The A-Z Challenge takes a break on Sundays so I am posting a teensy story instead. And no, I am not the narrator here. I didn’t own a shredder in the first place.

Broken

It was lying on my desk when I got in this morning.

A single red rose that I am sure he thought I would be swooning about all day.

He has never realized that gestures like that are merely the icing. If you don’t have the cake – the kindness, the respect, the day-to-day dependiblity – the icing will make you sick.

Meanwhile, it turns out that jamming a rose into the paper shredder is terrible idea. It makes a huge mess and it breaks the machine.

Makes sense in a way, don’t you think?

This post is part of the 2016 A-Z Challenge and I am looking forward to posting something new every day in April.

Just is case you thought that this was going to be a month full of insightful, introspective thoughts on my part, let me put your mind at ease by talking about a character from the movie Mystery Men.*

Sci-Fi on the Rock starts today and I don’t know how cons work in other cities but this is our biggest one and it is not limited to Sci-Fi characters, people dress up as all kinds of different characters from books and movies and comics and shows. As you may know from last year, I’ll use just about any excuse to wear a costume somewhere so I always look forward to creating something for SFOTR.

Aside: I don’t think I could rightfully call what I do cosplaying though because that implies an attention to detail and a level of commitment that I don’t quite have. I really respect how cosplayers labour over their costumes to get things JUST right and how they try to source specific materials and the like so I won’t call my approach cosplaying. Mine is much more ‘head to the thrift shop and then get other pieces from the dollar store and that’s good enough’ – for me the fun is in the invention and getting the spirit of the costume rather than focusing on every specific part. Most of the cosplayers I know find joy in the details but that would suck the fun right out of it for me. I only add details until it starts getting on my nerves.

ANYWAY, on to the topic of the day THE BOWLER!

Determination for the win!

The Bowler is a character played by Janeane Garofalo in Mystery Men. She’s a former grad student who is avenging her father Carmine’s death so she joins Mr. Furious’ team of ‘ragtag’ superheroes to fight Casanova Frankenstein’s evil plans. I like how snarky she is and I love Janeane Garofalo and her costume allows her to be fully dressed** and still be kick-ass, so it’s perfect for me.

I bought myself a black wig and green hair extensions, and a corduroy jacket and made myself a few patches out of felt. The challenge was in making her bowling ball with her Dad’s skull in it. We are exactly at the wrong time of year to buy clear plastic balls or beach balls and there isn’t a foam skull to be found anywhere.

Half-assed jacket and skull ball in bag. Good enough? Yep, good enough!

I was not up for the level of construction/crafting required to use a mould  (and time was limited) so I ended up buying two ‘frost domes’ for flowers and trimming them to make a sort of ball shaped thing, and the ‘skull’ inside is a skull mask around a balloon. This is where being a half-assed costumer comes in handy – I didn’t have to make it perfect, I just had to get close enough for me. And I did. See?

So I will be stomping around the event this afternoon in my good enough costume, having a grand time with my kids. (They are dressing up as Sans and Temmie from Undertale, in case you were wondering. We also half-assed their costumes.)

Aside: I decided to dress as this character ages ago but I was afraid I would forget what I had decided, so I put it in my calendar for sometime in February ‘Be The Bowler for SciFi’. Then, I promptly forgot about it. When the reminder popped up I was totally baffled because I had forgotten the reference. I was trying to figure out if I had agreed to be part of a bowling fundraiser or something (a bad idea, I am terrible at bowling), I just about knocked myself out with the facepalm once I figured it out.

So I am off to SFOTR and my other Saturday adventures shortly but I am curious about two things.

1) Do you like to dress up for stuff? Are you a full-on cosplayer or do you half-ass it like me?

2) How do you decide when something is good enough? Do you start with an intention for what is good enough or do you just stop when you get tired of your plan?

*Yes, this is what I am like in real life, too – One minute I am pondering the nature of existence, the next I am wondering how Black Widow can kick so high in leather pants. I think she must spend a lot of time breaking the leather in – perhaps she has people to kick specifically for the purpose of breaking in her leathers.
**That is in NO way a judgment on people who dress in teensy costumes, your body is your body and you can cover it as much or as little as you want to. And I will kick the ass of anyone who tries to harass you because of how you dress. For me, personally, it’s about my sense of what is public versus what is private in my own life, everyone has to make those divisions for themselves.

This post is part of the 2016 A to Z Challenge and I am looking forward to posting something new every day in April. I hadn’t meant to be away this long. <3

Well, how is this for irony?* After a spectacularly annoying morning, I decided that acceptance would be a great word to start my A-Z challenge and now, here I am at 12:29am on what is technically the 2nd of April,** forced to accept that I don’t always have control over how my day is going to unfold and forced to accept that I can’t always get everything done that I hope to accomplish in a day.

My mind gets it but my heart doesn’t. My heart wants a little more lee-way, it wants a little more kindness from the world, it wants points for trying. And it would like those points to come in the form of a little extra time when it is needed.

I know that the real world doesn’t work that way and that it is not possible for me to literally eke out extra time here and there.*** That doesn’t stop me from wishing for it though.

But, given that my wishes in that area have not yet come true, instead I am left with acceptance.

In my head, acceptance has this twisted connection with giving up, with not trying hard enough, but yet, I know better. I know from experience that once I say ‘Okay, I accept that this is a rough spot.’ Then I feel a whole lot better and I start to see solutions where none were before.

For example, once I accepted that I didn’t have as much control over this day as I was hoping to, then I could relax a bit and ‘roll with the punches’ – as my Dad has been advising me to do my whole life (not one of my strengths, that). I could spend less energy in struggling against what was happening (no crises, just annoyances) and spend more energy in figuring out solutions and ways to feel better.

And once I accepted that I wasn’t going to get everything that I set out to do done today, then I could focus more on making good choices about what really needed to get accomplished and what I could put off to another day. That felt a lot less stressful and, again, it let me put my focus where it was most useful.

I still don’t like it though, I don’t like having to tell myself to dial it back. I don’t like having to navigate the way that acceptance sometimes feels like ‘giving up’ – it’s totally not, I get that, but it’s where my mind goes first. I guess I have to ACCEPT that it is going to feel like that before it feels better.

I just keep hoping that over time I will learn to do the acceptance thing a bit more automatically. Sure, it comes easier than it used to and I tend to reach the point where I recognize that it is time for accept things as they are much more quickly than I once did, but it still doesn’t come naturally.

Maybe I have to accept that it might never feel natural but that it will always serve me well?

So far, acceptance has a 100% success rate in helping me feel better. My brain gets it, but that heart? She’s as stubborn as all hell.

I just have to accept that about her.

*Let’s not quibble about whether this is true irony or me using some sort of mistaken interpretation of it. I’m sure that once you read on, you will see the weirdness of me picking this word today.

**Since I haven’t been to bed yet, I am deciding that it still counts as April 1st. It’s all one damn long day, really.

***I also know that, depending on how I proceed, it is possible for me to FEEL like I have some extra time and that perception is a HUGE part of my relationship with time but that’s a whole separate post.

When you live in a geeky house and geeky people often come to visit, you spend a disproportionate amount of time discussing superpowers and which ones you would choose.* My usual selection is to have the power to calm people – individuals who are anxious, crowds who are dangerous** – I’d like to be able to help. However, soon after I mention the power I would like to have, we tend to veer off into the powers I would definitely NOT choose. Here they are in no particular order:

1) Invisibility – I don’t think it would be fun to be invisible. For starters, it would be kind of creepy since you could sneak into places where you weren’t wanted (I don’t want to be anywhere that doesn’t want me). Also, you would end up hearing people talking about you – I don’t want to know what anyone has to say about me when I’m not there.

2) Flying – I would love to be able to just kind of flash from one place to another but I have no interest in flying to get from here to there. I don’t like wind in my face, I’m a bit wigged out by heights, and I am always chilly – personal flight just wouldn’t be my choice.

3) Silver-Tongue – I don’t know what you’d actually call this power but I don’t want to be able to persuade anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. I get that this *seems* similar to being able to calm them down, but I don’t want to change anyone’s minds with calming – I just want to change their methods or to help them out. The idea of making someone go against their own will is just icky beyond. This is an imaginary list and I am still getting a pain in my stomach.

4) X-ray vision – Sure, it would be cool to be able to look through walls and the like but I come right back to the fact that I would be invading people’s privacy left, right and centre. That’s just not okay by me.

Can you tell that I place a lot of importance on people having control of their own lives and people able to decide how they move through the world? And that I have a really strong personal sense of what is public and what is private?

Imagination is one of my real-life superpowers and I still can’t imagine away those basics of my perspective on the world. And, of course, I can’t imagine not being chilly – that’s just too big a task to ask my brain to undertake. 🙂

For the record – in addition to my calming power, I would totally take being super-strong or having super-fighting power. Those powers would rock.

*This is, of course, despite the fact that most people in comics and movies seem to just end up with superpowers instead of actually getting to make a choice, but just run with me here.
**Yeah, I know danger is in the eye of the beholder, there would be a lot of things to consider before I could use this power.

The trick is to not look directly at them. They can get you if you look straight at them, you have to kind of use your peripheral vision. It’s not easy to learn, not simple to do, but with practice, almost anyone can manage it, and it may be the very thing that saves your life.

I know that sounds melodramatic but I’ve seen them turn vicious in a moment, all because someone stared. It’s hard to resist. I don’t blame you if you want to look. It’s a natural inclination, I think. Human curiosity, we all want to know more and we’re just arrogant enough to think that it is okay for us to put our eyes on whatever we like to look at.

The creatures don’t like it though. They want to stay on the edges, not in full view. I’ve had to clean up the mess when someone has forgotten the rules and it was all over but the sobbing.

It happened a lot more often at first, right after they got here. I spent a lot of time scrubbing back then. Of course, the authorities cared a lot more about keeping things quiet at that point. Now, they’ve gotten sort of complacent, the government doesn’t even bother to try and hide what’s happening.

I still spend a lot of time scrubbing, just not as much. And I think the things are more vicious because they don’t get to attack as often. They kind of save it up.

I know you’ve heard the ads about trying to get along with the creatures. It won’t work though. They aren’t interested in getting along with us, they just want what they want. They’re just trying to find a reason to attack.

You’ve seen the posters about how to look without looking. No one can tell you how to resist the temptation though, the government thinks that telling us what NOT to do should be enough. It doesn’t work that way, your brain doesn’t like it.

I try to tell people how to keep things blurry in front of them and clear off to the sides. Back in my day, we had these books that would show you a 3-D picture if you looked at them just right – staring off into the distance but with the book in front of you – that’s the kind of thing I advise people to practice. It’s easier to bring to mind when you are in a panic than just trying to avoid looking.

If they put up posters like those 3D books everywhere then people could get in the habit of watching the world that way and we wouldn’t have so many people in danger. Then I’d have a lot less blood to clean up. I think I’d like that.