(no subject)

Yep, still in love. Still nose congested. Neck much less sore than yesterday: Clover did wonderful things to it. Still reading Nukees.

http://www.nukees.com/d/20011017.html

And I still have that song from Need for Speed 2 in my head. Something about "Hey hey hey hey pretty little shadow".

Awwwww.

Crossover fic. Evil. Be warned.

Songs of the Season (from a comment)

One thing that I miss extremely about Fairbanks is the Sing-it-Yourself Messiah. It takes several hours in the afternoon, and we organize ourselves by voice range/part in one of the churches downtown, and one of the leading local (leading statewide, if you want to get technical) directors leads us through a rehearsal run, and then we take a coffee-and-cookie break, and then we and the small band sing the thing straight through. Just the highlights, and we always end off with the Hallelujia Chorus. It usually happens on my mother's birthday.

I was so disappointed when I learned that I wasn't a soprano anymore.

I miss that. It's not my religion (anymore/ever), but it's still a sign of the season, and I did that every year.

The Talk in the Hall (and other 6th grade stories for Essy)

Once upon a time, I had a boyfriend. This wasn't so unusual, except that I was in the sixth grade, and there were exactly three couples: Michael and Jori, who had been dating since 5th grade and were already accepted as part of the normal scenery; one of the Witt twins (the obnoxious one) and some girl (they were the picture-perfect couple, and probably only dating because they had to: there were roses on Valentine's day); and me and Kermit.

Kermit wasn't his actual name, of course, but that's what I'll call him, since Kermit the Frog was one of his major role models.

I'm certain that in this retelling, I will miss major aspects of the story, as it's no longer fresh in my mind. I don't know the chronology anymore; this is strictly a love affair of yesterday, one of the innocent ones.

I noticed that I'd fallen in love with Kermit, and I decided to let him know about this by leaving anonymous pieces of white paper with hearts drawn on them in his locker.

The first time he got one, he thought it was a prank from his best friend. The second and third times, he knew something was up.

I don't remember how I ended up telling him, but I did, and he seemed to like me too.

One day, I can't remember why, he was out in the hall, upset. The teacher had rules about how many people could be out in the hallway putting their stuff away at once, and I managed to get myself out there at the same time as he was. He and I were trying to have a Relationship Talk out there in the hall where no one could overhear us... and that's what we were doing... until he turned me around and pointed out the interested heads that were poking around the corner from the classroom. It seemed that half the class had gathered at the door to see what was going on with us alone in the hall together...

Curiousity. Dratted non-cat classmates.


My little sister Narcissa had a best friend in 4th grade when I was dating Kermit, and at the short recess, when the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades were out on the playground together, they would swarm around us screetching "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" because you had to be crazy to date a boy. Kermit and I played Tetherball together. We played Connect Four at lunch. We played chess. (He creamed me.)


Kermit's best friend must have been more than a little jealous. They'd been best friends forever, and now Kermit had a girlfriend. I don't remember much about Kermit's best friend, except that he'd never been one of the bullies or the annoying boys; he'd always been nice. One day he wore his pants to school backward, and had to run out of Mr. Powell's math class to switch them around: he'd put them on in the dark, and they were sweatpants.


On one of the last days of school, we went bowling, and then walked to Alaskaland [local museum park with playground and nice grassy areas and picnic facilities, a common place for outdoor meetups] for a picnic lunch/party lasting all afternoon. Kermit and I were on the same team, bowling, and walked together. Mr. Powell teased us, and I turned bright red, as I'd thought that we weren't exactly being loudly public about being a couple. Now everybody knew!

Kermit decided to be silly on the way to Alaskaland, and shouted out, "Look, everybody! I'm playing hockey!" He'd intended, of course, to say "hookey". I pretended not to know him.

Death

After school let out for vacation from 6th grade, I got a phone call from a girl I barely even knew. She told me that Kermit's best friend had been killed in a car wreck. Everyone was shocked. He'd been such a nice guy... A little after, I had a dream. Kermit's best friend was in it. He appeared in one of the library shelves at school, smiled and waved at me, in perfect health, very happy... and then faded out. I never dreamed of him again. They held a memorial service for him, at the school, and dedicated a picnic area to his memory, and planted a tree.


The school's got two dedicated areas, now.


Once upon a time, when my parents were running the water line to the house, they hired one of our neighbors who had construction equipment and a lively little business in using it, to dig the trench. (He did help with the installation of stuff, but that was later). I must have been just out of the second grade by then, as Narcissa was a kindergartener. Or perhaps it was just out of third grade. But, at any rate, the guy's son came along with him on a few trips, and played with us girls. His dad set the limit on how many dirt piles behind the machine we had to be, and since the kid was comfortable around machinery, he and I and Narcissa played on the dirt piles together. He and I played house: I was the mommy, he was the daddy, and Narcissa had to be the baby. We sort of shut her out, even though he was closer to her age than to mine.

It was the sort of kid-connection that you don't really think much about in the years after, just that you played together once, and it was fun.

Around the time when Narcissa was in 6th grade, I heard that one of George-the-creep's little brothers and one of his friends had been in a hunting accident, and the friend had been killed. The boy who was killed had been the kid who I'd played with on the piles of dirt when his dad and my dad had been working together to make water come down from the well at the top of the hill by the garden and into the house.

There's a soccer field at school now, and it's dedicated to the memory of that boy.

There's a certain celebrity associated with death. You want to say, "I knew him." But you didn't, really. You dated his best friend. You played with him once when you were both too little to be picky about friends. And now you know you never will know him, not really.

Holidays

The great thing about celebrating a holiday four days before the country's major religion celebrates their major seasonal holiday is that you get to have your panicked holiday rush while they're still partially mellow, and you get to avoid their panicked rush, or, at the least, be not part of it.

Ahh, the happy smell of Yuletide.

Need...

...to go to Sam's to get:

• cheese (DOOM!!)
• allergy meds
• chocolate chips

Karaoke!

Given that I'm me, I just have to hack things.

Nephew was given a drum machine. It has a headphone or speaker output, and a microphone input, and a verrry cheesy mono headphone/microphone combo thing.

I'm thinking: go to the dollar store, get two sets of headphones, and proceed to splice & dice a connector so that the output from, say, the CD player, can go into the drum machine.

This will be a Good Thing.

Userpic Modifications:

Deleted ; added .

[Edit: Yes, that's me. And Darkside. And we're grabbing each other's noses. We're very very silly children.]

Mastery/Unmastery

Standing in the chilly rain at the bus stop with a 5-lb brick of American cheese protruding from the pocket of one's voluminous black cloak is immediate testimony towards one's true occult standing... provided, of course, that the general fit of giggles (in the Vulcan sense of a slight smirk) is also noted...

Whee!

Steph called. Recognized the last name on the caller ID, and knew that the only person with that last name who would be calling me would be her. Noticed that Glendale and Claremont are close enough together to make for happy crashing-into, which is a Good Thing.

I shall therefore be packing textbooks to ponder over. Mmm, textbooks.