Being 35 Will Be My Banner Year

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It's my birthday! It's always fun for me to have a blog post on my actual birthday. I don't know why, but it is. Maybe I feel like you guys can celebrate with me if I post on my actual birthday?

Anyway, part of the reason this post is so late this week is because I'm at work right now. Yay. I get to work on my birthday. That's one downside to having a summer birthday. You grow up never having to go to school on your birthday; for the most part you can do whatever you want with your day. Then, post-college, you're in the work force and have to be somewhere every weekday.

That's how life is for MOST summer babies. For me, however, even post-college, I usually asked for my birthday week off. That way, before Hubby and I got married, the two of us could have the week together when he visited, and now I have time with Mom and my sister when they come up for my birthday. It's becoming rarer and rarer for me to NOT ask for my birthday off. This year, though, I went with just the weekend instead of the full week. Sure, today is Tuesday, and so I normally would have it off anyway. Then Hubby and I could spend most of the day to celebrate. However, since I only took the weekend off, and I didn't want to use any vacation time yet, it means I get to work today. Whoo!

So, here I am, on quite possibly only the second or third time that I've worked on my actual birthday.

C'est la vie. That's adulthood for you.

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Tonight, after work, Hubby and I are going to watch the "Live Action" The Lion King. I figured it is only appropriate.

For my tenth birthday, a solid month after the movie premiered, the local one-screen movie theater in my home town was playing "The Lion King." My parents surprised me with us all going after a day at the public pool. Actually, I sort of surprised them too, because I had purposely left my glasses at home, knowing that I wouldn't be able to use them while swimming, and that I could see shapes well enough still to manage getting in and out of the water without them. So one of my parents - I think it was my dad - had to race home to fetch my glasses and meet the rest of us at the theater.

Anyway... When I found out that the remake of the movie was going to be out for my 35th birthday, I knew I HAD to go watch it at our local one-screen movie theater. I know this new "The Lion King" has been getting a lot of hate, especially since it's basically a needless shot-for-shot remake with "less life due to the realistic nature of the animals" buuuut, how could I pass up a chance to relive being 10 for a couple of hours?

And maybe I won't find it as lacking or as much of a soulless cash-grab as most other Millennials. Maybe others of my generation are just holding the original "The Lion King" at an impossibly high standard, as the Hallmark of the 90's Disney Renaissance. I'll have to let you guys know what I think next week.

Finally, ever since I met ChibiSunnie, it just isn't a birthday without her personalized cards.

You can find the high-res version on her DeviantArt: Fruits Basket Birthday Party

How friggen adorable is this card!? First of all, it's Fruits Basket, which is a great manga - which, I think, my sister got me into - and it had a cute anime to go with it in 2001. This year, though, there has been a GORGEOUS anime remake that Chibi and I have been LOVING talking about each week. Just utter squeals and tears and... it's beautiful. So much so that I strong-armed Omnibladestrike into putting the new Fruits Basket into our weekly anime line-up.

Secondly, it's my ship: Tohru and Kyo. Look at him playing with her hair, and holding her hand as she presents me with my birthday cake! And the way he's looking at Tohru? So sweet! Love it! Love it so much. Reminds me a little of me and Hubby, especially with that height difference.

Third, speaking of me and Hubby, Chibi made the birthday cake lemon and blueberry. For one, it's a call-back to my wedding cake, and so it's one of my favorite flavor combos. For another, it's a fruit-flavored cake, which just seemed appropriate for a Fruits Basket themed card.

Fourth, she included my glorious Extra Boy Shigure. Yes, the further into the series you get the more you realize he's a complete manipulative jerk, but he does it in the most playfully cocky way that I can't help but love him. And look at him with his fan and his dance while giving me a gift! How can I not love that doggo!?

Next up, we have the blonde, Uo. Chibi and I have determined that if she is Tohru, then I am her bestie - one of two - Arisa Uotani. So, it seems Chibi couldn't NOT have my Fruits Basket equivalent on the card. I love her hair, and her outfit, and how happy she looks with her little confetti popper.

Finally, there's my other Fruits Basket persona: Tohru's mom Kyoko. It's fitting that both Kyoko and Uo are my Furuba personas because Uo tries to model herself off of Kyoko. Now, I was definitely more Yuki as a kid while I was growing up: good student, kind to everyone, but not terribly close to too many people. However, post Kyoko's middle school gang days, Chibi and I both think I'm a lot like her. She was madly in love with her husband, and it crushed her when he died. Something I hope to not experience until I'm at least 80...

She was a doting mother who was so stupidly proud of just about everything Tohru ever did, and loved to cuddle her daughter simply because her love for Tohru was too much to contain. She became a sort of second mom to both Uo and Tohru's other best friend Hanajima. My mom is like that, and I want to be that kind of parent as well.

In fact, Chibi made me cry one night by telling me I'm very much the type of person to be "mom" to everyone, and that was when we decided I'm Kyoko as well. Kyoko even chopped her hair shoulder-length after keeping it almost hip-length for years; kind of like what I just did.

Soooo, yeah, so many layers to this card, as there always is whenever Chibi draws something.

I LOVE IT, CHIBISUNNIE! ALTHOUGH, I'M SURE YOU'VE FIGURED THAT OUT BY NOW.

On top of everything else, the weekend heat wave finally broke, so it is gorgeous outside!

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I mean, of course I'd love to enjoy being outside in this gorgeous weather, instead of hanging out inside all day, but still. It's a nice reprieve, and it will be pleasant to enjoy once I'm out of work...
...
for about an hour...
...
before I hide inside a building again to watch a movie...

STILL! It's gorgeous weather for my birthday! Who could be mad about that?


Well. Now that all of my birthday squealing is done with, how about my writing this past week? It... well... it was...

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Yeah. About that well.

On the upside, I managed to only have one Zero Day this past week, bringing me up to only 2 the whole month...

My chain of writing days thus far this month.
Only 2 Zero Days on the board. Not too bad.

Hoooooowever, once you go over to my Camp NaNo calendar, you'll see those No-Zero Days aren't as impressive.

A previously sold (read: old) word count tracker for Camp NaNoWriMo
Designed by Miss Write
You can find other amazing (and really cheap!) trackers,
calendars, and planner stickers on her etsy: WriteMissWrite

Blech!

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Three days where I didn't work on "One and the Same", or really any fiction whatsoever, is bad enough, but to barely surpass 200 words on two days where I DID work on my story? Not surpassing 1000 words two other days? My weekly total was my daily goal!

Not.
Good.

It, was just... it wasn't a good week. All the more reason to enjoy today and start year 35 off right!

See, my final week as a 34 year old wore me out. My last day off was Thursday, and this upcoming Thursday will be my next day off before going into my weekend. That alone is a bit tiring. My job isn't all that demanding, so six-day stretches aren't typically that big of a deal.

But, between last Wednesday through Sunday, I had one day off, and four days working with the co-worker I almost always want to bash over the head with a thick phone book. We can usually stay fairly civil for two days straight working together.

This weekend we had three in a row. During a heat wave. Where we were already fairly cranky, and then we had to deal with equally cranky customers. And a lot of them. And one in particular became one of those customers that you just laugh about to prevent yourself from curling into a ball and sobbing.

It... wasn't a fun weekend at work.

I also didn't manage to have a lot of down time to work on my writing. What precious few minutes I did have were usually interrupted by the coworker whining about.... SOMETHING. Usually it would be that she was bored.... SOMEHOW, in the downtime, and needed to just ramble at me. My brain was too broken to manage to tune her out. This is a skill I cannot wait for Mommy Brain to learn once I finally have kids.

So... barely managing those 200 words/day while at work. What about AFTER work? Well, I managed to get that nice chunk done post-zumba last Wednesday. Thursday I was more focused on "this is my last day off for a week" so my priorities were a touch skewed away from writing. I did spend a few hours with OatS, but it was mostly editing and tweaking in order to get to a place where I felt comfortable still working on that ending series of chapters.

Then, Friday, right as I got home, I changed and zipped right back out the door. The friend of Hubby's that lent us his car while mine was in the shop had recently purchased a new table top role play game starter set. So we spent Friday night trying out this new game and discussing if we wanted to continue the campaign with the pre-made characters that came with the set, or if we wanted to restart with a party of customized characters.

Frankly, I liked my character and wouldn't mind continuing with the pre-made.

Pre-made character that comes in the
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition Starter Set
by Games Workshop

The main reason I like her is because these pre-made characters come with an established background, potential ties to the other party members, as well as secrets and motivations you get to choose. Most importantly for my love for THIS character specifically, is the fact that you are given a "meet your character" section which includes main quotes of theirs.

The second - of four - quote for Else is "What? No, no. I wasn't looking at Amris." Who happens to be another pre-made character you could choose. The woman is so tsundere, and I love me some tsundere characters. I mean, look at Helga G. Pataki from "Hey, Arnold!" or Noelle from "Black Clover".

The fact that Hubby lucked into Amris was just an added bonus.

Anyway, we played until I practically passed out at the gaming table - about 11pm - and then we headed home, where I truly did crash pretty much as soon as we were inside.

On Sunday, something similar occurred. I had to work, then pretty much straight from work, Hubby and I got changed, picked up my father-in-law, had an early dinner together, then headed to my sister-in-law's to celebrate our nephew's 4th birthday.

Unknown Artist
Image found via Google Images

We spent a few precious hours with them, fresh home from their trip to the water park, and then homeward bound we went. After dropping my Father-in-law off, Hubby and I zipped over to Walmart for a quick clothing run. Then I got home and wrote those 200-some words before passing out at my computer. Hubby woke me nearly 2hrs later so we could clean up my mess of papers off the bed so we could call it a night.

"But, what about Saturday?" you might be asking. Well... Saturday was when I broke. It was one of the hottest days. I had to deal with insane customers. The cleaning guy at work was just being annoying. I was trying not to murder my coworker. I just could NOT get myself in a proper mental state to write, even though I actually had some free time post-work that day. I just needed a re-charge day. A vent to Hubby day.

Thankfully, it was also a glorious Laugh at the Ridiculous of My Fandom kind of day.

Some context:
Over the weekend, I believe it was Friday afternoon/evening my time, at the San Diego Comic-Con, the Miraculous Ladybug panel announced that four characters just started up official Instagram accounts. Those four characters were: main classroom antagonist Chloe Bourgeois, Marinette's best friend and local blogger Alya Cesaire, and of course the two main characters Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste.

One of the people I follow on Tumblr - buggachat - has this weird thing about wanting to bully Adrien Agreste. No one truly understands it. I don't think even she does. However, she waited MAYBE 10minutes after the announcement of Adrien's Instagram account before creating an Instagram herself. She then played nice at first, liking and commenting on the few pictures the four of them had up and the comments they were leaving on each other's posts. Then the epic drama that is Locker-gate started.

Completely playing around, knowing full well the account didn't ACTUALLY belong to an honest-to-god 14year old child, buggachat told Adrien that she wanted to shove him into a locker.

Now, there is some controversy as to what happened next. Theory #1 is that buggachat's comment about shoving Adrien into a locker, and her follow-up where she attempted, but did not succeed in, telling Adrien how ugly his father is, got her blocked for bullying. Theory #2 is simply that Instagram saw buggachat rapidly commenting on brand new accounts, and thought she was some sort of spam bot. Either way, she was blocked from interacting with anyone on Instagram. She could still post pictures to her account, but she couldn't like or comment on anyone else's posts, even her friends who certainly did not report her for bullying.

Not knowing that Instagram blocked her entirely, buggachat assumed Adrien and the other three ML characters blocked her for bullying. She commented about this on Tumblr and went viral within our fandom. She became a meme. "Adrien" caught wind and apologized for blocking buggachat and making her feel bad. "He" is new to Instagram and didn't think he blocked her, but he'd try to unblock her if he can figure it out. SUUUUUCH an Adrien move: someone is mean to him; he apologizes.

In the end, buggachat became unblocked, she stopped cyberbullying fictional teens, and she's now "best buddies" with "Adrien Agreste" after bonding over how adorable buggachat's cat is.

It was a glorious soap opera that had me in tears from laughter as I watched the repercussions of it unfold on Tumblr. So... thank you, buggachat, for running face first and full speed into disaster so that I could enjoy the fallout.

Any who wish to see the full epic, you can find it on buggachat's tumblr here: buggachat answers an ask about Locker-gate

Personally, I love that it actually inspired at least one fanfic! I mean, inspiration can strike anywhere, right? What a way to be immortalized within the fandom, though!

You can check out the fanfic on AO3: Locker-gate by yukisukinomoto

So... yeah. Saturday evening was spent reading that fanfic, going back through the whole saga on buggachat's Tumblr, and reading my favorite posts to Hubby. Who, God love, at least pretended to be equally entertained. I then did a stupid edit to add to one of the posts. Any "Andi Mack" fans will get this joke; most others will not... Anyway, it's in reference to Adrien apologizing to his cyberbully.

Originally the character Cyrus Goodman
from the Disney Channel show Andi Mack.
That is the exact quote from that shot.
From the episode "Cookie Monster" from season 3

Time clearly well spent there...

Also, Friday evening, EdenDaphne posted a fairly quick update to her story Discordant Sonata. Now, Eden left us on quite the cliffhanger at the end of June. Eden also is a busy woman, and so her updates tend to be closer to the once every OTHER month, or every THIRD month. So once every 2 or 3 weeks!? That is SUUUUPER fast! Regardless, it was posted while I was either at work or while I was playing the RPG. So, the last remaining hours of Saturday - post work, and after going back through the Locker-gate saga - were more-or-less spent reading that update for Discordant Sonata.

Monday I was able to get a touch more written, but post-work was more racing around, between dinner and laundry and weekly grocery shopping and trying to spend SOME time with Hubby. I also attempted to work on this blog so it was done and ready to go up at noon, instead of me stealing time at work to finish it up. Clearly that last bit didn't go well, which is why this week's post is so late. The main reason working on my blog yesterday failed? I once again passed out at my laptop.

I have now done that at least once a day since Friday.

I think I miiiiiight be a touch burnt out.

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Just one more day of work, and then Hubby and I have Thursday off together. I might not get anywhere close to catching up on my writing, but I can at least have a recoup day snuggling with Hubby on the couch. With luck, I'll be refreshed by next Tuesday.

Until then, I'm just going to go one day at a time. Starting with enjoying the rest of my birthday.

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