dismallyoriented

Funny relationship moment from this morning that I wanted to share. Even though my wife knows I love her a lot, she is someone who craves romantic gestures. I am not terribly romantic in that sense - I default to practical or literal responses instead. The intuition for that type of response and when it's appropriate/expected just isn't there. So we've been practicing about it.

When my job started getting really bad, we started saying "have a good day at work" to each other. I finally left that job on Friday. But today wife was standing by the front door ready to leave, when she turns around somewhat expectantly. And I'm like, "Don't you have to go?" And she says, "You gotta say the thing."

It takes me a few seconds before I have the lightbulb moment and shout, "Oh! Have-a-good-day-at-work!" like a kid getting the right answer at a spelling bee. She was so endeared she picked me up and squeezed me about it.

He can be taught.

By which I mean she and the rest of her system have all joined dreamwidth! You can see their introduction post here: https://ghostqueens.dreamwidth.org/300.html

Go say hi! Give a follow porhaps

This might be a bit of a strange one. So earlier today a post crossed my tumblr dashboard, one with a load of excerpts from the NYTimes piece "100 Small Acts of Love". I may or may not read the full piece sometime later today. It is more or less exactly what the title says - a list of things that various couples do for each other as expressions of love. Leaving daily medications out, learning how to cook a beloved food and making it together, singing loudly to mask a sound the other cannot stand (the wife in question had actually gotten over that particular bit of misophonia, but didn't tell her husband because she loved his off-tune singing).

It's that kind of stuff, right? The small everyday things. Even the little excerpt of 20 or so examples had me tearing up at work. They're all so human and mundane.

( I'm not a person who is particularly good at saying )

So my wife and a handful of internet friends are planning a Songs for the Dusk game (a very cool post-post apocalypse game which features such touchstones as Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, N.D. Stevenson's She-Ra, and On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. Someday later I will talk more about it). In the course of brainstorming we ended up on the topic of dragons, which inadvertently reminded me of this very very good short story by Zen Cho, first published back in 2018.

It's about a creature from Korean mythology called an imugi, a serpentine proto-dragon that can ascend into a dragon after 1000 years and careful study. My only point of reference for them is Wikipedia and this short story, so you will need to look elsewhere for a better explanation. But essentially, Byam is an imugi who has tried and failed to attain dragonhood after 3 different attempts, and after the 3rd and final failure, swears to kill the human who thwarted its last attempt (Leslie, a depressed Korean PhD student who was hiking in the mountains during the ascension, and spotted Byam mid-flight). By the time it finds her again, she's an astrophysics professor. When it goes to her office in the guise of a heavenly fairy, however, Byam spies the textbooks on her shelves, which it recognizes as akin to the study it did when trying to become a dragon. Its interest in the topic stymies its revenge for long enough that they start to get to know each other, and the story proceeds from there.

It's a very good story about failure, how to cope with failure, and what it takes to eventually try again. While the free version on the B&N blog isn't available anymore, wayback machine still has it available. It's a very short and affecting read, so I highly recommend that you go check it out if you can. In the meantime, I have my big ol' Review of Feelings to follow.

( May the feelings commence )

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( Wifefeels )

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Entries tagged with partnersys

Morning wifeposting

Merry Christmas! Also my wife exists now

Thinking about love

Short story review: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again by Zen Cho

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July 2025

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