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What’s up now, Papo? I’m back in California, living with my fiancé, and biking to work. Long-term plans are fairly long-term — we want to honeymoon in France. Short-term plans are fun — renfaire this weekend, and camping (we think) in May/June after my OT crunch ends and Mike’s eye is fully healed.

My house is for sale. I wish it were for sold, but eventually it will. And in the meantime, we get by.

The trip to Youngstown last year was a mix of awesome and unexpected. Seeing you was bittersweet, and I felt like I put closure to something. Some unexpected bumps manifested along the way, but Mike and I had a great time despite the whims of fate.

I want to take Mike to Knott’s sometime this summer. I remember the time you took us and it was closed. Closed! That’s like showing up for Christmas, and finding someone had canceled it.

But you were Papo, and so you took us to Disneyland instead. Whims of fate, indeed.

There isn’t much I can think to add at the moment. I love you, Papo. I am glad Mike was there when I went to see you.

I’ll see you next year.

I did, however, grow up. I know. It’s tragic. But the pixie wings no longer sparkle in my mind’s eye like they used to.

Which is not to say that we won’t have some unconventional touches. Mike and I both are anti-champagne, but we love and comfortably tolerate Lindeman’s Framboise. We figure if we have to toast with something bubbly, we’ll toast with something we can both drink.

I know what you’re thinking. That’s so tame, Steph. Where’s the exploding cake? What about training Atticus to be the ring bearer? Ah, my friends. I have over a year to think on this. There are other, little things that I plan to do. The creative factory in my cranium has begun churning, and in my old age one might say I have become more…subtle.

Like a brick.

Of glitter.

Anyway. Mike is getting better, and I am sliding into the wonderful world of overtime as we gear up for…things. Stuff. And shortly: sleep. Mmm. Yes. Delicious, delightful sleep.

For those not up to date, Mike proposed to me last week, and I accepted. This is all very exciting, and now I am wearing an engagement ring for the first time in my life, and also for the first time in my life I find myself planning a wedding.

Weddings and games have similarities, so in this at least I am prepared: my day-to-day job is planning things within a game company, and so I find myself making the irresistible comparisons.

Weddings, like games, are easy to plan if you have infinite resources. And weddings, like games, can spiral horribly out of control even if you have infinite resources. (For the record, I do not have infinite resources, no matter what the credit card companies tell me.)

Weddings have a finite audience, and pre-orders — I mean invitations — can give you some idea of where your budget stands and how badly you’re going to blow it. They have a deadline you usually can’t push back after a certain point, and they have certain expectations. Brides should wear white, reception deejays should be annoying, wizards should cast fireballs.

Damn, sorry, mixing metaphors again.

Right now I am focused on finding something we can afford on the three points we care about: the ceremony, the reception, and the honeymoon. As we are not yet Filthy Rich and my dress will not be sewn from discarded hundred dollar bills, I actually have to be conservative, which is something I’m sure my parents never thought their former San Francisco pixie would say (note to Mom: given the choice, I would vote for Obama all over again).

Anyway. All this planning gives my brain ample outlet because even as I type this, Mike is trying to sleep off what we hope is not another tear in his retina. We have an 11 AM appointment for him. All we can do is hope.

But there is also this, that as I marched up the stairs from another night of overtime (such is the planner’s life during the final days of working on a project in the games industry), and as I worry about his eye, I know we shall come through together. And if it were me with the detached retina, then it would be him holding my hand as we wait in the doctor’s office, him driving me to appointments, him making sure I’m doing what the doctor says.

And that is why I will search for the right balance of cost and fun for our Big Day, and tolerate “Baby Got Back” on the dance floor, and kiss him after I say “I do.” And mean it for as long as we both shall live. That is why I said yes in the first place, and yes again, and again.

Most of those have told me they like me with long hair. Not just told me, but have been pretty adamant about my hair’s length, to the point that one told me he’d break up with me if I ever cut it.

(Amusing sidenote: I informed that one in particular that I, too, liked his hair at a certain length. He shaved his head a week later. When I commented about this double standard, he snorted and said, “Deal with it.” Needless to say, this one Did Not Last.)

So after having one, two, three guys comment pointedly about my lovely lady locks, I started to get a little neurotic about them. For a period in my life, I cut my hair above the shoulders partially because it made life easier, but also as a sort of spiteful middle finger aimed squarely at all those boys who had equated my attractiveness with my hair.

When I started dating Mike, I asked him the Hair Question. He shrugged and gave the answer that makes every girl’s heart leap. “Baby, I’d love you even if you were bald as an eagle.” Okay, so maybe not exactly those words, but you get the idea. Now I wear my hair short, long, whatever. He doesn’t care. He loves me either way. Hurray!

Until…I grew out my nails.

It was an accident! I don’t even know how it happened! My nails always break off. I type and I cook. This is Death to Nails. But California, something about that freakin’ state makes my nails long.

And one night, I scratched Mike’s back with them.

And now….

Well, how do I put this? I’ve learned the awful truth: Mike prefers his lady’s nails long. And all I want to do is chop ‘em to the quick, and all he wants is for me to keep on eating jello or whatever it is that’s making them grow.

Today I am in Boulder on a business trip. I stopped in a nail salon after my seminar, and I lingered over the price list. They are so ridiculously long, people. I feel like Wolverine when I’m typing.

Mike assured me I could get used to it.

I assured him I liked his hair longer.

I’m pretty sure we’ll still love each other, regardless the length of either.

ME:
“I’m going to the store. Do you need anything?”

MIKE:
(mouth full of gauze)
“Tissue.”

ME:
(confused)
“There’s a whole box right there.”

MIKE:
(mildly frustrated)
“Tissue!”

ME:
“Well, if you think you’ll need more –”

MIKE:
(slowly enunciating)
“Just…you!”

ME:
“OOOOOOOOH.”

Yeah, I know. B’AWWWWWW. The romance is STILL ALIVE, my friends.

I suspect the last do-nothing day I had was sometime during the start of the year. The last day when I felt like my job was secure, my world wasn’t going to change dramatically anytime soon, and it was safe to relax and drink coffee in my PJs.

It’s not that I think there is no chaos now that I suddenly work elsewhere. I actually consider the management, coordination, and prioritization of chaos to be part of my job description. To some degree, I like the challenge sudden chaos exposes me to — even as I simultaneously work my damnedest to keep it from affecting my schedules.

But all that aside, I am feeling very good today. I have no furniture to move. I have nothing particularly pressing to deal with. We had a scare with my grandmother mid-September, but she’s pulled through and I know she’ll be around for at least another ninety years, playing bridge and kicking out amazing apple pies.

Mostly, though, I feel safe, and I find it bemusing. Even as I sit here, refreshing my coffee cup and reading the second Mistborn novel, I find myself in reflection. The heroine of the series and I share a characteristic: neither of us believes in or trusts the concept of “safety”. A part of me will always stubbornly insist that there is No Such Thing.

But I have a do-nothing day for the first time in what’s been eight months, and on a do-nothing day it is okay to temporarily give in to that illusion.

And because my do-nothing days are more “do-nothing-important” than truly “do-nothing“, I have Christmas limas soaking and plans to bake cookies.

C’mon, this is me after all. I can’t exactly just sit by and do nothing.

The young woman at the time was in the midst of hating college, upset that the publishing industry hadn’t handed her a career on a silver platter, and aware (on a peripheral level) that she was in a destructive relationship with the wrong guy.

The job gave her several things — money, friends, a career. But it also instigated significant change. Dealing with bills and coworkers encouraged her to grow the fuck up. She acquired perspective to augment the compassion she already had. Fewer things made sense on a black and white level, and a few things just stopped making sense. She recognized the loser as such, and dumped him. On her own she realized that if she still really wanted to be a writer, she actually had to, y’know, write.

Change kept happening. And one day several months ago, a bigger change decided to knock on her door.

It’s like this: I miss my family.

And also: I want to change my career path.

People who have worked for Simutronics know what the give and take is. I love my job, still love my job, will miss what I was doing when I’m gone. Even now, with a week remaining, I am talking to my coworkers about the cool things I want to see in the current game.

I will miss the people who are like a strange, corporate family to me: my coworkers, the GameMasters, the players. I am grateful and thankful for all they have done, and always will be.

But at some point, I realized there were things that outweighed all that. Like being near my family again. Like looking toward my long-term future, and the need to establish myself in the gaming industry.

During the first half of my time at Simu I saw it as a temporary gig. I’d sell a book, get a publishing career, go be a full-time writer. I mean, the gaming industry was fun, but was it my future…?

And in the later half, that changed. I read enough horror stories to know that I didn’t want to scrape by as a midlister, wondering if a paycheck would materialize or if my agent/publisher would drop me or if I’d ever “make it”. I didn’t want to write books because I had to. I wanted to write them because they moved me.

More importantly, I realized which career I wanted in the industry, and it wasn’t as a designer or even a writer. I wanted to be a producer. I wanted to see projects through. I wanted to guestimate, schedule, and scope out. I wanted to help plan the battle. Crazy, but true.

But this wasn’t going to happen at Simutronics, where I was more valuable as a writer. Nor was I certain it could happen anywhere — until it did. More importantly, it did within driving distance of my family.

And that, ultimately, decided it.

So now the story is a little different. It’s a big company taking on an experienced woman, and the risk is low because the woman is awesome and so is the company. If she’s still unpredictable, it’s hopefully in the “flash of brilliance” way, as opposed to the “why did you throw a rice krispie treat at your coworker” way (answer: because he looked like he needed one and I swear I didn’t intend it to hit him in the face I SWEAR).

And while she came here with a loser on her arm, she’s leaving with the best guy in the world in her heart. Where the loser whined at her for leaving and asked her to quit her job to come be a loser with him, the best guy in the world is behind her 100%. He wants her to succeed. He wants her to have this thing, this career, and to be near her family again. He wants to come out and be with her when possible. And he will be. She knows that.

On the 16th, almost exactly 13 years to the day when I moved here, I will hop in my car and take the cats on a four-day trip through America. On the 20th I’ll be in California. On the 24th I’ll start.

I don’t believe in happily ever after. Every day is a new challenge, a new chance to be happy. And we will rise to that challenge. Ever after.

As a little girl, and even as a young adolescent, my grandfather was everything to me. He was one of the three cooks in my life (the other two were my grandmother and mother), and he had a penchant for good chocolate, jigsaw puzzles, and singing, “Here She Comes, Miss America” whenever I came walking down the stairs.

After they moved back to Ohio, I would come to visit in the summer, and he and I would take long walks through the forest and meadows, collecting wild fruits and bringing them back to my grandmother. Sometimes we had enough for pies, sometimes we had enough for jam, but usually we only had enough to eat out of hand.

I remember my grandfather being wiry, but strong. He insisted on walks after a meal. He was picky, and stayed up very late. He wasn’t afraid to say what he meant. He was intelligent, kind, and he let me put his hair in rollers. He was a positive male rolemodel, and though he’s now been dead longer than he was alive for me, that early influence of a man with a sense of humor and can-do, improvisational attitude has always been a strong force in my life.

When Mike asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday this year, I mused, “You know, I’ve always wanted to see my grandfather’s gravesite.” Mike’s response was, “Then let’s do that.”

And that’s why I love him. Because yesterday, we did. It’s been 18 years, but I finally got there.

I miss my grandfather. It was nice to see him again.

My grandfather's marker.

1. Drugs. After a decade, my sleep disorder has been addressed, and I can actually go to bed at a normal time.
2. Relationship. We both need to be healthier, and have come to independent conclusions on this. Mine was that I needed to hit the gym at least 3-5 days a week and cook more meals. His was that he needed to eat said meals more often.

Additionally, we both are people with side projects. Mine is writing, his is coding. The free time we devoted to this suddenly evaporated when we started living together, because we tend to gravitate toward one another when we’re awake. I’d be in my bedroom, typing up an action scene, and I’d hear from his room, “Hiiiiiii.” Or he’d be in his bedroom, frowning at Ruby on Rails, and I’d bounce in and curl up around him because I was bored. Neither of us was getting much accomplished.

I’d been sliding toward an earlier schedule since I started taking the sleep medication, and I find I like it, a phrase I never thought I’d utter in written or spoken form. In the mornings, I can do some cleaning up and get to work early, when it’s quiet and distractions are fewer. Because I get home before him, there’s plenty of time for me to prepare a healthy dinner without us having to eat at 10 PM. In the evenings, when I’m sleeping, he can focus on code.

Not that we don’t still cuddle and talk. But we both recognize that we’re cuddle addicts. Addicts, I say!

Anyway. Still adjusting to this, but it seems to be working. Better living through chemistry. And, y’know, that whole give-and-take of a relationship thing.

I’m not saying this journal is back from the dead, by the way. Sometimes things do feel like they need to be said. So I’m letting them talk. For now.

Seven years ago was bad military jokes, pontification, and corrections from Mom.

Six years ago today? Melancholic about being single. A kick in the ass from a kick ass woman named Kim.

Five years ago I was riding emotional rollercoasters, experiencing house anxiety, still pondering being a spinster.

Four years ago I was writing a book, starting to feel iffy about the house, blissfully not a manager.

Three years ago I was going to E3 in Los Angeles, learning to grapple with being a manager, and a couple months away from an ER visit.

Two years ago I was getting a massage and party-bound, still single, still wrestling with keeping my house in order.

One year ago I forgot to post.

So here we are, and I did not forget this time. This is the watermark post of this journal.

I’m grillmaster today at our company barbeque, and I’m up early because I need to pack some things and do a little prepwork. Last weekend we went camping. I found two ticks on me, and Mike found two on him, and that doesn’t worry me anymore. Most of the weekend we relaxed and ate brats and steak.

I had a car accident exactly two weeks ago. The less said about that, the better, but it’s significant, so I should mention it.

But mostly I have been thinking for several nights now how much Papo would have liked some of the changes in the world. I’m sure he would have hated others, but I think he’d enjoy some of the food I’ve found and cooked, and I know he’d like Mike. Certainly the new American love affair with hot peppers would have made him happy. And he’d have fussed over the great-grand-babies/kids: Brooke, Cari, Jay, Brett, Kiryan, Kip, Ben.

In June, Mike and I are taking a trip for my birthday to visit the cemetery where Papo is buried. That’s my birthday gift. Call it morbid, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for years, and my birthday seemed a good time to do it.

Tonight I will make beef and mushroom soup, and I’ll remember my granddad. For now, though, I need to chop onions and prep the coolers. I suspect, as a restaurateur, he would understand this.

I love you, Papo. I miss you.