a *very* nice weekend

It’s been a *very* nice weekend.

I made an executive decision and did not bring the laptop up to Portarlington with me. I brought six books instead. This may have been a little on the ambitious side, but better prepared than not! I finally read ‘s fourth and final book in the Glasswright series, which I generally enjoyed. I then started IRON SUNRISE, which I immediately wished I’d read first, because I *suspected* there would not be reading time over the weekend (my family tends to talk all the time when we’re together. *all* the time.), and I really wanted to finish it. Which I did do on the train on the way back, and enjoyed it enormously. The iron sunrise of the title turned out to be destructively poetic. I sat there and admired it for a few minutes before going on with the next chapter of the book. :) Anyway, good stuff. Better, I thought, than SINGULARITY SKY, and I liked that too.

Dad and Gavin met us at the train station, which was a pleasant surprise because we didn’t know when D&G were going to arrive, and I had a vague fear we might manage to utterly miss each other. But we didn’t, and so the weekend was spent playing with the little boys, who were almost exclusively charming (except one incident, the trigger of which I no longer recall, in which Breic screamed his little head off while I sat there thinking that people with copper-penny-colored hair should really avoid making their face that particular shade of reddish purple) and talking about all the various things we talk about. We decided we needed to get Ted and Gavin together more often, because they were having a great time talking about things that the rest of us, who don’t visualize, couldn’t even grasp. Mom made a variety of really yummy meals, and made a *beeeoooteeful* lemon meringue pie, and oh! Breic began to read this weekend! He started to be able to make the leap from C A T to “cat”, so that was really neat! It was a *very* nice weekend. I think our plan is to do this about once a month, so we all see each other regularly. We need to get our house clean/unpacked so we can host!

The train home took a jillion hours, ’cause the brakes broke and we sat at the Glauthane (or something like that) station for over an hour, til they sent a bus to pick us up. But it was still all of the good. :)

And now, ‘s questions, .

1. You have a mutant power (this is not hypothetical; Catie is possessed  of powers far beyond the norm) that you don’t talk about much. Describe your power, its origin and limits.

says it’s fudge. Definitely fudge. :) The making of, I presume, and it is true that I make extraordinarily good fudge.

But I’d probably say it’s my ability to turn negatives into positives. I’m one of those irritating people who apparently naturally has the mindset that They say you should have in order to win friends and influence people, or something. You know: if a door closes, a window opens. I tend to think that’s true, and if something suckful happens (Ted breaks his arm) I really do usually try to see the positive side (Ted gets to go with me to New York!). I don’t think I’ve *always* possessed that particular power, and it’s not to say I don’t/haven’t suffer(ed) crushing defeats, but in the last five years or so I’ve noticed I do find ways to bring out the silver lining. The first time I remember noticing it specifically was when a friend had had an editor tell her everything that was wrong with her book proposal, and my perspective was, “Now you know what to do in order to improve the story,” and that was, I donno, four years ago, I think.

The limits, of course, are that it’s largely internal. I can try to share that POV, but you gotta be receptive to the change in viewpoint.

(There are other things, but I have this sudden irrational fear that speaking of them might make them go away.)

2. What would you be doing right now if Ted had married Beatrice Arthur instead of you?

Writing *different* books.

3. There is not choice, however fruitful, that does not represent some  loss. What have you passed by, by making the choices you’ve made, that you still deeply wish you could have kept?

…

I periodically wish I’d, y’know, tried the Hollywood route, or the athlete route. But I am not a person who dwells on things gone by. Um. Honestly, the best way to really answer this question is with another interview question I had last year. It’s a long story, but it expresses why I don’t much bother with regrets in my life. Go to my Luna interview and search on “This is a long story.”

4. I’ve watched you grumble, be slothful, show all manner of avoidance behaviors…but never show doubt. Are you as confident as you appear? What gives you moments of doubt?

*wry look* What gives me moments of doubt is wondering if I am approaching something in the *best possible way* to achieve success. Other than that…

…I’m afraid I really am this confident. Ted, when he read this question, snorted and said, “Honestly? The answer is “More so.” Or, “And then some.”” I mean, yeah, sure, I have moments of “Oh, God, this is crap,” but … this is for real. It’s just how I’m wired. I really wanted to say, up there for question #1, that my mutant power was unassailable confidence, but everybody appears to *know* about that one, so it didn’t seem like a power that didn’t get talked about. :)

5. Your annual review comes in; you work well, but you aren’t going to be allowed to be Kit anymore. Because of your fine performance as Kit, you get to choose who you will be next. Who will you be? Why?

This is an AWESOME QUESTION.

My first thought was Hugh Jackman, because, I’m sorry, but it’s got to just *rock* to be Hugh Jackman. This is essentially my criteria, here: who would it be *fun* to be? I’m assuming if I’m getting a new role it means I don’t get to take my personality quirks and opinions along with me, so no point in going for a position of massive power, like, say, the Pope. Or Karl Rove. So sod power. I want to have fun. (And this probably tells you just about everything you need to know about me as a person, doesn’t it?) I think it must be massively *fun* to be Hugh Jackman.

If I don’t have to go with someone in the current time frame (and if I can be reassigned, I see no reason why I can’t take my pick out of historical figures, too), I’d probably have to say… Eleanor of Aquitaine. Elizabeth I is a toprunner, too, but we know so much more about her the idea of taking up the role of Eleanor is just very appealing. She was so incredibly powerful, arrogant, intelligent, and capable I couldn’t resist.