A Safe Space for Moogles

So, my boss informs me that I won't be going full time at the animal hospital. Time to whore myself out at the retail job sites, I suppose. Since 'not a complete drooling troglodyte' seems to be my only meaningful job qualification.

In contrast, my mom lost her teaching position at her old school last week due to a lack of students to fill the seats. Two days later, she had two interviews and two job offers. I'm trying not to be jealous about this, because a) she's a county employee so they had to put her somewhere, and b) she's a teacher and therefore has some value to society.

But I enjoy myself. ^_^ Look what I made! It's a present for lookingforsigns, who may be as deranged as I am, but who knows.

Also, Dad came home from a business trip to California today and brought us some seriously amazing peaches.

Saw Up with my mom last night. It was adorable and tearjerking and funny, which, y'know, Pixar. ;P ...After the movie we shared some ice cream and talked about how we needed to lose weight. Girl bonding, LOL. XD

I'm sort of playing with the seed of an idea of a duo of fics and/or drabble sets in the Pokemon world, Pokemon: Magic and Pokemon: Science. Science would focus on the network of Pokemon researchers and Pokedex trainers, and their quest to discover How It All Works. Magic would focus on the mythology surrounding the Legendaries, and how that translates to a near reverence for nature in general among humans and their relationships with Pokemon. ...Naturally, since there's a third game in each generation that comes out a little later, I'd have to come out with a third fic-set called, I don't know, Culture or some such.

...Dear god, someone please pry these games out of my hands. XD

My grandma, aunt & uncle, and cousin arrived yesterday to stay with us for a week while Mom's on spring break.

Today, two of our fish committed suicide.

This can't be a coincidence.

...which, I suppose, is a good thing. There seems to be a lot of hate directed toward April Fool's these days. At least on my flist.

The bug guy sprayed the hell out of our house, but a year and a half of the Recurring Bedbug Nightmare has made my parents even more neurotic than me. Along with washing everything in hot water (I hope my blankets get done soon, or I am going to be one cold moogle), Mom has gotten me new bedding, which is nice, and informed me that I have to bag up all my yarn and store it in the garage indefinitely, which sucks. My plans for an Etsy store are officially on hold, and (lj)ravynfyre's Magnus plushies are going to experience a Significant Delay. Mom says she's willing to buy me more yarn, but that's still a lot of projects - plans - hopes going Away for me. I'm kind of really bummed out by this.

She was very apologetic and told me over and over that I wasn't being punished, which of course only made me had to work harder not to start crying in front of her. Though the fact that I've been forgetting to take my meds probably accounts for some of that. Sleeping in the basement messes with my routine.

And just to add icing on the cake, oh my god, they're making the Anita Blake books into a TV series. I don't usually bitch about this, but Anita Blake broke my heart years ago and it's never quite healed. I dread to think what a bunch of executives will do to it. They're apparently aiming for a core audience of men 18-34, which is never a good sign, because most TV execs seem to think that 18-34-year-old men are a bunch of vacuous, self-absorbed fatheads.* About the only people they have a lower opinion of are women 18-34.

*Whether or not this is accurate is probably beside the point.

Well, the exterminators are coming tomorrow. Mom says they're using a brand new kind of bug-killing Stuff, which I was glad to hear. 'Cause really, if all this doesn't work, the next step up is Orbital Nuclear Strike.

In other news, springkink is accepting prompts! Wheeee! :DDD *hauls out Itty Bitty Notebook and starts typing up the fifty-odd prompts I've been stockpiling* *wicked grin*

Also, I've managed to freak out my mom (surprisingly more difficult than it sounds). I sent her a link to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I personally think sounds amazing, but, well, Mom's an English major. She wrote back:

Now they've gone too far. NOBODY messes with my Jane Austen. Heads will roll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fifteen, count 'em, fifteen exclamation points. Isn't five considered a sign of mental instability on the Internet? ...or is it a moot point?

One of Mom and Dad's old friends has come over for dinner and presumably a round of cow racing on the Wii. I'm currently hiding out in the basement trying to be forgotten about. I'm sure she's perfectly nice, but I don't fancy sitting around smiling uncomfortably while the grownups talk around me all evening. Call me crazy.

There's a job fair in Crystal City (45 minutes away) next Monday that I'm determined to go to. Well, they do say it's better to hand out your resume in person... Admittedly, the only reason I feel anywhere near comfortable going is that I've been to that city (possibly to the same hotel) for Katsucon one year. Ah, memories. ...Now I'm trying to decide whether I should go home after work and change clothes first, or just change in the bathroom in the kennel. If I go home, I'll be able to take a sink bath and make myself a sammich, but on the other hand, if I go home I'll inevitably find an excuse to dawdle. The job fair's only 'til 3, you know. ;P

The dogs were sooooo sweet today, omg. Kisses and waggy tails all over the place, and they were very polite on the leash for me. ^_^

Mom took me Out today, apparently partly because I've been morose. Which - well, yeah. -_- Anyway, it was nice - got our hair cut and went to see Coraline. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit; Mom fell asleep during the second half. XD But she says she enjoyed what she saw of it, so that's all right. ...She asked me at one point if I wanted an Other Mother too. I told her I had enough trouble with the one I already had. She laughed.

Anyway, look! More Five Questions! These are from a deepbluesquee.

( Y'all know the drill. )

In other news, for those who are still on LJ, Springkink is doing a anonymous kink meme. It's only on until 11:59 tomorrow night, so go! Prompt! Write! And see if you can spot the ones I contributed. ;P

...I better go write some ffvii_100 drabbles. *scurries*

Only a couple inches before it turned into hail/sleet/freezing rain/assorted Yuck, but all morning we got Real Fluffy Snow and it was really pretty. ...A little precarious when I was out walking the dogs, though - it's hard to keep from slipping when one of the big dogs smells something Interesting and goes *yank!* XD Anyway, I guess the roads were bad enough that the hospital closed down early. And one of the clients had given us a Bertucci's gift card, so we got to have a pizza party before we went home. Dude, I totally got paid to sit around and eat fried mozzarella. I love my job. ^_^

...And then I came home around two and went straight to bed. I kept waking up last night and I was soooo tired. *floppymoogle*

What else... let's see. Well, I tried to pay my student loan online, but couldn't because - funny story - they have my birthdate completely wrong in their database out in Colorado somewhere, and you need that to log into your account, so I called them up for Halp and the lady on the other end said "just send us a certified copy of your birth certificate and we'll fix that right up for you! :D" so I go to my mom and I say "hey, mom, the Loan People need a certified copy of my birth certificate and this is why," and Mom goes "okay, I'll take care of it." *deeeeep breath* And I asked her about it today and she's like, "oh, I forgot, and then when I remembered I didn't do it because I thought 'what do they need her birth certificate for anyway?' " and I'm like, "Mom, I'm home all the time, you could have asked me."

*pant pant*

So, I'm gonna have to send them a check tomorrow or Thursday, I guess. And get on Mom's butt a little about getting my records fixed.

On the up side, I sent in my application for the Vanna's Choice crochet contest. I just hope they appreciate the beauty of my corset and ignore the ugly dumpling wearing it.

My cousin had a baby! Well, my cousin's wife, heh. Anyway, it's a boy, seven pounds and fifteen ounces, and his name is (no shit) Jaxon.

Speaking of odd names, the wingthing got on a naming website and picked out a name for herself. She's now Pari, which apparently is Persian and means 'fairy eagle.' (Note that this is not her birth name.)

Also, two things that are awesome: Cracked.com's Why Megatron Should Have Fired Starscream Years Ago, and Advent Children Ghostbusters. I lol'd.

I just posted my last kinkfest prompt, after banging it out in the space of about an hour and a half. Which I've been doing far too often this round. *headdesk* Even when I was busy with school, I used to have my prompts written out well in advance. This month, writing was like pulling teeth and I usually wound up having to come up with something either the night before or the day of. I really think my quality suffered.

Maybe I need a break. It's not as though I don't have a metric ton of crocheting to do, after all. *zoom zoom yarn becomes blanket, alakazam!*

Thanksgiving was actually very nice. I baked the pumpkin pie (and it turned out amazing, thankyouverymuch!), Mom made gravy from scratch, and Dad did pretty much everything else. He'd wound up getting a twenty-five pound turkey because that's all he could find. It barely even fit in the oven. So, uh... anyone wanna come over for turkey sammiches? XD It's really good turkey, too - usually I could take it or leave it, but Dad did a really good job. I suppose that's a good thing if you're going to have leftovers anyway.

EDIT: Oh god, lol. Dad put up the Peanuts characters today (see this post) and has a spotlight shining on Sally so it casts the shadow of her head right on the front window. I... never realized how much her head looked like the Bat signal before. XDDD This calls for a crossover, you know. "Good grief, we need a hero!" "I've got an idea. Sally, hold still." "What are you doing, you blockhead!?"

.......oh god, my brain.

Win #1 - I finished the baby blanket I was making for my cousin's sproglet-to-be. And it is all soft and warm and cute!

Win #2 - I went on eBay and found a kickass Christmas present for my dad. Which doesn't sound all that impressive until you know how extraordinarily hard my Dad is to buy for.

Win #3 - I have Dad's sugar cookies. Well, had. *omnomnom*

...Dadadada, da da dadadada! :D

I can! I can has! :D (I have several Dissidia icons now, actually - it is the shiny. Thanks, Jou!)

Today I made an effort to be Not A Complete Cave-Dwelling Ogre as my parents and I went to Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It was cool and educational and all, but overall I think I would've preferred the aquarium since there weren't any real life animals there. Though the 3D Imax thing was pretty cool, and Mom's reactions were entertaining (her brain doesn't process that it's just an illusion and things aren't really jumping out at you, I suppose ^_^;;). Also, it was narrated by Johnny Depp. So, ahem. Yes. ^_^ I have it in mind to go back to DC on my own sometime soon and take pictures. Since we're in the nice part of fall and all that.

...oh god, my first areyougame prompt is due day after tomorrow and it's not even closed to finished. Flail!

Huzzah for Dad's laptop and hotel wireless! This may be the last time I can get on the Innernets until, oh, Thursday at the latest, so this is me making the most of it. (It seems to be a bit unreliable though. I'm on Meebo but it keeps fillipping on me.)

Saturday was pretty uneventful (except for the whole thing with Prime, Motormaster, and flowers, of course) until around nine-thirtyish when we decided to finally stop for the night. It's dark, we're tired, we're in the mountains near West Virginia somewhere so we're pretty much in the middle of nowhere (but at least it's a prettier nowhere than Illinois), and wouldn't you know it, the Hyatt's full. As a matter of fact, every hotel in the area's full. And so is every hotel at the next exit up for that matter. We know this because Dad called every single one of those suckers. We were just resigning ourself to the idea of having to drive two more hours just to find a place to sleep when the girl at the desk said, "The EconoLodge up the road has a couple rooms left."

"Scamperfoom," says we.

We managed to get there in time to get one of their last rooms: a Jacuzzi room, which sounds great until you realize that there was only one bed for the three of us. I was ready to sleep in the Jacuzzi until Dad remembered that there was an aero-bed in the van. Huzzah! :D

So that was yesterday. Today I learned that a) while Dad drives quite fast, Mom, er, does not; b) no matter how much you like to drive, seven hours of it is gr-u-e-ling, and c) West Virginia is really, really pretty. Not close enough to the ocean for my taste, but pretty. Of course, all that green started getting a little blurry about hour four. x_x It was all I could do to keep both Mom and Dad in sight, especially when traffic got busy. But anyway, we're in Virginia now. I haven't seen the house yet (the final ceremonial sacrifice of a chicken is tomorrow), so we're staying in a hotel suite in which (this is important) I get my own room. Yaaaaaay!

Also, TF07 was on TV tonight, so now my mind is filled with shiny robots. ^_____^ *skibble sketch drabble plaaaaaay* *.....flop* homigod so tired.

But! Tomorrow I get to see our new house! And meet the fishes! And pick my room! There's a blue one and a yellow one, and whichever one I don't sleep in will be my playroom, Mom says. That's not even counting the basement with the big projector screen. ^_^ I'll probably set up my PS2 down there. Mmm, FF12 on that huge screen, prettypretty... *_*

EDIT: Somebody remind me later when I get Interwebs at home that I have a major edit to make on my Fluffirothfic. I got hit in the face with a mental image earlier but it doesn't work if he still has Mako eyes.

The good news is, ravynfyre and I had an awesome time yesterday, and I am now fifty bucks poorer but seven toys, a pile of comics and a lot of hugs richer. ^_____^ Ravyn is awesome. *squeebounce*

The bad news is, I have to babysit my ten-year-old cousin tomorrow. She's, shall we say, a talker. Not a bad kid and of course I love her to pieces, but I've never had to spend long hours in enclosed spaces with her before. My feelings may change. -_-

(Mom says she will owe me a present. I am disinclined to argue.)

The best news is, day after tomorrow we leave for Virginia! Yaaaaaaaaay! :DDDD My life is finally starting...

Her name is Irene, and she lives in the group home with my grandma. She's sarcastic, bitchy, loves cake and has a closet full of shoes. She and Grandma and Mom and I sat and talked in her apartment for a while, and she welcomed me, teased at me and gave me a hug when we had to leave.

Irene also has cancer. It will kill her in about a year.

Grandma told us that when Irene was diagnosed, she had a choice: she could have foregone treatment and let herself die within a couple of months. She's holding on for the sake of her family and the people who love her, even though she suffers for it. And she may be one of the kindest and sharpest and funniest people I've ever met.

I can only hope to be that badass when I grow up.

(In other news, still not dead. Am crocheting and playing Phoenix Wright. Also, I love my grampy dearly, but if I have to sit and watch another Old Movie I am afraid I will scream.)

So, Dad's retirement ceremony is coming up, which yours truly will be obliged to attend. Of course I don't mind showing my support and all, but the spotlight on Dad will naturally extend to his family by extension. Which means near-perfect strangers will find it necessary to accost me with... The Questions.

They're all the same, too. In high school it was "What college are you going to?" In college: "What major are you in? Oh, history? Are you going to be a teacher?" And later: "Oh, graphic design? Is that one of those new-fangled Internets majors?" And I can predict what The Question will be this time, too. "Oh, you've graduated! What are you going to do now?"

Impress us, o moogle, tell us you are worthy to carry the blood of our honored clan.

I'm sure "I just graduated from OIP&T, I don't have a job lined up yet" will satisfy the minimum requirements for most people, but frankly I get tired of saying the same thing ten times to ten different well-meaning strangers. So I've been coming up with lines to deflect said line of interrogation that will hopefully not get me dismissed as a surly teenager. Here's what I've come up with so far:

"I'm going to be a unicorn."
"I thought I'd take a year off and go to Mars. I hear they need women."
"I'm going to be a bitter, disgruntled Wal-mart employee."
"I'm going to go crab fishing on the Bering Sea."
"I've gotten an offer as a superhero's wisecracking sidekick."
"I've been training for the Olympics. Cheesecake-eating event, here I come!"
"I'm crocheting an Optimus Prime. To scale."
"I'm going to be a ninja."
"I think I'd like to be an alpaca rancher."
"I'm going to visit my long-lost twin brother, get into a car accident, get amnesia, and wind up having the King of Spain's love child."
"I'm moving to Narnia."

Obviously this kind of goes against the whole improv thing, but I find a safety net helps me feel more confident and secure about opening my mouth and saying something silly.

So. Any more suggestions, loves? :D

Well, my graduation ceremony went off without a hitch on Friday - well, as non-hitchy as could be expected. It ran a bit long, and the guest speaker they had was some former coach from not-even-our-school-for-heaven's-sake, and he seemed to have forgotten that we were not a) his grandkids or b) football players. It was either screaming in our faces or "When I was your age blah blah poverty blah blah mastodon for breakfast." Oh, and he did a magic trick with a newspaper. I passed the time by contemplating Rodimus/Starscream ghost porn.

But in the end, it was worth it to walk across the stage. And dance off it. (I told you I would.) And toss my hat up in the air. ^_______^

And now? Now, ladies and gentlemechs, I am taking a nice long well-earned rest. My therapist told me today that I look much more relaxed, and yes, lifting that weight from one's shoulders will do that to a person. I spent a little of my graduation money today, and squeed over presents, and now there's just an Extended Family visit to get through before we officially move. Once I'm settled there I'll start looking for Jobs.

Speaking of Family, the day after I graduated, my grandmother (the one in Poor Health) fell and broke her ankle. Like, through-the-skin break. She was going to come down for Dad's retirement ceremony, but now it's a toss-up whether she'll be out of the hospital by the time we come up to see her in a couple of weeks. So, there's that going on.

Also, I just beat Magical Starsign, which is really good for me considering I only bought it a couple months ago. I would recommend it to anyone who's a fan of quirky RPGs. *checks off list* One down, seven million and three to go.

For those who've missed it so far, (lj)childofatlantis and I are doing an impromptu round robin. The Life and Times of Ghost!Starscream on Autobot-Controlled Cybertron: Full of co-existing pet ships, angst, tantrums and lulz. ^_^

In other news, Mom and I went shopping today. Mom spoiled me shamelessly due to Impending Graduatedness, but she's not going to let me have the books I picked out 'til after the ceremony. I'll pretend to be surprised. ;)

*sighs contentedly* Life, she doesn't suck.

So, room-cleaning with Mom was more painless than I'd dared to hope. She gave me some guidance and let me go, and we got a lot of work done while watching an all-day Deadliest Catch marathon. My bookshelf hasn't looked so organized literally since we moved in. :O (And it took her all of half an hour too, which is amazing considering the state it was in before. I swear that woman is a machine.) And she stayed out of my drawers, so the fact that I have a sexuality remains mercifully un-remarked-upon. ;) Anyway, I've pulled out most of the stuff I want to keep with me when we car-trip to Illinois and then head out to Virginia. There's not all that much - between books, my DS and my yarn what else do I need? ;) I also may go ahead and get a paid account on LJ sometime before we get on the road. My Internet access will be sporadic for a couple of weeks and I would hate to deprive you all of my brilliant musings for that long. ;)

Also, another character has set up shop in my head: a wolf who, due to the magic equivalent of heavy pollution, sometimes can be shaped like a human. I think this'll be my next story after The Rose Bearer is done. *sighs* I'm never going to get out all the stories in my head before I die at this rate. Currently I'm making a pouch for my tarot cards to replace the one it came with (fell apart quite spectacularly). When I'm done (and get new batteries for my camera) I'll post pictures, as well as the pouch I did for my DS. (It's felted and I'm very proud of it. ^_^)

In the meantime: this travesty is all lookingforsigns's and (lj)vani_nessa's fault.