Over time, your quickness with a cocky rejoinder must have gotten you many punches in the face.

I have returned home! ….unfortunately. But YAY now I can start seriously looking for apartments.

The SCAC show was amazing. I took lots of photos, and mostly stalked Munly because I’m creepy like that.

also because Munly

CO was amazing as well. I miss Kazehana already!

The only down side was that my good camera (the 35mm Canon) decided to pack it in right around here:

at least my phone takes decent photos...

(The Canon has had issues with the shutter for a while, so I guess it’s my own fault for not getting it fixed BEFORE going away to somewhere with fabulous landscape.)

This weekend I have the house to myself, and plan on clearing out everything under the bed so I can move the bed and get my window fixed. (Superstorm Sauron destroyed it and it has been held shut with wire hangers ever since.) I may use this opportunity to get rid of more stuffed animals.

I hate stuffed animals. I will not buy them for other people's children. If I am ever cursed with children of my own, I will not allow other people to buy stuffed animals for them. I will not allow stuffed animals in the house, at all. (Okay, maybe ONE per child.)

Currently, 12 stuffed animals live in my room. This a vast improvement from the state of things a year ago, before I did the first major clean out of the hoard. I had massive piles of stuffed animals underneath the corner table and under the bed. Not because I had any sentimental attachment to them, but because, for some reason, I am incapable of harming a thing that looks like something that is alive.

As in, if it has a cute face, I don't want to hurt it.

(This is coming from someone who probably consumes a total of about 2,000 mammals, birds, fish, crustaceans, and reptiles per year.)

The hoard of stuffed animals remained because I felt guilty getting rid of them. Mum kept insisting I just throw them away, but the thought of that would send me into a wild fit of anxiety.

(I have recently discovered that I am in fact NOT the only crazy person with this particular form of psychosis.)

Eventually I managed to get rid of many of them because I donated them. As long as I knew that all those stuffed animals were headed for new homes, and not for some landfill, I felt okay about letting them go.

Seriously there's something wrong with me. Like I've had actual nervous breakdowns because of "harm" coming to inanimate or otherwise non-living things.

Remember when I had that epic fever around New Years? I don't get fevers very often. I think I had maybe three from birth to age 18, and that one time when I was in college. It's a good thing I don't get fevers often because they always turn my brain into a puddle of insanity and completely misplaced intense emotions.

Those days in January when I was more or less bed ridden with the plague, I watched marathons of Downton Abbey and Justified. There's this one episode of Justified where this dude living in a halfway house is trying to go see his son for the son's birthday, but things go wrong and the dude ends up shooting people and stealing cars and holding hostages in restaurants and at the very end when Raylan finally catches the dude, the Firby he bought for his son gets shot.

And then the Firby makes this pitiful heartbreaking noise when it falls to the floor.

I LOST MY SHIT.

I don't even like Firbys. They're creepy. But even more than that, they make sad noises when you ignore them and that's the only way to turn them off and I CAN'T FECKING HANDLE THAT SHITE even when I don't have a fever, which is why there has been a blanket ban on such things in my house for more than ten years.

That wasn't the first time that had happened either.

When I was fifteen (I think it was around Thanksgiving?) I got this horrific fever and was sick for like a week. This one Saturday night, me and Big Sis #2 were hanging out watching TV because Mum had left me home to watch Lil Sis (her usual routine on weekends, even if I was so ill I was incapable of standing up) and Big Sis#2 felt bad so she had come over to make sure I didn't drop dead.

Lil Sis insisted we watch her new VHS copy of the Pokemon movie.

At this point, y'all can probably guess that me with a massive fever + this:

= nervous breakdown.

I was having issues throughout the duration of the film because every time Mew mewed I thought I might explode. Then comes the end.

When Mewtwo starts kicking the crap out of Mew.

I LOST MY SHIT.

You know when you're sobbing uncontrollably and as a result, you can't breathe? That doesn't go over too well with a body that's already under the stress of a 104 degree fever. Especially when the bug you have has rendered you unable to eat solid food for the past three days.

Big Sis#2 was an EMT at the time though, so I was at least saved a trip to the emergency room.


I hope you all have a pleasant weekend! I plan on (after dealing with the bed/window) sitting on my arse and doing absolutely nothing, aside from the Renaissance Faire and church on Sunday. 

The possibility of physical and mental collapse is now very real. No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Busy week coming up, so this might be my last post for a while. (Not that I post regularly or often anyway....) I'm headed into the city tomorrow for Slim Cessna's Auto Club (:D) with both Lil Bros, plus two friends; and then I'm off to Colorado for a week on Thursday. We'll be driving to Deadwood for two days while I'm there AND I'M SO EXCITED FOR THAT LIKE YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

In honor of fun summer holidays, I thought I'd share a story of one of our family holiday fails. I'm pretty sure you can't go through childhood without at least one of those horrific family vacations that ends in years of nightmares for everyone involved.

(If you have managed to reach adulthood without experiencing such a thing, I firmly believe that lowers your chances of surviving the zombie apocalypse by like 50%.)

For as long as I live, I will never again set foot in Hershey Park, Sesame Place, or a Best Western motel. Never.

In the summer of 1997, my Cousin F came out from Ireland for a couple weeks (actually I think that particular summer was when she went on the Christian Slater and then the he-who-must-not-be-named movie kick). Mum decided we should all go away somewhere fun and exciting for a long weekend while Cousin F was here, so she could do actual vacation things instead of the two of us putzing around the house and the pool for 2 weeks.

We left on a Friday night--Mum, me (12), Cousin F (15), Big Sis#2 (25), and Lil Sis (2) to take the three-hour drive to Hershey, PA.

When Lil Sis was that age, she was the BIGGEST EFFING BRAT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE. This is entirely Mum's fault, because even though Mum raised me and Big Sisters #1 and 2 with intense militaristic discipline, she spoiled Lil Sis rotten and always did whatever she asked. (I think by then Mum was just lazy and fed up and sick of parenting, so she just did that to shut Lil Sis up, which is basically the biggest parenting fail ever.)

 

if only

Ten minutes into the car ride, Lil Sis demanded that Mum put the Barney tape on. That tape was half an hour of soul crushing songs from the TV show.

And we had to listen to it for THE ENTIRE CAR RIDE.

Because if Mum put the regular radio back on, Lil Sis would whine and/or cry. And that meant Lil Sis was unhappy, which in Mum's mind, was absolutely not allowed. Never mind that her other two children and her niece were being tortured.

But it wasn't just three hours of Barney. It was closer to FIVE, because Mum has the worst sense of direction ever and we got totally lost, and this was before cell phones and navigation systems and google maps were invented. By the time we finally arrived at the Best Western, Cousin F was banging her head on the car window, Big Sis#2 was extremely carsick, I was bordering on suicidal, and all three of us wanted Lil Sis dead.

In the Best Western, we were greeted by a person in a giant dog suit.

That thing stalked me and Cousin F the whole time we were there. (Idk what it is about the two of us attracting stalkers in animal suits...)

I sh*t you not--it was in the elevator every time we went to use it;

and when we tried to escape it by using the stairs instead, it was always there sneaking up behind us or lurking around every corner. It was in the dining room when we tried to get our free continental breakfast. Cousin F almost killed it when we went to the vending machines the second night, because she opened the door for the stairs and THERE WAS THE CREEPY EFFING DOG

So she hurled the door closed fast enough and with enough force to knock it down the stairs and we ran back to our room.

On Saturday morning, we set off for Hershey Park.

I don't want to sound ungrateful for all of Mum's efforts at doing fun family things, but I have to say that her choices in location were never very well thought out. Lil Sis was too small to go on most rides and she was afraid of everything. Big Sis#2, Cousin F, and I didn't like rides at all and wouldn't go on anything more intense than the teacups (and still won't). All of us except Lil Sis hated Hershey's chocolate (except for Peanut Butter Cups, I'll eat those by the truckload). So in Hershey Park, we had some trouble in finding fun things for all of us to do.

And then around lunch time, they abandoned me in the bathrooms.

We all took a bathroom break and Mum had to change Lil Sis (despite everyone's best efforts, she wasn't fully potty trained until age 4, and by then she was changing her own diapers). I thought we were all meeting again outside the bathroom, but when I got outside, my family was nowhere to be found.

I was one of those tweenagers who refused to ask for help in these kinds of situations, so I wandered the park in search of either my family or security for half an hour before I gave up, found a shady spot by the food court, and sat and read (I was also one of those nerdy kids who always had a book with them). Mum & company were frantically looking for me, and eventually Cousin F spotted me reading at my table. (Why they left me in the bathroom in the first place remains a mystery.) Mum was in a state of total mental collapse by then, so we left Hershey Park and went back to the Best Western.

We ate the nasty room service dinner, took Lil Sis down to the sketchfest of a pool, hid from the person in the dog suit, and then while Mum was trying to get Lil Sis to go to sleep in the next room, me, Cousin F, and Big Sis#2 had an epic pillow fight, Mum screamed at us, and the hotel manager came up and yelled at her to please keep her rowdy family under control or they'd kick us out.

Sunday morning, we took the two hour drive to Sesame Place. Big Sis#2 and I had removed the Barney tape from the car and destroyed it, so instead of two hours of Barney music, we got two hours of Lil Sis crying and complaining.

Sesame Place is a water park, and thus was just as big a fail as Hershey Park, because Cousin F and I can't swim, Mum won't swim, and Big Sis#2 won't even go near a body of water larger than a bucket because she has an intense fear of sharks.

I've posted that on her facebook at least twice...

Then for whatever reason, Lil Sis was completely, maniacally, and ridiculously PETRIFIED of the Count. So after lunch, Mum was like feck it and we just went home.

BUT THE FUN WASN'T OVER. Several days later, we all discovered that we had intestinal parasites.

Y'all know I have issues with that. That is how I acquired my first ever prescription for sedatives.

I don't know if we got them at Hershey, Sesame, or in the motel. I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, all three of them are infested with parasites.

I shall catch up with y'all when I return from the wild west. Hope the rest of you topside are enjoying your summer! And for those of you enjoying the winter, FEEL MY BURNING JEALOUSY. 

<3