Life update! Or: a recommitment to journaling in some form or other

[practicalcat]

So my Aunt Marcia found and shared with the family the start of Grandma's autobiography. I'm not sure when Grandma started it, and it's not complete, but it summarizes her life from childhood to the end of WWII. Even so, there was stuff in there I hadn't heard about, or had been told about with minimal details. It was interesting.

And it made me think: okay, sure, I haven't been blogging much because my life didn't feel particularly interesting. But there are people out there (hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!) who are interested in what I'm getting up to, and there are hypothetical people in the future who'd be interested in what I was getting up to too. So maybe I should start blogging again.

Maybe journaling too, for the stuff I don't wanna put out there for immediate public consumption.

It's been just over a year and a half since my last post here (holy crap), so let's summarize:

• I graduated from library school as predicted, and moved back to the U.S. to the apartment Andrew and I picked out.


• I'm still hunting for a library job. Ugh.


• Back in therapy with Nancy. Wheeeeeee, anxiety!


• Got my first car. It's a 2015 Prius C in 'magnetic gray', which is sort of a glittery dark gray. I haven't really named it, but I sometimes call it 'Bunny'.


• Got a job at Fred Meyer back in August as a Food Helper Clerk, i.e. the person who puts stuff back on shelves and helps people find things. It's not exactly intellectually stimulating, but money is good and so is "look, I am capable of holding down a job" on a resume. Everyone seems to like me pretty well, which is awesome.


• This past July, Andrew found two tiny kittens on the sidewalk eating chip crumbs while out playing Pokemon Go late at night. We lured them into a cardboard box with a can of spam cunningly obtained from a nearby 7-11, and locked them in our bathroom.


• We finally acknowledged that all of our friends were right and that we were not just fostering the kittens until they domesticated. Their names are Spam (because of the bait they took) and Ricochet (because she ricocheted all over the bathroom when we let them out of the box that first night). Spam is a tortie and Ricochet is a tuxedo. Far from feral at this point, they are super cuddly and think that all people food should be investigated and taste-tested by them. Spam doesn't mew much, but Ricochet occasionally produces cat-like noises if not actual meows. They both purr up a storm though, and have very soft and pettable fur. Ricochet likes to groom my hair.


• Andrew and I stepped up to run the Changeling LARP with our friends Rolfe and Jessa back in August. We recently stepped down as a staff for reasons of certain players making running the game a miserable experience. For some reason, in spite of the fact we SAID that's why we were stepping down, people were surprised to hear that we weren't going to be running game for them for the next four weeks until the announced election. I agree it sucks for the people who weren't making it a toxic environment, but I'm kind of surprised that they were surprised.


• The 2015 Haunted House was "Clown College Gone Wrong", where I directed a scene where Andrew and I (in clown costumes) were vivisecting Zach (also in a clown costume) trying to "figure out where the funny was". When he "expired" on the table, we attempted to acquire new "volunteers" from the groups of kids going through. There was one mouthy kid who shut up REAL FAST when the tour guide pointed at him and said "he thinks he's funny".


• Haunted House 2016 was "Werewolf and Vampire Convention". I played a brand new employee of the convention center who got eaten by a vampire. We were perfectly placed, right after a scary scene where werewolf-security guard Jason was devouring Megan alive, and then lunged at the tour groups. Cut to me, in my pastel blue dress, looking totally non-threatening. A couple kids didn't even want to come into the ROOM with me. One group of girls tried to rescue me from the vampire, which was kind of adorable. We had a least a dozen kids need to be escorted out of the Haunted House before they got to the exit, and a Captain America lost his shield.


• Jessa has been teaching me girly stuff, like how makeup and clothes work. Further girly stuff she's promised to teach me in the future: how to butcher a deer and how to break a beer bottle without hurting myself.
  
• Election 2016 happened. I have added my Congress Critters to my phone contact list and started collecting scripts for phone calls. I have also actually made some calls. Fuck you, phone anxiety, I will do this thing!


• Speaking of government, spent about a year going back and forth with the Canada Revenue Agency because I forgot to notify them when I left the country. Whoops. I'm pretty sure it's all resolved now.


• I went to Emerald City ComiCon with Melanie and Erin from UBC. It was fun, though I DEFINITELY needed Xanax if I was going to be out on the floor. I ran into Seanan McGuire there and actually managed to approach her (on the sans-Xanax day) and tell her how much I enjoyed her writing. I also ended up buying a second copy of Every Heart a Doorway for Chris (for obvious reasons) and getting it signed, and she got another author on the panel to sign a book for me that she thought I'd like. Eeeee. Also, Nikki and Kelly were there as vendors! I got to chat with them too. And I bought a couple of hip purses for (what I didn't realize was) waaay high markup. Sigh. But the place that actually does them is local, so squee.


• I also did meet Jenny Lawson and got my copy of Furiously Happy signed. She appreciated that her first book made me drool on myself in public from laughing.

I'll scroll back through my plurk and see what else I've yammered about there, but hopefully next time I post, it won't be a year and a half :P