My friends are incredible

So here's a sappy personal post that doesn't really have anything to do with writing or activist stuff.

My favorite cartoon and occupier of a large amount of real estate in my brain these days, Steven Universe, is doing sort of a mega-event starting next week. It's never done this before, EVER. They're going to dump a bunch of new episodes on us in a row, with a new one every weekday for over a month. Given that the show (with four special-event exceptions since 2013) has always been weekly on the RARE occasion that it is actively showing new episodes, this is causing a massive explosion in our little fan sphere.

And I'm going on vacation in late July/early August, which is right in the thick of this event. I'll have to work in consuming the new content while I'm partying with my friends in New Port Richey.

The vacation house!

I mean, this is a good problem to have. Wow, you have a fun thing to do in the midst of another fun thing to do! How on Earth do you plan to manage that! Gee!

But I'm kinda used to . . . let's see, how do I put this . . . trying to pretend certain things aren't important to me while I'm sharing space with others so I won't annoy other people. One time when I was on a vacation, I was waiting for results for an important writing contest, and didn't want to talk about it even though it was consuming my thoughts because if I didn't advance to the next round then I would be sad and bring everybody down. (And yeah, I didn't make it, and had to pretend everything was fine.) From an objective perspective, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I didn't get to watch my favorite TV show because I was busy doing something else with my friends, or just saving it for when I got back from vacation. But! I have to admit that the prospect of downgrading the importance of enjoying this awesome piece of media made me a little sad, thinking I'd either have to sneak off to watch it later or bother other people to play with me.

Imagine my surprise when last week I had Meghan and Katelyn visit (for the Night Vale event) and Meg brought up the cartoon airing schedule and commented about how during our vacation we were probably all going to be huddled in a room together being nerds at the premiere time every day.

And imagine my surprise when Jeaux, who is only coming to the beach house for a couple days if at all, was trying to figure out some way he could be with me while we were watching it, like on the phone or something. Wow! What a nerd!

We're all nerds for an eleven-minute cartoon. Which, when you say it like that, should not be an incredible disruption to anything.

Just look at these nerds.

It makes me happy beyond what sounds reasonable when the people I care about are enthusiastic about the same things I am or at least don't try to make me feel like I should care about them less. Maybe it sounds over-dramatic, but when I was a teen and enthusiastic about things, I tended to get a LOT more pushback than I do now--like, I really enjoyed going trick-or-treating well into my adult life. (I think the last time I did it was when I was 30, and I rarely missed a year all through my teens and twenties.) I guess I had to move through a patch of "you're too old for that" until I was very much too old for that and it suddenly became okay again? And now as a woman pushing forty I'm all about an animated show on Cartoon Network, and my friends who are also fortyish are also nerdy about it, and we survived well into adulthood without being shamed into dropping what we care about or pretending it doesn't matter.

I really, really, really appreciate that I have company, and that my closest friendly relationships are not with people who roll their eyes and tolerate me. I of course will prefer being humored to being snotted at and being asked to justify what I like or being told my interests indicate immaturity by definition, but it is a whole other level of great when your friends are not just putting up with you.

Nerds. I love them too.