Coma Time

Ugh!

My computer mouse is spazzing out, I’m fighting off being sick, and my a “blogging injury” is acting up. Sometimes the silliest crap can just torpedo your morale you know?

But a friend’s daughters were baptized today, and even though I don’t work for that particular corporation, it doesn’t mean I don’t respect the holy bejeebers out of someone else’s faith.  And in some families, the baptism is sort of a rite of passage, a milestone of growing up–and I respect that too.  It was lovely to see these two girls grown into thoughtful, humble, stunning young women–it hit me right in the feels.  Nothing perks you up like being around joyful people, and I was grateful for all of that purely positive emotion.  And not all churches are horrible to the LGBTQ population or the science community–it’s important to remember that, because faith really can be a great healer.  Again, things to be grateful for abound.

Anyway– that was a thing on the positive side.

We also went to the SpongeBob movie yesterday and…

Okay.  I’ll be honest. I sort of like SpongeBob. Maybe I’ve just been brainwashed, because my older kids have been watching the show since 1997 when it debuted on Nickelodeon, and its a lot of fun.  The writing is clever, and there are a lot of meta jokes that adults can get (or older teens) and, well, after almost twenty years, it’s sort of a family staple.

But yesterday, Mate and I were both feeling a little punk and a little sick, and we sat down in front of the movie…

And zzzzzzzzz…..

We were out.  I saw him trying to wake up and he saw me trying to wake up and in the meantime the movie–which is always a little bizarre and a little meta and a little hallucinogenic–became like an eyeball-searing candy-colored version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and The Who’s Tommy.  There was even a musical interlude at the end with a talking dolphin who had toilet paper stuck to his fin.

And Antonio Banderas.

Sweartadog, it wasn’t until I read the credits that I realized I wasn’t imagining Antonio. He had a braid of pirate hair down to his ass.  Sorta sexy.  Definitely weird.

I mean… holy batfish catman– this was a show that had a talking squirrel in an underwater spacesuit as a matter of course. What were our sub-consciousnesses going to do with that?

I may never heal.

But I have my plane tickets to Florida, and Lights, Camera, Cupid is out already on amazon.com, and that’s sort of exciting!

Actually– have I talked about Nascha, the story in this anthology?  See, I sort of compressed about forty years into 10K.  In The Deep of the Sound, Cal McCorkle has to deal with his brother–who has every sort of psychological diagnosis ever (and who is based on some of the kids my son went to school with, as he keeps track of his old school friends and realizes that his difficulties are not the hardest things he could face), and his beloved Uncle Nascha who is spiraling into Alzheimer’s.

Nascha has a few lucid moments, though, and he makes use of one of them to put some events into motion that Cal is unaware of.

This story– these ten-thousand words–are his story.  They’re painful, and bittersweet, and ultimately hopeful. In a way they really are a Valentine to anyone who has ever had to say goodbye to a beloved older relative a piece at a time (done that), and hoped that all of the good memories somehow outweigh the bad.

So there you go– what I did over the weekend.  And now, I’m going to finish a thousand words or so on Quickening and go into the corner and make like the dog in the picture.

Coma time!