some others, have people who I normally spend time with, and who as such depend on me on weekends: my family.

And if you, as I nicely pointed out, had done one simple thing and acknowledged their existence and actually talked to them and explained that you exist and would like to spend time with me and could they perhaps do without me for one weekend? You would have got what both of us wanted, pongbrain, and all of you would have realized that the other is not an alien after all.

But nooooo, everything has to be hush-hush.

So I say, fuck this. I do not go when I'm whistled, where I don't belong, and everything being kept secret from everyone.

Because if I did this once, you'd expect me to humour you all the frickin' time. And I am not going to humour you. You put us into this mess and you damn well better get us out of it.

Oh, and after that:

Making up and getting halfway to normal during the week? Good.

Not turning Valentine's Day into a "Buy the most Idiotically Overpriced Gift Devoid of Any Use and Meaning" Fest? Good.

Not doing a Single Frickin' Thing about the day, even the customary kitten photo or an E-card or one single stupid flower? Think again.

Things that helped piss me off in the last few weeks or months:

1. The weather. It is very hard to be cheerful in icy fog.


2. My hair. It fell victim to the clumsiness (I certainly hope it was not intentional malice) of one hairdresser and had to be "fixed" by another, and that cost me nearly twenty centimeters of length (for you non-metrics, that's eight inches). I'm just not myself with a short 'do.


3. The fact that M and I have been like siblings since November. Ugh.


4. The lousy Freshman class this term - they've all but convinced me to stop teaching.


5. The water heater débacle: it took two weeks until I grew so accustomed to the thing that I could actually take a proper shower.


6. The political situation. That's a no-brainer. The reason why it's so low on the list is not that it is unimportant, but that it's been shitty for a very, very long time; so it's not new.


7. The uncertainty of things both personal and professional.

Things that helped cheer me up in the last few weeks or months:



1. It's still cold, but there are more sunny days, and more minutes of daylight.


2. I didn't look half bad in the last batch of pics I was presented with. Yay.


3. The situation will change, in whatever way but surely, as seen in my last post, for the better. Soon. (As compared to the length of time necessary for a BA, that is.)


4. My Sophomore classes, who re-awakened my motivation for teaching. They rock.


5. The fact that the new water heater, once it has accepted you, actually delivers more pressure and hence more satisfying showers than the previous one.


6. The fact that municipality elections are close: either at least one of the SOB's will leave, or at least I will have reason to do so.


7. See # 4.
   
   

At last, I am back, after more than two months of not updating.

To be truthful, the first month was more or less just because I was lazy, but in the last couple of weeks, I've simply been too stressed and angry to get my thoughts into some semblance of order.

When it all began, there was trouble enough (see ).

Let us focus on the chilly month of December, when the defecation really hit the ventilation: M tells me that the plant where he works is about to close down. Economic crisis, yeah.

Which means – he'll be unemployed, I think to myself. Well. Not good, of course, but not something that you cannot survive.

But, he tells me in the same breath, the /&+%(/ -company has found a solution for him: being transferred to the branch in the town about 350 miles away.

And then he gets all worried and nudges me and implores me to "say something" because my face must be showing too plainly what’s going through my mind: now we're screwed.

Fast forward now through quite a few days of grumbling and fighting. Part of me is angry at not being "preferred" over anything as mundane as a job.

Another part is griping that we seemed to have little enough of a future anyway; how are we supposed to continue in two different cities? And how long is this supposed to continue?

One sliver of me points out that even if he finds a better job there, as he claims he will, it still doesn’t mean we can continue; and since I have my own career and earn substantially more, shouldn’t he try to adapt to me?

After some days of bitching, the saner part of me starts reminding me that my greatest fear about this guy was that he would try to find ways of not working at all, so isn’t it actually good that he undergoes a toughening process where he lives and works under harsh conditions?

Finally, we agree that his going away does not mean the end of the world – after I have bitten off his head because he cannot pluck up the courage to tell me plainly that he has decided to go. He offers to come back for the weekend every two weeks.

And to make sure that this does not go on indefinitely, we decide to have a pow-wow in March and decide how things will continue. Of course, this includes not only where each of us will work, but – what M still cannot hear or even think without cringing – whether we are going to live apart or together. Sort of an ultimatum, although the word is not uttered.

It’s been nearly a month now. The first week apart and the first visit were - well, bad. Now it’s getting easier. Not just because by now I’m used to the new routine without two dates in a week, but also because I have learned to look at the whole thing positively.

As the matter stands, I will be patient. I will be calm, and not pick fights out of nothing. I will also continue refusing to date other people. I will just continue the "long distance but not official" deal and not even bring up any plans that have to be made for the future.

But only for three more months. (I have voluntarily upped the Gnadenfrist until April fourth. Just for the hell of it.)

I know that this period is actually harder on him than it is on me – the company-owned flat he is staying in, together with his supervisor, is probably not the most pleasant place imaginable. Even though I long for a place and order of my own, the family house is surely better.

Also, though he can only express it by sending cute kitty photos, I guess he actually misses me just as I miss him.

But more than that, I'm thinking that the knowledge that I'm going to come up with a big fat decision about life to be made in three months... a month... a week... now, is scaring the shit out of him. *g*

I also feel pretty good about going through this phase, knowing that a have made a promise and I am going to abide by it, even though I might get boiling angry at him or myself at times.

(Just as an example, I feel really good about having politely, but firmly refused a nice guy today, pointing out that I am "with someone".)

And then, when the grace period is over and we sit down to decide whether and how to continue, I will have two options, both of which are actually great:

Either the man I love decides to be an adult, and I get to live with him.

That will mean: accepting not only sharing a bedroom, but also the kiddo and bills and relatives and computers and laundry and career decisions and dinner choices and all the fun and frustration that goes with it.

In that case, we will also have to make the subsidiary decision of where to live. My suggestion on that issue will be simple: he has three months to find a job that pays more than mine. If he does and the area is acceptable, I will consider following him.

If he does not, he will have to consider coming to wherever I work and settle for a job that might not be a great one. And honestly, anyone who has worked in that shithole for years and not even said a word about being transferred to an even worse shithole, at the same pay, which is half of mine, really shouldn’t complain.

Or he decides that being with me it is not worth making such great changes and adjustments. In which case I get to make a whole new start, together with the one I hope to make in my career.

There is a chance of getting a job in the literature department. What a delight that would be, after two years of being essentially a primary school teacher in a university! Dealing with actual books instead of doubleplusungood student essays! Explaining characterization instead of pointing out subject-verb disagreements!

The world looks just a tiny little bit brighter.

This is not exactly a rant.

( Clear-headed speech beneath the cut. )

We don't do Halloween here, but I had a pretty emotional end-of-a-weekend. So...

( Rather sniffy and bleak personal stuff under the cut. )

It is the last day of a nine-day holiday, and I have been thinking about family life and marriage.
( Rant this way... )

Title: Twenty Random Facts About Viktor Krum
Characters: Viktor Krum, Hermione Granger, Karkaroff, OFC, OMC
Words: 1717
Rating: PG-13 (rather vague references to sex)
For iulia_linnea's Twenty Random Facts Fest (2008)

( Random Facts under the cut... )

Tonight I'm leaving on a two-week vacation. It will again be the Aegean coast (the best sea-bathing in the world, IMHO), though the corners we're headed this summer are those I've never seen yet: the Gökova Bay. Anyway I'll post again sometime after the 26th. Take care!

I wanted to try my hand at snegurochka_lee ’s Least Favourite Pairing Challenge. Probably I'll be disqualified for being too late: I spent all the week sewing to prepare for the holiday; today, it was cleaning and even some carpentry. Er, I smashed a bit of the wall, hence the cleaning. I was too tired to even read an article about the HBP film in a cinema magazine. But I still wanted to try this.

My unloved pairing is Remus/Tonks, which snegurochka_lee (wholly by coincidence, I swear!) has also written. In my case, I dislike the pairing not because of the fanon Remus/Sirius tradition (which is the basis for my teensy ficlet); I do not feel betrayed by Tonks's presence since I’m not much (OK, at all) into slash. I frown upon the pairing because I feel Tonks is wasted on Remus.

Before you chide my disrespect for Professor Lupin and for canon, let me explain. I adored Lupin when he first made an appearance in PoA: he was wise, caring, and brilliant. But once the Tonks subplot came up, he turned into a cad.

All through the last two books, Remus shows no trace of affection for poor besotted Tonks, or of intimacy with her. He mentions nothing of love in his motive for leaving her; there is only guilt because his child may be oppressed. He only goes back to her because Harry refuses to take him into the team and gives him a good kick in the tail. Later, when he is supposed to have repented, he is only hopeful and joyous because of his son; he also just mentions his son as a goos reason to fight and die for.

That is why I think that Tonks, who is strong and funny and sassy, and should by rights belong to someone like Charlie (although I cannot bear to see him with anyone but Hermione) should not have wasted her time, and ultimately, her life on him.

So I do have a low opinion of Remus, and I even refuse to pity him for having Tonks forced on him by the Order – he should have had the balls to either refuse interference into his personal life, even when alone and even by people he respects, or to stick to his decision once made, however grudgingly.

So, after a rant longer than the ficlet, here it comes:

Title: How Teddy was made
Pairing(s): Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks
Rating: I'd say R, nothing graphic, a bit of bad language
Summary: How Teddy Lupin was conceived
Word Count: 175
Author's notes: Written for snegurochka_lee’s Least Favourite Pairing Challenge

( Step this way for a bad pairing... )

This is the product of a restless night, and un-betaed as ever. Comments are much appreciated.



Title: Impossible but real
Pairing: Hermione/Sirius
Disclaimer: If they were mine, you'd never recognize the Epilogue.
Rating: R
Notes/Warning: none, AU
Word Count: 174
Summary: How can they be together?


( Right this way, please... )

I shall be ranting in a breathless and rather dizzying fashion, so the rest is under a cut.

( Read if you are in rant mood. )

It is confirmed: I might still be a nerd, but I'm definitely not yet a geek. I had thought I had suffered enough to be able to post, but to create this pixly pic... sigh.
I will probably grow into it, though.

( Read more... )

So here I am, over 30, and just managed to finish my first fic, and I don't even know how to post it! Shouldn't be harder than writing a +5K fic, though, right?