My pal Tom commented, “A lie wouldn’t be half as crazy as truth in our case though. Lmfao.”

It’s true. Then I started thinking about how I met some of the awesome people in my life (aside from the blood relatives, because it’s pretty obvious how I met most of them!). In many cases, the truth is damned near stranger than fiction. Just a few examples:

My best friend/roommate Lyse — Back before the Internet, we both belonged to the Mercedes Lackey fan club and I put an ad in the fan club’s newsletter asking for pen pals. Our first letter exchange included me describing my kids as “larvae” and her asking if they were going to pupate anytime soon. Based on mutually-compatible sick senses of humor, we soon bonded into soul-siblings.

My best friend from high school Brenda — We were in the same French class in high school, and bonded over the fact that when French-English dictionaries were handed out, we both looked up the dirty words first.

My husband Geoffrey — I had just finished braiding his then-girlfriend’s hair at an SCA event, and she was giving me a thank-you kiss. (It was a little more involved than what you might normally expect from a typical thank-you kiss.) He walked up with a rather annoyed look on his face and said something like, “Who are you and why are you kissing my girlfriend?”

My ex Robert (the World’s Best Ex) — He was an assistant manager at a restaurant where I’d just been hired. I took one look at him and thought, “That’s yummy! I’d like some of that!” Two months later, he moved in with me. A month after that, he got fired for “fraternizing” even though we did our best to keep it a secret, and I had already found another job and given my two-week notice.

My Number One Internet Fanboy Karel — We both collect tag lines. One of us (I think it was me but I’m not 100% sure anymore!) sent a thank-you note to the other for posting a text file of tag lines for fellow aficionados to plunder. We started an email pen-pal thing, which led to online chat-pal thing, and eventually arranged a meeting and realized we had great in-person friend chemistry too.

And just how did I meet my friend Tom? He was a band member for a group that was playing a gig at a hotel where Brenda & I were guests at a sci-fi convention. She & I thought he was hot, so we invited him (and another guy I was hitting on at the convention) to join us in the hotel’s hot tub that evening. It turned out to be an awesome weekend. *grin*

I lost both my grandmothers this year, my dad’s mom in March and my mom’s mom in August. Our finances are still wobbly, due to expensive vehicle repairs and Geoffrey having to change jobs (plus not getting paid for nearly 3 months of reserve drill), but we’ve tightened our belts and should be more monetarily stable within a few months. I’ve been to the doctor more this year than usual, and that didn’t help finances either, between the increased co-pays and a very expensive EKG. It’s almost a good thing that tendinitis in my elbow has cut down my crocheting to less than 2 hours a day anymore, because I can’t afford that much yarn!

Just about the only major good news I’ve gotten this year (besides my youngest graduating high school, yay!) is that I’ve lost some weight, 13 pounds in 6 weeks (which isn’t too shabby considering that I’m not entirely sticking to the diet… *sigh*). Plus Geoffrey just got signed up with a reserves command that will apparently be taking him all over the country for drill weekends, which is exciting for him (sounds exhausting & aggravating to me, but then flying triggers my migraines and aggravates other health problems). And Lyse, having graduated with her LPN nursing degree (with very high scores) in July, has been accepted for an RN program that starts in December, which is also kick-ass news.

Oh, and I learned to spin! After dinking around with it a little bit off and on for years but never quite figuring it out, I finally learned — and kept practicing until I got fairly good at it. I’ve made some pretty sweet yarn, and even crocheted a shawl made entirely of yarn that I spun myself! Next challenge: graduating from spinning plain wool by adding angora & other luxury fibers, and learning to spin “slippery” fibers like silk! In a year or two, I may even treat myself to a spinning wheel…

I’m getting really excited about the gardening experiments I’ll be trying over the next several months — hopefully a community garden plot will come through, and I’m going to try winter-sowing whether I get that plot or just have to suffer along with my little bit of earth. At least the vetch I sowed for a cover crop is sprouting!

This weekend I hope to experiment with candy making! It should be fun… or at least educational and entertaining. Two delicious words: whiskey fudge.

I briefly considered (because I am an idiot) doing NaNoWriMo this year, but recovered just enough of my sanity to realize what A Very Bad Idea that would have been. It just sucks because utterly awesome first lines pop into my head, and then the little demon in my head with delusions of literary ability starts wheedling at me, “Give it another shot, go on, it’ll be fun!” No. No, it won’t. It wasn’t even fun the year I “won” and finished my 52,000-word monstrosity of a truly terrible novel, much less the 3 years when I failed miserably. I wanted to discover that I was an amazing fiction author… but you know what they say — “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” Guess I will have to settle for blogging.

Oh my. I instantly got all teary-eyed, my heart felt like it was going to burst, and I had to choke down the enormous lump in my throat so I could breathe again. It was a good thing I was at a red light, so I had a few moments to pull myself together and blink away all the blurry tears.

As I told Anxiety, when I became a mom I didn’t exactly have a boatload of self-esteem, and for years it seemed to me that everyone constantly criticized my parenting. Not only pediatricians (who questioned my decisions to delay immunizations, and to breastfeed longer than 12 months, among other things), but also total strangers (I got yelled at in the supermarket by someone for giving my tantrum-throwing toddler a swat on the butt, for putting a preschooler on a leash, etc.) and schoolteachers (I refused to punish my kids for saying “No” to an adult in what I considered a completely-justifiable situation, and I advised my kids that if they were physically attacked by bullies, they had my permission to defend themselves physically — entirely contrary to the school’s “zero tolerance” policy) and quite often, even my own family (you never quite forget trying to explain to your crying pre-teen why a handful of relatives verbally trashed her mom).

And heaven knows I made plenty of mistakes. Many times over the last 20 years, I’ve said that I swore when I became a mom I wouldn’t make my parents’ mistakes, and how proud I was that I’d largely succeeded in that — of course, in avoiding their mistakes, I made a whole bunch of entirely new ones! But in recent years, I’ve come of believe that, while I’ll never be in the running for Mother of the Year (I’m just not nice enough — or conventional enough — by any stretch!), I haven’t done too badly, all things considered.

And hey, I raised an older daughter who is bright and beautiful, and a very talented writer, and a quirky and sassy and rambunctious young woman, who — for all her faults (most of which, I’m confident, will be resolved by time and life experience) — is unabashedly passionate about her beliefs and her relationships and her dreams. She’s always had the kind of passion that I was afraid to embrace until I reached my thirties, which led me to remark more than once as she grew up that she was the girl I wanted to be when I was her age. Her energy is full steam ahead and larger than life — things are never boring with her around!

And hey, I raised a younger daughter who is also bright and beautiful (but in entirely different ways!), who is amazing with little kids and has a gleefully wicked sense of humor, and who is responsible and level-headed and determined to do the right thing even when it’s incredibly difficult for her — and has a great generosity of spirit that simply astounds me at times. Straddling the chasm between child and adult, she doesn’t let her fears stop her from reaching out, even when they become overwhelming at times. Her energy meshes nurturer and warrior with a delicate graceful strenth.

I can’t take all the credit. So many people have been part of their growing and learning and becoming amazing. But — after all my worries and fears and self-doubt over the years — I can say, based on these incredible young women, that I’ve been a good mom. Or maybe just a bewildered mom who raised good kids.

And maybe there’s not much difference between the two.

I’m extremely worried that just about any poly person in Portland can be connected to me in way less than six degrees.

(I so very need to move to Alaska. Or anywhere that I can find a less-cluttered dating pool.)

From the time I was old enough to be interested in romantic love, I’ve always said I wanted a love who was like a male version of me, with just enough differences to make things interesting! And I never felt like I truly belonged — not anyplace, or with anyone. There were certainly people with whom I felt comfortable, and deeply loved & trusted, and shared with them a sense of belonging. But, although I don’t believe anyone needs another person to “complete” them, I have felt the most complete as a person in the years since I fell in love with Geoffrey. I absolutely belong with him, profoundly and completely.

And that almost didn’t happen. We were pals who were supposed to have a summer romance, a nice diversion, a delightful little fling and nothing more. Both of us fought the feelings we began having for each another; neither of us wanted to admit to ourselves that not only was love on the menu, but very likely a lifetime of it! And considering how stubborn and tenacious we can both be, that meant a whole lot of resisting those feelings was going on.

Then one evening, his face half-pressed into my neck, he blurted a muffled, “I love you.” I looked at him and said, “What did you just say?” He tentatively repeated it — and he couldn’t possibly have missed the huge amount of relief in my voice as I said, “Oh thank God you said it first!” Four months later, he moved in with me. That was 11 years ago this month, and now I literally can’t imagine life without him.

I don’t know how long he’ll be home, since we currently have exactly zero information on the likelihood of him being deployed in the future (he’s a reservist), but I intend to cherish whatever time we get. And hokey though it may be, I truly believe that, “Le mo ghrása mise agus liomsa mo ghrá” (I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine).

On the home front, the Lyse Beast is doing well in nursing school, and Anxiety is working part time and finishing up her high school credits at an “alternative” school which is pretty darned awesome. If I’d had an option like that, I daresay I would have been a lot more successful and much happier.

My gardening attempts this year were a dismal failure. It was a seriously weird weather year, and hopefully that was the majority of my lack of success. I’ve heard from a lot of other people in the Pacific Northwest that they did poorly this year, too. The only thing I can do is get the garden ready for winter, which in my case means digging the rest of the potatoes, raking & composting the heck out of my raised beds, and planning for spring. Next year’s garden will be a lot less complicated; we’re going to stick with just a few crops, and hopefully be able to grow enough to can some of it!

I’ve been doing a lot of crocheting, especially as the weather has turned bitterly cold this last week. It’s a la nina year, too, so I suspect it will be a long and very cold season. I have around a dozen projects in progress (some of which have been untouched for months, admittedly), and no few of them are items for cold-weather wear. With any luck, I’ll have most of them finished by the end of the year.

I’ve rather given up on NaNoWriMo; I got 6300 words and then all kinds of busy started happening (including moving the eldest spawn). Eventually, I recalled what I’d learned from the last time that I did NaNo — that I’m not cut out to be a fiction writer, and that I don’t enjoy writing fiction enough to do it for my own satisfaction. Hopefully this time the lesson will stick.

I’m still on graveyard shift, and for the most part I’m pretty happy about that. With the weather getting cold & nasty, I’m afraid we might have some really stressful evenings coming up. I may need to pack an overnight bag, if things get crazy enough that they start mandating overtime. It’s really too bad that most people aren’t more willing to get themselves prepared for winter conditions and use their common sense in driving during inclement weather!

I’ll just sum up the last 12 months by saying it’s been fraking exhausting, with no end in sight. (Not a complaint, mind you — I absolutely LOVE most parts of my life, and I fully expect it to just keep on getting better! But it is tiring.)

Okay, alright, to hit just the highlights –

bought an awesome 2005 Dodge pickup truck (too bad the damned thing is red, but they were all out of purple), moved a rather large household’s (3 humans & 9 pets) worth of stuff into a rather small condo that already had (1 human & 2 feline) inhabitants, got sucked into Facebook despite years of resistance (because of some stupid farming game, on which I’m currently level 75), cut nearly all of Geoffrey’s waist-length hair off (at his request, so he could get used to having short hair for the first time in 20 years, before he went to Boot Camp), performed my elder spawn’s wedding ceremony on her 21st birthday (oy and vey), had a Yule season frought with tension, helped elder spawn move house when she decided her marriage was A Big Mistake, had to deal with the most gawd-awful high school in the state until I finally told younger spawn that she didn’t have to go back (she’s now enrolled in an awesome “alternative” school & will probably graduate ahead of her year-mates), got to go shooting with my beloved Geoffrey and our friend The Bastidge a few more (awesome) times, managed not to bawl like a stoopid girl when Geoffrey left for US Navy Basic Training (miss him miserably, constantly, fiercely), was only able to visit hubby for 3 days in the last almost-four months and won’t get to see him again for another month yet, have done about 8 times more work on a garden this year than the cumulative total of my prior gardening, got a kick-ass purple netbook for natal anniversary number forty-one and named it Tinhead (shout out to F.M. Busby), have done about 4 times more crocheting this past year than the cumulative total of the previous 21 years since I learned how (and invented the term “yarn porn” to describe my fast-growing crocheting magazine & book collection), discovered my eldest cat has hyperthyroidism and has to be given pills twice daily to keep her alive (gee, that’s fun), and am still adapting to living with FIVE cats (not *quite* as much fun as I’d once thought it might be) and very little sex.

Yeah, I’m at the theoretical best years of a woman’s sexual lifetime, and my husband — light of my life, joy of my heart, fire in my loins — is over 2,100 miles away. (That’s something in the neighborhood of 3,400 km, for the rest of the world.) My new motto? “Navy Wife: Sexually Deprived For Your Freedom”

Hey, but I’m crocheting a lot. (A. LOT.)

I’m vaguely amused at the fact that I’m writing this on what would have been my 23rd wedding anniversary to my first husband, if he hadn’t been such a completely abusive dick who — among many other horrible things — stole & destroyed my most treasured childhood things, tried to take a breastfed newborn permanently away from her mother, lied in court documents & forced me all the way to divorce court, all just to hurt/punish me. (Guess what, Mick? My life is AWESOME now, and yours probably sucks. Karma is a stone bitch, babe.)

Here’s the scariest — nay, the most terrifying — part: if anyone had told me 10 years ago that I would be 1) married, 2) married without being traumatized by it, 3) married to a US Navy Sailor, 4) happy about owning a pickup truck, 5) excited about gardening instead of disliking it, 6) rabidly excited about crochet instead of just liking it, 7) a rather enthusiastic gun owner, and/or 8 ) a registered Republican, I would have said to them with complete and absolute seriousness, “Just how high are you, dude?”

And they say people don’t change. Well, one little thing hasn’t changed one little bit…

I am still a snarky bitch.

Geoffrey and I got married today. Still mind-boggled by it. Details soon, but for now I must collapse…sooo exhausted. It was a pretty amazing day, all told.

• Buy a new bra (and probably shoes)
• Get some speakers for my iPod
• Dye my hair (I may be 40 but I refuse to be gray!) & get it trimmed
• Buy the sparkling cider & grape juice
• Finish getting the ceremony written
• Order the corsages for the moms & boutonniere for Geoffrey’s dad
• Check the site for logistical surprises & do a brief walk-through
• Finish sewing the dresses!

It may seem like there’s a lot left to do, but actually most of the preparations are already finished. We have a dinner at Geoffrey’s parents house on Saturday night (eve of the wedding), so all this has to be done by late Saturday afternoon. I am hugely glad that I took these vacation days to prepare, or we would be completely FUBAR.

And my sixpence arrived in the mail today!!! It’s gorgeous, and the lady who took my order was so incredibly nice. When I called to order, she asked if I had a special year in mind, and I said no (they stopped making them 2 years before my birth year, which was the only year which popped to mind). Then she suggested one that’s a century old, to commemorate the year of the wedding, and I thought that was brilliant! So I have a 1909 King Edward VII sixpence for my shoe!

So tonight Geoffrey & I will do a bit of wedding-preparation shopping. Normally I hate all shopping unless it’s for books, but I promised myself a bra from Vicky’s, and I don’t mind shopping there too much. Except for all the ridiculous pink decor.