#normal things to do

[strugglinguist]

I sometimes have to put up a stuffed elephant to present to when recording for videos. It helps me use a more natural cadence to actually teach SOMEONE or SOMETHING. Otherwise I will drop into Autistic Robot territory or forget people have certain listening speeds. Since my roommate isn’t awake yet, I’m presenting my elephant with information about Plato’s and Panini’s thoughts on language this morning.

[guccigarantine]

you know when you get into a knife fight with the emperor of the galaxy

[feywhimsy]

i was like "WHY am i so close to carrying capacity??"

i then noticed i've just been. carrying around rolan's dead body

[myhamartiaishubris]

Mulder really said I don't care about the FBI I'm just here to be nosy and I respect him for that

[chubbymaryjane]

casually holding the pussy open so that an unseen monster may slide in

[schadenfreudich]

If I only talk about middle high german today, that's because i am being consumed by mhg grammar.

[alinaandalion]

Eliot calls her at some point.  It’s been a few months since Nate’s funeral and Maggie’s life has shifted back into something close to normal.  It feels different than she had expected; in some ways, not as bad as she’d feared but worse in others.

She misses him, misses the friend he’d become.  And then, the sharper edge of it, missing the only other person who knew Sam like she did, who shored up her own memories, who would always take her calls when she needed someone to talk to when the grief rose up out of the blue and cut her down.

But Eliot calls.  He’s worried about Sophie, and he stumbles through some kind of explanation.  It’s all a bit odd, always has been, but she takes it in stride.  Regardless of how much she would trade it all away to have Sam back healthy and whole, she is glad to have these people in her life.  Glad that Nate found a good life and she got to stay a part of it.

He explains how he and Hardison and Parker are worried about Sophie.  How they call, and when she does bother to answer, she sounds hollowed out and distant.  He says they don’t know what to do to help.

She hears the unspoken question:  how do you live with grief this big, this consuming, a dark pit that you fall into and can see no way out?

And the second question underneath:  how do you help someone grieve when you’re going through the same thing, when it tears right through you until you think you can’t breathe?

So she tells him the truth.  There is no way to help.  All you can do is hold on and grit your teeth and bear through it.  Because it won’t go away, not in the way you want it to.  It just fades away and you go on living, and then there’ll be a moment, a reminder, and a hollow ache opens up in your chest.  But even that won’t hurt for as long or as deep, or at least, not every time.  

And when their call is over, she books a flight out to Boston for the end of the month.  

[saintsanguine]

i'm so normal i see a painting of catherine of siena and i burst out in tears