To be frank, I had no clue what I'd write today. Due to the holiday, I didn't really think about writing at all this week.
Wednesday was a frantic last-minute dash to get things together for Thanksgiving. Thursday was the crazy holiday itself, but I did manage to get in my belated post. That evening Hubby and I drove to my mom's. However, due to the weather I was going only about 40mph the whole trip, and so it kept an extra 1.5hrs.
Friday I spent some time with my family, and then I zipped off to visit my one friend from Girl Scouts and high school. After spending an hour or so with her I sped off to my bestie's home to help her with the move to the larger apartment. Sadly, I showed up right at the tail end of everyone else moving the non-furniture items. I feel so guilty that I didn't really help much with the actual move, but she CLAIMS I helped by watching my godson while she reorganized the boxes and unpacked a little. So... I can pretend I helped, right? Friday concluded with one of my mom's old friends - and pseudo second mother of mine - swinging by and all of us drinking, catching up, and enjoying treats Hubby and my sis threw together.
Saturday was the family Thanksgiving gathering. Sadly, it's not as big of a thing now that us cousins are all adults, moved away, and started our own families. Still, it was a nice grouping of us. I connected with the "middle cousins" a bit more. Let me clarify, in my family there were four of us born within a year or two of each other. We are the "older cousins," and I am the youngest of that group. The next group of four - which actually includes a cousin born a year after me but he connected with the younger ones more - includes my sister and are about three to five years younger than I am. My poor sister was the youngest cousin for about 13 years before my mom's youngest brothers had families. This group of five - four from one uncle, one from the other - is the "young cousins" or "little cousins" and they are all between 8 and 10. On occasion, two of my cousins will bring their son and daughter and we'll have "the little ones" part of the party. This year the younger cousin - from the "middle" group - brought his daughter and the "Young Cousins" had great fun playing with her.
Anyway, I went on a tangent there. Point is, I was the only one of the "older cousins" that came back for the gathering, and so my socializing ended up with the "middle cousins" group. It was nice to connect with family I didn't really interact with much growing up. It was also fun to have my long conversations with my one uncle. I just wish it were more frequent than "our annual Thanksgiving catch-up."
Sunday was a day of relaxing, FINALLY watching the movie my sister had bought - How to Train Your Dragon 2; it was fantastic - and my mother flipping out that she can't stand my hair and that she was buying me a wash and cut for an early Christmas gift.
The poor stylist. I must have told her about four times "Oh, I don't care. I'm low-maintenance; do whatever." Some stylists love the "do whatever you think works with my face" comment because I'm like a blank canvas they can have fun with. Most stylists, however, just look at me blankly as they desperately wait for more direction. Thankfully, Mom was there to give direction this time. First time I've had my mother pick out my hairstyle since I was about 13. It was a disaster then, but thankfully it worked this go!
Monday we did some last minute things that my mother wanted me to go through, and then the drive home before spending Hubby's birthday early with his family.
Yesterday was our little party for the man. It got so crazy I totally forgot about an eye doctors appointment I had set up. D'oh!
So, for this week, the most I've done storytelling wise was have a cooky dream. It's been a while since I last had a vivid dream, but it almost always seems to happen in my mother's house. Something about that place, I guess.
I was part of a pirate LARP group, but I was just chosen to be "the everyday citizens" and so I ended up signing up for another LARP dealing with time travel and sci-fi elements. Little did I know that I was actually signing up for a top secret government mission. I was informed that I needed to capture some guy before a mass murder happened, and then the next thing I know I'm standing in front of my high school locker. It had been about 12 years since I graduated, and so it was a struggle to remember the combination. When I did there were still items in the locker and I realized I had jumped back in to my 18-yr-old self. I did some spy-stuff around the school and then ended up with a group of pre-teen orphans on their fieldtrip to an amusement park.
It was part SeaWorld/zoo with animals in captivity, but part Six Flags with the typical amusement park rides, games, and food stands. I noticed one of the orphans had a stuffed animal that claimed to be a sea otter, but it had leopard printing along the belly and underside of the tail. I went over to the sea otter tank to make sure I didn't miss anything; some sort of strange breed that had this printing on it.
While over there I heard a woman talking about closed attractions as she pointed at the park map. I went over and noticed a huge section that was marked as "closed due to flooding." Each main portion of the park - split up sort of like Disney World - had a button in the center of it and when you pressed it a mini-movie talking about the attractions in that section played on a side monitor. When I pressed the button on the closed section a video talked about how this portion of the park - in a very Jurassic Park-like way - was once an open game reserve/safari for animals that were genetically engineered for the park. Some were just revivals of extinct species, such as the dodo, sabertooth tiger, and mammoth. However, some were genetically spliced, such as the sea otter/leopard hybrid the stuffed animal depicted.
The video then continued on to tell the tragic tale of Hurricane Katrina flooding this portion of the park and drowning all of the animals in it. Until the section can be fixed up from the flooding, can prevent future floodings, and can rebuild the animal population the section would be closed.
I then realized that the man in charge of this genetically engineered zoo portion of the park was the same man giving me and the orphans a tour of the park. I ran back to the group to find out the man had them held hostage. This was the person I needed to find, and the thousands in the park was going to be the mass murder. I found out that the man had a tragic childhood and he related to the orphans. His family were those animals he engineered, and he lost them too. His family was gone and he was going to show his pain to everyone else.
However, there were some land-based animals that managed to climb high enough to survive, and the man was using them as his murder weapons. He controlled them telepathically through a metal circlet he wore as a crown. I tried to talk him down from his rage, but it was one of the advanced intelligence gorillas that understood my plea and took the man out. The gorilla then used the circlet to inform me and the police how he and his fellow genetically engineered animals were being mistreated. The man went to jail, the animals were put in to protective custody, and I returned to modern day having prevented a large-scale murder spree.
At least my imagination is going full throttle now. That month vacation from writing must have really hit the spot. I just need the time to harness that flow and get my butt to work.
Now, to conclude how I started. I'm also going to throw in an early Happy Birthday to Spink since hers is on Friday.
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| This image is actually very fitting. I used to make home-made cards via a card-maker computer program. The lip marks and handwriting font were both part of my logo. |
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