Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
My grandmother died last night. This wasn't a shock or a surprise. Her health has been on the decline, and she's been in hospice for the last month. She lived a long life, and in her final days she was surrounded by her three adult children.
My grandma was a kind woman. She wasn't perfect, but I always felt loved in her presence. She was a retired kindergarten teacher, and was still working when I was a kid. I have so many happy memories sitting at her kitchen table, and I'm going to carry those with me for the rest of my life. She was also proof that anyone who claims that you get more conservative as you get older is full of shit, because she certainly didn't.
I think it's interesting how the body processes grief sometimes. I don't know that I'll cry, but over the past month, knowing this was coming, I've felt a tension in my gut. Now that she's passed, instead of relief that tension is replaced by a sense of emptiness. That something is missing that should still be there. Something has been taken away, and I feel it.
Of course, as I wrote that, I immediately started crying... so I guess my body processes grief in pretty ordinary ways too.
I wanted to come up with something profound linking this to Beltane, which we sit in the middle of right now, but it just seemed hackneyed. Like I was trying to dig out some greater significance when the truth is death comes whenever it wants. The only predictable thing about it is that it's the end of all of our journeys. I hope that when I pass I'm so lucky to have lived such a long life with people that I love around me in my final days.
For the record, I will be fine. I just needed to get these words out while they were still in my head. I don't have some rousing conclusion or deep insight to tack on here at the end, just that gut feeling that something is missing.
Because it is.
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Damn it, Jim
Wow… That’s actually kinda shitty considering how much she’s done for the con. Sure, punching Terrence wasn’t the best decision while in a leadership position, but there is some reasoning behind it.
And it would be one thing if the staff had collectively voted her out on their own, but for a leader to poison the well to that degree? That says leagues about the kind of person someone is, and it’s not a nice statement. And it’s just childish really. Big loss of respect for Jim.
Also, should Lynn’s second speech bubble say, “They would get rid of me”? There seems to be a word missing?
Nah, it’s right. It’s more slang-ish/vernacular than “proper” English, but it’s still grammatically correct.
Fair enough. I write for a living, so I don’t always catch on to slang, lol.
It’s Unagi Con’s funeral. Besides Lynn can now go back to Bork Con and revive that con and restructure it again. And I have a feeling this is story has some real life influence.
Stuff has consequences, even stuff that you should indeed be doing. Trite but true, even here.
Lynn gave Jim several huge headaches. The obvious one is “when will she be violent again?” another is “what else would she lie about?” with a third being “What other con staff will she spread those behaviors to?”
If Jim wasn’t going to go, Lynn had to go.
Or he could have done his job instead of letting the Hate Policy violator stay.
Those questions seem rather hard for a first-time offense while on his staff. She hasn’t made a pattern of these behaviors while working for him, so jumping to “Oh no! She’s inexplicably violent! I must spread a whisper campaign to passive-aggressively run her out of a leadership position!” is just childish. He’s an adult, not a teenager. What he should have done was waited until after the con and had an adult conversation with her. Like a fricking adult.
(I have little to no patience for passive-aggressive behavior from people who should know better. I dealt with that BS enough through a great deal of middle and high school.)