Blogflog - Welcome Home, and Thanks for all the Fish!

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: Welcome Home, and Thanks for all the Fish!
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.



I plunged my hands into the cool water watching the fish swirl away and school in the far side of the big tank. I was back at the pond store, just like last year, to add to the koi in our water garden. All but one of our fish survived in the new pond even with this amazingly harsh winter. Sorry, everyone on the East Coast, I know you’ve had it harder than we had it here in the middle of the country, but it was the worst winter I’ve ever seen here in Missouri. We had more snow, colder temperatures, and just plain serious winter here, so I watched the frozen pond and worried about our beautiful koi. We honestly worried that all the fish would be dead come spring, and then it was still snowing here in March. Again, it was the worst “spring” on record here because winter seemed here to stay, but the thaw finally came and we watched anxiously as the ice melted. Much to our surprise all the koi, save the one, survived. The pond has a very deep section in the middle with a rock that spills over it like a protective roof, and apparently it was enough shelter to keep them all safe and sound.

So, today we went back to the same pond store that I bought those hardy koi at, because the pond is huge and I love the koi. I’ve wanted a koi pond with enough fish in it to boil in a shining, mouth-gaping mass when you feed them, just like at the Botanical Gardens, for years. We have koi to feed, but to have that beautiful carnivorous looking boil we need more koi, which is why I was trying to catch some of those bright, swirling shapes that swam just out of reach.

Last year we’d sent pictures and used FaceTime to show Genevieve, our long distance girlfriend, as I added the first koi to the pond. The FaceTime had frozen and timed out, and finally we’d gone to talking on the phone to her as we walked around the pond and spilled those first shining fish into the water. We shared it as much as we could with her, but the technology that helped us stay in touch over hundreds of miles was very frustrating that day. Smart phones, tablets, and the internet in general allowed Long Distance Relationships, LDR, to work better than ever before, but last spring was about the time that it just wasn’t enough with Genevieve. We wanted more with her than just texting and shared pictures, or even phone calls. It just wasn’t satisfying enough after four years of dating.

Skip forward a year and today I was back at the same pond store walking among the pools of fish. I wasn’t talking on the phone with Genevieve this time, or sending pictures, because she was there beside me. We picked out the new fish together, plunging the net into the water, herding the fish towards each other with our hands, as if we were bears catching salmon, but we weren’t going to eat these fish. They were coming home with us because now Genevieve and her husband, Spike, are living here. Home is all four of us in one house now.

The fish swim and swirl through the water, quick silver, flashes of gold, shining white, Halloween orange and black, gray-blue like lightning kissed clouds, all dancing through the water, fins flicking, tails like lacy rudders. The butterfly koi are serpentine in their pools, graceful and delicate. The regular koi are heavier, more fish than serpent but still beautiful, shivering living pieces of art that open hungry mouths and run from our hands as if we really are hungry bears reaching down into their world of water and lifting them up into our’s of air.

It was Genevieve that remembered that it was only last spring that we had that frustrating day of koi and failed technology. We smiled at each other and reached across the car to touch. She said, “I’m so happy I’m here this year.”

“Me, too,” I said grinning at her.

She grinned back, and we drove home with our new fish. Home has always been a great word, but it’s even better this year because now, “home” holds the people we love under one roof, at last.

Comments

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Gosh, has LKH moved her girlfriend, Genevieve, and her husband, Spike, in with herself and her husband, Jon? I can't recall her mentioning it before.

Also, all I am getting from this koi story is that LKH wants to overcrowd her pond so that she gets some badass visuals.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

ALSO ALSO, "our's"?

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

The botanical gardens can have as many fish as they do because their pond is gigantic. The koi just crowd around the bridge because that's where all the visitors feed them so they kind of pile up on each other because they're greedy little bastards.

(I love feeding the koi there, but I just love being there haha).

[bloodredroses1.livejournal.com]

"Also, all I am getting from this koi story is that LKH wants to overcrowd her pond so that she gets some badass visuals."

That was my second thought. My first one was was 'Wow she really does want to kill off all her koi doesn't she?'

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

but it was the worst winter I’ve ever seen here in Missouri. We had more snow, colder temperatures, and just plain serious winter here

What universe is LKH living in? No, I'm serious, speaking as someone who lives in the same metropolitan area as she does. The winter before last was WAY WAY WAY worse when to snow and cold. Like, SIGNIFICANTLY. We had record breaking cold temperatures, record breaking snow falls. This year? Winter lingered a bit longer here and we had more DAYS where it snowed (it melted quickly), but it wasn't nearly as bad. We had several times where it'd get cold, then pop up into the forties,t hen go down in the 20's again. Like. I don't understand why she's acting like it was so terrible here when it wasn't all that bad a winter.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

Add to the fact she was in the tropics for most of the winter.  Christmas till Faire Con IIRC

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

I knew she was in the tropics for awhile, but I didn't know she was for that long. WOW OKAY WOW. Also, she's acting like we had major snow in March and we had like, flurries a day or so early on. Which ISN'T EVEN UNUSUAL.

I even sent her little paragraph about it to my brother and he had the same flummoxed reaction as I did. We had to close our business the year before because snow was so bad. This year it wasn't even an issue.

EDIT: I was wrong, it snowed March 1st, and it stuck for a couple of days. But that's STILL not unusual (and it got really warm after that and then bounced back and forth) because it snowed like that the past couple of years in March.

[jessica collett (from livejournal.com)]

We picked out the new fish together, plunging the net into the water, herding the fish towards each other with our hands, as if we were bears catching salmon, but we weren’t going to eat these fish.

Um, thanks for pointing that out. I thought you'd unhinge your jaw like a python and just start devouring fish whole right then and there.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

We picked out the new fish together, plunging the net into the water, herding the fish towards each other with our hands, as if we were bears catching salmon, but we weren’t going to eat these fish.

So not like a bear catching salmon at all. Metaphors, how do they work?!

I'm totally with all the people convinced she wants to kill her fish. Poor fish :(

[apep727.livejournal.com]

Isn't that pretty much how all her metaphors/similes are? "It was like this, only not really." And it's always because she explains the differences - wait, you mean you're *not* going to eat these fish? WHOA. I *totally* thought you were!

It's like she thinks her readers are too stupid to figure that out for themselves.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

And yet words is her business.

[apep727.livejournal.com]

I swear I remember reading somewhere that she got kicked out of the English program in college. Given that she keeps writing crap like this, it doesn't surprise me.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Yeah she quite proudly brags about getting kicked out of her writing program in college. I look at each new book that comes out - which is somehow worse than the last, I don't know how but she keeps proving that it can always get worse - and go, "This. This is why you shut up and stay in the writing program. You might learn something."

(I totally sympathise if there was a tough lecturer that liked things a certain way but for the most part you shut up and stick through it because it's usually only a semester out of a 3-4 year degree. It's just not worth the trouble of dropping out unless you're genuinely struggling.)

[apep727.livejournal.com]

If it was an actual program, it was probably a series of classes, and voluntary. And yeah, if it was just one teacher she had problems with, then that'd be one thing. Even deciding to leave the program would be fine. But actually being kicked out of the program, and then bragging about it? No, that's LKH trying to rub her success in her teachers' faces.

I'm betting if any of them have read her books, they probably went, "Yes, you're successful, but you're writing is still horrible."

(Actually, this might help to explain her majoring in biology - writing reports is very different from writing fiction)

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

Subtext: I have so much extra $$$ that I can waste it on expensive fish that will die within the year.

[plum-arden.livejournal.com]

I admit I don't follow her all that closely, I don't even read her books any more (just the flogs). Do she and Genevieve have a sexual relationship as well, or do they just partner swap? From her reactions in books, I figured she'd always be the "eww! eww! no way!" type.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

They have a sexual relationship. LKH has now discovered that being "heteroflexible" is the only One True Sexuality, since that's what she is. Her last novella was entirely about this. Well, and about how gross and stupid she finds lesbians and abuse victims, at least female abuse victims.

[apep727.livejournal.com]

Of course she's fine with male abuse victims - that just means Laurell Anita can "fix" them with the power of her Doomcrotch. Because sex fixes everything, *especially* sexual abuse.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

But only heterosex, or not-really-lesbian sex with heteroflexible and magical Merita.

[plum-arden.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can't even with her any more. I know it's all about what's ok for her. It's ok for her to be hetroflexible or whatever, and have a sexual relationship with a woman, but a woman who is only with women?

Do Jon-her-husband-Jon and Spike (I think that's his name) fool around too?

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Iirc, she once wrote something like "our girlfriend and my boyfriend" about them. Idk.

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

OMG, her koi are doomed. That's all I'm really getting from this story.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry but I still can't get over her "worst spring in history" considering I was wearing a jacket for most of March this year and we had THIS (https://scontent-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/t31.0-8/893311_10200739340628525_1977264407_o.jpg) last year on March 24.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

While it should be surprising, it's not really. Laurell K. Hamilton is wrong about everything. Always. Forever. She finds amazing, unpredictable ways to be wrong constantly. It's a gift.

(She does have stopped clock moments, but even those are buried under more wrongness.)

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

You're definitely right. It's like you have to TRY to be this incompetent at facts of the place you live.

I asked my brother if this year's winter was worse than last and he was like, "are you drunk?" Ask anyone in St. Louis what the worst winter we've had in years was, and they'll say the Polar Vortex in 2014. It was much colder, much longer, and we had much more snow. This year wasn't WARM, per se, but it really wasn't that bad.