Wednesday, June 26, 2013

This Song Is Driving Me Crazy

I wrote a song. You know, for the story I'm working on. Initially it was just supposed to be something to open up the story, a replacement for a short set of verses I originally used, which were apparently too sad for the beginning. Except this song popped into my head with actual music, instead of just lyrics, and from there proceeded to drive me nuts.

First, I had to record it on youtube. It held me hostage until I did that, going over and over again in my head until I finally gave up. The video and sound quality wound up being terrible - a side effect of using a budget laptop's built in microphone and webcam. It bothered me that the quality was so bad.

Then last night, I went, okay, fine, and re-recorded it, this time using youtube's capture app for the iPhone, which did a shockingly good job. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. A phone's microphone had better be good, especially one as expensive as the iPhone.

So if you have any interest at all in hearing the song, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBC96Yk_4jA

"My winter lady scolds, she scolds
and sends me to my bed
but the sun is high and calling me
roads are waiting to be tread!

Will you come and dance with me,
merry lady, in the snow?
Will you wear an icy crown and laugh
as the wind growls deep and low?

Oh, we'll dare our dear Courine
to send her cold white powder
and try to keep us trapped inside -
we'll only sing the louder!

Dance with me, dance with me
our love will keep us warm.
Sing with me, sing with me
our love will keep us from harm."

Monday, June 24, 2013

Ankhfire

You may have noticed I haven't posted much lately. That's because much of my writing energy has been redirected into another attempt at a novel, once again far more complicated than it needs to be. This one is extra challenging, because it's an attempt to save a novel from when I was 12. :D Should be fun! 

If you have any interest in reading it, I'd posted it below. It's also on DeviantArt, so you can get updates when I write a new one, here: http://diglette.deviantart.com/art/Ankhfire-Chapter-01-380500082?ga_submit_new=10%253A1372133123

Also, I have the song here. Yes, that's me singing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXe1EjzLDjo



Ankhfire


The trees around her are hungry demons in the night. She has never been this deep into the forest - for all of her pride and the courage she strives for, the Forest Deeps are too dangerous. Always dangerous, but never like this. Fear is like a living thing within her, coiling and writhing in her stomach and through her veins. A pulse beats hard, suffocating and frantic in her throat. Whatever she found pride in before, she is prey now - a rabbit before woves. Little light penetrates the boughs of the massive, craggy oaks above, but here and there a shaft of moonlight lances through the softer shadow. Beacons of flase hope in a place and time where none exists. Her breath seems too loud, echoing back at her harshly in the bitter darkness.

Time to move again. They can not be far behind. Fear lends her strength, and she tightens her grip on the smaller woman's legs, her aching, exhausted legs carrying them both deeper into the night. "How could I have let this happen?" she mouths, neither daring nor able to make a sound and she trots across the unstable, treacherous forest floor, thick with mast, and roots, and fear. 




Chapter One



"My winter lady scolds, she scolds
and sends me to my bed
but the sun is high and calling me
roads are waiting to be tread!"

Music rises above the autumnal trees of the forest in a slow, smooth voice, deep for a woman, but sweet all the same. It's a cheery song, but has a somewhat martial tone, less because of its composer's intent and more because the voice that bears it is slightly strained with effort and the sound is punctuated by the dull echoes of metal meeting wood.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

The chips fly, thick and wedge-shaped, from the middling-sized oak tree that lays across the blue-gray, white, and tan river stone paved path to the small wooden cottage. Rhelle works steadily, feeling sweat move across her skin, tickled by an errant breeze, as her hands grasp firmly the varnished ash handle of the slightly pitted black hatchet. It slides downward to further darken the forest-green tunic she wears belted over her black leggings and solid leather boots. The well-used blade catches the light from the sinking sun and flashes it back merrily as she swings.

"Will you come and dance with me
Merry lady, in the snow?
Will you wear an icy crown and laugh
As the wind growls deep and low?"

The tree is mostly in pieces now. The branches have been cut off and cut into manageable bits. The trunk itself is being reduced to chunks just small around to get her arms all the way around and perhaps an arm’s length long. She’ll split them later. Even the bark will be stripped for kindling. She stops for a minute to look around her as a thin crack announces the severing of another length of trunk, leaving only one more cut to make.

Winter is coming. She can smell it in the air around her, feel it in the crunch of red and yellow maple and oak leaves under her feet, feel it day by day as the billions of complex, interwoven strands of fire energy streaming from the sun, invisible, became subtly longer, thinner, and weaker. Winter is coming, but Rhelle and her small household of two are prepared. She might not need the wood – the wood pile is quite large enough to last through most winters – but why let it go to waste when it has fallen so conveniently across her path?

She worries that it might be a sign. This is the second oak tree to fall this week, neither with discernible cause. Oak is a hard wood. It doesn’t catch fire easily, but it holds a flame for a long time, and burns hot and bright. Though she is not a god-speaker, this is not a hard sign to interpret. Reinforce your walls, raise your wood piles, and store extra food. This winter will be hard and long. Oak is protective, and in that capacity, often warns of danger. The long, bitter months ahead are dangerous enough for anyone, living this far from town.

She shakes her head slightly, feeling her shoulder-length mass of sun-streaked red curls bounce and settle against her ears and neck. Focus, Rhelle, or you won’t have this job done by sun-fall. There are still two cows to milk and a half-crazy tabby cat to bring in. She picks up her hatchet again, starting on the last cut. 

Thunk. Thunk. The hatchet's blade bites enthusiastically into the hard wood, and every few swings she turns the log with her foot so that the cut is an ever-deepening circle around the log. She takes up her song again, cheerful in the face of honest labor to be done. She's always happiest when there's work to be done, and it's work she knows exactly how to do. Sitting still doesn't suit her. With a crack, the log splits in the center, and she straightens, sliding the smooth, slightly sweaty handle of the hatchet through a loop in the leather belt bisecting the deep green cotton tunic she wears. 

A glance shows  that the shadows are lengthening. Sunfall approaches, and when it comes, it will wake mankind's only true predator. When the night comes, vampires come with it. 

She swallows a tickle of nerves in her throat and deliberately sings a a little louder to prove that she isn't afraid. This is my home, she thinks fiercely, and yanks on the slightly prickly ends of several body-length branches with more force than necessary. 

The chores takes less time than she expected, and before too long, she's two buckets of milk the richer and her heart is light. The barn the cows live in is attached to the house, but there's no door directly between them. Two entrances might have weakened the threshold. The failing sun pours light through several panes of glass embedded in the roof of the barn. No creature of the night can hide safely within while the sun is up. She heads for the front door.

The sky is just beginning to glow with sunfall's glory as Rhelle strides across her small home's dark wood threshold, feeling a small weight of anxiety lift from her relatively broad shoulders. A heavy milk pail swings just slightly in her grasp, its metal surface gleaming brightly in the yellow light of the candles Lunira has already lit on either side of the doorway. A hopeful cat trails after the bucket, tabby fur rippling as he keeps pace. A plaintive mrrtt issues from him in a bid for pity. The yearning in his posture is clear. 

She pauses to smile at a willowy young woman with shining black hair cascading around her pale, freckled face. "Lunira," she greets the woman with love and warmth in her voice as she kicks off her boots and hooks a foot around the door to pull it shut. She heads for the kitchen to put the milk on the table. Her wife will want it for the pancakes she promised to make tonight, as she does every full moon. Some superstition she  brought with her from her birthplace far to the west. 

Lunira's initial good-humored grin flashes brightly on her face and then vanishes, chased away by an entirely different emotion. Sparks fly in her eyes, chips of ice in her golden-brown regard. "Cut it a little close there, didn't you?" Her voice is sharp and cutting, and Rhelle starts in surprise. The smaller woman's eyebrows draw together with reproach. "What if there had been something waiting for dark out there? Even the old ones will risk twilight for careless blood, you know!" She follows her lover into the kitchen, scolding like a mother hen. 

Rhelle's gray-green eyes widen with mock surprise, and her work-roughened hands fly up to her neck as if to ensure it is still intact. She ostentatiously checks the pulse under the corner of her jawline and sighs in comical relief. "No, I think I'm safe. I must have been too tough and stringy for their tastes. Or maybe it was that they only come out at night. As in past the first hint of sunfall." 

"What if one had bitten you? I saw a female hiding under the eaves, behind the woodpile. It could have gotten you." Spots of angry color rose to Lunira's pale cheeks as her eyes snapped and flashed with ire, trying to snatch the pail of milk from her lover. "Then what? They don't let go of the ones they've marked!" 

Rhelle dodged with a smile, snatching a small blue porcelain bowl from a shelf and pouring milk in it for Fearsome. The silly creature dances and mews happily as she places it on the floor for him. The name is a joke. Fearsome has to be the worst hunter either of them has ever seen, and that includes his far lazier black and white predecessor. 

"I know you wanted to make pancakes, and we're running short on butter, but you can spare a little, yes?" She laughs, waiting for Lunira to roll her eyes and flap a hand at her. Unfortunately, the taller, dark-haired woman seems determined to get her point across and refuses to relent. Making another bid for the pail, more successfully this time, she marches up to Rhelle, her expression flat and unamused. As she turns to put it by the cutting board of dark, much-abused wood, her yellow dress swirls around her ankles, and Rhelle snags her around her slender waist to kiss one pale, exposed shoulder. "Hey. If I'd been bitten, they'd have had a hell of a fight. I don't like the bloodsuckers any better than you do." 

"And then what?" Lunira pulls away, her voice not raised above a whisper this time. In the dead silence, it is loud enough. She pulls away, head down, and goes on without waiting for an answer. "Then I'd be waiting by the door, not even daring to go look for you, waiting for someone won't be coming home. Then all I would be able to do is wonder." She seems to tremble slightly with emotion: fear, relief, loathing for the dread creatures that keep mankind caged when the sun is down. Rhelle isn't sure. Her quiet voice is fragile. "Did they drain you, allowing you to die in peace, before feeding your body to their wolves? Did they imprison you? Are you being tortured? Will you be tortured for the rest of your life, just for giving them a 'hell of a fight,' or even just for fun? Or gods all forbid, did they carry you to the dark river and make you one of them forever?" 

Her words ring in the hushed room, like the bell-toll of the white angels of death. A shining diamond drops, shimmering in the dying light still streaming from outside before darkening a tiny circle on the cobbled stone floor. Lunira is weeping as she spells out the fear they live with every single night, the fear every man and woman alive lives with, though it is not often commented on, or even thought of. Rhelle closes the distance again, embracing her wife, and this time Lunira allows it, and the tension melts.

"Why are you so afraid, dear heart?" she murmurs into a shining mass of dark hair. 
"Who says I'm afraid?" The brave question is belied by the way her voice breaks on the last word. "I just don't want anything to happen to you." She twists and captures Rhelle's startled mouth with her own, and the two hold each other close as the kiss deepens. 

Breathless moments pass and Rhelle breaks away, her eyes glinting with mischief. "I can think of something I want to happen to me." Her wife's answering smile was a sweet, loving, and sad. The older woman opens her mouth to ask why, but is distracted as a yellow dress falls to the floor with a muffled thump and she is pulled eagerly toward the open door to their small bedroom, across the sitting room from the kitchen.

They return to the kitchen an hour later, both of them hungry and slightly sweaty, and somehow, Rhelle has forgotten all about the argument, and the strange look of sorrow at its close. 



The moon changed its form as he retreated from his earthly lover and returned again returning to brilliant, bursting fullness overhead twice more before everything changed. A fire crackles and pops merrily in the hearth, though already it is burning a little lower. Its shifting reds and yellows paint the wood-paneled walls and gray cobblestones paving the floor with warm, gentle colors. The rocking chair beside the fireplace rug throws back sharp, dancing fingers of black shadow toward the open, airy kitchen, lying mostly in shadow. The sun is very low in the sky.

Rhelle sits by the window directly opposite the kitchen where Lunira hums softly while finishing up the dishes, quietly content, on a dark wooden bench built into the wall. The bench has a thick, soft cushion. It was a team effort to make. Rhelle built the bench and collected the feathers, and Lunira sewed deep green velvet from Anarinne into a rectangular pad thick enough to sink into. It is a very nice place to sit and think.

Something nags her gently. Nothing important - just a faint feeling of recognition. The tune Lunira hums is somehow familiar. A smile tugs on slightly chapped lips as the redheaded woman recognizes it. "Will you come and dance with me, merry lady, in the snow?" she sings quietly, smiling in the direction of the kitchen. Lunira returns the smile with warm affection as she dries her hands. 

"Will you wear an icy crown and laugh as the winds growl deep and low?" she responds with a little laugh. Rhelle rises, and they dance to meet each other  swaying in the warm firelight. Lunira's voice is higher and sweeter, light starlight, like ice in the morning sun.

"Oh, we'll dare our dear Courine," Rhelle sings, her voice rising with power and joy and pride ("You would dare Her," Lunira laughs softly") "to send her cold white powder." She pulls her wife closer for a quick kiss, and then twirls her gently around. The younger woman's hair flows with the movement, deep blue highlights shimmering in her black hair as it catches the firelight. 

"And try to keep us trapped inside! We'll only sing the louder!"

"Dance with me, dance with me, our love will keep us warm!" the two sing together, high voice like fae light, like glass and bells and wintry things, low voice as rich and nurturing as the earth and full of love and strength. Rhelle's eyes are closed, and she misses the frozen moment, charged with fear and shock, when Lunira's eyes fall on the door, held slightly ajar. She sings the last line alone. "Sing with me, sing with me, our love will keep us -" 

Lunira's scream cuts her off, and green eyes and brown alike fly open. 

Things begin to happen very quickly. Her heartbeat drowns her in sound and pulsing terror as the vampire, lean and deceptively human, crosses with inhuman grace and terrible speed the short distance between the front door (the threshold! How did it cross the threshold and open the door?) and in a time that seemed syrup-slow and as short as a heartbeat, Lunira fell to the floor, the vampire's venom incapacitating her in an instant. 

It is unlikely instinct that saves Rhelle from suffering the same. Fire is her element, and while she doesn't have the easy comfort with it that Lunira has with water, she was trained as every child was. In blind panic, she tugs at the thousands of strands of fire energy making up the flame in the hearth and throws it at the vampire. A moment of hope stabs at her, as sharp as pain, and she throws another handful of the fire, and another. 

Fire. Fire is the only thing that really destroys a vampire. Wood through the heart with turn it to still-sentient dust, as will the sun, running water will form a barrier as sure as a brick wall, but fire detroys. All she sees is flame and shadow and movement. The world dissolves into heat, the fury of the moment. She backs away and hits the wall, panting, eyes wild, and sees that the vampire has deflected the flames. 

Can it do that? They can't! They definitely can't do that! Except apparently they can. The vampire wears an amused smirk. "I have to thank you," he says cheerfully, "for leaving the door open! You should be more careful. Carelessness will get you killed, you know. These are terrible times." Lunira moans in unconscious pain behind the advancing vampire. 

Trapped in a corner, with fire apparently no longer her ally and no way to escape, Rhelle knows she is going to die. "You should know," she counters hoarsely, angry with the inevitability of the situation. "Or were you born this hideous?" 

Irritation more than anger flashes through flat black eyes. His smile is mocking. He will savor this, make her death slower than it must be, just for that remark. The stocky redhead leans against the wall, fear and fight alike draining out of her as she braces herself for the end. She whispers a prayer to the Dark God who governs Death and grasps her amulet, silver in the shape of an ankh, pulling it out from inside her shirt. Her arm falls. 

The vampire hisses like a cat, its features contorting with fear. She watches dumbly as it backs away, and then a spark of light, of hope returns to her. Compelled by something she cannot quite understand, she grasps the amulet by the long chain, raising her hand to let the symbol of eternity dangle freely, shining in the firelight. 

She sees the world only in flashes of picture, surreally tinted with oranges and yellows and blues. She is closer to the monster. Has she taken a step? The vampire backs away, eyes locked on the ankh the way she would watch a poisonous snake, expression twisted with hatred and fear. 

The sight of that symbol, the symbol of the continuance of life, is more than the creature can bear. Too long has it walked the earth, killing every night or else returning to the black river to gain the vitality to survive another sunrise, each visit draining a little more meaning from its continued existence. Fire, it did not fear her fire, because it longs for true death, which only fire will bring, but it can not stand this symbol of eternity. A raw cry of pain, terror, hatred, and grief tears from its throat, and it flees into the night. The door slamming against the wall behind it echoes, louder than she can believe, with her heartbeat. 

Relief makes her limp, and then the smell of woodsmoke and burning fabrics clears the cobwebs from her mind. Rhelle's defense is hungrily devouring the labor of her five years living with Lunira, and two years before that. She built this home from the ground up, laboring day after day for longer than she cared to think about at the time. Now it is falling. Now it is burning. 

She is frozen in an instant of indecision. The fires are too large to smother already - it has gotten ahold of curtains and the tablecloth. If she stays, she and Lunira will both die. If she goes, the things that live in the night might take her, and she will be food, or worse. 

She chooses the risk. Anarinne isn't so far away, and someone there will take them in. Gently, lovingly, Rhelle lifts her lover in her arms, glad that Lunira is so delicate and slender, and holds her close, carrying her from the shelter that has protected them for five years. Without a glance back, she stumbles through the darkness, her life going up in flames behind her. All the while, she knew that eyes might be watching her, and not all would be old enough to fear the symbol of the ankh.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Beds Are the Most Amazing Inventions Ever

I'm lying in a bed. An actual bed. My actual bed. See? Here's proof:




Okay, so it's not really proof, but it's the closest I can get without getting out of said absolutely amazing bed, and frankly, I'm not convinced that's happening at all this month. I love my bed. 

You just don't fully appreciate how wonderful a bed is until you spend a week alternating between sleeping on a loveseat and sleeping in an easy chair, always in temperatures about 75 degrees, which is probably fine for everyone else, but is misery for me. I'm so sorry. I will never take you for granted again.*

The week sleeping in either my parents' easy chair or my boyfriend's loveseat, mind out of the gutter, you!, is the latest stage of job-seeking stuff, between interviews and the orientation at  PSA, where I wasn't actually 100% sure I was hired until yesterday. 

Except actually, I am. Yay! That could be awkward if any of the places I interviewed at actually call me back. I'm staying, though. Leave a full time pediatric nursing job with hours flexible enough to allow me to go back to school and a wonderful, supportive supervisory staff, not to mention amazing learning opportunities? Hah. Not hardly. It would take my Dream Job to pry me away and since I didn't actually apply for my Dream Job, I think it's a safe bet that's not happening. Yet. Someday. 

Seriously, though, this company will teach you anything you can learn as an LPN. Hundreds of free Continuing Education classes, and they'll brush me up on trach care if I want, which I do. Speaking of things you don't appreciate till they're gone, I'm so sorry, High School. 

So I am super excited to meet my patient Tuesday. Until then... Squee! I have my bed back, my cat is still super affectionate from missing me - more than usual, which is both adorable and slightly terrifying - and life is good. 

PS - and because you apparently don't tempt fate that way without reprisal, Sarah, I rolled over flat on my back and ow! Owwie. Apparently my sleeping arrangements and stress level have made my back tense up that badly. Ow. 

... Not retracting my statement, though. 


* I apologize in advance for any lies I may have just finished telling. 

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Am Mature Girlfriend

Warning. Safe for work, sort of, but maybe too weird for work. So I'm hanging out with Shane, the Boyfriend, when we start having the strangest debate with his roommate Rowan. I don't even remember how this got started. 

Rock vaginas. That's what this debate was about. Rock. Vaginas. 

Sort of. It was a Pokemon thing. Rowan thinks geodude reproduces through Technology, I think that with geodude and rock Pokemon only, they reproduce by budding, and Shane thinks geodudes must have rocky vaginas and penises. 

Then we had a miniature debate about how rocky vaginas must be all rough and scrape-y, which is so not true because polished stones, Shane. 

Somehow this turned into marinating steaks in kangaroo milk, which is oozed out of the skin because marsupials are neat like that, and I don't even know anymore. 

We have the weirdest conversations sometimes. I think that might be why we work as a couple. Because he's not afraid of rock vaginas. 

Smile for the camera, Shane. :p 


Tuesday, June 11, 2013

The Magnanimous Mr. Voodoo-Man

As a gift to celebrate me getting a new job, my extremely awesome uncle sent me the most amazing gift in the history of mankind. 

An iguana statuette. Not just any iguana statuette, either. This iguana statuette:


His name is Mr. Voodoo-Man and he's awesome. I decided that I would be his Voice, since ceramic larynxes probably don't work very well. He will be a wise and magnanimous overlord! All shall bow to him! 

I can't stop giggling at how epic he is, seriously. I've been toting him around for hours and making ringing proclamations for him.

I think my parents are getting tired of hearing, "Mr. Voodoo-Man approves of this French Toast." and "Mr. Voodoo-Man desires more tea." 

But Mr. Voodoo-Man doesn't care. He's too awesome to be bothered by such criticism. 

PS: I'm getting him a cape. And a top hat. Hah.


Sunday, June 9, 2013

Common Medical Misconceptions Pt 1

So I've been reading the Dresden Files, and I came across something that disappoints me enormously. The book further perpetuates a couple of myths that have caused me trouble in my profession as a school nurse. My school does have a couple of students who have frequent seizures, and so have the schools I was at before THS. I had one unfortunate case where I got there too late to prevent the aid from sticking something in her mouth and the girl wound up bleeding.

The myth: When someone is having a tonic-clonic seizure, you should hold them down and stick something in their mouth to keep them from swallowing their tongue.

NO.

NO. 

Do not hold them down. You'll hurt them as they convulse against the restraints. You will accomplish nothing. You might even get yourself hurt in the bargain.

Do not put something between their teeth, ever. You can not swallow your intact tongue under any circumstances, including seizure. You may hurt their teeth, their cheeks, and your fingers trying to accomplish this, and if you're very unlucky, the clenching and unclenching of the person's jaws may result in the object going down their throat. This is not the desired effect.

On a side note, please don't give them food or water either, until the person is fully alert. Their swallowing functions may be impaired, resulting in aspiration.

Here's what you actually should do:

1. Cushion the person's head in some way to prevent injury. Don't hold it down. Just make sure that if it hits something, that something is soft.

2. Turn them on their side if possible. Seizures may result in vomiting - we don't want that in the person's lungs. That would be bad.

3. Time the seizure. If the person has a bracelet identifying them as epileptic, 911 may only be necessary if the seizure goes on longer than 5 minutes. Of course, if you don't know they have epilepsy, it might be a good idea to call anyway. When/if EMS arrives, they will want to know how long this has been going on.

4. When the person comes to, stay with them to provide reassurance and aid if necessary. Stay calm. Let them breathe. It doesn't help to panic and demand they talk to you and tell you what they need.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go grumble about priests getting people killed.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Justine!

I was excited. I was relieved. My chainmaille obsession had finally died. I went from three to four hours of chainmaille every single day for six months to giving my hands a nice, well-earned rest. But no. Justine (best, most frustrating friend ever) introduced me to the Game of Thrones, which I have been resisting watching with an iron will for months now, and because I can't really watch something without doing something with my hands, I wound up working on chainmaille at the same time.

I had to finish this piece eventually, but hell, she started me back up again, so I wound up doing more than the one piece. I will say that it was very nice to work with my german silver that's been sitting on my worktable untouched for weeks.



I also wound up finishing the Barrels piece I've been promising Justine for ages now. This piece, and the ease of its birth, is how I know that I'm at least mildly back in chainmaille again.... because for about a month now, I've been trying to force out the last half of the above piece, and it just flowed today. Damnit, Justine.


Damnit.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Why Trivializing Your Child Is a Worse Idea than Spinach Ice Cream

To the parents who trivialize their children's sexual orientations: I don't get it. No, seriously. I don't get it. What do you hope to accomplish there? It's truly sad that in my four months of being a high school's nurse (I was in an elementary school before that, and for two and a half months in the early part of this calendar year) I've had too many students in my clinic crying over parents' dismissiveness to count on two hands.

That's right. I saw that more often than I saw drug issues and STDs combined. That's just depressing, Parents. I'm not even a guidance counselor.

What do you think's going to happen? Oh, I snickered told my son that his being gay is just a phase, so he's going to see how silly he's being and suddenly like boobs. Yeah, that makes sense. Let's examine this piecemeal.

Assumption: Homosexuality/bisexuality/pansexuality/asexuality/what-have-you is bad, for some reason.

Option 1: Rebellious phase. Okay. Sounds good. Every teenager goes through phases, and some of them make more sense than others. As much as I'd like to say everyone knows for sure who they are at all times, it's not true. Teenagers really do occasionally go through sexual orientation phases. Here's the catch. If you say something nasty or derisive, you'll wind up pushing your teenager into rebellion mode. As soon as you make someone defend their points, it becomes harder to change their minds. This is true of children as often as of adults. You've seen it before. Leave it alone. If being gay/bisexual/pansexual/asexual/what-have-you is a phase, it will go away on it's own.

Option 2: Plain old confusion. I don't even know why I have to explain this. Giving someone an absolute answer with no real supporting evidence to a terribly confusing, multifaceted issue is the opposite of helpful.   Try an actual discussion. Your child may realize he or she isn't as confused as he or she thought.

Option 3: Not a phase. Which, believe it or not, is the case more often than not, I think. All you're going to accomplish by mocking your child is to cause massive psychological damage and self-esteem issues. As much as they want to think your opinion doesn't matter, it does. Parents have more power, even over older teenagers, than they know.

Now shape up. I would really prefer not to see any more crying children over something like this.

On a side note, I do not recommend writing blog posts after taking benadryl. In fact, it might be better to stay off of the internet altogether once you've taken benadryl. The Davis Drug Guide refers to it as a hypnotic for a reason.

I might come back and make this post more coherent tomorrow morning. Or I might just delete it. -shrugs-

Memories and Tea

Normally, my posts are pretty silly. I suppose it's to make up for the scant silliness my work affords me. After all, at THS I had the health of over a thousand students to worry about - though truthfully, probably half the students I saw came from a pool of maybe a hundred regulars. Today, I just don't have a lot of silliness in me. I guess I'm still pretty shell-shocked. 

Wednesday was my last day of work for the health department. School's out for summer, so they won't need me until August, if I'm still in Titusville, and truthfully, as much as I love my job, I don't think that I could stand not working for so long. 

So yesterday, after pre-employment testing that I sincerely hope will end in employment, because this would be a great place to work, I spent all day with my boyfriend, Shane, watching Doctor Who (he hadn't even seen all of the Eccleston episodes until yesterday, guys! I'm not sure this is going to work. :p) and hanging out, drinking his roommate's tea.

His roommate has some really extraordinary tea. 

Today he had to work, though, so I went home and I've basically been wandering around my apartment confused. What do I even do with myself without my clinic? How does that even work?

And I miss my kids. I miss simple things like bringing water and replacing ice packs for students with high fevers waiting to be picked up, and more complicated things like seizure care - which was needed surprisingly often, by the way, usually by one student. I miss the administrators, my one student who always comes in for ice because I can't prove she's coming in just to see me but she really needs to only do that during lunch, Eve-gwen. I miss my daily meds kids, the student resource officer, the library assistant. 

Aww, hell. This is day two. 

Fortunately, I've discovered something beautiful, which is really helping to keep my stress levels down, and is delicious besides - good, Teavana tea. 


Right now I'm drinking Phoenix Dragon Jasmine Pearls, which is a fairly bitter green tea with a nice floral overtone, probably from the Jasmine. Before that it was a blend of Samurai Chai Mate and Majaraja Chai Oolong. Mmmm. Amazing. 


I might have a problem, guys. 

PS: all of the teas in my cabinet are good, but you would do well to be cautious before trying matcha. I love it. It has a rich, briny (what does it say about me that autocorrect changed that to 'brony'? No, don't answer that) flavor and is very, very strong. See if you can get a sample before trying it, because Justine's face after drinking some suggests that my loving it might be one more way I'm a 'freak of nature,' as she lovingly puts it. 

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Silly Names for Invisible Griffins


As I've said before, I work as a school nurse. I’m sure you can envision the kind of silliness I see. (For instance, I had one girl come in the other day with a bug bite, clutching at it and wailing that she was dying, and someone should call poison control, or maybe her grandmother. Truthfully, I’m not sure what she expected her grandmother to do.) Ironically, the part of my job that most taxes my ability to hold in my giggles is the names I see.

You get your usual myriad of misspelled nouns and adjectives, of course – I’ve seen every misspelling in the book of Jewel, Precious, Dove, Special, and Sky – but then I get some like Devon’cling Darknyss McSmee the 11th (whose mother and father, of course, are named John and Rachel) or some such silliness, and you think I’m joking, but I’m not.

Of course, the above is not the name of one of my students, because that wouldn’t be nice, and I wouldn’t do that, Mom, but it is similar in many ways to the name of a student I sent to archiving today. That is to say, it was an ordinary name, apostrophe, verb, followed by a noun, and that was just the first name.

I’m actually a little worried, because I’m giggling a little less at stuff like this now than when I started. What if I’m becoming immune to the ridiculous? After all, familiarity breeds indifference. Isn’t that the theory behind vaccines and allergy shots and griffins?

A friend informs me that I have to explain what griffins have to do with familiarity and indifference. See, when I was a kid I was encouraged by a student in my class to introduce her to my pet griffin. Of course, I didn’t know I had a griffin at the time, and I suppose he was probably imaginary, but I did anyway, because what if he was real and I was the only one who couldn’t see him? So I named him Jaunita, speaking of silly names, and my imaginary griffin and my friend (whose name, I confess, I have forgotten) became good buddies. She spent so much time interacting with Jaunita that I convinced myself I could see him, too.

By the time I got to second grade, I realized, of course, that there wasn’t actually a pet griffin, and that was why all of the fruit I left out for him rotted and we had fruit flies. Please don’t tell my parents.  You know what, forget it, I don’t think that would actually surprise them.

I suspect, though, that Juanita was real, and familiarity just, you know, bred indifference. So eventually I became immune and stopped being able to see her. That’s why kids know that unicorns and fairies and dolphins exist, and adults insist they’re made-up. We can’t see them anymore because we were exposed so much we became indifferent. Hush. That is totally a correct way to use that word.

This is why I have to find work outside of the school system. I’m already immune to griffins. What if I stop giggling at silly names and then stop giggling at silly students and then stop being silly myself? How would I survive?

My cat would probably be happy, though.

PS: Not all of my students are silly-named alarmists. In fact, most of them either have perfectly ordinary names, or they have really epic unusual names. Yes, I do totally get to judge what’s epic and what’s just silly. This is my blog, thank you very much. As for being alarmists… Let’s just say I had a student come limping in last week with a massively swollen and bruised foot, asking for ice.

Some of my students should be more alarmable.

PPS: Don’t assume your students are fine just because they wail that they’re dying. I had a student do that once, and I made the mistake of figuring they were being melodramatic, and while I was going through my routine assessment (heart/lungs/pulse/PO2/BP) for chest pain, she started going gray, which is impressive for a particularly dark African American girl. This was right around when I noticed that her heart beat was doing some scary things, and called 911 and then the principal (which is only polite if you’re bringing an ambulance to their schools. They tend to get a little grumpy if EMTs show up and they weren’t informed) and tried to help her keep calm until they got there. I don’t know if I succeeded, or if she was just making good progress towards passing out. I’m leaning more towards passing out, personally.

PPPS: That student is fine.

PPPPS: Probably.

PPPPPS: I’ll be honest, I just wanted to see how many p’s I could get away with.

PPPPPPS: Six. The answer is six.


Monday, May 20, 2013

Much Ado About Mind Control


Every now and again, I go off on little tangents. The funny thing is that there’s rarely a logical reason for me to be having these tangents at all, and there’s almost never any logic to continuing them. For instance, I just finished Jenny Lawson’s, “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.” There’s a moment in the book where she’s gleefully realizing that she’s controlling your mind as you read what she’s written.

Or maybe that was in her blog. Whatever.

So I’m sitting there trying to figure out how I would word that realization if I was writing it, because I had a very awesome moment when I thought, wait a minute. I can do that now. I totally have a blog of my own now. Then I realized that unless I’m significantly funnier than I think I am, I’m probably only going to be briefly controlling the mind of Shane, who I recently started dating, and that made me sad for a minute.

But I’m pretty sure at some point the word, “actively” was in that little rewrite in my head. Does it count as active mind control if you’re doing it at one point and then the minds are actually being controlled later? Or is that passive mind control? How do you passively control someone’s mind?

This is all working off of the assumption that I’m not in a coma and you aren’t a figment of my imagination. Goodness, my imagination is complicated. Stop being so complicated, brain.

This was the point at which I started coming up with random scenarios and sorting them into active mind control, passive mind control, and unsure. Most of the scenarios wound up in the unsure bin, because I don’t actually know how passive mind control would work.

Someone should write a book about this...and I should really get a grip on my brain.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

This Is Why I'll Never Be a Real Author

We all pretty much know that life moves in cycles. Right now, my life is cycling in several different ways. I'm trying to find a new job because right now, I work at a high school, and school is out for the summer on Wednesday, which is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Oh, aye, I've put out applications, both in person and online, and I've followed up, but nothing has turned into more nothing, and now I'm getting seriously worried.

Ahem. Possibly more than just worried.

So there's that.

On top of that, I've cycled out of chainmaille (see picture below if you don't know what that is, said picture being what I was going to use for a business card before I realized my mailling was drying up)


and now I'm moving back into writing for the six millionth time. Surprisingly, it's the cycle back into writing that's frustrating me for right now, perhaps because it's the problem that I can do something about that I'm not already doing. Usually when I enter a period of time of writing, I start up an entirely new book idea, and then a quarter of the way through, or halfway through, or years ago, maybe even three quarts of the way through, suddenly the drive to write is entirely gone, and doesn't come back no matter how far I slog. It's just not worth it if you have to force more than three or four chapters, you know?

What I really need to do is find a way to make it possible to go back and pick up older projects when I cycle through drawing and then painting and then chainmaille and then something random like knitting and find myself back at writing. I'm at a bit of a loss.

I'm also very frustrated, because I have a few possibilities. I could start another brand new project, which is, at the moment, an unappealing option. There are three or four unfinished books on my hard-drive. One I've gotten thirty thousand words into, and I'm only maybe a fifth of the way through the story I had planned for book one, and the world, mythos, and magical systems are so ungodly complicated that I don't think I can pick it up again a year later. Another is much simpler, but is maybe ten years old, and is terribly written and bare-bones at best on details... but if I want to go through and reread it, I might be able to rewrite every chapter, and from there I only have five or six to go. This is the likeliest option, but I'm not sure how I feel about a vampire novel, even one that introduces new ideas (such as true vampires being created, not by being bitten, but by being chained in the river Styx for three days and nights, and wild magic, which is nigh uncontrollable) at this time. Then I have a fanfiction written for Yu Yu Hakusho, but I'm not certain I can untangle it from the anime and make it stand on its own, even though the main character is original. I have another story which gets into complicated sciences, and I'm not happy about the idea of writing science fiction because I know I'll get the physics wrong. Plus it's heavy on the politics of an imaginary society and I don't even like real world politics much.

I have a couple of other options, but so little progress has been made on them that I might as well start anew.

How frustrating. If anyone's reading this and feels inclined to weigh in, please do so.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Thi'ev the Magical Talking Squid Thing

When I was going up, I had a dangerously over active imagination. This really isn't too terribly unusual in and of itself. Every child is creative at ten years old to some degree. Unfortunately for my family, I was armed with two things that most unusually imaginitive child lacked. A large library of fantasy novels and a younger brother who was willing to go along with pretty much whatever I wanted to do. This is a very dangerous combination. 

One those very dangerous novels was called Water: Ascension. It was about a mermaid who finds out she's half human (I mean, half of the amount of human that mermaids normally are, I suppose) and goes on to bond with a Farworlder and become an Avatar, just in time for Atlantis  to sort of die. 

It's not a very far stretch from half human mermaid who looks like a mermaid to half mermaid human who looks like a human. Within the course of a morning, I managed to convince myself that I was actually adopted and one of my real parents was an Atlantean. If I found a magical-talking-squid-Farworlder of my very own, I could find my real family and go live in the sea.



My lack of gills never seemed like a big problem to me. Farworlders were magic, right? All I had to do was find a baby Farworlder. 

I also conveniently forgot how much I hated seafood. 

I don't really remember how I convinced James to help me in this quest. Possibly he was still grumpy about my fake Hogwarts letter and wanted me to drown. Or maybe not. He was a little young for revenge. I hadn't really gotten around to teaching him that yet. 

Between the two of us, we decided that pools were kind of like the sea, and maybe we'd find a Farworlder infant in our pool. I seized upon the idea with the same singleminded determination that had me trying to acquire our cockapoo, thats's a dog, you pervert, every night so that I could morph into her. There really is a fine line between creative and crazy. I would know. Probably. 

So that's how an eccentric ten year old and her six year old brother wound up scouring every inch of a kidney-shaped swimming pool looking for a magical squid.

We searched for hours. By the time we'd gone over the entire pool four times, I was convinced that I was Serai, a kidnapped mermaid princess from the Dolphin clan of Atlantis, and my brother (who really was adopted, and so could be anyone) was probably my best friend before we were kidnapped by these cruel, terrible humans. Shortly after deciding that I'd already bonded with a Farworlder (who totally had a name - Thi'ev) who had been stolen from me, and that I loved him more than pie and was totally a tragic heroine, we did actually find something. Or at least, James did.

Well, it had a whole bunch of legs, all right. Which is kind of what we were looking for. Unfortunately, the exact number of legs was eight. 

I don't have any memories before this of being afraid of spiders. Maybe this was the first. He was a whopper, all right. We call them Banana Spiders. God knows why, because they look nothing like fruit, science. They're about the size of a man's hand. This one was dead, which didn't make him significantly less frightening. He floated in a corner of the pool like a war casualty. I don't know where he came from. He wasn't there before. (Actually, it was probably a she, but I didn't know that at the time. All scary animals were male to me, god knows why.) 

My eyes bugged from my head, and I utilized my most terrible weapon against the evil spider. I screamed at the top of my lungs, and while it was recovering from my brutal attack, I swam for it. 

It was an epic battle for survival. In the end, I made it, a slightly baffled younger brother trailing behind me as I yanked open the sliding glass door and ran inside. I can't imagine my mother was thrilled about all of the water. I don't remember. 

The terror wore off pretty quickly, because honestly, fear was much less interesting than the pizza the cruel, terrible humans were offering, and by the time we'd both wolfed down three pieces of pepperoni-covered-glory, I'd forgotten all about Thi'ev.

Which just goes to show, really, that sometimes when you search for Atlantis you find magic, and sometimes you wind up running away from dead spiders in a swimming pool. Sometimes, if you have parents like mine, you have both. Or at least pizza. 

Pizza makes everything better. 

I've Joined the Mindless Masses

So I may have gotten a Twitter account (Look me up, I'm SarahEArmor) even though I have no idea how to use Twitter and it will probably languish. This gave me the opportunity to follow the world's most amazing people, like Amanda Palmer, the Bloggess, Allie Brosh, Tamora Pierce, Mercedes Lackey, and the Doctor. Shut up. It's totally the real Docter. He has a Twitter. I firmly believe it.

This lead to the odd realization that I have an actual list of people who are so epic that if they were aware that I existed, I would totally have a month-long fangasm. Seriously. How neat would it be if Felicia Day said hi to me?

I totally lost my mind one time a year or so ago and wrote fan letters to Amy Lee, Tamora Pierce, and for some reason, Kate Constable. Don't get me wrong, Kate Constable is a good author. She just didn't help to shape who I am the way Amy Lee and Tamora Pierce did. Sadly, I got form letter back from Tamora Pierce and Amy Lee (which is more than I expected anyway) but Kate Constable did actually reply. No, seriously. She's actually legitimately awesome.

I mean, this awesome author actually took the time to write a real, several-paragraphs letter in response to some girl who was sad that her books weren't available as ebooks in the USA. See, this is why I love authors.

Okay, tangent, much. So anyway, I got a Twitter account, and now I'm stalking epic people (and also my brother, who apparently uses the word "breh" all the time, even though it's not a real word, James. Breh is a misspelling of what a donkey does.) like Wil Wheaton, the totally epic, ridiculously sexy actor who plays the very douchey Fawkes on the Guild. Which you should be watching.

So yeah. I should probably be alarmed by the fact that I have an actual list, but I sincerely doubt I'll ever actually talk to any of them. So....

XD I'll settle for stalking them on Twitter.

PS: Yes, I do have an actual list:

Felicia Day
Tamora Pierce
Mercedes Lackey
JK Rowling
Wil Wheaton
Neil Patrick Harris
Allie Brosh
Jenny Lawson
Amanda Palmer
Amy Lee
ANYONE WHO HAS EVER PLAYED ANYONE OR ANYTHING IN DOCTOR WHO.

I should probably be ashamed of myself now.

PPS: In case you don't know who Amanda Palmer is, she's an extraordinary musician and an even more extraordinary woman who gives away her music. Bloggess linked one of her songs, and I listened to it and fell in love with it. The album the song is in is titled very appropriately, "Music To Change the World." The first time I heard it, I was all, "Huh, this sounds like the lead singer from the Dresden Dolls" because I'd been listening to Coin Operated Boy, and then I found out oh my gosh, that IS the singer from the Dresden Dolls. Epic.




Friday, May 17, 2013

Stockholmy Love!

I frequently tell people that I torture my cat. It's only fair, after all. She's so fluffy that it's physically painful. But I also adore my cat, Nala. Here she is:


Do you see that? Do you see how she taunts me? So my response, of course, is to do what any sane cat owner would do. I flip her upside down and kiss her furiously on the tail! 

I know you won't believe it of someone as sweet and gentle as me, so I totally acquired proof. Nala was not thrilled about this because normally I only hold her for a few seconds and it is surprisingly hard to get an iPhone picture with a fat, fluffy cat upside down in your arms. 

But here it is. 


See? It is proven. It is even more proven than the Loch Ness monster because my blurry photo is in color, so there. 

Just to prove how much like me she is, she followed my releasing her after like three solid minutes of complaints by purring and rubbing against my ankles. 

This cat has some serious stockholme syndrome, guys.

PS: This cat is just daring me to pick her up again.

PPS: I swear she is. I can see it in her little kitty eyes. She desperately needs to be picked up.

PPPS: Ow. 

Alpha Goose

A few years ago, I was dating someone named Michael. I swear I didn't trap him in carbonite. I wouldn't do that. Probably. Except maybe to Andy Warhol. I can't stand that guy. You are not an artist if someone else does the work. You're a concept guy. Jeesh. No, we broke up peacefully after three years together. Anyway. He went to a college in Jacksonville called UNF that has an impressive array of wildlife. It even has a nature walk.

It also sported quite a large herd of geese. 

I'm not sure how much experience you have with geese. You may be under the misapprehension that they waddle around cutely eating bread and wearing bonnets, quaking sweetly at passers-by. Let me assure you that that is not an accurate image of geese. These things are violent. 



You see? These things do not mess around. They have murder eyes. Seriously. Hide your children. 

So from time to time I would come visit him on his campus. Gorgeous scenery, fresh air, the bustle of the big city, not my parents' house, what's not to love? Geese, that's what. They strutted around the campus, knowing that the sight of their lowered heads could make proud D20 wielders and clever artisans alike run for cover. 

Or else, my boyfriend informed me, these things might charge you down and bite your knees. 

Well, this could not stand! I hatched a daring plan. In my head, I envisioned myself standing triumphant in the center of a circle of docile geese, tamed by my fearless wrath. 

So when, walking from lunch to his dorm, we passed a herd of geese, I could not resist. I picked out the nearest one, clearly the dominant goose, the alpha goose, if you please, and eyed him haughtily. With eyes and demeanor, I dared him to challenge me. Turning in his direction, my chin lifted and stance both menacing and masterful, I waited, bravely battling off my boyfriend's attempts to save me from the devil-geese. 

As I stared him down imperiously (the goose, not my boyfriend) he turned. And charged! 

The goose, used to people running away when he lowered his head and ran at them, stopped dead in his tracks as I charged forward, waving my arms and yelling. I was unstoppable! As he scrambled to run away, and the entire herd started edging away nervously, I was the kamikaze! 

Charged with power and energy, I screamed out my battle cry! I am ALPHA GOOSE! 

I ignored the sounds of alarm from the students around us. They were just jealous.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Why Bananas Don't Make Good Hiding Places

I'm starting a blog. I'm not entirely sure why I felt the need to announce this, because I'm pretty sure that you've figured this out by now, but just in case. I don't want to disappoint Whovians who may have thought they were stumbling upon a fansite, when really this is just a slightly neurotic nurse seeking an outlet that won't mind being notified at 3am that she's figured out why herbivore poop smells so much nicer than carnivore or omnivore poop.

So if you're still reading, especially if you're a Whovian, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I don't know whether overactive imaginations are contagious, but I'd better apologize just in case. Please let me know if you wake up in the middle of the night from a dream of being strangled by a pair of lungs in a dog house made of pancakes. The blueberry kind, of course. Then I'll know.

Unless that's normal for you. In which case, I apologize for assuming that we're odd.

So today was a fairly normal day for me. Wake up way later than I had planned to, go in to work, and on my lunch break read "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" by Jenny Lawson, who is amazing and possibly more nervous than I am. 

Today's work consisted of helping a child through a panic attack (and discovering that my blood pressure cuff didn't want to work [it was inflating, but not reading an increase in pressure] but only when I actually needed it so that I had to run to the Patient Care classroom to borrow one only to discover that the patient had left and my blood pressure cuff was being nice now, and wow is this parenthetical insertion rambly) (I don't know if that's a phrase, but it sounds nice, so it is now) cleaning wounds, and dispensing tampons around calling the parents of probably sixty children to pick up meds by the last day of school.

That probably wouldn't actually be worth mentioning, except that I was going in to an allergy clinic to fill out an application in a suit jacket, no less later that afternoon, and so I was having occasional mini panic attacks myself. For me, that mostly consists of the world kind of getting distant and overwhelmingly noise-blendy-together-ish while my head turns in circles. Oh my god, I'm not going to get this job, I'm not going to get any job ever and then I'll be homeless or a bum living off the government, and with every ridiculously repetitive and melodramatic word my self-worth spiraled a little further down the drains until I wound up hiding in the closet pretending to fish tampons out a cardboard box. Since the only time someone came looking for me I was able to emerge more or less composed with an arm full of tampons, I'm pretty sure I got away with it.

I'm also pretty sure that doesn't count as a panic attack, but that's okay, no one's going to read this anyway.

Surprisingly, despite the fact that I'd managed to work myself up into a true freak-out by the time I got to my parents' house after work (because they live mid-way between my apartment in Titusville and the allergy clinic in Daytona Beach, and also because my mother owns suit-jackets) I feel like I did pretty well. At least, the receptionist who I chatted with for a few minutes after handing her my application was smiling. Unless it was sort of a pitying sort of smile, but I'm going to pretend I didn't think of that.

So we had Curry Chicken after, and now I'm significantly less nervous.

Afterwards, I brought my plate to the sink, and that's when I saw it. An entire bag of lifesaver mints (which is at least partially composed of crack cocaine, I firmly believe) hidden, of all places, in the fruit bowl beneath a bunch of partly-browning bananas.

I absolutely love those mints. On the other hand, I'd just stolen like four of them from the candy jar, so I probably would have left an unopened bag alone, except the sheer strangeness of putting candy in a fruit bowl underneath bananas made me gape in awe for a few seconds. My parents are really not strange people. So this was kind of beautiful. Like finding a flowering thistle on a barren rocky mountainside. A single beacon of weird to signal that maybe I do come by it honestly. (I'm convinced that thistles flower. Please don't tell me if I'm wrong. I would be very sad.)

So of course, my immediate thought was, I wonder how long it would take my parents to notice that these bananas are no longer a bizarre hat for a bag of mints.  So I snagged them and put the bananas back and tried not to snicker as I said my goodbyes and it totally had nothing to do with how delicious those mints are.

I think that probably my parents were just trying to hide the mints from me. Unless it was just my Mom trying to hide them from Dad, who has a bit of a sweet tooth. She would do that, but it would surprise me, because she's normally not that creative  more subtle about her hiding places. Which just goes to show, Mom, bananas don't make good hiding places. Unless you're trying to hide a Brazilian Wandering Spider, apparently.

PS: So apparently it didn't take Mom very long to notice. I'm kind of impressed, actually. When I got home from their house, I found a text from her. It read, "Sarah, did you take the bag of mints?" You have to admit, that was pretty fast. Well, you don't have to. But you totally should.

To which I responded, "...No. >.>"

It was very convincing, apparently, or else my mother is much more passive-aggressive than I thought, because her reply was, "I'm hoping you get the job with Dr. DiNicolo, but I know u will get a great job. Anyone would be blessed to have you."

Now I felt guilty, even though I was pretty sure she didn't believe me, so I had to say, "Thanks. <3" And then I had to sit there for a couple of seconds and come up with a good, non-impulsive reason for me to have stolen a bag of banana mints. Eventually I came up with the fairly weak, "And I did totally take the mints. They were shoved under bananas. I was curious to see how long it would take someone to notice." Then I added hopefully, just in case flattery would make an impression, "I'm kind of impressed."

Her response was not encouraging. "Where is our bag of mints?" "You mint thief. We want them back."

I tried distraction. "I am legitimately laughing so hard I'm crying at that. This is so going in my theoretical blog." Which is totally no longer theoretical, by the way. Awesome. It was almost true, too. I was giggling rather maniacally at the way she'd phrased that accusation.

"When do we get them back? Karen and I love them!!!!!!" Karen is my parents' tenant who moved into my bedroom when I moved out. Sort of. She's epic. You know, just clarifying in case you thought I had two moms. Not that there would be anything wrong with that. Karen would make an epic second mom. I just prefer having my Dad because he is also epic. I'm totally not homophobic. That would be weird.

So I told her she'd have to wait until this weekend, and that that was what she got for putting mints under bananas, because that was just plain weird and sounded more like something I would do. She was not entertained, and replied in what I imagined to be a tart tone, "We didn't put the mints under the bananas, we put the bananas over the mints so you wouldn't steal them!" I would like to point out that there's not a great deal of difference there. Then she added for good measure, "You mint thrift."

That was uncalled for. Still, I figured someone had to be rational and so I reminded her that I wouldn't have stolen them if they hadn't been in a fruit bowl. They were practically calling out to me, begging to be adopted. At which point she commented that she hated auto-correct, which was a relief, because I don't know if I could have handled a reputation as being thifty with mints. Just to drive the meaning home, she reminded me once again that I was a mint thief.

There's really only one response when someone becomes that degree of unreasonable.

"Yes, Mama."

PPS. I've just reread this rambly abomination of a blog, and I'm seriously considering hiding my name until I get hired. Would that be paranoid?