moominmuppet

...or at least I'm not particularly good at writing in ways that do translate intangibles to text.

I've been pondering what to write about this weekend.

We did stuff, and we went places, none of which was particularly central to anything, just different environments in which to spend time together. I do like knowing people's home environments, though; it creates context in my head, so I liked the wandering about and the spending time in their home for those purposes, especially.

I got to meet important people in

firinel's life, which was much more central.

marnanel (who I wasn't 'meeting' for the first time at all, except face-to-face) and

riordon (who I've spoken with very briefly, but the best way to know a five-year-old is definitely face-to-face), of course, as well as SaraMae, and Sharon, and

floatyfish and

onib. I liked 'em all... Floatyfish and Onib both seem very cool, and excellent company. SaraMae's got a, um, powerful personality. She intimidates me just a touch, but I like her a lot. And she vies with my grandmother on the "chill and accepting" side of things. It's very nice not to feel closeted or awkward around her regarding my involvement with Fin and Marn.

riordon really deserves her own paragraph. She's a fabulously cool little kid, and we spent a lot of time hanging out together on Friday and Saturday (and she made me cookies when she was at her grandma's on Sunday!). I think we get along really quite well, although I'm rather relieved that I've become something of a morning person over the years *grin*. I also discovered how very little spanish I remember while trying to read her a bedtime story (she has a Pooh book in spanish that she requested). She's just generally loving, and bright, and helpful, and wonderful.

And, of course, I spent the most time with Fin and Marn. And those are the bits I feel least competent to express verbally. I'd been perhaps most nervous about how Marn and I would get along -- not because I had any doubts about him being just generally cool and fun and caring and awesome (we'd talked previous to the visit more than enough to know all that), but in the whole "new poly involvement" way. Worrying about whether things would just sort of fall into place with both of us having involvements with Fin, and all being in such close space together, or whether there'd be stumbling blocks, or awkwardness, or whatever. Worrying about all of us finding our collective footing. But, we all seemed to find our footing remarkably well (even better than I'd hoped), and things really went in wonderful (and fun) directions.

And Fin... That's the part I'm having the hardest time describing. The train of thought in my brain that tends to run scenarios ad infinitum has been assuaged, and is no longer doing the "But you don't know if you'll really click in person" thing. The other side of my brain, that tends to go much more on instinct and a general sense of things, is remarkably unstartled. Pleased to have gotten the time together, sorry that it's over until next time, but no great momentous shift in how I'm thinking about it, because we were already perceiving ourselves as 'together', and this just confirmed what that part of my brain already knew. Interestingly, even random little household patterns didn't come as any real surprise, since we've spent so much time on the phone while going about our own daily lives, and overhearing each others' in the background, and since we're both pretty intensive long-distance communicators in general (particularly in regards to LJ, and the trivia of our daily lives). There was no great shock between "long-distance" and "face-to-face" for me, and maybe that in itself startled me a bit. And that may have been more the case for me than for her. I had the advantage of her digital camera showing me all sorts of daily aspects of her life long before I got there, and that, combined with the LJ, email, IM, and the phone, let me into huge aspects of her life before I could ever actually be there in person, so the transition itself felt very fluid. The parts of my life that I consider central to myself are more, um, distributed, so it's harder to get that second-hand sense of most of them (mostly people, and a few places) in the same way. Anyway, that's turning into a random ramble about all sorts of identity, association, and commmunication stuff. What it comes down to is that time together was wonderful, and felt like a very natural extension and confirmation of where things already were between us.

And it was a wonderful weekend. Even despite the icky lung-crud that descended upon me almost immediately after my arrival and eventually completely stole my voice sometime during the bus ride back home, rudely preventing me from phoning certain people and *squeeing* in their general direction, and even preventing me from getting to work where I could do same in text form. (I was thoroughly irked yesterday -- had I known I wouldn't be able to work, I could have stayed an extra day in PA. And being stuck at home without any feasible way of bouncing at anyone -- Yarg!)