the trick is to keep breathing

alatefeline left me some prompts and i’ve Already told y’all the story of the fucking faucet so that will count a s my rant for plumbing. Let’s get this

And today instead of RANTING i’m Going to tell you a hilarious story about my brother and food coloring so buckle up chucklefucks

SOOOOOoooo backstory: my brother and I grew up reading a lot of Calvin & Hobbes cause my gramma and grandpa had a bunch of the (books? Collections?) things, and we’d read and re read them the way you do when you get bored at your grandparents’ house. Right

So one day we’re eating dinner and mum has made like, meatloaf and mashed potatoes i think? And shes serving everybody and out of nowhere my brother says, “Can you make my mashed potatoes green?”

Cue mum: “Wha” ????

My brother: “You know how in Calvin & Hobbes their dinner is always green mush on a plate. I want mine to look like green mush on a plate like Calvin & Hobbes.”

And so my mum says, “Well, we can add some food coloring if you want, but it’s going to look very gross. You have to promise you’re going to eat it.”

Bro: “Well duh, it’s still mashed potatoes, I just want them green”

So mum gets the food coloring and they proceed to dye my brother’s serving of mashed potatoes a terrible looking green and he’s loving it like the lil dork he is and dad and i are just kind of peanut gallery eating meatloaf in the background or something idk.

Dinner’s served. And after about two fucking bites, my brother says, “I don’t think I can eat this.”

Mum: “It’s still mashed potatoes. They’re just green. You literally asked for this”

Bro: “yeah but its gross”

Mum: “we literally just talked about this”

Bro: “yeah but its gross”

So yeah even after ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THEY WERE STILL FUCKING MASHED POTATOES, and ADDING THE FOOD COLORING HIMSELF, it turns out my bro couldn’t eat the green mush on a plate. We threw it out and he got new normal colored mashed potatoes and we laughed at him for, well, the rest of his life i guess

And the moral of this story is: green eggs and ham is a bad sell, but regular eggs and ham is delicious. NEXT

Can we. please. have. mostly-constant. temperatures. More than five days in a row.

Lady Fibromyalgia-Arthritis Johnson thanks you.


In other nonsensible news, I may be considering signing up for a triathlon. A baby triathlon - sprint triathlon category: swim 0.5 mi, bike 15 mi, run 3.1 mi. I don't know why the prospect is so appealing -- it isn't like this body is running low on pain and exhaustion and thus has to pick up some more at the triathlon training store. This is a good idea, Sev, said no one. However, the thought of doing something stupid and violent appeals to me. It's cool.

Somewhere in the back of my brain I've got a big 2013 New Year's Resolutions post brewing, but this is not that post. This is just a public announcement, because I figure it's fitting that one of my first actual actions of the new year has been registering for my remaining 4 credits of graduate research at the University of Akron.

I figure that since the general desire to finish my thesis and get all gradumitated and get this over and done with hasn't been enough motivation for me to actually do it, maybe the $1800 I just shelled out in tuition credits will be. :/

I mean it this year, folks. I know I've been saying it for a while, but I actually mean it this year. I'm done with this shit. I need to finish. I'm so tired of having the shadow of this hanging over my head and getting in the way of my actual life.

I will get my masters in 2013. Fuck it.

So! In the upcoming year of 2013, lassarina and I will be playing through each Final Fantasy game, in order! One game every month! Moving on at the end of every month! And we'll be blogging our thoughts, our meta, our deconstructions and fannish feels - and once a month I will, apparently, be drunk!live!blogging something horrible - and recording everything here: moogle_university, as a public record of our gamer cred (for Rina) / shame (for me).

I've posted an intro here, if you want to know a little bit about my reasons for doing this project and how excited I am to have had this awesome idea. I invite anybody who wants to watch/join the comm -- part of what I love about Final Fantasy is the community built out of its fannish love, so everybody's welcome. It would be awesome if people helped to spur us on or even asked questions as we got the project rolling.

So, yeah. That's a thing.

...Why am I suddenly thinking I want to do a triathlon next year?

There are two preludes to this story:

(1) So Rydia still fights with the boys occasionally; this is worse at the townhouse, because with all of us - and Becky - there, space is pretty limited, meaning Rydia doesn't have a very good "safe haven" she can run to when she just doesn't want to be bothered with their bullshittery. They get along fine most of the time; it's really just when one gets in her all up in her space (it's usually Marzy), or when sometimes they (read: Marzy) interpret her as playful, and try to bat at her tail or boop her nose. She'll howl and hiss and sometimes swat. Depending on how they reply, it can continue, although usually they get the message and leave her alone.

It isn't anything bad, although I don't like when it happens. It's just a feline assertion of boundaries. Rydia is made of cranky cat hate, anyway.

(Side note: how come I can't just hiss and swat when somebody comes into my space and bothers me? KIA SOUL I AM LOOKING AT YOU)

(2) There's a pack of stray cats that live out by the dumpster. I saw them for the first time a couple months ago: there's a little wild patch of brush and bushes and stuff leading into the woods behind the dumpster, and they chill in there. There's a mom and at least 3? 4? kittens, mostly black and grey, and some of them are fluffos; the kittens are not kittens, they're at least ~6 months old, but they still follow the mum like a pack. They seem pretty feral; they looked curious about me, but certainly didn't want to come out of the wild brush and investigate.

So last night about 4:30 I was awakened by the howl-snarl-hiss of Rydia and Marzy getting into it. Gee, thanks, cats. I rolled over. But it didn't stop: suddenly there was just howling, that low warbling mournful-angry-painful deep howl that cats do. By the time I had gathered my poor sleep-stiff brains together I'd realized that it probably wasn't Rydia, because it sounded like it was coming from outside (I have my window open pretty much forever). I went to the window. It sure sounded like a very unhappy cat. Now I'm picturing a cat run over by a car or something awful. So I got out of bed and went downstairs - subtly checking to make sure it wasn't any of my cats - and then slipped outside.

Right in front of the neighbor's townhouse are two of the ferals: the black one and another one that was hiding under a car that I couldn't see. Neither one would approach me, although they kind of sat and stared. They'd at least stopped howling - maybe one was a lady in heat; maybe I'd interrupted cat sex - and eventually kind of slunk off, which made me feel better because hopefully neither one was injured.

So I have a new goal now. My goal is to befriend the dumpster kittens... enough that I can take them in to get them all fixed. I'll pay, I don't mind (although I'll take donations!), and I'm pretty sure they're feral enough that they won't want to live with people anyway - they can go right back to the dumpster. I just hadn't really thought about it until last night, but I want to make sure they're taken care of, so that there aren't suddenly 40 dumpster kittens next spring.

You know, I don't REALLY believe in astrology. Really. But at times like this - when everyone around me is having a shit time of it, and I mean a really shit time; when lives and relationships and emotions and loves and friends are all down, depressed, wrecked and dying -- when it's like everyone I know has something awful happen on almost the same day, within the same week --- look, I start to get fuckin' suspicious of the stars and the planets and the damn moon moving through Scorpio.

♥ to everyone I know.

I am posting this from my new place. I have internets. I still lack half my stuff. Priorities, I has them?