anagram of brat

Insert rabid mega-liberal rant about last night's election. I can't even. I mean, Massachusetts, the bluest blue state that ever blew its blue self outta the blue? Surprise! Republican governor. What.

I am peeved at folk I share this country with, y'all. especially the ones that only vote every four years for presidents, if that. I'm willing to bet a lot of those people are pale, male and and full of trilby-wearing fail.

I now have to use that phrase ALL THE TIME now.

But yeah. Grump. As grrm would say after the Jets lose (or the Patriots win, lol) life is meaningless and full of pain. Yes, he really is that dramatic about football. It's glorious.

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So there's this THING going on locally that's kind of a big deal. One of what used to be one of my favorite late night haunts, the Route 9 Diner, is now on my and holy crap! loads of people's shit lists right now after a series of blogs mostly titled "Tales from the Diner" were posted detailing the intense constant abuse/sexual harassment the waitress endured at the hands of the cooks and the management. It's sickening and horrific. I know people both well and in passing who have worked there and I'm kind of... I'm abusing the word horrfied, but that's the best word for my feeling when I think of my friends putting up with that level of bullshit. I'm especially sickened because my diner mainstay is milkshakes, and there were many many stories of waitresses being cornered in the walk-in freezer. Just. Ugh.

If you want to take a look, here is the first Tales From the Diner (links to the rest inside.) I don't usually trigger warn, but holy fuck trigger warning for sexual harassment and abuse.

Anyway, its gotten enough attention to make the front page of the Hampshire Gazette yesterday. And while mostly reaction to it and a similar case being brought against the Whately Ballet Castaways strip club across the river are supportive, I did accidentally end up in conversation with someone who will remain nameless that was being a judgemental jackass about it. I refuse to repeat their comments again, but I'd have easily filled out a couple of bingo cards with their responses. I walked away from the conversation before I could get super mad about it, but I posted this to Facebook in response:

"It really angers/saddens me that some people have an attitude of 'I endured [x hardship/abuse] but I'm fine/successful now, people need to quit whining' towards others that are either currently enduring [x hardship/abuse] or enduring something else that is percieved as easier than [x hardship/abuse]. It's frustrating because sometimes I catch myself doing it too in certain conversations and I hate it. We all need to judge others less and have more compassion. Suffering is suffering, and there is no prize for having the ability to take more of it than your neighbor."

TL; DR - people are dicks, take two.

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Random news - I was reading an article about vocal fry this afternoon. (for those of you going "wha?" here's an explanation.) and on my way to church for bells this evening I spoke a few sentences out loud to see if I do it - fuck. YES. YES I DO. IT'S TERRIBLE. Am now strongly considering trying to train myself out of that habit but I'm not too optimistic about success with that, seeing as I've been trying to get myself to quit crossing my legs at work and that's not been working, lol. Course in all likelihood I'll forget about it by tomorrow anyway. Still. Yeesh. I'm not going to be able to not hear/feel it when I speak for a while.

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skimming another article today about game design and realizing SQWRRL, design wise, is pretty solid - I just need to get off my ass and make it happen somehow. Hence the icon.

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I don't know who was the first weirdo that decided to sprinkle salt on their chocolate covered caramel was, but my hat is off to whatever mad genius it was. Reminds me I need to write a backtrack entry about my weekend adventures. Maybe tomorrow. Shower and bed now.

I'm being melodramatic, of course, but holy crap it's been a shit week. Hence the silence.

It's been ass cold again. We didn't get any of the snow or 80mph wind gusts that the coast did, but the wind we DID get was fierce and cold enough thank you. I am well sick of single digit wind chills. Thankfully this seems to be the end of it; at last check the 10 day forecast ahead calls for highs of 60 (!!!) and lows of no colder than 30 and it keeps notching slowly upwards, which is encouraging. Rainy for most of it, sure, but 60 after any of this winter is positively tropical. Time to start thinking about what to put in my "garden" and how, I think.

So car. Yay right? Except Drew took it for the seven day registration inspection and it failed. Somewhere between the initial trip to the mechanic for evaluation and last week the car developed a tie rod issue. This is not entirely surprising, as the roads around here have developed so many potholes that driving is not unlike traversing a wedge of swiss cheese, and some of them, especially out 202 way, are big enough to fuck up your front ends. We must have hit one somewhere. Phooey. So we were carless again for about a week. Thank goodness for zipcar rentals. From the sound of things, that's getting resolved today, though.

Guess which one of the cats is peeing blood again. >_< Y'all, I'm about at my wits end with this cat. After doing some reading about feline cystisis and talking to other friends with similarly beleaguered cats, I'm suspecting stress may be the culprit here - all three cats have been absolutely FREAKED for the past week or so (why a bit later). Meantime I'm bribing him with tuna water and encouraging him to drink moar, and hopefully tomorrow before I head out to Boston to get the kids I'll have a minute to run a sample down to the vet. Hopefully now that the source of the stress has settled out, so will he.

So the kids' grandfather has sold his house, and the past couple weeks have been dedicated to moving and cleaning it out. Drew's been helping with the cleanout process and meanwhile I've inherited a few items which I'm very pleased about - not only do I now have a Singer sewing machine, but we have some wine glasses finally and a couple other small odds and ends that we needed. We also finally have the bottom half of a bunk bed for the kids - the main reason the cats have been so freaked out is first there were bed pieces strewn around the living room, then MOAR bed pieces when we finally checked out an SUV from zipcar and moved the rest of it over, then we moved Drew's futon from the kids room into our room (it is now a cat/human hangout/read corner), cleaned their room THOROUGHLY (mmm, 3 year old dust bunnies) then assembled and made up the bed. It mostly gave me an excuse to clean the upstairs like a fiend (it needed it, rather desperately, and it looks really nice now, so I'm happy. And hopefully the cats will get used to it too.

But yeah, there's been some sad and angst over there with the emptying house and the moving and the giving away stuff. Hell, I had a MOMENT when the husbeast came home one night with a bag that turned out to be full of knitted squared and a half finished afghan, which I immediately recognized as the wedding present Barbara has told me she'd been working on before she died. That was rough. I'ma see if I can match the yarn colors at Webs at some point and make some attempt at finishing it., even though my own knitting skills are at best half-assed as fuck, but I think she'd have liked it. *sigh* change is a hard thing. Thankfully that will all be done by the end of the weekend.

Nothing new on the bead front - waiting for my latest order from delibeads to come in, and then I can start Banzai Bill. Meanwhile I've been using the downtime to work on my website, which I'd been neglecting since, well, Dad. It's slowly coming along to where I want it. And wow, working with virtual photoshop beads is almost as much of a pain in the ass as regular beads.

There's more, but I gotta bounce on out the door to meet the husbeast for the shoppings. So I'll leave you with the assurance that while it's been bad, things are now looking up. Oh and if you wan a giggle, have a short video of Ash and Moonbeam attempting to play with the kids' Hexbug.

The life of Andee has been both boring and incredibly... stressful isn't the right word. Collections of little things all demand my attention and wow they add up, lets just put it that way.

Friday: I took one of my leftover vacation days intending to spend it catching up on errands and sleep. That ended up not happening. Instead I accompanied the kids' grandfather to Auburn to pick up his new car, after which I got to head off in his old one to pick up the kidlets. It is looking likely that cell23 and I will be purchasing it, but in the meantime we're... I guess borrowing it? It's got a few problems and a ton of mileage, but it's a Honda so it should hold us until we scrape together enough for a newer one somehow. Meanwhile you would think driving all the way around the state would be stressful in itself and it was, but only because it had been six months since the last time I really got to drive further than up the hill and back and I am rusty at it, but being able to sail down the highway singing along to the radio? Food for the soul. It also meant we had happy awake children arriving at the house instead of sleepy cranky ones and that's a bonus.

The kids: Eh, maybe not a public post for that. They're fine, nothing huge, and we had a pretty good weekend but ... yeah. Stuff.

Cat drama: Oh Moony. He had about a week and a half of peeing like a normal continent cat and then over the weekend it got bloody, frequent and everywhere again. (thankfully, again, he is sticking to on plastic and other easy to clean surfaces.) For now, back on the antibiotics until I can get a urine sample down to the vets office and tested. Old man can't catch a break. In other news, the cats seem to have finally crossed the threshold into full acceptance of each other and the relative newcomer insofar as they can all be on the bed together snuggling the humans. Which is cosy and lovely.

State of the Me: Still fighting my way upwards through this latest round of ick, both in the headmeats and the near constant exhaustion... meats? At least part of it can be explained by a rougher than usual period and maybe a touch of seasonal affective disorder, hoping that February will herald brighter days. We'll see. Considering the cat, car and some family stress (two more members of my extended family have passed away in the past couple of weeks and while I was not close to either person, it's still messing with me) plus old headnoise I thought I'd made peace with rearing its ugly, hydra-like heads, managing myself is a bit of a challenge. Mostly dealing by hermiting, farting about on the net, and yeah I know I said I 'd take a break but I got really twitchy without a bead project so I started a bracelet to pass the time hahaha it's a problem I know shut up.

Very recent development: EPeen just decided to throw a temperamental old lady computer fit when trying to connect to the husbeast's online 13th Age session. Am now digging around in her brain trying to pull out why the webcam is not only not talking to the browsers, it's crashing them. She's probably overdue for this, she's been running like uphill flowing molasses lately. *sigh* I really need to start saving for her eventual successor. More shit to worry about, hooray.

Even more recent developments: Just got some terrible news about a friend. Right, out of can, going to flounce off and read Sano Ichiro for the rest of the evening. *sigh* I'd like a day that isn't a shit parade, plzkthnx.

New icon is appropriate.

I dragged out the breadmaker last night and cranked out three loaves of bread - one for us, two to take with us to NY. And I'm not done - some whole wheat and pumpkin are also planned. There might have been cackling and repeated exclamations of BAKE ALL THE BREADS while I did so.

Drew and I are heading down to NY with esotericscribe tomorrow. Prayer circle for us, lol.

Can't see the forest for the trees. And the glare. Taking pictures of this thing is a right bitch.

Seeing as November ends on Sunday and this weekend is bound to be nuts I'm revising my goal count down a bit - from half done to 45%. I probably could bang out 18 more rows by Sunday, but I'd have time to do nothing else. 10 seems a bit more reasonable, though what will probably happen is I'll land somewhere in the middle. I'd be ok with that. Regardless, its still going MUCH faster than the Tetris one did - I didn't hit 39% on that until February. I mean I started it a couple weeks later in the year than this, but still I'm kinda boggled that I've managed to do in a wee bit under a month what took me twice as long last year. What a difference determination and a few improvements in technique make.

Anyway, time to fill my house with the smell of baking holiday stuff.

Whoop, 1/3rd through.

1 row. Yeeesh. But considering I've spent much of the evening scouting used car listings on the internet and stressing about River being terminal, if not quite yet dead... yeah.

Oh and I was going to elaborate on my rant about #feministselfie on Twitter earlier but it's late and I got other shit to deal with than internet shit.

I really wish these sorts of happenstances didn't immediately dredge up all my YOU FAIL AT LIFE HOW ARE YOU 35 AND NOT ON TOP OF YOUR SHIT YET crap.

Nothing on Monday and only a row and a half-ish done yesterday due to a sudden onset of deathly Vague Plague. it was not pretty - I went home early on Monday, and was feverish and miserable by the evening and mostly slept it off. Still not feeling too great as of this morning, but very grateful that I can work from home so I don't lose 2.5 days of work I actually get paid for.

• Oak Bluffs! I realize it's entirely fabricated to be as appealing to tourists as possible, but I can't help but be charmed by the rows of tiny brightly painted gingerbread houses crowded around little parks. It feels quite a bit like walking through one of those facade villages of a theme park, except that people are actually LIVING in those tiny houses.
  
  
• Mad Martha's. Expensive, but man can they do a root beer float.
  
  
• Ferry food. Good enough to distract me from my utter dislike of boats and open water.
  
  
• Beach bonfire, even if we forgot the sticks to toast marshmallows.
  
  
• Watching cell23 in full on Dad mode, chasing and getting chased by both of his children in the surf.
  
  
• Realizing that this has been the longest period of contiguous time we've had the kids and kinda not wanting them to go home afterward.
  
  
• Watching Kidzilla go from a shy retiring ghost to a giggly affectionate kid with the rest of my family.
  
  
• Shaking my head at Nuke's burgeoning sea glass obsession. That's not hyperbole, she actually forbade anyone staying in the house to come back from the beach without at least one piece.
  
  
• Skee ball.
  
  
• Bunch of Grapes bookstore. Still proud of myself for managing to walk out of that place without buying, like, five blank journals.
  
  
• Watching Kidzilla's face as she won at the arcade, tasted fudge, and hunted shells on the beach for the first time and loved every single second. Her and G getting on like a house on fire was pretty cute too.
  
  
• Speaking of cute, Lil'Beast going hard with the big blue eyes and dimple charm and having almost everyone fall for it.
  
  
• Getting to catch up with the fam was great for the most part. I realize I don't see anyone nearly enough.
  
  
• Long periods of time just staring out at and being soothed by the sea.
  
  
• Finally acquiring something with The Black Dog on it.
  
  
• seeing bunnies everywhere this time instead of skunks.
  
  
• taking mostly pretty fantastic pictures with my phone instead of having to drag out the Hatemonger.
  
  
• Managing multiple trips to the beach without either dropping my phone into the ocean or getting it full of sand, nor sunburning. Not that I burn easily. Bonus for neither ghost pale child burning either. All hail good strong sunscreen.
  
  
• Making good progress on Vulpix. (More on that later.)
  
  
• Meeting up with cell23's family on the island after their arrival on Thursday.
  
  
• Staying up late and getting punchy with Ale the last night there. Always terrified by how similar we sound when we laugh.
  
  
• Coming home and having both cats instantly forgive us.

I think I'm okay with being back home and having to work tomorrow, except for still having a post-yard sale disaster still up in my house to clean up on top of unpacking. I'm trying not to twitch about it too much. I'm giving myself until Thursday to get it mostly handled; seems reasonable, right?

As for the island, another year of memories made. cell23 and I might return in October to celebrate our anniversary/my birthday, but even if not, there is always Christmas and next summer at Harthaven to look forward to.

I'm unsure of whether it's because I'm approaching the end of the Giant Bead Project or the temporary being off my brainmeds (combination of broke until this morning + can't be arsed to get down to CVS) or just being more distractable in general lately or procrastinating from stuff that I really Should Be Doing (there's a list) but lately my brain's been in creative overdrive to the point of it feeling like that bit in Kindergarten Cop when Ah-nuhld loses it in a class of five year olds and just howls "SHAAAAAAAAAAAAHHT AAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWP!!" at them. That's the problem with having sixty bazillion ideas, three creative projects in the fire, four books out from the library (well, no I don't but I could), a messy house and a full time nine to fiver. Well, in my case, eight to four thirty-er. But still, gods. Explain to me why humans require sleep again.

Still plugging away at the Giant Bead Thing, at 92% now. Had to take a couple of days off due to Reasons and aforementioned need for sleep. Also it seems my various attempts to free up my schedules are backfiring, as I seem to have gained a couple more social engagements just as I got rid of a few as a stress managing measure. Le sigh. I suppose I can't avoid people, just need to schedule stuff as best I can. Still at least these sorts of things are exciting.

Last Wednesday (I thought I'd posted about this, but apparently not) as part of the ongoing Wednesday One Shots people around Squire are doing this summer (basically a different person with a different group of volunteer players runs a single session tabletop game of whatever description), cell23 ran a session of 13th Age, which to my surprise I ended up enjoying immensely. Actually I think all present did - four of the original six are on board for a recurring game and we meet for character creation tomorrow. I had been trying to pull completely out of gaming this summer due to aforementioned overscheduled and stressed and due to one game imploding and successfully bowing out of the second had managed to clear my docket, and then this one came along and oops. It helps that I don't have to go further than my own kitchen for it, and I had been bugging cell23 to run something again, if only for the ongoing excuse to keep the kitchen clean. Sooo there's that.

I've been listening to a LOT of podcasts lately to keep myself sane at work. On people's recommendations, I've been checking out ones like Aisha Tyler's "Girl on Guy," "Paul and Storm Talk About Stuff for What Is Actually 20 to 30 Minutes," "Stuff you Should Know," "Radiolab" and "Hardcore History," which are all enjoyable listens. I have quite a crapton of NPR stuff as well. I don't know when I because That Person That Gets "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me," but apparently I am now. I also have some local stuff like "Mythspoken" and "Press Start to Continue" going (there will be a locked entry about the latter later) as well as some goth/industrial/EBM ones (why the hell has it taken me this long to discover theungodlyhour? The fact that they have a Livejournal account should tell you how long that one's been around). Oddly enough the ones I seem to return to and enjoying the most are the Nerdgasm Noire Network podcast (featuring five ladies I already followed on twitter discussing "nerd shit") and the various podcasts relevant to my interests put out by ThisWeekInBlackness.com, which have been both informative and funny and... I don't know, really resonant. I think I like both of them the most because they're done by groups of people that clearly care a lot about both their subjects and each other, and because the people "on air" are clearly quite good friends "off-air" as well a fair amount of reasonably good natured bickering and trolling ensues. I guess me being used to my own loud black family, that sort of vibe is one I get and gravitate to, which is probably why I've been enjoying those far more than the podcasts that only have a single host or maybe two.

Somewhat inspired by/related to this, there was yesterday... About a month ago I reached out to claxman and our mutual acquaintance NR with a "Hey! You're black, live in the Valley and nerdy. Lets do something with that." NR invited his friend K to join us and yesterday evening we all managed to clear just enough space in all of our schedules to meet up at Packards to discuss the idea. I think it went well - a bit disorganized, but it was late in the day, we were all fried and this is still in the beginning stages and nebulous so that's okay. We all came away with some ideas for future games, some worldbuilding and stuff that may evolve into a content portal/podcast of our own, which... damn. I've been trying to get something like this off the ground for the better part of a decade with various people; this is the first time that I'm even remotely hopeful something'll come of it. Schedules permitting, of course - all four of us are rather horrifically busy people. Still... excited. More as that develops.

Bringing it back full circle though... probably because of all of the above, not only were the usual suspects from Guardians and Gods bugging me this morning, two characters I hadn't heard from in a while got really froggy with me. Basically way back when I was in the beginning stages of planning a webcomic, but it didn't go anywhere due to some head-butting with the person I was working with and, the fact that I can't draw worth shit. Okay, that isn't exactly true - I actually can, but it is not at all effortless due to not having a natural knack for it and being a bit of a perfectionist to the point that things suffer, so the idea of me producing a comic on a basis more regular than once every, oh, I don't know, month? is kinda laughable. There were other Reasons, but meh. Anyway I shelved the two protagonists and the concept for the most part, though I did partially recycle them for Guardians and Gods... but anyway today they showed up and were like "OH HAI about that webcomic? So that thing you did yesterday? Maybe you'll have a platform for us now. What do you say? Oh and by the way, here's the rest of us." and then they brought out the rest of their family, which hadn't existed previously to 10am this morning, wtf, but they showed up, fully realized and I had to take a few minutes to sketch them down and make a few notes on them to shut them all up. Sheesh. As I lamented on Twitter earlier, why is it that my brain can't come up with single characters? Why does it have to vomit forth entire ensemble casts? I mean, for fuck's sake, Guardians and Gods is getting dangerously GRRM-y to the point where the idea of a wiki to keep all the characters straight was floated at the last Drinktank (which wasn't a half bad idea, but I haven't had the time to deal with that, let alone write the damn story).

And lets not talk about the gazillion nebulous bead-stuff ideas I have banging around - not only poke-coasters, but other stuff that surprise surprise, does not feature copyrighted characters. Like the bracelets I was working on a few years back with ascii art on them. Also see some kink-inspired chokers/collars. Dyeaaaaagh!

So yeah, things have been very busy upstairs in Andeeland. On the flip-side of that things have also been fractious and disjointed, but that's probably just me off my Wellbutrin - four days and I'm noticing what little ability to focus I have has completely gone to shit. Gonna see about getting that filled on Friday cause fuck this noise. That said, the fountain of creative misfiring is actually kind of nice and I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.

Completely unrelated to any of this, having gone through a fair amount of his discography on youtube other than "Thrift Shop" (which I LOVE mind, but I wanted to see the rest of his stuff) I think I've developed a wee bit of a fangirl crush on Macklemore. "And We Danced" and "Can't Hold Us" are seriously giving me all of the life right now.

The timing certainly isn't the best, and completely apropos of nothing, tonight I find myself poking google for material on another urban disaster in Boston, separated from the events of yesterday by both intent, location and 97 years. The selection is sparing and surprising - so far I've only turned up two books about the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, one of which is considered the definitive work on the subject, the other, bizarrely enough, is a children's book.

I can't really do proto-research on this without also poking another disaster that occurred just three months before the Molasses flood, but in New York. Not all that far from where I grew up is a street named Empire Boulevard. No, it does not exactly warrant or live up to such a lofty moniker, but considering the street's old name (Malbone Street) and its association the horrifying subway accident that happened just beneath its western end, one could excuse the overreaching upgrade in terms of its name.

Funny how things become linked in my head. Being the extreme subway nerd that I am and the location, it's kind of a no brainer that the Malbone Street Wreck became sort of my pet disaster. It became linked to the Molasses Flood because the first time I brought cell23 down to Brooklyn to meet Dad & Co., we'd taken a walk through Prospect Park and for some reason ended up at the intersection of Ocean Ave, Empire and Flatbush Ave, where the Franklin Ave Shuttle tracks enter the Prospect Park station. So of course, I had to nerd out about exactly why all the trains entering and exiting the station were only using one of the two tracks. After I'd gotten that out of my system and we'd walked back into the park to head home, cell23 saw my pet disaster and raised it with his own: a 15 foot wave of molasses.

I don't know, it's one of those moments in a relationship that you remember at a random moment, shake your head and smile.

*sigh* maybe the timing isn't all that random honestly. Yesterday's bombing of the Marathon is punching me in some unexpected places, with also unexpected degrees of hardness. I am heartsick for my adopted state and its capital right now. I am horrified at the latest casualty counts, and at the deaths reported. I am saddened for the people who train so hard to run these races only to have their triumph tainted by something so senseless. I wince at the crackpots that came marching out of the woodwork ready to point fingers based on nothing and the people who have been and will be victimized because some people are racist shits. And I'm not going to lie, the coverage and the experiences of my friends trying to contact friends and family in Boston in the hours immediately following the bombing massively twigged me in my 9/11s. But I'm also heartened by some things in the aftermath, and honestly most of the response from my hometown in particular has very nearly brought me to tears a time or two in the past 24hrs, and I'll admit to losing it a little when cell23 retweeted the message of support for the Red Sox from the fucking Yankees. They're even gonna play "Sweet Caroline" during tonights game. Y'all. Y'all, what the fuck. I can't even with that, thinking about it makes me choke up again.

It's so easy to be cynical when something like this happens, to bark at the Internet that you've given up on humanity, drop the mic, and exit stage left. This morning Patton Oswalt wrote far more eloquently than I ever could about why that's an abysmal attitude to have. Long ago the late great Mr. Rogers addressed how to deal with seeing scary things on the news: "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." Wise, that man was, or perhaps more accurately, his mother was. But yeah, the immediate aftermath of a terrible event is no time to be cynical; rather it's a time to help, or at least be kind. The time for cynicism will come later. And boy howdy, will it ever come. But not yet.


Before I sign off, I did want to note what happened last night: inle_rah is moving, and on Sunday? morning I got a message on Facebook asking if I wanted to take the clothes she was getting rid of for various reasons, seeing as a good chunk of it was about my current size. Not realizing what I was setting in motion, I said sure. I fucking love it when friends give away clothing because it saves me the trouble of getting off my ass and going shopping for myself, a much loathed activity.

I was expecting a few items, not three giant garbage bags crowding out all available space in extrajoker's trunk. O_O We started unpacking and sorting it all in my living room and it quickly became clear that there was more there than I could possibly deal with (and 90% of it was cute!) so I put a cattle call out to the Squire ladies to come help themselves. Less than 20 minutes later my living room contained six (later seven) giggling women in various states of undress trying on and shrieking delightedly over various items and how they all looked. We stayed there and played dress-up for a couple of hours, terrifying cats, husbands and the section of Squire facing our living room window with the cackling, squeeing and giggling. In the end, 5 out of 7 of us, myself included, left with a pile of things and a spontaneous evening well enjoyed. It was a nice distraction at least from earlier events, which I think all present needed. And I have new, cute clothes that actually fit, including some work appropriate stuff, some hang around the house stuff, and my first ever pair of Tripp pants, which I've coveted lustily for, gods, almost two decades? and never had the nerve to buy. Cannot wait to bring the 1997 goth realness, maybe to Burlesque? (Meanwhile my husband is HORRIFIED by them, teehee.)

And now back to my stories and beads...