Intro post, damn it! For reals!

[st_aurafina]

I keep trying to make an intro post, and real life keeps intervening. Like, tonight, for example, I accidentally murdered the microwave. (Maybe I can plead manslaughter on that?)

But tonight I soldier on!

Hi! Hi friending meme people! Hi, my dear old friends also! This is a belated introduction post. (Here's a similar post from 2009, which is still correct.)

I'm Danielle! I'm 41 and I live in the country. KOALA COUNTRY. My partner is lilacsigil, we've been together for fifteen years. She seduced me with X-Men comics, and it was all comfortably downhill from there. Cis-female, white, bisexual, GAD-sufferer, on the spectrum. Taurus.

I'm a pharmacist, I am the co-owner of a pharmacy in a small country town in a primarily dairy farming region. I've lived here for twelve years, and I love it, despite the occasional gossipy flare-up. We're the only out queer couple here. We're the only out geeky couple here. It's a little bit isolating sometimes.

We have three cats: Aeon (our aging lady), and brothers Baggins and Chewbacca. They are all lovely!

I lead an HAES oriented life. I have recently discovered a love of swimming and a surprising lack of fear in the changing rooms, which means a lot to me. (This time last year, I was trying to pluck up the courage to actually get in the pool. Now I have a season membership, yay!)

What's big in my life right now? We had our back yard landscaped this year, you can see the progression here. We've gone from growing tomatoes in tubs to having a full-on vegetable garden this year, and it's going well.



First tomato:

[Tiny green tomato the size of your little fingernail.]
This is a Sweetheart, which is a cherry variety. We have so many tomato plants this year, I'm a little bit afraid. But people heard about our garden and gave us seedlings, so we put them in. There's one that's some kind of hybrid that just grew one day, and nobody knows what it is but it gives good fruit. They call it Hazel, after the lady who grew it.

Gendered Pumpkin flowers!

[Bright yellow flower on a green plant, there is a visible yellow stamen inside.]
So, we learned that pumpkin flowers are gendered. This guy makes the pollen.


[Bright yellow flower, with a small fruit at the base.]
And this is the one that takes the pollen and turns it into pumpkins. Botanical magic! The variety we are growing is Golden Nugget, and it make small pumpkins you can hold in your hand.

Cannibal Snow peas!

[Pea vine snaking up a frame, with white flowers.]
This is the pea that ate five of its siblings. We planted six. Only this one survived, yet it is suspiciously large. We've since planted more peas, but none of them can match up to monster pea here.

Koala can't believe what we've done to the place:

[A grey and white koala, sitting in a gateway with a disgruntled expression.]
This guy is used to seeing a jungle of trees. None of them were gumtrees, so none of them were part of his habitat (and there are huge, huge gumtrees on the other side of the fence.) He was supremely unimpressed, and when we turned on the sprinklers, he took off into the evening.



Fannishly, I've been a Who fangirl since before I can remember. I love X-Men and X-Files and Twin Peaks and Harry Potter and Sanctuary and Warehouse 13 and Once Upon a Time, and, and, and. I'm very multifannish. Where we live, we get no television reception at all, so I have to download everything.

I co-mod comicstore_news with lilacsigil. I've won NaNo the last six years. I write fic and make icons and sometimes fanmixes.

I'm st_aurafina and st_aurafina. I am not so active at st-aurafina and not active at all at st_aurafina. My chat IDs are in my Dreamwidth profile, and I'm happy to chat.


Now, because I killed a major electrical appliance the week before Christmas, I really want to do that Yuletide meme. Also, It's like the last possible straw of procrastination I can think of, before I have to finish the final edits on my story.


2006
Silk Cut Souvenir or on the Archive here.
(Hellblazer, John and Chas, PG)
Chas Chandler and John Constantine: a story of friendship and miraculously preserved internal organs.
I loved writing this, though I was terrified, because it was my first Yuletide, and (sorry, kindkit! I was really nervous!) the person I was writing for seemed scary and smart. (He turned out to be a good friend, so I feel okay saying that.)

The Seventh Wave or on the Archive here
(Aeon Flux, PG, Trevor Goodchild)
Trevor Goodchild remembers more than he knows.
A treat that I wrote in the final hour or so before the deadline. I love this movie. (I loved the animated series - we named our cat from that series, she's older than the movie.)


2007
A Rattling of Cages or on the Archive here.
(James Bond: Casino Royale, PG)
On the trail of a bioterrorist, James Bond makes more than one regrettable decision.
Casino Royale made me love the Bond franchise again, seriously. (Having said that, I haven't been able to see Skyfall yet. So busy!)

Sea Legs or on the Archive here.
(Chronicles of Narnia, G)
Eustace finds that sea-legs are no use on land.
A coda for Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I sat up straight in the middle of the night with this image of Edmund and Eustace fighting with wooden swords, and I had to write it.


2008
Put Down the Bomb and Step Away from the Rhino or on the Archive here.
(Standoff, PG, Matt Flannery/Cheryl Carrera)
On Matt and Cheryl's last case together as partners, they must negotiate for the life of an unusual hostage.
Standoff is a great series - Gina Torres! - and everyone should watch it, just for the banter. My creative starting point for this fic was "OMG, a rhino is the hostage!)

Taking the Waters or on the Archive here.
(Diana Gabaldon - Lord John Grey series, PG)
The waters of Bath are not the cure that John needs most. (Set between The Brotherhood of the Blade and The Haunted Soldier.)
An actual pinch hit this time. And some pretty heavily implied flirting between John and Stephan, though nothing comes of it in this fic. But I ship them, my pretties! I ship them so hard.


2009
Carried Through Many Nations and Over Many Seas.
(Diana Gabaldon - Lord John Grey series, PG, John Grey/Perseverance Wainwright)
Of all the things that John expected to see in Lady Joffrey's dining room, a half-naked Perseverance Wainwright was perhaps the least likely.
The first year on the Archive. I remember it was quite chaotic! This was the last Lord John Grey I wrote before Diana Gabaldon had her blow-out tantrum about fanfiction, which kind of took the fun out of it for me. *sighs*


2010
Give Us Those Nice Bright Colours
(Warehouse 13, Teen, Myka Bering/H. G. Wells)
Of all the Artifacts to smuggle out of the Warehouse, a View-Master is not the most practical, but Myka is going to save the world.
Holy crap, I just realised I wrote basically the same summary for two fics. Summaries! So hard! This fic came at the end of a wracking, wracking season of Warehouse 13, with HG being carted off in cuffs to who knows where. *chokes back a sob* Everyone was writing fix-it fic.

2011
The Infernal Celibacy Rededication (Or how Roxy decided she didn't need her groove back after all)
(The Middleman, Roxy Wasserman)
No matter the weather, it's good to be Roxy Wasserman.
But seriously, how much fun is it to write The Middleman? I LOVE IT! I love the titles, and the chyrons, and MM's ejaculations lol. It's the best series ever.



That was a fun retrospective, and completely took away the sting of burning out the microwave. COMPLETELY. *convinces self*

Comments

[lonelywalker]

Good luck being on the run from the microwave homicide police...

She seduced me with X-Men comics
I feel this is an even geekier version of "she blinded me with science!"

Your town seems as though it should be at the heart of a comedy series. I'm not sure if it's more Ballykissangel or Hot Fuzz though.

[st_aurafina]

Maybe I blinded her with science? (She used to catch a tram, and buy a couple of Magnums, and we watched X-Files together. It was an awesome sci-fi date.)

We have a Masonic Lodge, so I'm going to have to say Hot Fuzz.

[shehasathree]

Fascinated that you identify as on the spectrum, since i'm currently trying to figure out if/how much said spectrum-dwelling might apply to me.

[st_aurafina]

I haven't sought an official diagnosis, but my therapist agrees and thinks it's likely. I self-identified while I was having processing issues investigated - I have hyper acute hearing that becomes distorted when I'm overloaded, and the only explanations I found were on boards for people on the spectrum. And then I learned about face-blindness, and things started to fall into place. One person talked about not being able to manage walking on a crowded street, and that is something that terrifies me. I honestly can't tell which way people are going to go.

There's a lot of stuff that makes sense in that identity for me - though I'm mostly using the coping strategies more than looking for a diagnosis. Therapist has given me some names to follow up with, when I feel ready to tackle the social anxiety issue, because these are people she says can help me with unknotting that part of me. Next year, maybe. This year has been about getting the anxiety manageable again.

Are you looking at sensory issues, or social. Or physical stuff? Spectrums. They're good in a way, because you can move around in them.

[scheherezhad]

There are a lot of things in this thread that have me nodding in desperate recognition. (Anxiety, failure at telephones, don't function well with too much noise/too many people, some level of face blindness...also selective mutism.) I sometimes wonder if I'm on the spectrum, but the way I was raised tells me I'm just making a mountain out of some unconnected molehills. ...I should maybe stop here, because I'm already in a not-so-great headspace today and I'm upsetting myself.

Mostly I just meant, "hey, me too!"

[inkstone]

Garden!!!

[st_aurafina]

It's the best! We saw baby eggplants and tiny tiny peas tonight!

[likeadeuce]

Your garden looks great and -- wow, that really is a koala!

I'm glad you're having success with swimming, sounds like that's fun :).

[st_aurafina]

It really is a koala! I hear him more often than I see him - he walks up the side of the house from one patch of gum trees to another, and he sounds like a broken down motorbike.

I'm glad you're having success with swimming, sounds like that's fun :)

It's great! And if you had said to me last year that this year I would happily stomp past whole flocks of schoolkids in a bathing suit, I would not have believed you, but I do.

[frayadjacent]

Holy shit there is a koala in your garden! That's amazing! To me, anyway. :)

Great to e-meet you, and good luck with your microwave!

[st_aurafina]

There is! It was amazing to me, too, when I moved out to the country. (It's still amazing, actually, every time I see one. I'm a softie for our wildlife.)

There's a new microwave on the way. It was such an "only at Christmas" thing, sigh.

[retsuko]

My Mom's a Taurus, too! I'm a Leo, myself. Tauri are always cool in my book. :)

I'm really curious: what's the landscape beyond your garden? For me, country where you are means a sort of quasi-small forrest type place (that is, no super-high trees, but lots of vegetation.) Forgive me if that's an incorrect stereotype; my knowledge of the country in Australia comes from a diverse, but mostly pop-culture set of sources, so I fully accept that it may be horribly wrong. And, adding my squee over a koala in the garden! Are they benign neighbors, or do they "borrow" things from the garden?

Anyway, super pleased to meet you. :D

[st_aurafina]

Out the front, it's a typical residential street - quarter acre blocks with brick houses. Out the back, there's a sheer drop down to the town centre where the shops are, and that's full of eucalyptus. They're really big, old trees, and I'm pretty sure they've originals. (And that they're holding the hillside together, too.) But we're pretty green, actually. Most of the year, it looks very much like English country side out here - rolling green hills, lots of cows. In summer, it all dies and turns yellow, and sometimes catches on fire. Basically, the closer you get to the coast, the scrubbier it gets, and the further away from the coast, the greener. And where there's forest, it's thick and tall. This is the closest National Park,it gives a good idea of the kind of forest.

Koalas only eat eucalyptus leaves, so they don't borrow from the garden but they're really, really noisy. This is what we can hear as they walk up the side of the house. It's pretty scary and an amazing sound to come from such a small creature.

We also have possums which do eat fruit from trees - They're quite different to US possums. But also very loud!

[emmeleia]

*waves back*

Your garden looks awfully nice! (and OMG koala!)
I don't have one, sadly, so I've coerced my mum into growing tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, strawberries... also, we have a resident squirrel. :)

[st_aurafina]

It is a lovely garden! We did perfectly well with tomatoes in tubs, but it's much better to have them in beds. Strawberries do really well in tubs, I'm told!

Squirrels! My auntie lives in Canada, and when we skype, she shows me the squirrel in her back yard - they're so cute!

[kindkit]

I was scary? *laughs*

Anyway, that was a fantastic story and you've reminded me how much I adored it.

[st_aurafina]

Well, see, I'd only really seen you commenting here and there on meta posts, and you seemed like a vry srs person indeed.

[clare_dragonfly]

Koala in the garden! Poor koala, he is so disappointed that there is nothing interesting there anymore XD

[st_aurafina]

He was so cranky! He's fine though, he's still walking up the path beside the house every couple of nights, grunting and complaining.

[tree]

KOALA COUNTRY.

i think you mean: DROP BEAR COUNTRY.

oh, man, your roxy wasserman story was a thing of beauty and wonder. you = genius.

[st_aurafina]

Drop bears and hoop snakes! We are screwed!

Thank you! She's a heck of a gal, or so MM would say.

[senmut]

Ooh, did you spark the microwave? Still remember the day my younger cousin nuked poptarts in their foil pouch!

+snugs you for no reason at all+

[st_aurafina]

What I did was so stupid - lilacsigil said "Put the microwave on, something something dinner in it" and I heard "Put the microwave on, I've already put dinner in it" when she actually meant "You'll need to put the dinner in"

And all it would have taken is me having the common sense to look inside the microwave before I put it on. So, yeah, trying not to beat up on oneself too much, but feeling pretty sheepish about it.

*snugs you back* Who needs a reason?

[syntaxofthings]

Trade you a bit of snow for some of those tomatoes. ;) Hi! I feel like this is a re-intro post for me since I haven't been around in... a long while. But I'm home sick and bored so I am slowly yet surely creeping back into Dreamwidth. Oh, man. I miss talking Warehouse 13. I hope hope hope I get season 3 for Christmas, that would be amazing.

[st_aurafina]

You know I would always take that snow away from you! Lovely mysterious snow! It's going to be 37 degrees on Saturday.

Warehouse 13 was awesome this year! (I bought S3 for myself, yay!)

[vass]

*waves to you guys, the garden, and the koala*

This is a drive-by comment because I need to do my Yuletide right now.

[st_aurafina]

*waves back as you drive by* Hope the kitties are going okay!

[lark_ascends]

Nothing like killing a major appliance. While renting, I've killed a washing machine and a fan heater (when I was living in a furnished place - so was not mine). Bizarre how some things happen sometimes.

Yay for your veggie garden!!

[st_aurafina]

Ugh, it was my fault with the microwave. I dealt the death blow. But we have a new one, and the cats have a new box to jump in and out of for a day or so, so we're all happy.

Yay, garden!

[heartequals]

/loves on you

/and your garden

[st_aurafina]

There's a pumpkin there with your name on it.

[mergatrude]

I was going to quickly comment with a "Yay! Aussie bush!" (I live in the Bush Capitol), but I got absorbed in the comment threads and wanted to say how wonderful you all are!

My son has been diagnosed with ADHD, and I see so many of these things in his behaviour (social anxiety, hypersensitivity to noise, etc) that reading about how other people cope with these aspects of the brane-going-feral-on-oneself helps me understand him better. Thank you!

[st_aurafina]

Yay! I'm so glad it helps to see other people going through the same thing. Sometimes I want to say to parents with kids on the spectrum, "Hey, it's okay! We did okay, we have happy lives!"

Brains. So weird and mysterious.

[china_shop]

Yay garden! Unimpressed koala! And ooh, Standoff! *all the hearts*

*waves from across the ditch*

*observes a minute's silence for the microwave*

[st_aurafina]

Unimpressed koala is unimpressed.

Yay, another Standoff fan! It is such a good series.

Poor old microwave. We got a new one two days later, and it was a case of "The microwave is dead, long live the microwave!"

[hibernate]

Lots of interesting comments up there! I'm not autistic, but I have All The Anxiety Issues, basically, and I use some of those coping mechanisms mentioned too - especially that thing about being "calculating" about small talk and looking at it as a game of Sims (LOL, video games, helping socially inadequate people since 2000!). It is really the only way I've been able to do it. I also absolutely can't, cannot look people in the eye, so I tend to pick out a different part of their face to focus on when we talk.

Anyway, the reason I came here to comment, before I got distracted, was that YOU HAVE A KOALA IN YOUR GARDEN. That is totally nuts.

[st_aurafina]

Video games, and omg, reality TV - watching people negotiate social situations while I'm in a perfectly safe environment? I learned so much from The Amazing Race, and not just how to negotiate airports.

Eye contact! I look right between their eyebrows. It seems to do the trick. But ugh, sometimes I can't make it past the chin. Eye contact is hard!

Koala is unimpressed with your excitement. Koala is unimpressed with EVERYTHING.

[rhiannonhero]

The koala pic! My heart! :)

Love this write up! So happy to get to know you!

[st_aurafina]

He's a lovely but super grumpy koala!

And yay, good to get to know you, too.

[umadoshi]

Koala! *_*

She seduced me with X-Men comics, and it was all comfortably downhill from there.

This is a truly excellent "how we met" summary.

[st_aurafina]

Yay, koala! We're too far in town to get wallabies and kangaroos, but we do get the koalas. And the possums, but they're less fun.

[redcirce]

She seduced me with X-Men comics
Obviously the best way to seduce people ever!

Your garden is lovely; I hope it bears a ton of vegetables!

[st_aurafina]

Obviously the best way to seduce people ever!

It was for me!

I am hopeful for a good crop! We've got tiny zucchinis now, and miniature pea pods.