Our anniversary

Well, I was going to write something interesting today. But I'm too tired! I woke up at 3am and started doing stuff rather than going back to sleep. And I've had two naps today, but it hasn't helped enough.

So here's something I prepared earlier.

It was Smith and my anniversary of the first time we went out, on January 24th. I wrote him a card.

[front of card]

24th January, 2008

"Dear Smith,

Well.

It had to happen sometime. After eight years, your brainwashing has finally worn off [in-joke]. Finally, I see things as they really are. I'm kicking myself now, I really am. How could I have thought I loved you?

[inside card, left-hand side]

I mean, all you ever did for me was
share my interest in Physics,
share my love of Terry Pratchett [author of the Discworld series],
make interesting conversation with me,

[continued on a pasted-in loooonnnng strip of paper, folded]
share in-jokes with me, make me laugh, bounce ideas off me, invent new words for me, look at me every day, tell me you loved me in a wonderfully cryptic and creative way, decide to live where you wanted to, send me novel-length emails, tell me your innermost secrets, hopes and dreams, share most of my values and tolerate the rest, feel protective of me, consider my comfort, introduce me to online life, be nice to my family, kiss me silly, cuddle me happy, ask me to marry you, consent when I wanted to wait, give me unwrapped books, lend me your library, share bus trips home with me, be nice to my friends, fit in with my social life, accommodate my study and my timeline, provide me with a safe haven, give me your old computer, download games for me, share your home with me, accept the ring I bought, share your family with me, hold me when I needed you, wait up for me in the lab, miss me when I was away, talk about my family with me, support me through my first job, distract me from my studies, decide what you really wanted to do, move out with me, buy household goods with me, buy furniture with me, make a life for me, enjoy my cooking, buy me a ring, marry me on the MUD [imaginary], wear my ring, support me financially, endure my clinical placements, cook when I was too tired, cuddle me when I was sad, watch TV with me, kill a zillion cockroaches, pay my HECS [Uni fees], take me out to dinner, visit my family with me, tell me about your job, make me smile, take me to concerts, find a job you like, indulge my MUD addiction, sleep by my side, visit me on rural terms, help me take my medicine, support me through my exams, talk about life with me, pick a beautiful new apartment, wash up when I need to cook, buy fun jigsaw puzzles, hold me on the train, help me get out of bed, dress me for class, make sure I eat, change your work hours for me, remind me to take my medicine, take me to the doctor's, hold me when I cried, kiss me til I smiled, make sure I did paperwork, analyse my chances of getting the job I wanted, let me live away when I had to, look good in a suit, imitate HEX [from Discworld] for me, teach me to code, marry me on a beautiful day, plan a wonderful honeymoon, drive us all around New Zealand, take me bird-watching, slide down a glacier with me, surprise me with puzzles, go ballooning with me, fly on a wire, endure my horrible hours, go dancing with me, take me to the theatre, visit me at work, talk me down out of the building, make new friends and old with me, cuddle me when I made mistakes, feed me dinner when I couldn't move, cook dinner when I could, clean the house, take me skiing, push me to move when I was home alone, talk me through things on the phone, stroke my hair when I was sleepy, make me get out of the house, watch my mood for me, help my tidy my room, vacuum the house, let me have friends over, endure my bad habits,
let me know when you were irritated, guilt-trip me into good behaviour, let me buy anything I wanted, share fantastic and whimsical ideas with me, talk with me at nights, walk with me in the mornings, never show a hint of jealousy, while at the same time being perfectly possessive,

[on the card again, still left-hand side]
love me with all your heart, inspire me to be a better person, and generally make me the happiest woman in the world.

[inside card, right-hand side]
I mean, DUH! I should have realised that a man who couldn't bend the universe to my every wish [Another in-joke] would try and make up for it in other ways. And now, it's been eight years, when all along I could have been out there, looking for the man who could...

Oh, what? I actually got myself married to you?
Uh oh...
this complicates things.
let me think now...

Well, before I go on my way, I guess that to be fair, I should try and repay all that ... So I think I'll stick around for a while longer.

And you're good company, I'll give you that.

And besides, if anyone's going to bend the universe to my every wish, isn't it going to be you?

And maybe...

[back of card]
maybe I really am a little bit in love with you after all.

[Illustration: small hearts drift into big hearts forming a thundercloud, raining into a blue puddle washing away to one side.]


*brain slowly melts, and washes clean*

I see the truth ...
I love you with every subatomic particle of my being...
and I always will.

Jean"

You know your husband's a geek when...

Shamelessly copy-pasted from my post in the xkcd forums.

*watching TV, and at a random pause (dinner was ready)*
*Smith looks at the paused screenshot, which happens to be itself a screenshot, of one of a character's many computer monitors*
Smith: Ahh, source code!
*Smith inspects the screen carefully*
Smith: This could be the GDK libraries.
Jean: Ahh, at least it's, umm...
Smith: Open source?
*Jean nods*
*Smith considers some more*
Smith: No actually, this is the OpenGL libraries.
*Jean giggles, and runs off to post in the xkcd forums.*

I love my husband.

For reference: Moonlight Season 1 episode 12, about 5 or so minutes in.

The origins of the angel Jean

Well, I've decided to tell two stories tonight, 'cos I probably won't post tomorrow. The second one's longer.

The first one is purely a vanity story.

--The origins of the angel Jean--

While I was just friends with my now dear husband Smith, he mentioned that he had recently been made a staff member at an online game. This game is a "multi-user dungeon" or MUD, a text-based roleplaying adventure game which could be accessed online via telnet.

Well, soon after we decided we were right for each other (which is another story for another time), he invited me to look at this game. The rest, as they say, is history, but hey, I feel like telling the story and I never really have.

Jean is not my real name. When he invited me to connect to the game, he checked to see if my real name was available as a username. It was. I duly connected to the game using my name, but he wasn't there when I did, so I started playing the game. I found it interesting, but involved, and eventually disconnected.

(Smith is not his real name either. It is his game username. I don't use real names online.)

As a coincidence, one of the other staff members had the same first name as I do. (I think Smith had found that out earlier, and did some snooping around to make sure we weren't really the same person. :P)

Anyway, the next time I decided to connect, I decided that since it was make-believe, I could use whatever name I wanted. I chose Pearl. Yes, Pearl the elf bard was my first real character on the Dead of Night mud and I played her for quite a while.

Once Smith had seen my character, he also made a character, and we played together whenever we were on. But, he was on a lot more than I was, and as I said he was a staff member and knew a lot about the game. Pretty soon his character was 50 levels above where Pearl was. :P

I met his online friends and enjoyed the game for the most part. But I did have one bad experience as Pearl. Because Smith's non-staff character was so much higher than mine, and because he liked to give me things, I soon amassed some equipment that I never would have obtained myself. One day a respected player (who would soon become a staff member) looked at me and accused me of multiplay - that is, making multiple characters and passing equipment from one to the other - which is considered cheating in that game. I was mortified.

A few months in, Smith decided that he no longer enjoyed being a staff member, and quit. He would log in his other character every so often and chat with people, but he no longer played with Pearl as much.

I didn't mind. Our real life relationship was getting stronger (and continues to do so to this day) and we were spending plenty of time together. But I still liked to play as Pearl. She did have a tendency to get hit on, however, which I didn't enjoy. I should have expected that, I guess that's one thing that did reinforce my prejudice of the community as being nerds.

One day I decided I was sick of it. I wanted a new character with different abilities. All I had to choose was the name. I chose Jean. It was plain and nobody would know if I was male or female. And after the multiplay scare, I resolved not to accept any help from ... anyone. I would do this by myself.

And I did. I have to say that I picked one of the most difficult combinations on that MUD :P Not deliberately, just out of ignorance. It was 3 years before I got to level 21 where you can choose your own title, so for 3 years I was 'Jean the elf'.

By then, I guess my personality and Jean's character had really come through. I chose a healer class because it fitted in with who I was. I had even begun to roleplay a little, and of course Smith came back (soon after I started playing Jean, even) and everyone knew I was his. Staff on the mud are given 'god' status (basically meaning they have powers others do not), so I played his little priestess. I also wanted a little humour and conflict in my character, so Jean was a naive and gauche little girl who said things without thinking. Jean was never very good at her healer class anyway, so that helped form the character.

I was very flattered when Smith was allowed to write a room description of his own and he dedicated it to me. This is what he wrote:

Slight, solid stainless steel skylight shows streaming sunlight.
Bathed below, beautiful baskets contain copious cooled fresh fruits from
far fields. Deep, dark desk draws dedicated attention at an actual
angel. Architected as alabaster, an angel appreciates an apple. Less
lovely lifeless, lifelike loses real revelation reality releases. An
angel achingly associates real resonant remembrances etching elven
existence, Jean.

(Yes, I am addicted to apples. One a day. Don't tell me it's ironic I'm a doctor.)

So when it came time to choose my title, I was definitely going to go with Angel Jean. Of course, Smith was the one to point out to me that it really should be the "the angel Jean". So online I have been known for ... wow ... five years now as the angel Jean - Smith's little elf.

I subsequently became a staff member myself (another story, although I have to say I earned it). And when you have to deal with players who want character and game changes from you, and you have no reason to work on them other than a desire to make them happy and the game a better place, you will get a lot of flattery. But I was touched by how many would tell me afterwards that I had truly earned the title in their minds. And call it self-aggrandisement, but I wouldn't have used the title if I hadn't thought I would deserve it. Jean is helpful and kind with never a nasty word to say about anyone, always ready with a listening ear, tries very hard not to show any favouritism, and is Always sincere.

I have drifted away from the Dead of Night. Staffing is a chore, and Smith would rather I spent my life on something tangible. And you can't flatter me by calling me an angel any more, although I might be bemused. But I can't yet let go of the angel Jean, and I try to continue to live by her high standards.

Hmm, story two will be another post.

the angel Jean - Smith's little elf

Apparently I needed a half-hour to think about my chosen topic for the day before I wrote about it. I say this because I decided on my topic while I was writing the last post, and then left it 'unfinished' and went away and procrastinated for the next half-hour. I checked webcomics when I knew there weren't updates, looked at all my Firefox tabs, closed the unnecessary ones, did a puzzle. Now I've thought, I can write.

So I mentioned that I spent a few days with my best friend in March. She's my dearest friend in the world. But when people say that, they usually also mention 'closest' and say they can just call and talk about anything. So I have to face the fact that I'm not very good at 'close'.

Of course, Smith is my closest friend. He and I can talk about anything, any time we want to, and we do. But hey, there are only so many hours in the day, and he likes to do other things too, and so do I. (Right now he's playing Super Mario Galaxy, which is such a fun game, I like to join in too at times.) Anything that has to be said 'now' or 'before I forget' or 'about us' can be said. But most of my thoughts aren't that urgent or pertinent. We share a lot of those too, just not all.

Okay, so back to my best friend. Every so often, she'll call me, and we'll spend 45 minutes or maybe 2 hours talking about interesting stuff. We'll tell each other how our lives are going. Sometimes we'll go out and just walk for five hours, looking at things (museums, art galleries, the harbourside walks, suburbia) and talk about whatever comes up.

But we don't talk about everything. Much as I feel I'm an open person and I love to share, well, I love to listen and discuss things a lot more than I like to talk. (Although I do love to write.) And there are places we don't feel the need to go. We don't have to talk about "men", for example, because she's single and not looking (as far as I know), and I'm married and not looking. We don't feel the need to share our whole inner lives or private lives.

But there are also things I'd like to talk about, that I'm uncomfortable broaching. And one of them is our friendship. Does anyone else find that a difficult thing to talk about?

You obsess over your relationship with your SO (or husband/wife as the case may be). If you have to live with them, so you might as well get it right, and one good way (the best in my opinion) is to think and talk about it. With your family, you might mention things casually, or if you're close you might go as far as arguments and compliments and the occasional 'I love you Mum'. And with a not-so-good friend, if they do something that bothers you, you might tell them and ask them to stop, although it's mostly not that important and you leave it.

But with my best friend ... I dunno. 'Hey, let's talk about us' seems to imply that there's something wrong. She's never actively done anything that bothers me. But I would still find it difficult to start a conversation that was, well, to do with her (good or bad).

And last time I was with her in March, I tried it. We said ... basically nothing. The conversation lasted one sentence, and then we were both too uncomfortable or hesitant to continue.

And no, I didn't actually say anything bad about her, I didn't say anything about her at all. I simply said enough to let her know that I was thinking about a particular private issue that had to do with her, and mused upon a question. She answered some of it truthfully, and then said no more. And I was left wondering if, just by going there, I had hurt her.

What bothers me the most is that I simply don't know if I offended her. I thought about it on the 5-hour train ride home, and while I normally love train rides, that one was hell. I could also list other examples from that trip where I did something and I don't know whether it bothered her. I'm not a very good houseguest. But I don't know how to broach that one with her either.

I've been out with her since then. We had a good time, like we always do. She's even done something since then that tells me she's been thinking about the issue I brought up. And she told me about what she'd done. If there ever was an opening to talk about that issue with her, that would have been it. But it wasn't an opening, really, and I don't know if I'll ever talk with her about it.

Maybe I'll call her now.

Well, there you go ...

I knew I didn't have a good memory for events! Yesterday evening after Smith had read my blog, I asked him if it really was the first night we'd spent apart. We both thought about it for a little while, and then he remembered that I'd gone to spend a few days with my best friend in Wagga (out west) in March.

So now I'm embarrassed. Mostly because I forgot about that holiday for so long. I've even been missing her a lot these past few days, can you believe, and I still didn't remember that. It's not as though I didn't have a good time while I was there, and I even missed Smith almost as much as I did the other night. I guess that missing him wasn't my main memory of that holiday.

Well, the other night was a first of sorts, I guess. It was the first night I'd spent alone at home without Smith. It was going to bed alone that I dreaded the most, which is why I put it off so long and posted at past midnight. I don't know why, I've spent the best part of a lot of days at home alone in the past few months (Smith works, I'm off work), and I've even taken naps in bed. I do get lonely, I guess.

Of course, there is one thought I've been having all evening...

... this is the first night since we were married (just over a year ago) that I will spend without my Smith. Of course, my memory for events isn't that good but I've been thinking, and I'm pretty sure this is the first.
Which makes me sad, of course.
...

Smith's paternal grandmother died on Saturday. She was buried today in Mudgee, which is a few hours out west of here. Of course his family on that side attended. I would have been there too, but I had a medical appointment in town that had been very hard to organise. :( As it was, the family - his mother, brother, my soon-to-be-sister-in-law (sister for short!) - booked a hotel room in Mudgee overnight, as plans were to discuss the will after the funeral. So he's not coming home tonight :( I wish I could have gone with him.

Smith's grandmother was 92. When I spoke to him about her a couple of nights ago, he had some memories of her ... mostly from when he was younger. But she has suffered from dementia, and for the past couple of years she has been in a nursing home close to where Smith's mother lives. She gradually but severely declined, and it has been a while since she recognised Smith's mother when she visits. Part of the tragedy is that her eldest son (Smith's father) did not outlive her, but was taken from us five years ago. The rest of it is her dementia, which meant that for the past couple of years she has had a very poor quality of life as she gradually stopped remembering, stopped speaking and finally seemed to stop being aware of people around her.

Well, when I think about all that, I'm all sad. But for various reasons, I'm not crying. I haven't seen any of her family cry about it, although I wasn't there today. When Smith and I talked about it, we thought that the funeral would probably be more of a remembrance than a huge mourning. Even though I have probably only met her once, I have to say that my feelings are mostly of relief that she is at peace ... dementia is a horrible illness. Those closer to her may disagree.
...

As I write this, I realise how easy it is to hijack your own blog. I came here wanting to write about Smith and me, because I've always wanted somewhere to say how happy I am with him. And to tell you all how badly I've done without him tonight. But the above is stuff I've been thinking about for several days, and I guess I've had more time to put it into words.

Well, before I finally go to bed like a good girl, I'll try and say some of it.

Today, my dad drove me to the appointment. I spent the half a day with him - we bought fruit and on a whim we both had haircuts. (Different ones). But I always knew that I'd have to spend the rest of the day alone, and take care of myself.

I got home in the early afternoon, with plans to eat lunch, wash my newly-cut hair, finish my Christmas cards, cook myself a dinner, and sleep early. What I have managed to do is to get stuck on Meg Kelso's blog (I swear! It's addictive!), eat biscuits with cream cheese dip, two pieces of chocolate, a pear, a slice of watermelon, two slices of toast and a slice of smoked salmon (not in that order), wash my hair, and forget to drink water. In fact, I'm just realising that the lack of water is giving me a headache and I won't be able to sleep just yet. Time for a drink and a headache tablet, back soon.

Forgot the tablet, back I go. :P

Okay, well, this is despite Smith calling three times today. He even rang to tell me to have dinner, I told him I'd make a sausage sandwich, there's plenty of food in the house. The man loves me, he wants to make sure I do what's good for me, when I can't do that he'll even cook pasta and sauce! I love him too but there are times I wonder how I deserve him. Ahh, well, all I can do is appreciate him to his fullest and try my hardest to be worthy.

Yes, I have an excuse - diagnosed depression. Don't worry, I don't have anywhere near as poor a self-esteem as the sentence above might make it sound, he's just so good. But I do suffer from low energy levels and poor motivation. And I'm actually amazingly better in the last month than I have been in the past. Anyway, all that, coupled with a tendency to procrastination/poor initiative, means that I tend to be unreliable about things that are designed to be good for me. Such as eating, keeping well-hydrated, sleeping, and achieving things that I really want to do.

I'm actually debating going and making food now. I might be able to cook and eat before the headache goes away so I can sleep. But I have a visitor tomorrow morning (he's available the one morning Smith's out of town, drat that) ... hmm.

Food wins.

If anyone ever reads this, you take care of yourself too! I'm off to do that.
Jean