My children were born a month ago, and I’ve been chasing paper since. In between heating bottles and pumping and pleading with Henry to eat without choking, I’ve had to gather evidence of his identity. Which is especially difficult when he’s too young to have much of it.

He was given the wrong name in the hospital. Not by me. I filled out Eleanor and Henry’s birth records at the same time and gave them over to the same person, so when I requested their birth certificates, I was surprised that there was one for Eleanor, but nothing for Henry. The person filing his records put down my last name for him instead of the name he shares with his sister and dad.

The hospital fixed their mistake when I called, but it was too late to stop the cascade of other paperwork that began rolling in with the wrong name. His social security, birth certificate, and the insurance cards for our entire family were thrown into question, because someone in our family had inconsistent records. I left the twins with Erik while chasing these inconsistencies and stamping them out with the flimsy records I had.

Today I received the last piece of paperwork confirming Henry as an official Hosa. I also received a notice that his insurance claim was rejected and we’d be on the hook for the entire cost of his delivery.

Which is a little curious, as he was the second twin out and Eleanor was covered. Did they bill me for half a c-section? At that point pulling out twin 2 has got to be only 10% of the work.

The call to the insurance company was a gloriously short one. The notice that the claim was denied was sent out while there were still records for a non existent Henry Beals, and had since been corrected.

I hope. I Hope. I HOPE this is the last we’ll see of the name that isn’t. Hold music and phone anxiety has taken too much of my time in this last month, when the true business I’d like to get to is singing to my kids and bathing them and sometimes just holding them while they aren’t hungry, because I love them and I want it to not be so much work.

Or rather, I want to choose the work that benefits them directly. Henry and Eleanor don’t know their names yet, and it will be years before they’ll understand this story. But I can collect song lyrics today and tack them up in their room so I can sing to them even when I’m so tired I forget my words. And I can practice the signs for ‘hungry’ and ‘finished’ and ‘more’ so they can talk to me a little before they learn to speak.

It’s been a weird month, but the best parts have been when I get to be a parent. I am glad for that work to continue.

If you are reading this blog, you probably know my husband. I don’t think I have a wide reach, and that’s okay. This is a small and quiet space, because large ones make me anxious.

You probably know him as a very handy guy, easy to be friends with, clever and always willing to learn a new skill.

There is no one in this world I’d rather be a parent with, and throughout this pregnancy, every day has proven it true. Honestly, I don’t know that I’d ever want to be a parent if it weren’t with him. I joked when my test first came back positive that having kids was basically getting double married, but now that we’re at week 36 I know it wasn’t a joke.

It is very difficult to be pregnant with twins. Everything in my core hurts, and when I shift positions my lungs compress from the weight of them. My balance is off, and standing requires a slow process of shifting weight until my legs steady underneath me. And he has helped me through the house, in and out of cars, rubbed my shoulders when they’re sore from overcompensating my inaccessible abdominal muscles.

My brain is foggy, and he writes down my questions so I don’t forget to ask them at the doctor’s office.

He’s been building and finishing so many projects, getting our house ready for the kids’ arrival, and all of this is so good, but it adds up to so much more.

I know that I can trust him with anything. I can be vulnerable with him. Actual, in person vulnerable, which is still hard, and he still has to remind me that I need to let him handle the things I’m currently unable to do.

He’s going to be in the operating room with me during the c-section. It’s the kind of thing I’d only ask of someone with 15 years of background in being my partner. Because I love him more than anything. Yes, more than the babies I’m scheduled to meet in about a week.

Right now, the kids are still a dream for the future. And we’re excited to see them, and learn who they are, and guide them as best we can. And they’ll be folded into the love Erik and I have for each other, and grow new branches that are entirely their own.

Because I really really love my husband. I’m glad we’re double married.

I haven’t written a short story in a while. I don’t actually know how long, because I am terrible about keeping track of such things.

I’d like to have more. There are a couple I’m holding that haven’t found a market yet. And I’m coming ever closer to publishing them myself on Curious Fictions. I haven’t submitted anything in a while, because I couldn’t manage a rejection letter in 2020. I had two stories published last year, One Last Stand for the Cold Blooded Chaos Society over at Translunar Travelers Lounge and Moon Errata on the Toasted Cake Podcast, both of which were written in 2019. And I think, because it’s been some time since I’ve had a complete short story, I’ve been a bit rough on myself.

For most of 2020 and the first bits of ’21 I’ve been writing a novel. According to my inner demons, and based on absolutely nothing, I’m not writing it fast enough. It may be the fact that my outline keeps changing to move the goal of ending this thing always over the next horizon. Idk, it’s hard to know why it feels so slow.

But I like it. Not surprising, I know. It takes a lot of effort to write a full novel and you’ve got to like what your doing to keep going. But I like it enough that I can’t think of other stories, and I have got to get to the end of this thing before I can build up a list of shorts and get back to collecting rejection letters.

I was going to go to Kij Johnson’s and Barbara J. Webb’s novel writing workshop last year, but 2020 happened, and new developments in 2021 mean I won’t be able to attend the online workshop this year. (The online workshop looks really amazing and if you are all interested, do audition for it!) I wanted to work on this novel with them, but I know I can’t wait until I manage to take their class. But I’m not doing it alone.

I wrote alone for a really really long time, and as a shut in, I thought it was for me. Nope. Get yourself a community, friends. The novel I’m writing now looks so different from my first few pages. The pieces are still there, but having friends to read (friends who write and know how a story goes together) and highlight things I’ve missed are invaluable. And I’d be completely lost in the dreadful middles if I didn’t have their insights early on. It’s a slow process, yes, but progress is possible. I’m not abandoning things.

Well, I’m abandoning short stories. But only for the time being. And my demons are going to have to get used to it. Who has the energy to argue with demons, anyway?

Here’s a bit from what I’m working on.

Across the field of brambles, high enough in a pine tree that the top bent to her weight, a small woman in a brilliant blue coat waved cheerfully to Tuulikki. Her face split into a wide smile, and she lifted her spidery hands from the branches. Her toes were wrapped around the tree as tightly as fingers and kept her balance steady as the tree swayed. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted across to Tuulikki’s window.

“Hello! You are under siege!”

Tuulikki set down the vial and opened the window. There was no sign of anyone below her window. The woman in blue was alone.

“I know,” she shouted back.

I’m back with another four! These are not in any order of preference; they are simply written down as I can remember them. As someone with exceptionally poor memory, remembering twelve things is quite impressive, and if you would like to shower me with accolades, my office hours are 9-5, Monday to Blurnsday.

NADDpod is an actual play D&D podcast which just started on their second campaign in October. If listening to a group of people play dungeons and dragons does not sound exciting to you, please know that the antics of this group has improved so many days throughout 2020. The DM Murph has a wonderful sense of story, and he is so willing to go weird when his chaotic comedian players have a wild idea. Because I can’t condense an entire podcast down to something for you to sample quickly, I’ll put up an animatic that an amazing fan made of the darkest and silliest Star Wars inspired moment in the game. https://youtu.be/_U8Jme5e6Ps

Sometimes it’s very cathartic to watch someone else vocally lose their mind the way I’ve felt on the inside for some time! Brennan Lee Mulligan has a series of sketches which highlight his skills as an unhinged man, so tired and disappointed in the world around him that his unraveling has become poetry. My favorite, and the one I’ve watched many times this year, is “Tide CEO pleas with the American public to not drink bleach.” You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/Z36OznHFIt4

John Allison has been making my favorite webcomics forever, and 2020 brought a new series called Steeple about a former Church of England Curate named Billie and a former satanic priestess named Maggie who are best friends in a small English village. It’s great. His dialogue writing is effortlessly hilarious, supernatural hijinks lurk around every corner, and the issue I’m linking here is the Christmas special! Maggie and Billie attempt to bring some holiday cheer to the village’s most hostile woman, and must exorcise a ‘sesh gremlin’ while extremely hungover before they become forever slightly inebriated. CHRISTMAS WITH CLOVIS

The eighth good thing is miniatures. I love miniature anythings. Model ships, train layouts, sets and props made for stop motion movies. When I was very young, I lived on a cul-da-sac near a man who had a massive dollhouse in his garage. He’d been building it for some time, and he made a new piece of furniture for it every year. The dressers all had tiny drawers that could pull in and out, the dining chairs were upholstered, bookshelves had trinkets and books. I don’t remember the overall look of the house he’d built, but I do remember how intricate everything was that he built. I probably would have fallen in love with tiny things even without this early memory, but it does stand out to me. And I am married to a man who also loves building things on very small scales.

Christmas ornaments are a reliable source of very small, and Erik has been making a new one for our tree almost every year. This year he built tiny doorframes for our tree and for a few of his friends from work, complete with door catches drilled with the smallest bit I’ve ever seen. I painted on the glitter.

So here’s our 2020 ornament.

It’s not a dumpster fire. While I do understand the catharsis of wrapping up this year in a commemorative dumpster fire, Erik and I agreed that we are perfectly capable of summoning our depressions and frustrations over 2020 without giving them physical form. I like our little door. When Erik started work at Frontier Cabinets and Doors, he also started bringing home lots of wood that he salvaged from the chipper.

2020 has been a year of building. We put in garden beds and a deck between them, we made an end table for the library and a bar for the window upstairs. Almost all of it built from salvage, because lumber is scarce and expensive right now. But also, salvage feels good. Building something from what has been discarded is an act of hope.