My mom's been painting.

Y'all know I'm highly allergic to paint, and she's even worse. But, I can paint under controlled circumstances with high quality products (such as are never used in commercial applications :P), and I get rather a profound satisfaction out of doing it. And now she's discovered that she can, too, so long as she's careful to do it in small bits. :D It's not reaction-free, nothing ever is, but it's tolerable and controllable, and she's so excited that she could paint the craft room before moving my bed and stuff in there. I'm questioning the choice of mint green, oh lord, but I'm so pleased for her. That's become the bedroom basically b/c it doesn't get damp in there the way the other room could, which is partly b/c this one (formerly known as the craft room) is at the front of the house with a window that gets lots of morning sun. Yeah, you can see why I picked the other one to sleep in, LOL. That, plus the under-stairs crawlspace and its entrance are in the craft room as well. But that's fine; it's not like I'm living there, and I can certainly put up with it for visits. The hilarious part is that she was going to surprise me with it, but my mother can't keep secrets like that to save her life, lol. It's why she always spends too much money at Christmas because she buys things months in advance, but can't bear to hold onto everything until December 25th and then has to get something more after she gives it early. ♥

M'in a weird mood tonight. Kinda chatty, yet I don't feel like doing up the 'friends and family newsletter' that I am ridiculously overdue on, and I don't feel like writing. Those are both more formal, thinky kinds of wordplay. Chores-wise, I'm not going to vacuum or clean the bathroom in the middle of the night, and things are more or less organised in here - or at least as good as they're going to get for the moment. I'll prolly redo it some after I do a thorough vacuum, which'll be next week; bathroom takes priority, plus I don't think my back is up for vacuuming after me overdoing it yesterday. And laundry, but the stuff I have hanging now needs to finish drying before I can do any more, tomorrow sometime. I'm likely going to just stay in tomorrow so I can do that and b/c it's supposed to keep up with the heavy rain that started tonight. Ahaha although the disappointment at that notion gives me a better context for the mood: I feel social! LOL. Yes, indeedy, apparently social = a weird mood in my world. Mind you, that goes for a fair few of y'all as well, so that's okay then. *g* I would read, but I don't feel like reading anything *new* and that's all I have. I wish I had brought Tigana. I had this vague notion of buying the 10-year anniversary paperback edition once I got here, that has this amazing afterword in it that I want so bad but hadn't been able to justify buying when I have a perfectly good condition hardcover still, but I don't know now if that was perhaps only even released in Canada. The only Guy Gavriel Kay book I've even seen is the second-to-most-recent one, which is actually the last one that I read; I still haven't managed Ysabel. Maybe the library has something, now that I have a card and all.

Actually, since it was synecdochic's post that probably set my head a-whirl, maybe I'll search out that fic of hers I've had recced several times for all kinds of different reasons and haven't gotten to it yet. That's sort of the kind of thing I'm in the mood to read, that will yank you out and twist your head and heart around. You know, that reminds me too, that one thing that I find I'm missing liek woah in bandfiction, especially lately, is that depth of story. I thought of Revelations the other day because I said something to looking_spiffy about Future Max, and I remember the way reading that story made me feel, and how right and yet complicated and painful everything was; how REAL. There were a lot of killer Roswell stories like that but there really aren't that many in bandfic, at least not that don't go all AU, which I don't like much. *always a canon girl* Even in my own writing I simply don't find the same kind of scope, usually. Saints would be the exception there. I mean I have enjoyed working my way through the 50kinkyways challenge, and I will definitely be completing it. I've learned so much since I signed up for that, not just research-wise but about writing and about myself. And I maintain that I write erotica because sex sets things loose in people that may otherwise never see the light of day. That interests me, and the interaction of different people's unfetteredness interests me. That's how you can end up with something like Saints that has two people fucking a million times but it's never the same twice, even if the specific physical action is, because they're not exactly the same people in situation B that they were in situation A. But I'm missing the level of conflict, exploration and manoeuvrability that a long story allows for. Yes, God help me, I *miss* writing a freaking epic. It's not like I've been avoiding doing so or anything, though. I just don't have any ideas, at least not in bandfiction. The only long-form ideas I have are the two stalled novels with protagonists who aren't speaking to me (and haven't been since I fell into GD obsession/writing), and the Roswell-based one that I categorically refuse to write as fanfiction but can't figure out how to originalise it. That's it. evaine said once that Green Day seems to lend itself to short, sharp shocks in fiction, and that is true. To me, most of the angst that can be realistically introduced to the canon GD universe is of the short-lived variety. Note that I said "realistically." Yes, there's always things like car accidents, yada yada yada, but that feels sooo manufactured to me. And of course there's the journey towards each other and discovering that hey, this is who I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life with, but, y'know, if that's Billie and Mike you're talking about, there's the Est storyline, and if it's Mike and Tré, then you want All the Ways I Never Knew You, and then there's Tré and Billie, and oh that's Ready or Not at All, or if... oh, wait, that's everybody. :P See what I mean? Done, done and fucking well-done.

It's like, when oh_johnny_ signed up for the Est, it crossed my mind too, not for the first time. There's no existing Rob Thomas pup, nor does he have any game connections that I can find, and obviously the writing sample wouldn't be an issue, but I decided again that I'm just not interested, for all the same reasons, which distill down to two main, interconnected ones: Rob, at least the one in *my* head, is a contented fellow. He's happy with his life, he's comfortable with his sexuality, and so any Est play would really be just play. That means that I would be writing just for the hell of it, to have fun, and the thing is? I don't. Writing is a goal-oriented activity for me. Said goal might just be a fic posted on the Internet but it's still a goal. I've done some meta before and it was hella fun (and oh, *so* very wrong, LOL), but that's very much the exception that proves the rule: I write with a completed, polished product in mind. Plus, to be perfectly honest, smut for the sake of smut bores me. There needs to be a point besides somebody getting laid, because to be honest, it's not difficult for me to write sex scenes. Obviously there's thought and effort involved, but some people have the hardest time with those scenes, and I just don't. So there needs to be something else going on to keep my interest, and Rob at the Est wouldn't *have* anything else going on, it'd all be about fun. Ergo, not gonna happen. And I could take James Hetfield in, who would definitely, definitely have more conflict going on (definitely) and is in the same no pup/no connections sitch, but I'm not sure I'm ready to commit that large a portion of my brain to him just yet. And then, of course, we come down to the deal-breaker anyway, which is that she's the only person I know currently writing in the Est (and neither of my potentials are interested in her pup), and I am pickypickypicky about my cowriters. So it's best to not even put myself in that position. Eh, I suppose I could always run epically with the 'Mikey is an alien' one... *snicker*

Oh, for... and there goes Chasing Cars again. Goddammit, radio! All that I am, all that I ever was, is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see... *dramatic sigh*