It's been an age, and we're still unlikely to return full-tilt to journaling, but:

Beth is pregnant! She's due in late February -- the 29th, to be exact, which is a fantastic date and one we will strive to meet.

We went with IVF this time around (and thankfully we live in Massachusetts, where it's completely covered by our health insurance). Beth is now experiencing the uncertain delights of being both hungry and nauseated at the same time, and learning to balance plates of food on her uterus.

I am very much looking forward to seeing if she nests.

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I said we wouldn't be back or even necessarily reading for a while, but:

The Sunday before last, we received a phone call from Beth's dad. We thought he was calling to ask about what to get Beth's mom for her birthday on the 30th. Except what he was actually calling about was to let us know that Beth's mom was in the hospital. In surgery. To find out what was in her kidney.

Over the course of the week, we found out that it was cancerous; that it had metastasized to her lungs; that she'd have a year if there was no treatment at all; that we'd be pushing for four years even with treatment.



The news is never good. We're not doing well.

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Well! Hello, everyone.

We... are not here. While in past we've been eerily silent but still keeping up with our flist, at the moment the world does not actually have enough hours to accommodate all the things that need doing, and that means some stuff gets shunted aside for a while.

What this means: If neat things are happening to you, and we haven't commented, it's probably because we haven't heard. Email us or comment somewhere and we'll come running back, but rest assured we don't hate your face or anything like that.

Love, daffodils, and hopefully a return to normalcy someday ever,

-Team Trifles

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You know, like, the entire plot of Bujold's The Warrior's Apprentice?

I have to pull that off.

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For those wondering, I wrote the Monty Python RPFs READ THIS ONE FIRST and We would skip this one, if we were you -- it’s more of a supporting document, really.

For extensive author's notes, plop on over to my writing journal, here: Buttering Parsnips (link goes directly to the entry; there may be spoilers for the story visible).

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It's been a while (a very long while) since I did fic recommendations, longer since I did Yuletide fic recommendations, and a supremely long time since I've done any sort of fic recommendations under this journal name. SO. Clearly the time has come! Have some recs.

( first batch -- perhaps there will be more later? )

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Oh, Christmas. How far we have to travel for you. How unfortunate our current state of illness is.

Internet access will be spotty at best for the next couple of days, but we love you all. Happy holidays, and we'll see you on the other side.

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Dear Yuletide Author:

( perhaps you would like some details )

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On another journal, there was a discussion of murder ballads, and the linking of the same. It seems a shame to waste perfectly good download links, so here, have some dead-people songs and summaries to go with.

( My mother did me deadly spite )

Dear Beth,

Today is your birthday -- you are twenty-nine! You are, once more, older than me. I love saying that, because it makes you wrinkle your nose and explain, again, how you're always older than me. The nose-wrinkling thing is the important part; you hardly ever do it. It's worth repeating an old joke just to see it.

I love you. You know that, I tell you often. It's not just a random platitude, though, or a conversation filler, or a parting salvo at end of a long day -- every time I say it, I really mean it. I thought I should tell you, in case it isn't obvious. (Sometimes, I am not obvious.)

I took a marvelous picture of you today, grinning at the camera, holding a dressed-up Claire beside you at my office's Halloween party. I'll be printing out a copy of that one to put on my desk to see and smile at, like I do the picture I have of us at the zoo five years ago. The zoo picture is the one I used to tell everyone we were engaged. This Halloween picture, I think, will be the one I use to show off my family.

My prose is being a bit spotty here, and throughout this; my brains have leaked elsewhere, spending all my decent words writing fiction. Another thing you support and love me for -- do you know how rare that is? Rare enough. I'm grateful. Your pride in me makes me want to do better. You have made me a better writer, which is as close as I'll ever get to admitting there are such things as muses.

Did you know that you're beautiful? You are. Your hair, your skin -- the flex of your ankle, the curve of your collarbone. Your eyes.

(Also several other things that don't belong in a public letter.)

It is still astonishing to me that if we both look out into a crowded space, we will both be looking at the exact same small detail. Time and time again, we have demonstrated this to one another. It doesn't work when we try it with other people. Just us. I don't know how it happens that we do this -- did we each of us come this way, or did we learn it together? What would have happened if you and I were always the ones to notice that detail, us and no one else, and we never met? I don't like thinking it, even if the answer is that we would never know or miss it. I prefer the life I have, where we don't have to wonder. And that, you'll find, is as close as I'll ever get to admitting there is such a thing as fate.

Today is your birthday. You are incalculably special to me. I hope we see many, many more such birthdays together. I love you.

-Cass

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