House!

The #1 question I get asked these days, other than "how's the college search?", is "how's the new house?"

Short answer: AWESOME.

And hey, this Saturday, we are painting the living room, foyer, and hallway, and anyone who wants to help should come on over. There will be music and probably GF pumpkin chocolate chip bars. We're going with that grassy green. Love it.

So the long answer:

This has been so, so good for us. I still haven't posted publicly about the details of the situation with our former landlord; I'm being super-cautious Just In Case. We'll know within a couple of months if any legal action will be goin' on, and after all is settled, I'll do a great big post summing up what we'd been living with for years, and you'll be like "holy crap, 'song, no wonder you were a stressmonkey." I'm gradually coming down from the resurgence of PTSD that was running my life late last year/early this year.

So. This house.

Is amazing.

As I said before, it's about 1/4 to 1/3 larger, I think? I think 1/3. And it has the full attic for storage. So, just to start with, we have significantly less clutter - I no longer stress out just walking through the living room. With storage, we're actually able to have a tidy house. Whew. And the extra space means space for everyone; we're not constantly on top of each other. Everyone has their own space to retreat to.

We have All The Windows - so much light all day. I have an enormous tree that sort of wraps around in front of/beside my bedroom, visible from three of the four windows; I don't know what kind it is, but it sprouted yellow pompoms and then all of a sudden beautiful vivid droopy-down leaves. It is also visible from my office, where I'm typing this.

I've gone into basic house details before. What you want to know is how we feel in it.

I am finally to the point where I don't flinch when someone walks heavily in the living room or lets a door slam. (Yes, I was totally sound-paranoid for the past year or so.) I feel comfortable. With sufficient storage space, I'm not overwhelmed by clutter; with sufficient living space, I'm not overwhelmed by people. We had a house concert last week and we were not all on top of each other, and I wasn't wincing at the loud parts.

I feel safe again.

The neighbors we've met so far have been very nice, and lots of dogs get walked around here. I'm planning raised-bed and container gardens, which is yay compared to not being allowed to set foot in the backyard in the old house. I mean, it's yay anyway. Judah tried to talk me down from the gardening on the grounds that I'm already doing a lot, but I reminded him that I had been looking forward to this for years and it is a self-care thing, and he accepted that. I'll start small. I have a really ambitious project board, but I'm getting solid advice on which of those things can actually work, and I have good book recommendations, and thewronghands is coming over Sunday maybe to provide further insight.

The landlords also seem nice! And live several states away! So they will not be on our doorstep! And whenever we ask them about something, it gets taken care of pretty much immediately, no-fuss. We are adjusting to being treated like human beings and having landlords who actually take care of the property and don't get all up in our private lives.

Judah had been spending much of his time with us before the move, but now he's actually living with us. So how's that? Pretty awesome. As even my parents noticed, he and Adam make a great team. Which... makes me so happy. That I don't just have both of them; they have each other. We're still sorting out stuff like when to do our weekly meal-planning, but that's a thing that's okay to still be sorting out. The main thing is that we all function really well together. It's also been good for Elayna in that she's being treated by everyone as an equal housemate, which I think is important, given that she's off to college in a year and a half.

Also, we are closer to everything. We can actually walk to Harvard Square from here. (When I haven't been doing college tours all week.) We're just on the other side of Watertown, but it really feels like a whole new town.

Anyway. That is enough blathering for now. :) The takeaway here is that you should come help us paint. ;)

Wiscon Schedule!

Friday
1:00-4:00pm: Coffee, Tea, and Subversion: Enjoy coffee, tea, ice water, and/or cookies! Members of the Interstitial Arts Foundation serve up refreshments and a bit of chat about the interstitial arts and the work of the Foundation. (As usual, I'm looking for Lovely Assistants! Hang out with me at the Gathering and dish out cookies!)

9:00-10:15pm: The Moment of Change: Feminist SFF Poetry Open Mic : Come join the authors of the "The Moment of Change" for an open mic evening in celebration of the first-ever anthology of feminist speculative poetry! "The Moment of Change" is edited by Rose Lemberg and forthcoming from Aqueduct press, and includes poems by Ursula K. Le Guin, Nisi Shawl, Amal El-Mohtar, Delia Sherman, Vandana Singh. Bring your own feminist speculative poems to read, and join Rose Lemberg, Shira Lipkin, Sofia Samatar, and Alex Dally MacFarlane for an open mic extravaganza to celebrate the release of the anthology and feminist speculative poetry in general.

Saturday
2:30-3:45pm: Crossing boundaries and bending genres: Meet the Interstitial Arts Foundation:
Larissa N. Niec, Ellen Kushner, Rose Lemberg, Shira Lipkin, JoSelle Vanderhooft. The Interstitial Arts Foundation (IAF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study, support, and promotion of interstitial art: literature, music, visual and performance art found in-between categories and genres--art that crosses borders. One of the specific goals of the IAF is to foster conversations among artists, academics, critics, and enthusiasts--conversations in which art of all types can be spoken of as a continuum, rather than as a series of hermetically sealed genres. Currently, the IAF is seeking to grow and develop new projects. In this town meeting-style session, we seek input from (1) artists and writers about ways in which the IAF might be of value to them as they seek to promote their boundary-crossing work, and (2) readers and enthusiasts about needs they perceive for the support of literature and other art forms that expand the conventional boundaries of gender and other restricting borders.

4:00-5:15pm: The Wild Ones reading!: Q: "Hey Jane, what are you rebelling against?" A: "Whadda you got?" Rose Lemberg writes about liminal identities, naming magic, languages, and birds. Shira Lipkin will bring you to the home you never knew you'd lost. Alex Dally MacFarlane lives and works in London, where the foxes cross paths with her at night. Patty Templeton writes hellpunk in a hand-basket, full of ghosts, freaks, and fools. Join four women of varied writing styles for a ruckus of a reading.

Sunday
1:00–2:15pm: Blogging While Female: Shira Lipkin, Jacquelyn Gill, Susan Marie Groppi, Michelle Kendall, Therese Pieczynski. Online writing has become an indispensable tool for authors and fans, however abusive behavior is rife and women bloggers are disproportionately targeted. Even women writing online about seemingly inoffensive topics---technology or fashion or book reviews or gaming---attract far more abuse than men blogging about identical topics. In reaction, many women curtail their public presence by writing under pseudonyms, screening their audience, or simply spending less time online, leading to under-representation in the larger blog-o-sphere. What strategies can women bloggers employ to minimize abuse, while still making themselves heard and maintaining a conversation? Can online platforms do more to help? What can male allies do to change the underlying culture?

2:30–3:45pm: I may be blonde, but I'm not 20 and I don't actually physically kick ass. Shira Lipkin, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Holly McDowell, Karon Crow Rilling, Nancy Werlin. Is anybody else tired to death of young, sexy, kickass heroines with attitude? Where are the heroines whose brains are more important than their brawn, whose understanding of human nature is more important than their facility with firearms? Are there no mature women who are interested in things that go bump in the night?

As usual, if you can only get to one thing, get to my reading! I am so excited to be reading with rose_lemberg, alankria, and pattytempleton!

Answers!

thegreenyear gave me questions, um, a while ago. Today is my day of going through and methodically taking care of all the to-dos that have been shoved aside for way too long. So! Answers!

1. You are about to send your gorgeous, talented child to college. Please give us your top five parenting tips.
My success as a parent is up for debate depending on the day and phase of the moon, because hey, teenager! But here are some tips!
* Parent is a verb. It is a thing that you have to actually do. Your kids don't get to be awesome by themselves - this is your job! Every moment really is teachable, and you should be using as many of them as you can, especially when your kids are really young.
* Be the kind of person you want your kid to be. Kids learn by example. If your kid sees you making the right choices instead of the easy ones, they'll develop an inclination to do the same.
* Talk to your kid like a person. Elayna grew up engaging in conversations with my friends, who treated her as if she were a perfectly mature and rational person, and so she was one. This poise is serving her well in college interviews, by the way. Mature and well-spoken!
* Self-care. It is all well and good to be as patient as you can and as engaged as you can, but none of us are superhuman. If you are frazzled and stressed and need a break, take a break. Take care of yourself - because you need it and deserve it, and also because you want to model that for your kid. Tap parents and friends for babysitting duty and go do some self-care when you need it. Happy parents make happy kids.
* Start Shakespeare early. (Substitute other cool thing here if you are not into Shakespeare.) When Elayna was in elementary school, I started showing her modern adaptations of Shakespeare plays, and then recordings of the original versions (think 10 Things I Hate About You/The Taming of the Shrew). I wanted her to see how malleable and adaptable stories are, and Shakespeare's got the most examples of that! She's developed a love of storytelling in general and Shakespeare in particular; we go to several plays a year, and she's in a friend's backyard Shakespeare troupe. So cool.

2. I know you are constantly working on many different projects. I wish I were as organized! Tell us about one of them. What are you doing that we should see?
I'm feeling more frantic than organized right now! :) Hm. In terms of things that everyone doesn't already know about, I'm working with omnisti on establishing the Strowler Arts Foundation. We're waiting on the 501(c)3 status right now. It'll be a nonprofit organization, yay! Our projects are manyfold, and include salons and conventions, but also - my specialty - organization, dammit. For strowlers of all stripes. My pet strowlery project can best be described as using my nexus powers for good and building a massive list of resources for strowlers, from income tax resources to mentorship resources to networking resources, to, well - are you coming to Boston? Do you need a venue with sufficient height clearance for aerial silks? Do you want a local opening band? a bellydancer? merch people? When I'm done, everything you need to set that up will be at your fingertips. That's not the only thing the SAF will be for; omnisti and Ben have their own projects, and there'll be a working group of people to handle other projects, but that's my primary focus. That and Boston-area Strowler salons and StrowlerCon.

3. You have received a magical token that allows you to change your hair instantly to become exactly as you would like it to be. This change lasts for twenty-four hours. What do you do with your hair?
Really, I'd just make it longer. I miss having waist-length hair! It's coming back from the last time half of it fell out, but it's only just past my shoulders. I am impatient. I do like everything else about my hair, though!

4. You have come into an inheritance worth $320,400.42. What do you do with the money?
I am so boring. I would pay off credit card debt, put Elayna and myself through college, then use the rest towards a house. I do love this house, but I want to eventually own a home again and just put down roots and never move again.

5. You can only drink one thing for the rest of your life. What is it?
Coffee. I have a lot of stuff to do, man. :)