let's stumble towards success and pack some snacks for little breaks

(Note to mamagotcha: please point Linker here after he opens the package I'm going to mail in the morning. I'll ping you to make sure you've seen this if you don't comment.)

Dear Lincoln,

Happy birthday! Sorry I'm a little late with this. I hope you had a good day, and that age 8 is treating you well so far. I hear there was mini-golf--sounds like a good time.

Mom says you've been really into Pokemon lately. That's awesome. The Pokemon card game came out when I was 8, and for a while Cord and Clay and I spent almost all of our time playing Pokemon, talking about Pokemon, trading Pokemon cards, hanging out at the store where they sold Pokemon cards, and saving up to buy more Pokemon cards. I think it was probably my first social fandom, which means it was the first time I got really excited about something that a lot of other people were excited about too, so we could talk about it and be excited together. Being excited about something with other people who are excited about the same thing is really, really fun.

I stopped being so excited about Pokemon after a few years and found other things to be excited about instead, like Harry Potter and motorcycles and learning about how brains work. Right now, I'm really excited about hockey. But even though I wasn't playing Pokemon anymore, I kept all my cards. I'm not even sure why I took them to college with me, since I didn't have very much space to put things. But I'm glad I did, because at my graduation party Cordell and I took them out and played Pokemon. I beat his pants off. It was fun.

I haven't played the game since then. I don't think I even looked at the cards again until today, when I found out that you've started collecting them, so I pulled them out and went through them. Remember I told you I had 418 cards? It turns out I was wrong, and I actually had 470! But now I have less than that, because I made two decks and sent them to you. I made you one deck with all Plant cards and one deck with Water and Fighting cards. There's a nifty Trainer in that deck called Mysterious Fossil that evolves into a couple different Pokemon. If it's hard to figure out, ask Cordell for help. (If he won't play with you, ask him if he remembers how patient the big kids at The End Zone were with him, and I bet he'll do it.)

I had a really good time sitting on my living room floor going through all my cards and building those decks, talking to Clayton on the phone about Pokemon. Did you know Clay was a Pokemon for Halloween one year? He was Sandshrew. That was about 13 years ago. We talked about how these cards are older than you are, and we talked about the neighbor kids we used to trade Pokemon cards with, and talking to Clayton about Pokemon made me remember how excited we used to be. It was cool to remember that, so thank you for making me think about it.

Maybe in a while I'll send you some of my holographic rares, too. It's kind of silly that I'm worried about bad things happening to them, because they're not really worth all that much money. Sometimes people are silly about things that are important to them, though, and my cards used to be really, really important to me. But they're supposed to be played with, they're not supposed to be kept hidden on a bookshelf. So if you keep being excited about Pokemon, and you promise to take good care of them, I'll try to stop being silly and let you have them.

For now, I hope these will keep you busy. Have fun!

Love,
Julia

Today, I took my four-year-old brother to Crown Center. We met up with Kit and Jasmine and spent the day hanging out with them. A couple of amusing quotes from the kiddo:

At the Crayola Cafe:
Kit: I'm thinking about getting dessert.
Me: If you get something with sugar in it, Link will bug you to share.
Lincoln: No! Mom says I'm not supposed to eat sugar. I have to eat good food.

At the ice rink, after he'd fallen over a few times:
Me: Link, are you okay?
Lincoln: I took some damage, but I'll survive.

Lincoln is extremely unsure what to think of this.

I went to sleep at two AM last night and woke up at 4:45. In the afternoon. That's almost 15 hours of sleep. I have no clue why that happened. I did a little algebra homework- I think I'm finally getting the hang of factoring, thank whoever made the platypi. I watched part of an Audrey Hepburn movie with Mom and Clay, then went to the store in my pajamas. Mom managed to convince the manager of Brookside Market to let us buy one of the three Thanksgiving soda sets they're getting this year (last year the flavors were turkey and gravy, green bean casserole, mashed potato and butter, fruitcake, and cranberry). They were going to raffle them off, but Mom's grovelling apparently scared them into promising her one. I am highly amused at the entire situation.

Then everyone else was eating Bill's decidedly non-vegan pumpkin pie (with PAH written on the top... Google "weebl and bob" if you don't get it), so I had a vegan chocolate shake with soy latte and Purely Decadent in it. It was incredibly good but gave me a bit of a stomachache.

Link's been adorable lately. He likes to tilt his head back and spin around until he falls over. He can say a few words like 'dog' and 'watch,' and he's almost figured out which member of the family he's supposed to call 'Daddy'. I taught him to pull up his shirt and poke his navel when I say "Where's Lincoln's belly button?" Except he wouldn't do it today.

Cordell's being an absolute asshole about the G5, which I need to do about four-fifths of the homework I have due Monday and Tuesday (French quiz Monday, French audio both days, algebra homework both days, algebra quiz Monday, English response Tuesday, English group presentation Tuesday, twenty-five minute honors seminar presentation Tuesday, research paper for honors seminar Tuesday). He wouldn't let me have it earlier until I got Bill to tell him to, then I got up to eat dinner and when I got back, he'd taken it over again. I didn't push it then because I didn't want to get in an argument, so I waited for him to get off for about four hours (!) then finally went in there and asked him for it again, and he snottily told me he'd be off in about an hour. Of course, Bill was in bed by then, so I couldn't do anything about it. He's still on there, but even if I could get him off, I can't start anything now because it's one AM and I need to be at church for childcare by 8:30. Bill kicks Cord off when he's around to do it, but he usually isn't, and Mom's being less than helpful- can't I wait, he said he'd be off in five minutes, why are you making such a big deal out of it, just use one of the laptops, etc. I can't use a laptop because a) my French audio is on the G5, b) what I have so far of my English and honors seminar research is all on the G5, c) I want to keep all my work on one computer and the white laptop is entirely unreliable, and d) even if I could do it on another computer, it is not cool for Cordell to think it's okay to behave like this. It would be one thing if he was doing something important, but he isn't. He's chatting on IM, burning DVDs of anime, and posting on video game forums. And what he's learned from this so far is that Mom just wants to avoid conflict, and to pull this shit when Bill's asleep/not here. Life skills? Right.

By the way, he has a job now. But he's at the job while I'm at school, so we still want the computer at the same time. I think he needs to be out of the house providing for himself, but I seem to be overruled on that one. Three more months until he turns 18, though, then I think Bill will be pushing to get him out of here too. Hopefully.

The kid's got a name, people. Wait for it... waaaaiiiiit for it.... LINCOLN.

Lincoln Joshua Paul Sabin Gilliland. Dude, he matches me in middle names. *shakes fist*

They named him Lincoln for several reasons. It means "home by the pond," and he was born in our hot tub out back. Abraham Lincoln was arguably the greatest president this country has ever seen. Lincoln County is where his paternal grandfather lives. It's uncommon enough to satisfy my mom's needs, and recognizable enough to appease my stepdad. Annnnd.... it shortens to "Link." My brothers' names (Cordell and Clayton) shorten to useful objects (Cord and Clay). Also, it's the name of a character in the video game "Legend of Zelda," so my brothers are happy with it.

Joshua is my stepdad's best friend's name, and Paul is his father's. Sabin is a tribute to my mom's last name- it's not hyphenated, but it's there, like the rest of us.

Anyhoo. Cherries and fig-flavored chocolate to you all. *hugs*