Your result for The Heart Test...

Broken Heart

You are 0% Independent, 35% Idealistic, 90% Intimate, and 50% Indulgent!

Take The Heart Test at HelloQuizzy

Actually, I have to say that on many of the questions I either wanted a third choice, or else wanted to know if they wanted what I am like by nature or what I have learned to live with...

I am finding it very amusing that while people ten or more years younger than I am are teaching children to drive now or quite soon, I sent my baby off to pre-school today.  And trust me, I found that at least as traumatic.

Braveheart is 16 and has never been to school without me.  I have never had to let the public get their grimy little paws on him.  So, although I have been a mother quite a long time, this is the first time I have had to put a child on a bus with a lunchbox and a backpack.  In addition to making my husband stay home from work so  we could go to the meet the parents room, I needed my mother here to be able to let the kid go at all.  (Yes, that is totally pathetic, I admit it.  I blamed it on needing her to tell me which pair of identical shoes I bought him yesterday actually fit him.  No, I was not sure.  )

Well, the baby came home in one piece,although the bus matron did try to give me someone else's child when they showed up.  I cleverly remembered what my own looked like, so that solved that.  He won't talk about it, but he seemed to have a very good time.  And he is REALLY enjoying wearing the school shoes.

I am still not sold on this, but he came home without cigarettes or condoms in his pockets, so I guess I let him go back tomorrow...  :-)

Sometimes I really can't stand my family. Lately I've just been wanting to run away!!

Well, there's one way to make me feel a lot better after having a horrible day/week/month/whatever. Seeing one (or more) of my stories nominated in the Quicksilver Quill Awards (QSQs) on MNFF. Especially if the stories are ones that I'm extremely fond of!

My Sirius/Hermione story, Logic Be Damned was nominated for 'Best Non-Canon Romance', as was my Sirius/Lily story, Secret Boxes.

Also, Recolitus Optimus - a short story and my entry for MNFF's 'DH-Release Mini Gauntlet Challenge' a year ago - was nominated for 'Best History/Mystery'.

And a thank you to those who nominated these stories: cassiel9 for LBD, R_Ravenclaw for SB, and luinrina for RO. I appreciate it all from all of you! Win, lose, or whatever, it makes me 'SQUEE' just to be nominated!

Of course, all of these stories can be seen on any of my accounts (links in the Master List), as well as on my fanfic community, fics_by_megan.

In Real Life news, I've just got back from meeting my mother, who was bringing some things from home that I forgot when packing for college. Mostly, they were things from my walls - since the walls here are SO bare without anything. Now, I got my HP collages (one of the general series, another of Sirius), and just happened to pick up a new poster at Wal*mart - one of the Joker from "The Dark Knight"! (This is the poster that I got, by the way.)

The walls don't look so much like prison cells now!

(And if I can get my digital camera to work right, I'll try and post pictures of it. The pics from my cell phone are horrible quality!)

I don't know if the dementors have finally left your washing machine or not, but I have been reading on the enormously large knitting site and it seems one may have found the dishwasher of a knitter there, who was asking for help.

She was advised to run teh dishwasher with TANG orange juice drink powder in the machine instead of soap.

This seems to be some sort of folk remedy that even dishwasher repairmen pass along, and it sort of makes sense - it is probably largely citric acid. (well, in between the sugar.)

I am now not certain if I should be telling you to dump some in the washer. 

Gathering it all up and trying to put it to rest, it has been a bit of a week.

I mentioned that my Great-Aunt died.  My Aunt Ida was the mother of five children.  Her husband, a very decent man from all reports, was a truck driver who lost his leg to some disease, and then retrained to be a bookkeeper.  At that point, he had some sort of heart failure and lived a few more years, but was unable to work, so the family had even less than my grandparents, but managed to survive.

Aunt Ida was the best cook in the family, despite having almost no money.  I remember that when we went  - me, my grandmother and Aunt Ida - to Lexington, Kentucky to visit my Aunt while her husband was in Law School, we carried canned tomatoes in shopping bags on the plane, these being, at that time, a diffiuclt thing to get in Lexington, and my Aunt needing them to make the gravy.  She once (In my 20's, maybe even my 30's) let me eat an entire box of devil dogs at her house and was just glad I enjoyed them.  Aunt Ida was a happy person despite the apparant hardships of her life, and everyone liked her.  She was 95 years old and had been in pain for years, and so although she liked the Nursing home she was in down in Florida, we all knew that it was time, that she herself felt ready to go, and so it was painful to lose her, but not as bad as it could have been.

Her oldest daughter is on a ventilator in a nursing home for Emphysema - they have not even told her yet.  Her youngest son has terrible Parkinson's disease.  That Daughter's husband went to see his wife at the nursing home, realized he could not ever bring her home, went home and died in his bed.  It took people a while to figure this out...which is probably one of the reasons it was a very quiet funeral and we were not even told about it till this happened. 

This death of my aunt caused the family to reconverge on Brooklyn.  The same firm that has been burying them for 50 years got the job.  Children and Grandchildren flew in, drove in, from as far as California and as close as Bay Ridge to a place on Flatbush Avenue.  I saw people I had not seen in maybe 13 years, some of whom I hadn't seen in that long, at least, before then.  (Hey, Steven, I'm so and so's daughter.  I haven't seen you since you were his age [I point at kid about 8 or 9 who has had to come along with his mom.])  My father even drove my mom thorugh Crown Heights...

The things you remember on occassions like this - last time I was in that funeral home I think it was to bury my Grandmother in 1987.  They seem to have gotten new couches.  The last time I was out to St. Charles Cemetary - which is well within my normal cruising radius on the Island - was for her funeral, and it was a pouring rain Memorial Day weekend.  Those of us who drove or flew in were the only ones - the extended family is all either dead or considers themselves far enough removed to be under no obligation.  That, or perhaps it was not in the papers, or else no one reads the obits.  One or two friends came, but mostly it was her children and grandchildren.  Her brother, I was told, was too old to come, and I don't know if his daughter even knew.  I remember much larger funerals - like the one where someone who understood who my mom was only when she described herself using her mother's maiden name thought my husband was married not to me, but to her...   I remember not being so close to the top of the age pile.

BH went with me - we have represented at every family funeral for the past 16 years, because I was at home and could do it, even when everyone else was working or too far away to come in.  Today was the day he asked me what happened when people died, why, if they are family, we never see all these people...a bunch of tough questions.  I got to see my cousin Lester again - the only one, of all the cousins, that I have ever done anything with outside of a large family gathering - we had lunch once when we both worked in NYC.  I found out how many of us have ADHD  - a bunch, it seems, and all of it actually came into this family from inlaws - my grandmother, her sister and her brothers did not have it.

All in all, there was a lot to process.

The thrid death I heard about this week was my friend Jim.  Jim was actually the father of my HS boyfriend, but over time our families became close - his youngest brother was my mother's assistant at the camp we all worked at, his middle brother was very close friends with my very close friend from school who we brought in as my mother's other assistant.  Jim and I were in the NY CSLewis Society together for many years.  I have not actually called the Lifeguard yet to extend my condolences - even after almost 30 years phone calls there are a bit weird.  This death actually hit me very hard - this man loved me like a daughter, treated me like a friend, and told anyone he cared to that I was the one his son let get away.  I knew him as well as many people - actually much better than most - I remember a letter he sent me at college with  a little musk ox he drew on it.  I remember the first time he invited me to dinner, and prepared an elaborate meal that involved hacking up a chicken with a cleaver.  Hell, I remember the outfit I wore while I was eating it, the problem the family had with the bee's nest in the fireplace; I wonder if they ever got around to returning the neighbor's cement mixer, although I know they finally gave up on building the folboat and got one ready made.  There were a few years there where I was a part of that family, and then a whole lot more years later where I was just Jim's friend.  Losing him was something of a blow, and because the memorial service was sandwhiched in between two sessions of my aunt's wake and in a town abotut 7 hours from me, I knew I could not go - but I felt bad, and I wish I could have.  I had some good things to say about Jim.

Between Braveheart's episode and these deaths, there were more than enough brushes with mortality this week.  I also realize that it is quite possible there will be two more family funerals any time now, or maybe one now and one who knows when, but those will be even smaller and I probably won't be invited.  It has come down to that. 

Just exhausting. 

And - I just needed to post htis before the nice report.

Well, while I'm all chilly in my dorm room (and wanting to be at home more than I want to be here), I just wrote another story and posted it up. Called Justify, it was inspired by the banner by hansolohpfrk on MNFF, and written for the Gryffindor In-House Challenge over there.

Also, the story was able to be written in response to two different prompts in all my LJ tables - "Thoughtful" on potterprompts and "Why?" on 100quills.

Title: Justify
Rating: G
Length: One-Shot
Pairings: None
Era: Marauders/First War
Summary: She was trapped in that house, the walls suffocating her. But it hadn’t always been like that; there was a time when she was happy there. Yet that time is gone, but can she justify – even to herself, if to no one else – performing the greatest of crimes? Can she justify betrayal?

And you can enjoy it at fics_by_megan.

~Megan

We had a very close call with BH tonight.  I was on my way back from Brooklyn  - the Great-Aunt's wake - and DH was here alone with the boys.  He handled the situation and BH seems to be ok.

I'd like to thank everyone who prays for him regularly, and everyone who has ever done so, even if only once.  And to my non-praying friends, any positive vibes, thoughts, wishes or energy you have ever thrown our way count in this category so consider your selves thanked too.

No nurse tonight, which is possibly intentional on God's part, as DH was the one around and he knows exactly what to do to this child of ours, which is a little different from the usual protocals.    I am not sure I should/will/would be able to anyway sleep tonight.  Tomorrow DH is back at work and I am alone with both kids, so any blessings you would like to shoot our way, this would be a perfectly acceptable time...

I should have a nice summary statement here, shouldn't I?  I don't.

That is the question.

My ficlet, Do You Remember ... (link), is long enough to be considered a one-shot on MNFF, whose minimum word count for something is 800-1000 words. (HPFF is 500, and of course, FF.N doesn't have one.)

Since this ficlet is almost 1500 words long, this is where I get the dilemma.

I was wondering if I should post it as a separate story, or eventually just post it as another part to my drabble collection on FF.N, Bits and Pieces.

So, let me know what you think.

a) Post it as a separate fic
b) Post it in the drabble collection
c) ... I could've sworn I had a third option, but I can't remember. I guess this'll be the "other" option.

And a "Thanks" in advance!

~Megan

So I am back online today after a little vacation with the family, and came home to 947 emails.  That is an actual number, and what I get for signing up with the local freecycle group.

Before 11 am today I had two delicious phone calls - one from a nurse who has to come and determine every six months if my son still needs services - Lady, if he did not, you would probably have read about it in Newsday if not the Times, but you can come next Thursday.  The other was from my mother - two deaths in the family and one expected any day now, at least one more reason to not be totally jazzed about my SIL, (no cause and effect here on the deaths - she was in another city and had nothing to do with either of them.)

This is why we need to get away, folks.  So we can come back to all this and smile.

I am here, and catching up on email, Ravelry, Pm's and so forth.  Spotted cat, are you gone?  Are you back?  Are you gone and back and gone again????

I finished 31_days! Care to have a look at them? ;) I could do with some honest concrit.

As an excuse In celebration, I bought myself a hundred userpics O.o So I'll be off filling those up.

Also, is it a good idea to see Eoin Colfer at the Cheltenham Literature Festival? Would it bring out the nasty fangirl in me? Hmm...

HANG ON, RUSSELL T AND JOHN BARROWMEN STILL HAVE TICKETS?? ASDFGHJKLH BUYING.