I decree a stalemate
After swearing for 15 years I would never ever do it, I played Axis and Allies today. The Spousal Unit to Be set up on the extra bed in my dorm room bed once, and after about an hour of trying to parse the rules I got exasperated, sat down on the bed beside it, destroyed Asia and half of Europe, and declared victory. I wasn’t going to play that game ever ever ever. I also never have succombed to Risk or almost any other war games of the board sort. Chess and checkers notwithstanding, of course.
Anyway, my friends are over, and peer pressure does work on me on rare occasions, depending on the peers. And, darnit, of course I had a little bit of fun at it, too, after my brain stopped hurting from so many rules all at once. Sooo many rules! We stopped after about 6 hours of gameplay or so, because my attention span had enough, but maybe it wouldn’t be incredibly awful later now that I know the rules. Or… maaaaaybe I’d deign to play Risk. If Jared didn’t bring any blue decks over. 
I’m not promising anything though.
Yeah…
It’s too much stress to even try lying to myself about the novel. Not real confident about the bloggy posty either, but hey, I haven’t blown that completely yet. Even if all that’s getting posted right now is random thoughts, I think that I’ve read enough other NaBloPoMo posts that are of the same level that I can forgive myself for that.
Friends will be here in an hour, and I’m excited but I’m also wound up tight. I’ll try and chill for a few days and just quit with the fidgetfidget nervousness, which will probably all smooth out once they’re here.
Oh, that reminds me that over Turkey Day, I’m supposed to cheer up my Granny who got something prescribed “for her nerves”. Since I’m the level headed and grounded one. It’s funny ’cause, sadly, it’s true. Laughter is good for the soul, right?
Quicky
So, this every day posting stuff is getting hard now. I knew it would, starting about now. Holidays really are official now. I have friends coming in town tomorrow. As a matter of fact, once you count all the different invitations I’ve wanted to accept or people who were just going to come by tomorrow, I’ve been officially quintuple booked for the weekend. We’ve whittled it down a bit, but it’s still going to be a whirlwind of activity over the next few days.
All of this, on no money and no immediate prospects for more! And Christmas is next month! HOORAY! Money is my bane. It stresses me out so much when it’s tight that I can barely function. I have this overwhelming need to have it coming in, in amounts far larger than I’ve seen in quite some time. And Chris isn’t nearly so avaricious as I am. So, I’m afraid I’m going to become a monomaniac until the short term crisis is resolved. I’ll do my best not to be an utter jerk to my family and friends in the meantime, though. Just forgive me and understand that one of my biggest triggers has been pushed.
And that’s all I have time to post today. In the 7 minutes I allotted myself, I prattled about being stressed about money. That pretty much says it all. This has to get fixed, post haste. Else how will I justify my spiffy shooting star boots when I’m picking up a welfare check?
100th post
And it’s late in the evening, and I’m short on time. So, for this monumental event, I’ll share with you the oddest thing I saw all day.
I’m a Capricorn. And this is creepy.
Did you know there was a Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists? Well, you do now.
Omnomnom
Behold, my powers of parenting and artistry combined! Quake in fear!
(Also, check it! I didn’t realize it until later, but I used lots of consummate Vs! That’s how you can tell it’s a real dragon.)
Something to write about
should come up soon, right? Or else, this will just be free writing for about ten minutes, til I get sick of typing. This is the kind of junk I used to do back when I tried to do The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. She had a lot of good ideas in that book, and it did me a lot of good, but then the chapter on money just pissed me off and I quit. This happened on two separate occasions, as a matter of fact.
The idea is that upon rising up, you write for a few minutes, which generally amounts to just a page or two, and just purge your mind. I did this faithfully for quite some time, even after I dropped the whole project. There were times that it did me immense good to just think things out. I also found myself dwelling on negativity and picking apart my motivations and the things that irritated me to pieces. I found myself thinking about writing them ahead of time, too, and that’s really what did me in. That was counter to the project, planning things in advance. It was supposed to be extemporaneous.
For the most part, my NaBloPoMo has been relatively off the cuff. I’ve not given myself much time to write, and I think that the blog feels much more natural to me as a result. I’m glad I did the project, even if I’m only a little over halfway there and just free writing tonight. I feel more like the blog is an extension of my thoughts, and less a project that has to have these grand goals and meaning. It’s comfortable now.
Leonid Meteor Shower
It starts tonight! If you can watch it, do so! We had been planning on driving up to the north a little bit, perhaps into the mountains, to see what we could see. I even marked my calendar for this event, too. Of course, there’s a gigantic cloud cover blanketing all of Alabama for all of tonight. Even though the chance of rain is only 30%, that cloud cover is predicted to hang around roughly til time for the sun to come up.
The kids have school tomorrow, but who cares? One of my first memories was being woken up in the wee hours of the morning to watch a lunar eclipse. Other important events my mom didn’t want me to miss, despite my inconvenient sleep schedule include the signing of the Camp David Accords and the wedding of Charles and Di, but those things really didn’t mean anything to me. They just annoyed me because they interfered with my sleep.
If you’re outside of the Alabama cloud cover, you might want to take advantage of this opportunity. The most active time is predicted to be around 5:30 CST, so hopefully some people actually will get to see it. We’re travelling through enough space debris that the predictions are for 30 meteors an hour in North America. Asia should get an even better show. Let me know if you see anything! I hate that we’ll miss it, but there’s still a chance that there will be some more activity tomorrow.
Little Life Lesson
Sometimes being a parent is gratifying.
Today, when the boys were getting a bit too rambunctious, I suggested the boys go play outside. Both of their faces immediately fell, and I knew something was up. They told me that they didn’t want to go outside, because the little girl who lived next door wasn’t their friend anymore. This girl is the light of their existence. They will be dead set on doing nothing but loll on the couch and be slugs, but the second they hear her voice outside they disappear, barefoot and all.
I knew good and well they’d all been playing badminton together Friday evening, and I’d wondered why Saturday was such a big indoor day for everyone. I dug a little deeper. Piecing together the two versions of the tale, the boys had gotten carried away with playing in the autumn leaves. They threw the leaves over her head one too many times, and she got fed up. She announced that since she didn’t have any friends that would play with her, she wasn’t playing outside anymore. Both of the boys just accepted this as their due for crossing the line. They both expressed remorse, but they informed me that their apologies hadn’t worked that day, so that was that. They’d lost a friend.
I was horrified at how easily they let her go. Clearly they were both sad at the loss. They didn’t want to even think of playing outside unless there was a chance she might be there. They were embarrassed that they’d hurt her feelings, and didn’t want to “bug” her anymore.
It was clearly time for a life lesson, one that lots of grownups I know need as well. I suggested that perhaps Next Door Girl actually might be missing them. Surely, there was a chance she could be persuaded to be their friend again. They were very skeptical, but agreed to try to win her back. I let them mastermind the plan, and they decided to write her a card asking for forgiveness. Red Chief even added a Tootsie Pop from his dwindling Halloween stash. She didn’t answer the door, so they left it on her mat and waited.
I was so worried that this would backfire on me. I distracted them with the movie Nausicaä, and crossed my fingers that all would end well. Within an hour, two little boys were rewarded for their persistence. This note had been left on OUR doormat:
I forgive u can u come out side p.s. thanks for the succer
All was right with the world again. The movie was forgotten, and they even left the door open in their scramble outside.
Gratefulness
Life goes on, right? My husband lost his job yesterday. There’s a lot of stuff that I need to rethink, since my classes at UAB are no longer going to be free. I was already struggling with prioritizing properly anyway, and everything got ever so much more complicated that it already was. I assume I’ll end up back at work at least part time. I’m not giving up on the engineering that easily, though. It just will be a different plan than I originally thought.
When Chris called me to pick him up, I told a few people, made a phone call to a friend who listened to me and I thanked profusely, then I made a quicky post to various social networks. People’s connections will be our best ticket to getting leads and straightening things out. What I didn’t expect was that so many people I knew had already posted images of their arms for me, referring to me as their impetus. I’d already been rewarded for allowing myself to show pieces of me I never usually would let be out there. Then, in short order after I announced Chris’ job loss, people showed themselves ready to help in whatever capacity they could.
Apollo immediately sent me the Mountain Goats’ This Year video. I hadn’t heard that song in ages, but it so appropriately expresses my exact mental state. This year isn’t going to beat me, damn it.
The day progressed, and though my head ached, there were more phone calls, more support, and even friends who came over and hugged me and made me laugh and wouldn’t let me stay down.
And it continues on, even today. One of the people I’ve known the longest, since preschool, sent me a message asking what was wrong? I briefly told him about the state of things as they are right now. Tonight I logged in to write this post, and he’d sent me a picture of his arm, with the word LOVE on it. His caption read, “Supporting an old nemesis.” (I was someone’s nemesis! How cool is that?!)
I’m very glad that I’ve learned to begin to show a bit of vulnerability. Letting people into my emotional inner circle is difficult, but I’m so glad I’ve gotten over that enough to let people in, or else how would they know I needed those little perks? Thank each and every one of you for all you’ve done. Karma will be knocking on your door, I promise.