Concept art for the new Zuzu Delfs. ;_;

I remind myself firmly that the only reason I ever want these is for their fullsets, and I would therefore have no real fun with them.

But oh my gods, the little Scrooge and the little witch... It's Snow Queen, Snow Queen, my favourite faery tale! And they're fennecs! ;_;

In...somewhat-related news... 25 days of Christmas isn't enough anymore? Now we have to have the countdown to 25 days of Christmas, ABC Family? (I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; the 'Soft Rock' channel on Music Choice became the Soft Christmas Rock channel November first. ~_~)

Zenyatta is huge. Seventeen and a half hands. I never knew that about her. She's a dance'n prance pony, too. She's like our ASBs - they know when it's a show day, and they get their mince on.

She knows what today is.

Jocks are walking down to the paddock. Yeep, it's Calvin Borel!

I want to believe. I believe in you, Zenyatta! You can do it!

Ha! A bunch of people are holding 'Go Zenyatta - Girl Power!' signs. XD

omg. Call to post. It'll be a long parade, for a race like this.

She's breaking from post four. Four = the Kemetic number of completion. Good heka?

Borel's got post one. Rail advantage for Calvin Bo-rail. Mike Smith knows what he's doing, though. Just gotta have faith.

Three minutes to post... -bites nails- Oh, the crowd's calling for her like they do Rachel.

Mmkay... They're loading the gates. I believe in you, baby. You can do it!

Holy shit - Quality Road's thrown a giant fit about the gate. They couldn't get him in, and once he was there, he started bucking and kicking... They're going to have to reload, and he's almost certainly going to be scratched...

Scratched. I hope he hasn't hurt himself too badly... I hope the delay hasn't affected Zennie too badly... I hope ESPN is going to damn well show the whole thing now that it's going to run over!

Reloading... Zennie was reluctant the first time, but she's gone in alright now.

Here we go...

DEAD LAST TO DEAD FIRST IN THE LAST HALF-MILE! She's another WONDERHORSE! First filly to win the Classic, and my god, that run! YEAR OF THE FILLIES! Horse of the Year nearly always comes out of the Classic - if it isn't her or Rachel this year, something is wrong wrong WRONG. She's fourteen for fourteen. She's undefeated! She's FIVE! I know I'm normally so against retiring good horses after a big race just so they'll go out on a good note, but if I was the Mosses, I'd just send her to pasture right now. She doesn't have anything left to prove, and everyone who thought she wasn't as good as any other horse because she didn't travel and didn't take on the boys and didn't match with Rachel Alexandra can choke on it.

(...shit. I just missed three minutes of Legend of the Seeker. Almost forgot entirely. ZENYATTA! My throat hurts from yelling at the TV. ^^; )

(...okay, now I'm a little pissed off. Apparently, I did miss the last episode of last season, which was supposed to be shown before the premiere. The local Fox schedule said both would be shown at seven. -froths- I have no fucking idea what's going on now, and I can't goddamn well go watch it online vecause I have no sound.)

Finding out that one of the other horse-related publications you get has apparently sold your address to Wild Horsefeathers and Back in the Saddle. (And no, that's not sarcasm - Wild Horsefeathers, in particular, I've been meaning to send off for for a couple of years now, and I pull BitS out of the recylcing bins all the time. ^^;)

(...hey, BitS! I never realized that before.)

So I had three happy things in the mail today (the other being my Horse Illustrated). And! As it turns out! Not only is Fox showing Legend of the Seeker at seven pm this week (some weeks, they don't show it at all, and WGN shows it at four and five) - which I can surely be home from the meet in time for - post time for the Breeder's Cup Classic is 6:45. -crosses fingers- Zoom Zennie Zoom! (Okay, that doesn't work as well as, 'Run Rachel Run'. ^^; ) Filly power! Make this a year for the girls! (She's the favourite! She's beating the Derby and Belmont winners in the odds!)

(Oh, and by the way? Barbaro's next-youngest baby brother, two-year-old Lentenor, came in third in his first race last week. ^_^ Nicky's out with a stone bruise, but there's also a soon-to-be-weanling on the ground and a filly on the way. A Barbaro-family filly! I wonder what she'll be like. ^__^)

On the down side... The site merger (finally) went through, and it looks awful. It took them a week longer than predicted as it is, and they still don't have it all running right yet - the subrooms don't work, the members' area is down, and they lost a lot of the information for Camelot's main room (which, I can't fault them too much for that; they were manually transferring stuff at four am so they could get it done for all the people that were nagging 'em about it, and I understand about trying to work under exhausted pressure). My main objection, though, is that I feel more like we got absorbed into the other site than that the two sites combined to make something entirely new - I've always felt the userlist pages and chat software for the other site were horribly unattractive, and it looks like we're stuck with their style. Yay. ~_~

I have a dire need for a tiny hat, too, and no tiny hat. -sniff- I'm going pseudo-Victorian tomorrow - black corset, floor-length skirt - and damnit, it needs a ruffly, adorable hat!

I need to go to beeed. Meet in the morning, fillies and Rahls in the afternoon, anime at midnight, and somewhere along the way, supposedly, elfboys. I wonder how many of those things will actually happen. ¬¬

So as it turns out, I did not miss Legend of the Seeker this week. I completely forgot that when I was watching it last week, WGN ran a notice saying it would be shown in the wee hours of Sunday morning this time around. 'course, I would have missed it (again) if I hadn't been looking for something else to watch at precisely the right time...

Rather nice episode actually, what with the copious amounts of Evil!Haldir Rahl and his half-open, sleeveless bathrobes sitting on beds and brushing back hair and generally being hot in the sleaziest way possible.

But then he brings out this kitten.

I spent the entire rest of the episode knowing what was going to happen to that cat. ~_~

(It just ain't my night for fuzzy things, is it? XD)

Sadly, that was actually the less traumatizing of the two, since they didn't feel a need to show it. The producers at Nature could take a lesson or three. ¬¬

Born Wild: The First Day of Life - A look at baby animals in their first days, including chimpanzees, gorillas, marmosets, and moose. The offsprings' relationships with their mothers are also explored.

Sounds cute, doesn't it?

This thing has been like a forty-minute documentary on How Baby Animals Can Die. X_x They can be trapped in the egg, they can freeze, they can be killed by their mothers, they can be eaten by predators...

Oh, hey, and those are just the solitary mums. Then we got to the disadvantages of being born into a society, and I just knew they were going to do lions. (Was right. Could not watch that part.)

In summary: Do not recommend. Watch something else instead. ;_;

I went ahead and closed Soledi a few weeks ago. It wasn't being used and I'm alright in Camelot, so...

Turns out the site itself is moving, now - merging, really, with another site to make an entirely new one. They're upping the limit on the amount of subrooms that any one room can have, so we're going to set off Tirla's lands as Camelot's fourth subroom once things are up and running.

The reason Tirla has lands is because they made her a princess. It's a nominal title - all shiny crowns and pretty dresses, no real authority. She doesn't even run the household herself - Narayana does that (ostensibly because she wouldn't know how; but privately, they both know it's because he scares the fuck out of her and there's no way he's having her outrank him - so she lets him have the power for her own good).

I'm not sure what to call them, though - I suppose technically, they could be considered a principality, but that seems to indicate at least a certain amount of sovereignity (plus, 'Principality of Sadachbia' abbreviates down to 'PoS', and I'm trying to avoid that. ^^; I don't want to just call it 'Sadachbia' because I can't make that fit nicely into my tags the way I need to).

I'm hovering on 'Duchy', which so far, seems like it might be the best choice. No, she's not a Duchess, but there's apparently quite a bit of precedent for princes and princess who weren't in line for the throne to have been awarded duchies solely so they'd have land and income. In most of the cases, it looks as if those individuals actually were addressed as duke or duchess after that, but there are at least a few in which the title of 'prince/ss' still took precedent. (Did you know that Prince Charles is also the Duke of Cornwall? Granted, he is the heir to the throne, and that's a modern reference, not medieval - but seriously, how often do you hear his full list of titles?) So I'm thinking I might be able to get away with glossing over that aspect. And then if for some reason the lands ever did become fully sovereign, it wouldn't be much of a switch up to 'Grand Duchy' - not that that doesn't have its issues, too; though I do seem to have found one specific instance of a grand duke's daughter being referred to as a princess instead of a duchess...

( But Which is Which? )

I miss doing stuff for Halloween, so I dragged out my Faire gear and one of Foxy's costumes and took him for a walk around seven or so. Lame town being lame, there weren't even any little trick-or-treaters for him to say hi to. -sniff- Oh, well. Maybe next year, I'll whip myself up a Soul Reaper cosplay and he can be Kon.

No one's around in the rooms tonight. I guess everyone else is out doing something. ~_~ (And I forgot about Legend of the Seeker being on today, and missed one of the two last episodes I haven't seen by thatmuch. It should have come on Fox, too, but they aired paid programming for two hours instead. -bleh- I'm going to have to figure out how to set my mum's crazy new not-normal VCR up before next weekend, since that's both dorrie meet and LotS season primier. And Breeder's Cup. I can't believe I said I was free that weekend when we were trying to pick a date! How could I forget? ;_; Rachel Alexandra won't be going, but Zenyatta is and they're thinking about racing her against the boys in the Classic now! X_x)

When I woke up yesterday morning, I had to force breakfast down (I always have a hard time eating when I first get up), and I felt like I was going to throw up for a long time afterwards. This is nothing new, so I chalked it up to the usual bullshit and moseyed off to the barn. I've actually been a little wobbly the past two days - and the muscles in my stomach hurt something awful when I'm standing up, but I've been sitting up knitting with no back support and nothing holding me up other than said muscles, so again...

And I am. So. Pissed. Off. Because apparently, between Friday and Saturday, two other barns were guilt-tripped into going - so we had a full show. But since the clases had already been combined and such, there were still no points. RAR. (On the up side, there was one other person in my classes, at least, though I'm thinking she may be a Bluff Creek rider so she would have been there anyway.)

I won my first class and came in second in the other, but the judge said it was close. I'm happy to have any wins on Stat (I came in dead-last the first time I tried showing him), so I can't complain. (I also think it may have been my equitation class I won, too, which is kind of a big deal because that's judging the rider and not so much the horse. *^_^*)

It did start raining a couple of classes after mine, so we all huddled up under the Dixie pavilion and had our picnic lunch. The rain came in through the sides, but it felt nice - it's been so warm again the past couple of days.

I felt alright at lunch, but by the time I got home, I was wobbly and nauseated again. I had a shower and laid down and realized that my skin had that fun 'raw nerves' thing going on, and by the time I got up...

I think I'm sick. ;_; I don't know if it's a mild case of the pig plague or what - I'm obviously upright and (sort of) capable of hobbling around, but I feel like absolute crap. My mommy ran out to get me some juice and soup and baby food. I hope it doesn't get any worse. >_< Though I guess I'd rather be sick now than in a couple of weeks, when we have the dorrie meet.

I ran out to my mum's (by which I mean 'the camper') right around seven o'clock, and when I came back in, I kept hearing something beeping. It took me thirty minutes to consider that it might be the phone, because seriously, who aside from her is going to call me?

Missed call and voicemail, though. From the barn. Every time Lynn calls me now, I'm afraid it's going to be bad news (particularly considering that I'd asked her about Scrap on Monday - his stall was open and empty, and he's been lame for a few weeks now. They were just playing musical stalls again, though). I was practically sick waiting for the message. ^^;

Everything's fine, though - at least on our end. It turns out, however, that we are the only barn slated to show up for the show this weekend - so the host barn has apparntly decided there's no point to holding a 'real' show. They're combining half the classes, cutting the entry fees (okay, so that's a plus), and withdrawing it from the points program.

I'm...a tad ticked off about that last part. Yea, I show for fun, but between membership fees and nomination fees, I spend around thirty bucks to be in said points program. There's a three-class requirement for each division, and south Georgia doesn't have the amount of shows north Georgia does. Since Wildwood cancelled their show and I can't go to Nicholls this year, this was my last chance to qualify. If I'd made the requirement and come in second (which is actually where I stand right now), I wouldn't care, because I'd still feel like I put in the effort and got my money's worth. Now, it's just a loss.

And there's no reason, really (as far as I know) that it couldn't still be a points show. There's nothing that says, "You must have this many barns attending." Hell, they don't even come to our shows (or if they do, it's just a few Academy riders). Sometimes, we only have ourselves and one other barn - but we still go all-out for it, you know?

But then, it is You-Know-Where we're talking about. I suppose I should be glad they didn't just cancel it altogether.

(I'm also a little irked because this will be my second time showing Stat - and the first time I'll be any good on him in a show, because he was yanking my hands all over the place last time - and I was going to have my mum take a video of us. She still can; I just won't be in my fancy custom show clothes. They dropped that requirement, too. ^^; )

^______________^

My mum's phone rang while we were in Goodwill. She didn't want to answer it at first because the caller ID was showing up as a restricted number, but I said, "What if it's someone about the dog?"

And it WAS. Someone brought him in to animal control this morning - though the story we were told just does not add up at all - not on the part of animal control, I mean, but the person who brought him in. He was found on Caines Street, which is just right down the road, and supposedly, he's been running around with someone's dogs and the owner's been trying to catch him for two weeks. Em. No? He only went missing on Saturday - and before that, he hadn't been out of our sight - and seriously? We've thought more than once that we heard him barking, but we were never able to spot him and he wouldn't come to us. To me, that suggests he's been shut up in someone's yard, not running loose. We're kind of wondering if whoever found him had originally planned on keeeping him and just changed their mind.

But, whatever. He's back, and that's all I care about.

Because that's where Foxy slept, and all.

No. Still no dog. Animal control was closed yesterday, so we left a message and pulled up Photoshop to make a flier. When I tried installing the newer printer this morning, the ink cartridges turned out to be stuck. No idea why. I ended up having to uninstall it, too, because apparently the computer won't tolerate not having it hooked up once it's in the system. I wouldn't care, except that it won't let me clear the little triangle from the taskbar, and that pisses me off. I don't have room to keep it hooked up all the time, even if it was working.

The other one wasn't that way, but it also has no ink. I can't even print in black and white with it because it has to be calibrated when it's reinstalled, and since the colour side is fucked up, even greyscale doesn't come out right. We finally called Jeni and asked if she'd mind printing out a couple for us - he's so close to the colours of the background in all the good shots I have of him that I was afraid he wouldn't even show up in greyscale, and I wanted to leave a colour photo at least with animal control even if the rest were B&W.

When we got to animal control, they said at first they hadn't seen him, but then one of the volunters said she wanted us to come back and look at something anyway because it was the same colours. It wasn't him, though - I'm pretty sure it was also part Silky, but it was a little bigger and the fur was longer/straighter. Whatever it was, it looked so sweet and sad... I hope the rescue ends up getting that one. :/

We left one of the colour pages with our vet, too... I'm going to go ahead and run off a few more in B&W, I think (at VIP or something, not printing them out - since I can't), and then laminate the rest of the coloured pages with clear Contact paper before we put them up. We were going to put an ad in the paper because lost and found used to be free, but they've started charging for them - $11.10 for one insertion. A week would be thirty bucks, and we just can't swing it right now. I saw Diana at the barn, though, and she suggested putting one on Craigslist instead.

I got to ride for a pretty long time today, because in the two weeks since I asked about switching back to evening lessons, someone took the 5:30 slot I was told about - so I had Stat ready waay too early. ^^; If it had been one of the more advanced students, we could have just ridden together, but it was a beginner-beginner (like, second-lesson type beginner). I offered to take the bridle off Stat and put him back in the stall until Lynn was ready for us, but she said just to come on out to the garden and have playtime while she was giving the other lesson. (Like I'm going to turn down extra saddle time, right? XD )

He was really, really good today, too, particularly considering how long I had him out for. He did get kind of fussy toward the end, but not anything I couldn't handle - and we got a lot of cantering in, so that's good.

I don't think I mentioned this, either, but Katie did something horrible to him. The last time I was out there, I walked out to the big ring to bring him in (he's pastured out there in the mornings right now - half for lesson-fetching convenience, and half for having his show shoes on) and stopped short because I couldn't find him. His lead rope was on the rail, but none of the horses in the ring had their tail tied - which he always does, because it's so long that it drags on the ground and he'd end up damaging it if it wasn't kept up. There was a horse out there who was the right colours, and who had withers of doom, but the tail was loose.

So Lynn came out and asked if he was being evil again, and I said, "I'm still trying to figure out if that's even him!" To which she said, "Oh, right. His tail's not tied up."

The tail, see, right at the end, was just a few strands - so Tiffany suggested that Katie go ahead and cut those off. Katie, in turn, blunt-cut the tail of her show-pleasure horse so high up that it ends at his hocks. You do not do this to a Saddlebred! (Not one who's shown saddleseat, anyway. Other disciplines are different.) Not only that, she did it the week they were due to go to State Fair. omg. I have not gotten to beat her yet, as it rained last Wednesday when I was going to go out there. Woe.

Lynn said they had a good time at State Fair, though (in general, I mean; not just Katie and Stat) - apparently, the other local barns kind of kept to themselves, put up tarps so they'd have privacy and such, so Dixie was the only ASB barn that was really on display - so Lynn opened up all the stalls, stationed handlers with the horses so people could come over and pet them, and put out a slew of older ASB magazines to look through. Pimpin' the breed, yo. ;D

Bluff Creek show this weekend. No November Nicholls for me this year, since the organizers apparently had to find a new location and hauling jumped to something like $180. X_x Pine Haven's fun show is in early December, though - it looks like I may end up debuting my winter costume there instead of at the Christmas party this year, since the current calendar has fun show the day before the party. That's going to be a crowded weekend, ugh.

So, my mum had a yard sale today. She thought she ought to make three or four hundred dollars, because that's what she's heard other people pull in. She made $50. She thinks it's because she wasn't able to get everything she wanted out there in time, but... -shrug-

Anyway, because she's been busy with that, Foxy's pretty well been in here with me. When I took him out earlier, he flumped down and didn't want to come back in, so my mum said, "Oh, go ahead and let him stay out." She'll let him run around loose if she's there to watch him. Me, I really don't let him off the leash ever. And why don't I let him off the leash?

Because he wanders away.

I went out to the camper for unrelated reasons a couple of hours ago, glanced around, and said, "Where's the dog?"

"...isn't he with you?"

...

She forgot as soon as I went inside that she'd offered to take him. So, yes, he is gone. Again. Has his collar and harness on, but not his tags, because they broke off and I haven't had anything to reattach them with.

Yes. Am pissed. He's come home on his own the last couple of times he's pulled this, but I don't worry so much about him willfully not coming back as being picked up by someone (or worse yet, getting injured and not being able to come back).

I'm so fucking tired, too. I've been waking up really early again, so I gave the Vistaril another go. It won't put me to sleep, but it seems like sometimes it'll keep me...well, not down and entirely, but in and out some if I ever manage to get there. It almost seems like it has some kind of weird second life or something, though, because I keep getting zonked around ten, eleven o'clock (like, twelve and sixteen hours after I've taken it) - which would normally be when I'd want to be up anyway because that's when the room starts picking up, but by the time I've already been awake for eight hours or so, I'm so sick of it I can't stand it anymore. And then I lay down and can't get back up until seven am or so, which of course means I'm fucked onto a diurnal schedule again.

I do not like drugs that seem intent on forcing me to be 'normal'.

And of course, today being Saturday, I have something to watch at five, something at midnight-thirty, and something at fucking two in the morning. I can't record any of it, because I have no VCR anymore. I was going to try and nap, but the dog running off has fucked that right over, hasn't it.

As much as I like Luphase's default wig (to the point that I fear to leave him in it, because it's not really replaceable - that style isn't on the DoD website anymore), once I had him in that black one, I realized there's something about the front that just doesn't work for me. I finally figured out that the way the 'bangs' curled around looked weird. Before now, I probably would have been too worried about ruining it to risk a boil un-perm. Since it worked alright on Andha's, though, I went ahead and worked up the nerve and did just the very ends.

And... Uh... Is it just me, or would he in fact not make a bad Sephiroth? O_o

(Another done in night scene instead of night snapshot, which changed the colour balance a little, and one in night scene from the front - that last one's my least favourite of the three.)

I got attacked by mosquitoes while I was doing it, though. ;_; And by the time I realized the first set was too dark (they look much, much brighter on the camera display than they actually come out, so I tried diffusing them with a scrap of black silk), the kittens had finished their food bribe and wouldn't leave us alone. ¬¬

Much more pleased with it now. -nod- (Really need to be in bed, though. Demonboy is supposed to be off and giving me Virgil-time today. Oh, by the way: I found someone else who supposedly really, really wants to play with the little devil girl. And did he show up last night like he was supposed to?

Now, what do you think?)

( Do they drive you from the garden, snake? And do they wield the flaming sword? Saint Patrick walks the island, in the good name of the Lord. )

^--- Andha's introduction proper, part one. Was it a giant pain in the arse? Yes, yes it was. Not so much on the posing itself, for once (until I had him standing him, anyway), but something has been really, really wrong with my Testor's lately - it's rubbing off like crazy, even when I barely touch it. I'm used to it wearing over time, but on aesthetics that are two and three weeks old? it's been happening on Phase, too. It's ridiculous - I've been doing it the way I always do, not too cold, not too humid (well, as not as it ever gets around here anyway), and it's even been different cans, so it's not like it's one bad batch. He lost part of a nip and a good bit of the middle torso joint. One set of the scars came up, too, and I couldn't fix it, so I had to peel them off completely. ;_; (They're just white glue and pastels, so the peeling is kind of expected - that's one of the advantages, actually; how easily they come off. It happened once before already, but the last time, I was able to wet my finger and rub the underside and get it to stick back down. This time, it was two cross-lines, and they end up sticking to each other and bunching instead of laying back down.)

Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do for the sort of populated, public enviornment Andha and Phase are supposed to meet in. It's kind of hard to make crowded nightclubs for dorries, heh. ~_~

I've been lazing off majorly on getting Andha's introduction story done - mostly because it's going to involve going outside, and we already know about my issues with finding good backdrops that don't have to be driven to. ~_~ I think I found a spot in the backyard I can use as long as I'm fully clothed (by which I mean not that I'd be running around naked back there, but that I'm likely to be eaten alive by mosquitoes and less-sexy snakes and therefore need sleeves, pants, and boots ^^; ), but I'd rather do it on a nice, grey day - which we had a lot of at the beginning of the week, and which of course ended two days ago. ~_~

I decided the transition between his torso and his temporary tail was too obvious, so I made a harem-y sort of belt to cover the point where they meet. It took bloody forever to get right - I had to redo the chains four or five times, and then the veilpart kept sliding up - and he looks so good now that I can't bring myself to shoot the scene wherein he slithers out of said tail just yet. I wanted some pictures of him, though, so now there's this:

( Cheesesnake ~ The Naga King )

There's no actual nudity (beyond the lack of a shirt), but there is something suggestive toward the end, so if you need to be careful about who sees what in your house, be careful about who sees what. ^.~ There's also a black-and-white omake shot in the dorrie journal.

Happy Cephalopod Day to ME!

You know, Quiz has been gone for a year? Doesn't seem like it's been that long at all...

...not so much that I am, but that I'm just done.

Not in general or anything (though you probably could stick a fork in me, most days); just with one thing in particular. I've been off Those Boards for a week and two days, and it's just...better. At least for right now. There's this bored little itch that keeps nagging at me to go look (now that I can) just so I'll have something to do, but I know I'm probably just going to get upset if I give in.

I never though that would happen, really. That was always kind of my standard for when I had absolutely nothing else to do. But it's pretty well ruined for me now. Has been for a long time, I suspect - since I lost That Collar - but that last round of getting raked over the coals... Yea, that did it. I don't think there's any point to me trying a new character when it'd be obvious who I am just from my owner, and if I'm not doing that, there's certainly no point to going back just to announce I'm gone. I'll just...fade. No one will notice.

It's pouring rain and I want dearly to go take a few shots of the boys, but there's nowhere to do it - the porch is a mess and off the side is just the neighbour's crappy shed anyway, and I'm certainly not going to put them out in it. I did get the front of Andha's wig fixed, finally, and it looks a thousand times better.

It's occurred to me a few times lately that I still hate my birth name, still can't deal with hearing it because of the things I associate with it, but I...kind of don't mind a shortened form of it, the first four letters with a short vowel instead of a long one. 0.o I'm not sure if I'm ready to say what it is yet or not, though. It's one of those things that once it's done, can't be taken back...

(I'm mostly putting this here so I can find it next year when I've forgotten it. Heh.)

The barn's Christmas party is on December sixth. I was going to try getting my Snow Queen costume done this year, until I remembered why I didn't last year (faux fur being fourteen bucks a yard even at Wal-Mart, and all). I wanted to do it up with proper barding, too, so that means it gets put off until next year again. (Mind you, I could probably start it now and still be working frantically come December 2010.)

I want to do spiderweb strap barding for it, but that's kind of a bitch when you don't have your own horse because it has to be so carefully fitted. The back is all one piece and not really resizable, so it doesn't move easily from one horse to another.

It has just occurred to me that I really don't see a reason I couldn't make it in multiple pieces, and connect them via buckles and grommets. Not even remotely accurate, but I'm not going to an SCA event here, and it would certainly look cool. What would be really nice would making it in leather, but somehow, I just don't see that happening. Unless we get around to winning the lottery. ~_~

My mum told me a couple of years ago that I looked like an addict. I remember mentioning it here then. (Of course, that's exactly what I am, isn't it? Just for something that can't be bought, sold, or taken.) I knew exactly what she meant without even needing to see myself, because I could feel it.

I feel like I did then. I don't know what I look like, but the less-tangible parts are the same. Every nerve is at once both raw and dead, frayed and drawn to the point of breaking, and something starved and unforgiving is gnawing at the edges of what's left behind. Every time I lay down, I'm haunted by ghosts that haven't been this relentless in years. The whole of the inside of me is hollow, and I can feel the dead space reacting to their presence - cold and hot at once; clawing and writhing and pulling me down. I'm used to a certain baseline of misery - I don't think I could function without it, in fact - but this is below and beyond. I haven't felt this bad in a long time.

I'd blame it on the cunts who felt a need to throw something from three years ago in my face when I've never said so much as a word to or about them myself without their dredging it up first, but I'm not sure I can. That's when the worst of it started, certainly, but the overarching shadow has been there for a while now. When I had those last two really bad panic attacks, I could at least be fairly sure the primary trigger there was having had so little sleep for so long immediately prior - and granted, that's a factor now, too - but it doesn't feel like that's the whole of it. I don't know what does.

Edge of the knife, like the little mermaid. Can't return to the sea, can't drag myself to the prince (as if I've ever wanted one), can't scream the siren's rage. I don't know whose shadow I'm chasing anymore, only that those silver slivers still flash and vanish in the darkness. Nothing on this world, in this world - Only eidolons of desperate dreams, tangible yet eternally untouchable. (And Andha has such a smirk on him, looks so smug and I know why - because he can have what I never will, twined in the artifical embrace of some sadistic silver-haired god - We're all only replacements in the end, aren't we.)

A few years ago, I burned a CD, threw some Sailor Moon onto the extra space at the end, and later deleted the Sailor Moon folder because I'd forgotten I couldn't fit everything on there. I only lost two songs, but it always kind of irked me. I finally went looking for them again.

I found everything - the Japanese soundtracks, the background music, the English dub songs that I snapped up a tape of when I found it at Media Play - my gods, over a decade ago - no matter how cheesy they were because at the time, it was all that could be had. I went ahead and downloaded just a few of the zipped-up sets and burned some more CDs.

It made me unspeakably happy and at the same time, only crushed me more. It was the first serialized anime I was ever that heavily into - I'd seen various OVAs and the like, mind you, but there wasn't much in the way of televised anime then. I thought it was such a stupid show at first, but I kept watching it anyway and then I couldn't stop. I'd forgotten until now how much a part of me it really was. I'd hit a song I remembered from one of the tapes someone had made for me and start crying. I want terribly to watch some now - to the point that I'd even dig out my crappy recorded-from-TV DiC dubs if I had anything to watch them on. I bet I could find them online somewhere, if I just had sound...

My mum used to be a member of the Alice Cooper mailing list. She signed up for it all by herself. She deleted her old email account a while back and created another (somebody of the family sort was giving her crap), and never got around to signing back up. Tonight I was thinking about another concert coming up that we're not going to, and decided that just for the hell of it, I'd check on Alice's latest tour.

...he's going to be in Daytona Beach on the fifth. Closest he's coming until at least the end of the year. She really wants to figure out a way we can do it (and I would like to go), but I'm afraid I won't be able to handle being away overnight without the computer. The only way I'd be able to manage it would be if we could stay at Darline's place after it was over so I could use hers, and that'd be another two hours of driving once the concert was done - which means we wouldn't get to her place until well after midnight, and she might not be up at that hour, you know? (Also, it's a Monday, and we don't have any way to tape Heroes anymore.)

Then we realized that she's supposed to start babysitting for a friend of ours every Tuesday and...I think Thursday? I forget - and that being a Monday...

She's still trying to figure out how we could pull it off. She just came in and made me look up driving times on Googlemap. ^^;