the trick is to keep breathing

The first Christmas with the baby was beautiful. Hectic and crazy and not really relaxing, but refreshing in a way. I got up work-time Monday morning and drove in to Pittsburgh to pick up Gramma, then drove up to Buffalo to the tune of a Spotify Christmas station which worked for the most part but occasionally wondered if what we really wanted to be listening to was the Electric Slide.

Jim and Mar and Jos were already up there. This was the crazy hectic part: Josie's ~10 weeks; Gramma's 90; and I'm not sure which of them cried and wet themselves more. Both needed intense help. I love my little niece to pieces and am always happy to pick her up and bounce and BOOP her and walk her around, and I adore my gramma and am willing to help her stand and walk or carry on a conversation. The two overlaid upon each other occasionally makes it hard to breathe.

That's the refreshing part, though: there's something about being surrounded by these people you love so hard it hurts, and even in the middle of the chaos when all you want is a nap you know for a fact that you'd do anything for any one of them. I'm continuously amazed at how much I love a niece who has only been in my life for three short months. Jos has a great smile. I hear that's how babies survive.

Christmas Day was a gratuitously decadent celebration of gifts and ribbons and glitter.

I'm back in the Feymarch because I had to work yesterday. As often happens at this time of year I'm incredibly pensive about my life - more so this year since it's been so dramatic. I want to write about it, but not yet, so instead I'm going to play Final Fantasy Tactics until noon with no regrets.

- with a delightfully complimentary assortment of the family I love, the family they've chosen (my sister-in-law and her parents), and the family I've chosen (my close friends)

- making everyone - extended family and friends included - take the Myers-Briggs test and getting to pontificate wildly and very nerdily about what everyone's results mean all night long

- continuously eating and drinking far too much, including the green bean casserole I made from scratch after a shame grocery pilgrimage that's really its own sordid tale

- playing two very, very drunk games of Settlers of Catan

- doing three Tarot readings that were so scarily accurate and meaningful that everyone in the room was substantially freaked out and I'm actually a little afraid to touch my deck right now

- sitting outside in a graveyard looking at the sky and drinking Dark & Stormy from a flask while being snowed on and shooting the shit with an important friend, until we couldn't feel our butts, before coming home at 5am to cuddle for warmth with my roomie

- meeting my parents at Taco Bell before we all went our separate ways because holiday traditions are important, yo

- coming home through the snow and cold to the most gratuitous bagel-egg-cheese sandwich in the world, a warm bath, and a bed covered in blankets and cats who missed me and can't wait to sit on my feet




I'm not always the happiest / most optimistic / most upbeat person, especially recently. But even with everything else going on, I'm officially thankful that this is my life.

Swiped this as soon as I saw it from rosencrantz and irish_ais ~!

Day 01: Favorite Final Fantasy Game

HOW DO I CHOOSE

Well, in typical Sev fashion, I am going to have to choose three because I don't do decisions, but I have reason for my choices, so here goes:

My favorite Final Fantasy game in general/overall is FFIV. This is for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with the game itself and everything to do with nostalgia. FFIV was my first Final Fantasy - back when it was FFII - and I can remember first sitting down with my brother to play it: the boy I had a crush on in school had lent us FFII and Zelda for SNES, for one week, and I really just remember getting hooked on FFII. Jim and I couldn't beat it in the time we had it, but after getting that taste, we would constantly petition my mother to rent the game from the supermarket. It became our babysitter: Mum and Dad knew that if we had that game for an evening we wouldn't do anything else, including get hungry. It was real.

So I have a huge soft spot for that game overall. I loved Rydia from the second she came on the screen, adorable little green-haired nuker. I watched Cecil and Rosa be all sweet at each other, watched Kain's awkward honor/obedience thing twist himself up in ways I was probably too young to understand, loved Edge, cheered at Yang and Edward and Palom and Porom, and cried at the frigging Giant of Bab-Il when everyone comes back to fight, I'm not lying, I still tear up at that scene occasionally because, well, we're going on 20 years of memories of playing that (yup, just aged myself, didn't I).

I made Rydia and Rosa Lego People afterwards. I mean, okay, at that time, I liked video games, but I think I would have liked them more if they'd had girls in them - and FFII/FFIV did. No matter what (genuine and appropriate!) criticisms you can lay on Rosa and Rydia in terms of traditional female roles and female video-game-character roles (and I have!), you can't deny that they are important in the game, important to the plot. Rosa's at Cecil's side for a lot of it; Rydia saves the day with her summons. They both defy the menfolk and fly to the moon and won't take it back. It isn't - it was like, oh, okay, I can identify with that. I used to pretend I was Rydia more than I should admit online.

I've played this game more times than I should admit either. I've played it on SNES, on emulator, on PS1, on GBA, on DS, on PSP. I know it pretty well. And every time I play it I still enjoy it: so there isn't a lot of gameplay involved, no customizable characters, not even really replay value (except for the DS NGP option), and yet... I still love it, because I'm a nostalgic softhearted sucker for it. It still makes me smile and sigh and stabs my heart in all the right places.

So for those reasons, FFIV will always be my overall favorite.

My game I think is the best one is actually FFVI. It's complex and intricate in a lot of really awesome ways, with character backstories that are really fleshed out and personalities that are multilayered. It's funny and silly and heartwrenching and sad all at once. It has a fantastic villain and no real hero / "main character", but it's led by two awesome heroines who are central to the story being told. Gameplay is pretty straightforward, but characters are sort-of customizable (Esper levelling-up) and there's some replay value in that you can pick different parties and get different scenes in-game and at the ending. It's a great game and when I think of all of them, I still think it's the shining star.

It would be my favorite, but the nostalgia-value of FFIV pushes it over the edge, honestly. I have some pretty good memories of FFVI, too, though - dual-controller SNES games where I wanted to be all the girls and Jim had to be Sabin because I couldn't Blitz worth a nickel.

My favorite game to write for is FFVIII. As a fanfiction writer, as somebody in fandom, I think this is a slightly different angle: FFVIII was a fantastic and fantastically confusing game. And for a fanfic writer, it's still my favorite. I still haven't run out of stories to tell in that world; I omni-ship the entire cast; I'm still coming up with theories, past and present and future and why does no one pay attention to Ellone and the game was informative enough to give us these interesting characters, a time-twisting plotline, some father-son snippets, weird fated threads -- and yet confusing enough that it leaves plenty to write for, plenty to do, lots of things to say and explore and lots of directions to go.

It was a great game, and of the "later" FFs it is my favorite. And for fanfic, it is the winner.

( 30 Days of FF Meme )

So the last time I went on a vacation I didn't tell a ton of people I was going and I think some people thought I had fallen off the face of the earth because, let's face it, that happens sometimes. But hi, I was gone for the last ten days! I WAS ON A CRUISE BOAT MOTHERFUCKER DON'T YOU EVER FORGET

Here is what happened:

• I got on a boat


• My brother got married


• I spent some more time in the Florida Keys


• I played with dolphins


• I went to the wedding reception in Pittsburgh


• Now I am sick.

( Here is more of what happened. )

And that was the wedding!

There are three things of note here:

1. While I was gone, I Skype called my cats. If you have Skype set up on a computer with a webcam and you pick the right settings you can have it automatically pick up with the webcam. So I got to see my kitties playing while I was gone. It was yayful.


2. I forget.


3. Photos soon!

cue: total and utter panic.