blissmorgan

Probably the best non-prank prank this year was that when I got home from work on Monday, Eldest Spawn came out of his room and told me he had gotten an out of school suspension. His brother was finishing up serving an in-school suspension that very day. My face fell, and my brows drew, and I got as far as "...WHAT?!?!" before the lad started laughing.

I drove Youngest Spawn to school the next morning and we had an on-boarding meeting to discuss the incident of the previous week, nail down stuff for moving forward, and send him off to class. I had a nice chat with the vice principal (who at this point I feel like i know all too well, le sigh), and then headed off to work.

I was JUST about to clock in when I got a call from the school that there had been another incident and that I needed to come back to pick Youngest up and take him home to start his actual out of school suspension.

Very funny, Universe. Very funny.

He was introduced to the wonderful world of This Is Not A Vacation by taking a trip to IKEA with me for shelves. We built them, cleared the mound of junk and useless bins out of the back corner of his room, and put them up. With them confiscated, his task while home alone all day was to work on organizing and sorting his things onto the shelves. He got about as much done as I expected, which wasn't a lot, but he did spend the brain time on figuring out which shelf would best be used for what items. When I got home I rallied him, and we managed to clear everything back off his bed, much of it onto the shelves, so he had somewhere to sleep.

Other stuff has been going on, most of which I cannot publicly discuss. Some of this stuff has me reevaluating why it is that whenever someone is talking to a group of people about a thing that shouldn't be getting done (or something that should be) I always tend to take it as a censure or instruction specific to me. Relievingly, I was told forthrightly after the fact that nothing I was (or wasn't) doing was the issue.

I met online with one of my authors last week to catch up, and circled back around for a progress check on their novel today. I got to send them a message letting them know how much I'm enjoying what they're doing, and hit some clear themes and callbacks to stuff earlier in the overall work, so that felt pretty great. I like being able to tell an author, "Yes, I Understood That Reference and it's all working and carry on yes good GO GO GO."

Tonight I need to talk to the Spawnfather about the kids' upcoming vacation week. I have the opportunity to take some vacation time to travel, but really only if I take the vacation time for the first half of the week because the second half is already claimed by some people. We'll see if that'll work out at all.

This morning I finished and sent off my tax return. It's funny because I've had it done since the third week of January and I've been sitting on it for what turns out to be no dang reason; I thought the finishing part of it was going to be more complex than it has turned out to be. 

G+ is closed. I should probably delete the app from my phone, huh?

Hello, Blisstopia. <3

It's odd how going to sleep at midnight and waking up shortly after 8 somehow doesn't feel like a full night of rest, even though clearly I was or I'd have not awakened and stayed awake. Perhaps it is because I spent so much of my sleeptime dreaming, and therefore my mind was quite active during its rest period.

Without getting too deeply into it, I dreamt of lions, and of a demon with a nickname, and of sex that some people might consider problematic because it involved explicit preemptive consent rather than in-the-moment consent. That is, perhaps, something worth setting up a private filter for. Sex and sexuality, the nitty-gritty sexy-wexy that lead to the erotica I write, the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of non-het non-mono relationship lifestyling: let me know if you're interested in being in on that filter.

....I've had this post sitting open for almost two hours because when SALM finished cooking breakfast he sat down and we proceeded to have a long conversation about the dangers of sharing personal information on the internet, my long personal and third-party familiarity with those dangers, the way they have morphed over time and differing services (I've outlived several online journaling services; I was on OpenDiary back when it was free. And existed.), and how nowadays one must not only be concerned with individual manipulators using one's own information against you but also corporate and political movers attempting to do so as well. It surprised him how much time and thought I've actually put into all of it; it's not something we've ever really discussed in depth before. Topics ranged from the Livejournal Strikethrough to the Koch brothers, from Ayn Rand to G.G. Allin to Nationalism, Antifa, and Communism.

It was a long more thinkythoughts than I was expecting this morning, and there are parts where I fucking floundered due to lack of knowledge/information, but it was also damned wonderful. At one point, too, he strongly urged me to look into getting an MS in Library Information Science, because a strong swath of the needs of the positions making use of such a degree include a strong leaning into Information Literacy, something which is of definite interest at large these days and which he sees me having an affinity for. We'll see; for now, I've lodged that as a thing to consider.

Last night I went and played D&D for the first time in quite a while. My DM lives north of the city, so it is a bit of A Drive getting there and back, but it is so worth it. Apparently two of the other players have been clamoring for me to come play, because I was in a game with them that he ran a couple years ago and was so much fun. Then, I was a halfling fighter whose exploits included jamming a bomb inside a severed monster head to use as a frag grenade against a crowd of evil dwarves, and stealing not one but TWO airships. I was an excellent admiral, y'all. This time around, I am a half-orc granny rogue whose weapons of choice are a demeanour of being aged and infirm until the fighting starts, as well as the actual weapons which are a pair of knitting needles (daggers) and an oversized pair of scissors that can be yanked apart to use as a pair of shortswords.

My DM loves me and lets me get away with shit because we are both writers and I pull shenanigans that are as entertaining as hell, even if I do have a knack for completely derailing his adventures. Heheheheheh.

Today will involve a bunch of driving around. We are going to hit IKEA to pick up a corner shelving unit for my bathroom upstairs, so I no longer have my stuff in sort of just a piled drift in that particular corner. I'm also going to get a pine 5-drawer unit and some green stain for the Youngest Spawn. Well, the stain is for the chest of drawers which, in turn, is for the Spawn. He's been handling using soft hanging units in his closet for his clothing, but he is getting big enough and his clothing collection big enough that they don't fit handily into the hanging units any more, and have a tumbling-out tendency.

The driving around is also going to involve playing Ingress. I started playing it a month or two ago, bopping over into it sometimes while we were already out playing Pokemon Go, and my interest in it intrigued SALM enough that he started playing it over a long weekend when he was away visiting family. He went up 5 levels in as many days, and we have been having a grand time going for drives together and building up portals, links, and fields.

This evening I have some picking up to do in the living room, and I may very well set the children to the task of de-decorating the tree. It's time. I want it out.

I also have writing to do, so there will be some introspection today. It may involve lions.

Hello, Blisstopia. <3

You know what my social media totally needs? Another post talking about social media!

In brief, everything is in wild kerfluffle right now.

In not so brief but list-oriented format (with links!):

• Google+ announced to be shuttering by August 2019
• Google Hangouts rumored to be closing down, although initial reports have been amended to say there will be a migration from Hangouts to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet
• Tumblr is going to ban adult content as of December 17, and in the run-up to that has deployed some sort of supposed porn-detecting algorithm to flag posts that is in fact flagging everything, from innocuous cartoons to sand dunes, to regular fully clothed selfies and Mark Rothko abstract art, and even in the most laughable instance of all it flagged Tumblr's own text-only announcement of the impending change.
• Facebook made a community standards policy change last month that essentially bans any mention whatsoever of sex or sexuality, and has started removing posts that mention sex in any way

So much is changing, and some if not all of these changes have me and thousands of others rethinking where we can comfortably post content we enjoy and interact with other folks without being afraid of an unnecessary ban-hammer. I came to Dreamwidth, and plan to keep sticking with the place. I will be creating a Blisstopia community sooner rather than later, so that folks can be social there. I have a Discord server - ping me for an invite, because it's a really decent place for both group and individual chatty goodness. I'm Bliss#0337

I'm on Twitter but I don't use it much.
I'm on Instagram, but mostly have just been using it as an easy way to push photo-based posts to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, so I don't know how much longer that will be useful.
I may make a PIllowfort account if a lot of folks from Tumblr go that way, but it's still very much in development and I'm hoping they come here instead.

WHEEE, CHANGES!

In other news, there are other changes in my life. Most notably, I am shifting from a part-time-technically-scheduled-for-less-than-twenty-hours-but-working-close-to-thirty position at work to a full time position. I am excited not only because I got my review at the same time, so this change is coming with the related small pay bump, but because my boss is really thoughtful and dedicated to working with my particular situation and needs so that the job doesn't interfere with my home life. To that end, I am going to be Closer Girl Extraordinaire! I'll be able to get all the Spawn up and off to school, and then head into work. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are going to be regular 8-hour days. Thursdays I'll be starting earlier and ending later, making a 10-hour day, because Saturday is only a 6 hour day. Fridays being a day off is awesome not just because it leaves me a chunk of open weekday time for any needful things that need doing during traditional business hours, but also it's a day off when the Spawn are at school so I get some built-in time just for me every week, AND I will still have no problem driving the lads to the Spawnfather's place on alternate Friday nights. 

In related good news, my little pay bump is retroactive to when I should have had my review back in the beginning of September, so there will be a nice little chunk of change in my next paycheck for that. Given the impending $winter holiday$, plus the work my car needs done, the timing on that honestly could not be better.

Meanwhile, I have a workfriend who has made the overtures toward being an outside-of-work friend, and I could not be more excited. We have had some very similar life situations/experiences, and seem to kind of be in the same social interest place right now. To wit: "want to come over and have some wine and crochet and watch horror with me?"

A WORLD OF YES.

So, I still need to make the call to get the car worked on. I need to do Christmas shopping. I need to find me a kittycat to come be my buddy.

But I have a job I enjoy and am good at, at a place where I like all the people and they appreciate me and understand the value I bring to the job. I'm making enough money to pay my bills and start saving, the impending car repairs that will be eating all those savings notwithstanding. I am reasonably healthy.

And I gave myself the gift of a little bit of World of Warcraft time, so maybe come find me in Azeroth? I'm Bliss#1599 there.

Hello, Blisstopia.<3