From snowflakes to giraffes

So today's Snowflake challenge has led me to this — a friending meme from St. Aurafina. And I'm thankful to find it.



DW username: Taabe
Preferred pronouns: She / her
Other platforms (please specify): A03 (also LJ under a different name)
Active/primary interests or fandoms: Fandoms range from Check Please and YOI to Barbara Hambly, Haroun and the Sea of Stories and the Thousand and One Nights. Dorothy Sayers, Kamila Shamsie, Rainbow Rowell ... Often small and most often books. I write for a living, and stories matter.
If you've seen me around, it's probably because: I've written for Yuletide off and on for about 10 years
I post about: Here, about stories I'm reading or writing, contradance music, small mountains, friends and family, puttering in the kitchen, life events
I post/check my feed: Depending on the season (and deadlines), it varies from weekly to a few times a month
I want to find people that post about: Books, writing ... I'd love to know more about more writers from more parts of the world, for one.
I am most interested in interacting with people on: DW for anything like this
My blog is: Sometimes public but often friends only
Anything else you need to know about me: I love fandoms and stories where people really talk and work their way through tough times — where they have the hard conversations and trust each other and face their dragons together — and they're rare.

Thankfulnesses

It's a quiet winter day, a trace of thaw before the next storm. It's supposed to be snowing now, but the temperature is the age I've just become. It will be colder before morning.

I'm at the end of a holiday break after a rare week with family and friends. My sister and brother-in-law live across the country, and my brother and about-to-be-sister-in-law live halfway across, so having all of us together takes thought. And they are close friends. We are. We had some quiet time over Christmas and the early nights of Hanukkah, making cookies and lighting candles. My oldest friend and his wife gave us a vid made with 10 years of photos of us all. And then we headed to the farm, and two old family friends and my brother's fiancée's family came up to meet us. So we had a houseful of board games and a fire in the fireplace. I introduced Oracle ... which told us, among other things, that the Swedish Chef can take any three superheroes out there, including the Hulk. With flying lettuce and a blunderbuss.

When I got back, the annual New Years Tribecon was in full swing, with more old friends and games and conversations about the properties of funghi (which evolved before animal or plant life and can eat rock — there's something alive in here.)

And this is a quiet time in a quiet month. I've taken a couple of quiet days to settle in and re-read Rainbow Rowell's Carry On (one of my new gifts, a request because I finally read a library copy this fall and fell into it headlong.) Sanj introduced me to Yuri on Ice, and we watched the whole short, beautiful season. Kouredios, I think I owe you for telling us about it? It's breath-stopping, warm, the rare kind of love story that feels real.

The podcast I've been working on has gone live, and deadlines are easy so soon after the holidays, and in winter. I'm looking forward to a few weeks of quieter time, and to writing more fiction before the journalism catches me up again.

And I'm 39. This morning I opened an email from my sister, and she had written me a birthday poem. It's the first time anyone has written a poem for me. It made me cry, in the best way. And my brother has saved up enough frequent flyer miles so I can visit him. This year may bring plenty I can't predict, for better and for worse, but my people — all of you I am so thankful for.