ellenkushner: (FurCoat)
ellenkushner ([personal profile] ellenkushner) wrote2011-09-25 11:19 pm

So why was I so pissed off at Delia about the microwave this morning, again?

I don't know why I spend so much time being trivial and cranky, when delightful surprises are so often lurking in ambush. 

Take today, which I was planning to spend being simultaneously extraordinarily tired and answering all my neglected business email after an 8-hour (+ 2.5 hrs subway travel) recording session yesterday.  (The session - for the Swordspoint audiobook - was glorious, but draining: all the emotional, scary stuff around the killing of Lord ---.  You know.)  

But then [livejournal.com profile] 2muchexposition invited me to read Richard III's great "sun of York" speech at her little fete tonight - I've only wanted to do that forever! So I got to look forward to that all day.  

And then, a few hours later, the phone rang, and it was Amanda Palmer (who's been over here before w/Neil - he had to bring her round to meet the family, after all!), rather desperately asking whether she might be able to come over with some friends to use our piano, because they were working on a song and the place she'd lined up (about 20 blocks away) was locked.

So we said Of course.  (Why have a piano when we don't play ourselves, if not for that very purpose?)  So she turned up with the 2 friends, one of whom turned out to be John Cameron Mitchell.  Yes.  Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  I expressed unbridled delight tempered with a becoming reserve.  Because I know plenty of famous authors.  Just because one can sing - and is a cultural icon . . . Well, we all need water or we'll dehydrate, right?

We left them alone to work - but we did get to hear the song at the end - along with author Maria Headley, who turned up in the front hall halfway through.  I had met her at Readercon, but, true to form, I totally failed to recognize her (See?  It's not just you! I told you so.), and glared at her rather rudely until she (re)introduced herself.  I am, fortunately, very good at apologizing.  You woudl be, too, if you f*cked up as often as I do.

And then we got dressed up and went downtown and saw some friends and read our pieces - and my Richard III came off a kind of  a pissed off punk girl who knows she isn't pretty - hmmm, I can work with that - and now I'm home and I should totally go to bed without passing GO, because tomorrow dawns all too early and I've got another 8-hour recording session, during which some very intense and dramatic things are going to happen to justabout everyone, and I need to be fit and sparky for it.

And [livejournal.com profile] deliasherman still had to do the laundry, and I still had to clean the stove from all the gunk I got on it when I made those cornmeal pancakes.  

That never changes.

But in between, there is music.  And delight.
ext_3319: Goth girl outfit (Default)

[identity profile] rikibeth.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 03:32 am (UTC)(link)
okay, I am just going to teleport to your house and sit very quietly in a corner so I can see awesome stuff like this happen.

[identity profile] ellen-kushner.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 03:41 am (UTC)(link)
OK - but there will also be long spates when it's just me being cranky about something trivial, and Delia nagging me to clean up my papers, and stuff. Also noisy angst about such critical things as whether I should have bought those plane tickets two weeks ago because maybe they were cheaper then, and the broken washing machine, and who's going to stay home for the repairman (though, hey - if you were here waiting for the Good Stuff - *you* could let him in!).
ext_3319: Goth girl outfit (Default)

[identity profile] rikibeth.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 03:45 am (UTC)(link)
I could indeed. Hey, I could be your brownie! just remember the saucer of milk, and the papers will be tidied, and the repairman let in, and...

all I need to do is figure out how to be tiny and invisible.

[identity profile] ellen-kushner.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 12:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Deal!

[identity profile] heartofoshun.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 03:41 am (UTC)(link)
Lovely apologies are the next best thing to getting it right the first time.

[identity profile] heartofoshun.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 03:52 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you. I made that one myself. It is a comfort icon.

[identity profile] kittydesade.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 04:02 am (UTC)(link)
Cleaning stoves and doing laundries are important things! They take up the mundanity so the stories and the music and the making people laugh or cry doesn't get any.

[identity profile] ellen-kushner.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 12:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Well said!

[identity profile] matociquala.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 12:40 pm (UTC)(link)
You guys make me happy. ;-)

[identity profile] ellen-kushner.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 12:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Love ya.

[identity profile] jocrowfae.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 03:32 pm (UTC)(link)
"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this *speaker* of York;
And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried." Loved how your topic mirrored itself. And, OK, so its autumn, but your take on the dailiness of life interspersed with magic made me form a much needed smile and now I shall make me some espresso and be useful.

[identity profile] liminalia.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 06:09 pm (UTC)(link)
This does indeed sound like a pretty spiffy day. I want AP to just drop in at my house.

[identity profile] ecmyers.livejournal.com 2011-09-26 10:54 pm (UTC)(link)
That was all just some wonderful dream, wasn't it? :)

Even if it were, I'd still be jealous!