This thread is an awesome thread. Fred - damn, that is some intense stuff. Jars OMGWTFBBQ Baby!

I feel like I kinda know what's up with a lot of folks through FB, but for the record currently in the World Of Fay I'm in my 3rd year working in Uganda, happily so, but presently looking for jobs elsewhere for the next Academic Year. (2nd interview for a gig in Suzhou, China, tomorrow, via Skype.)

The Cat Daniel, whom I acquired as a scruffy kitten in The Sahara Desert lo these fourteen years ago, sadly shuffled off his mortal coil within the past twelvemonth, due to cancer of the cat. (FUCK cancer.) it was grim. However he'd had a happy two years here in The Pearl of Africa and had learned to enjoy, in his grumpy neurotic fashion, the company of a wee calico kitten called Miss Darcy. When Daniel died I brought home two floofs to keep Miss Darcy company: Thor and Loki. I have apparently embraced Crazy Catlady hardcore, which is not the wisest choice for somebody with a peripatetic existence, but I don't have kids, so I'm going to try to make it work. (My cats are SUPER AWESOME you guise. SUPER SUPER AWESOME.)

What else? Um...perennially single (see above re: crazy catladydom), still bake excellent cookies & create awesome liquors, currently blonde, got promoted to Head of Department at work this year, teaching Art as well as Drama and English, haven't done much writing other than for work (oh - but I did have a play staged here at the National Theatre last Christmas, and I've written another that will be performed here this Christmas. Although this sounds way fancier in writing than it is in reality), have been acting on and off in various things...er...that's pretty much it.

Oh - although I wrote a rap about Donald Trump recently which I'm rather pleased with, which was a result of obsessing over "Hamilton". So that's a thing.

Fay! I'm so sorry about Cat Daniel. I can't believe it has been that long since you started teaching in Egypt. Good luck wherever you end up next school year!

I kinda feel like a lurker, even though I'm still around and reading here, and even (infrequently!) posting. Still in Seattle, still with that adorable loomy Brit. Still have the pretty sweet tech writing gig that lets me work from home (even if I'm still the only damn writer for my massive product).

What else? Gothic Charm School is still in print and selling, yay! I'm waiting (not at all patiently) to see if any publisher wants to buy my first novel.

I love de-lurking month!

So let's see....my kids are now 11, 8, and 4. Frisco was diagnosed with mild autism (Asperger's) last year. The diagnosis was difficult to get to but now he's doing so well and has amazing support. He goes to 11 hours of therapy a week plus his regular therapist and loves karate. eta: I guess I forgot the other two kids. Ellie is in 6th grade and growing up so fast. I LOVE watching her growing up. She's so busy and independent. Sammy, 4, is also currently focussed on becoming a ninja. Loves karate but also like practicing walking silently through the house to hone his ninja skills.

I've been dating the same guy, Sergio, for 18 months today. We've been through some real ups and downs but I think we are both very much in love. I think we've both learned a lot from crappy past relationships and so we seem to still be kind to each other and respect each other despite the difficult parts.

About a year ago, I bought a house with my parents. It has some ups and downs but mostly ups. My kids love being around my parents and vice versa. I love having other adults around. We also have a great German au pair.

My law firm has really grown. It's amazing how sometimes divorce is the perfect thing to make you both happy and successful. I am now struggling to meet demand and all the PITA parts of running a business.

I see many of you on Facebook,but it's nice to come back home so to speak. It's crazy to me that I have been on this board since at least 2003 - 13 years....

So, in this middle-of-the-night-instead-of-working posting, let's see what updates I can come up with. Hmm.

First: Jars, what great news! May all be as well and healthy and happy as possible, for all of you.

Aims, Callaluna - I can't imagine it being easy, but it seems from how you write that it's the good thing for you, so the hardships are worth it. Good luck.

All y'all - it's so good to read your updates! Fay and esse and Susan and erin and Raq and PMM and Stephanie and Jilli and Nora and John and sail and Barb and Strix and juliana and beth and sumi and Amy and Glamcookie and Fred and Anne and Theresa and Frank and and... and it's bad to name names because now I'm sure I've missed at least one and am already sorry in advance!

You know the basic important stuff, I guess - the much-loved khusband, PiBoy, Pi++Toddler (or is it Pi++Girl? When does it have to change?), physics, lecturing (so working at talking in front of students all the time, not in front of a computer as I had been during my MA and PhD), and the details of the daily runnings-around are pretty much covered by this, but at the same time, so much not.

Nothing - no matter how many large paragraphs I throw at any screen - can convey how impossibly lucky I feel that I got - and get, each and every day - to be part of the lives of those two wonderful exceptional rare people, who are still a little boy and a toddler (no, I really should get started calling her a girl by now). I have no idea what kind of cosmic lottery we filled in order to win such a prize, and then win another one, all over again. And, yeah, of course every parent feels that way, completely objectively, of course, and without any comparison to any other little human being who walks around the earth, and yet, I can't avoid but feel that I managed to really luck out in this, the 'Everybody feels that way, but in our case it's the rare time in which it's true' sort of way of looking at things, you know?

PiBoy is five and a half years old, and in his last year of kindergarten. Pi++LittleGirl is three and a half years old, and is at her first. I could post endlessly about them, embarrassingly so, and therefore I won't even start. I do realize that children's stories - as well as children's pictures - are mostly interesting maybe to a few family members of those children, and sometimes not even to them, so I won't go into all those little details who build the everyday pictures of their lives, and therefore of such a large part of mine. I'm deeply thankful that I got to experience with them those normal-boring-mundane details of their everyday. The fact that they are their normal-boring-mundane stuff coats them for me in all the colors and glitter possible.

With work, things are quite the same, and yet somewhat not. I'm a physics lecturer at a pre-academic program, just like I've been doing in the past few years, but the program grew extensively last year (due to bureaucratic reasons unrelated to the content of the classes), and suddenly I'm the head of the physics part, with a few lecturers and lab-instructors whom I have to coach and manage and who thought I'm a grow-up enough person to be in charge of others like that?

It increased my workload immensely (especially since I've realized that I have opinions - even strong opinions! - on how certain subjects should be taught, which ends up in me having to actually sit and write those opinions down, for the other lecturers to be able to teach accordingly, so that all the groups who are supposed to cover the same material actually do. Some of that stuff I can't find in any schoolbook, so I totally have to make it up as I go along. In fact, that's what I'm supposed to be doing right now, instead of rambling about meMeME, but there you go).

Also, last year I ended up agreeing to another project (before I knew about how much my regular job would grow), so last year was hectic to the point of - oh, I can't think of a proper comparison. Grading season was especially crazy, and between the khusband's illness, being adamant that (continued...)

( continues...) afternoons are spent with the kids so that I'll get to actually be with them for a few hours each day, and starting all the from-home part of the work only after they were asleep, I didn't even have time to remember that I don't have any time for anything. I've already taken several steps in trying to ensure that next year will be at least a little less crazy. Hopefully, some of them will actually work. I still find that moment of the light-bulb being turned-on on top of a student's head in "Oh, so *that's* what it means!" to be a thing of wonder and joy.

I constantly wish I had more time to catch up here, to really know how you're doing, not just check "Beep Me" and "Press", but the actual daily details of how people are doing (just like, I'm-not-going-to-calculate-how-long-ago-because-I'll-never-believe-the-number-anyway, I was looking for your conversations regarding the BtVS episodes, not just episodes recaps). So many of you are constantly in my thoughts and daily in my prayers. I miss y'all.

[Edit: yeah, I didn't expect I could do it in just the one post, I have to admit. And that's even without getting all gushing and mushy and sappy about the khusband and the Pi and the Pi++. And without me getting to try to unentangle thoughts about how parenting is the most challenging, rewarding, demanding, forcing-you-to-the-become-the-best-possible-version-of-yourself job I could never imagine. Concise, that's not a word I can ever use for anything regarding me.]

Nilly, it is lgood to see you here, and very good that things are going so well for you.

Stephanie, it is good to know you are prospering.

Concise Nilly would be sad making. It is a pure delight to read about your full and happy life and I only wish you had more hours to spend with us to share those daily moments. You are loved and missed.

So let's see....my kids are now 11, 8, and 4.

How many Buffista sprog have been born in the last 15 years or so that we have been here? World Domination is surely ours.

Stephanie, it is wonderful to see your considerable hard work yielding such results. What you do is important and I hope more gratifying than frustrating.

Nilly! So good to see your pixels again.

So is my non-Buffista friend the only one who calls that club "hyster sisters"??

I think I will call it that from now on, since I'm scheduled to join said sisterhood in February. Could've done it earlier, but between the Europe trip last summer, having had the flu this spring, and my NYC trip this summer I'm super-low on both vacation and sick leave, so I wanted to stock up enough to avoid leave without pay. Also, doing it in 2017 gives me time to up my flex med contributions. Not to mention it's given me time to go from, "Wow, surgery=scary! No more uterus=strange," to "So damn sick of this get it out out OUT."