Despertar

omg omg and bonus

Fuck, I did these entries out of order and now I'll have to backdate this one or something.

Fuck.

1. What time is it?
Seven twenty-seven in the evening. Outside, what Topper Shutt calls a "wintry mix."

2. How many phone numbers do you currently have memorized?
When i started this survey before, I counted and listed them, all twenty-seven. Four or five are for Chinese restaurants and a Ledo's by my parents' house. The rest are various cell numbers and the now-irrelevant landlines of childhood friends I haven't seen in years. It's so weird how the brain refuses to purge some of the really early, really useless junk.

3. Who's your favorite Sim, ever (living or dead; created or townie--it doesn't matter)? Describe their appearance and family situation.
First off, I have to say that you'll never catch me saying anything positive about a townie, ever--they are among the three most annoying aspects of the entire game (the other two being the repo man and the need to order groceries every three days). I think my favorite Sim ever was probably Angelica Tetrault Miles, of the second neighborhood. She was the third child and only daughter of Richard and Stephanie Tetrault, the one who took most after her dad, had inherited his protruding ears, pointy chin and full, pouting lips. She was a freakazoid, growing up, but as an adult, she really grew into her looks. She was a RED/blo and very beautiful, so I married her to Brandon Miles, the BRO/blo Average Joe with the abnormally thick chin, in anticipation of their having babies with a rainbow of hair colors. (I don't know why that prospect always excites me so, but it does.) She and Brandon moved onto an empty lot (as opposed to inheriting either of their childhood homes, because they both had older siblings) and proceeded to have six children in the space of nine days. Two sets of twins (Cameron and Dashiell, Evan and Felicity), then two more daughters (Genevieve and Heather). Their home was a disgusting, filthy madhouse for all of Angelica's adult life, because she was too busy getting pregnant and giving birth to hold a job, and Brandon was too busy changing diapers and potty-training four (sometimes five!) toddlers at once to work his way up the career ladder. They didn't manage to build separate bedrooms for the kids till Cameron and Dashiell had already moved out, and by then, Angelica was fat with no job and most of her wants unactualized. I think I like her best, her memory, because I still feel badly about her. Oh, and this was before I figured out how to avoid producing clone children, so instead of a rainbow of hair colors, they had five identical blondes and one brunette. My favorite Sim in this current neighborhood is probably Kale Schafer, because of Justin.

4. Verb a noun. Go on. Do it.
I'm drawing a blank right now, but rest assured, I am always quick to verb a proper noun. Chances are your name has been one of them.

5. What time of day (or night) do you most feel like writing?
At night, which is invariably when my roommate gives me the most grief about having my door closed.

6. What time of day (or night) do you most feel like sexing?
Also at night, for Pavlovian reasons.

7. What song are you currently listening to?
Helena Bonham Carter's charmingly off-key rendition of "A Little Priest."

8. How long is your hair?
Just barely shoulder length again, finally. I hate it so much right now, I was tempted, yesterday, at the hairdresser, to tell her to just go ahead and fully whack it off so at least I'd have something approaching a style instead of this neither-here-nor-there in-between mess.

9. In fantasy worlds, magic-users are often divided into "alignments" or "factions," if you will. In Magic: The Gathering, we have white magic (healing magic); green magic (nature magic); blue magic (illusional magic); red magic (destructive magic); and black magic (death magic). In DragonLance, there are white-robed mages (practitioners of "good" magic), red-robed mages (neutral wizards), and black-robed mages ("evil"). In your own fantasy world, what types of magic would there be, and what dress-code, if any, would denote those who practice each kind of magic?
All of those semicolons could have been commas.

10. Jesus Christ--Lord, or swear word?
Well, it's two words. I rarely use it either way.

11. What's your favorite (auto)biographical book?
I have read an embarrassingly slim number of actual autobiographies, excepting the whole prescribed Maya Angelou series, which I didn't really like. I like to pretend I've read Q and that it touched me deeply. I actually tell people this, unhesitatingly, when they ask me this question.

12. How many Writing.com journals/blogs do you have favorited?
Forty-two, but I'll be honest: Of those forty-two, I just deleted eleven (while I was counting them); probably about half of the ones remaining are only bookmarked for this or past Follow the Leader rounds; and five or six of the rest, again, just being honest, I only read when the rest of my life is at an utter standstill and I feel I'll die if I don't read something.

13. Have you ever been so disappointed with a store or restaurant, that you vowed never to return?
Denny's, for the racism, but I've never really wanted to eat at a Denny's, anyway.

14. On a scale from zero to one hundred, zero being completely straight, fifty being equally attracted to both men and women, and one hundred being completely gay, where are you?
Well. In my defense, I never actually want to have sex with women. But it is much easier to sustain an emotional crush on someone with a little more emotional depth. Maybe a twenty.

15. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is...?
Traditionally, Republicans support legislation and programs that limit the reach and impact of government, because, traditionally, they stand to benefit the most from keeping things exactly as they are, hence the term "conservative." (The politicians themselves, that is. The vast majority of Republican party members could probably actually really benefit from some level of welfare, education and defense reform, but the topics always overshadow the issues.) Democrats, by contrast, typically support legislation and programs that extend the reach of government, either because they themselves stand to benefit from more extensive regulation or because they recognize that others could so benefit.

16. What was your favorite song when you were sixteen?
At sixteen, I was entering my "jammin' oldies" phase, so it was probably something by War or the Isley Brothers.

17. What was your favorite song when you were twelve?
Don't know. My self-awareness was incredibly low, at the time, and I barely noticed anything, that year.

18. What was your favorite song when you were eight?
Mariah Carey's "Fantasy." Not the original, but the remix with the rap by the late Old Dirty Bastard. God, Mariah Carey is old.

19. What was your favorite song when you were four?
Michael Jackson's "Bad," even though it created a lot of confusion, as it prompted my mom to explain to me, repeatedly, that no matter what Michael Jackson said, "bad" isn't good.

20. Does learning someone's zodiac sign ever change your opinion or expectations of them?
How could it? I mean, I never ask anyone's zodiac sign, and no one ever tells me, and even when I find out someone's birthday, it's less than likely it'll fall into one of the three astrological windows I have memorized (Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces). Also, there's the whole thing of how I don't believe in astrology almost at all.

21. What's a trend or fashion that you thought, at one point, was just so cool but seems totally ridiculous now?
Flare-leg jeans.

22. List every entertainment system you've ever owned, along with your favorite game for each system.
My brother and I co-owned a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and the original Super Mario Brothers game was always our favorite. (We dominated it, too--we made our way through every regular, secret and special level, then spent the rest of our summer in a kind of Ahabian what-do-we-do-now sort of malaise. Chad owned a bunch of other consoles over the years, but it wasn't really my thing. I inherited his N64 when he got bored with it, and I liked Donkey Kong 64.

23. Name one or two grammar-related pet peeves.
Sorry, Jenn, but Elements of Style says either way is correct, and I was trained, by my high school journalism teacher, to omit that final comma. I hate when people say things like "would of" and "could of," because it reminds me that people just don't think pretty much at all.

24. Have you ever seen a stranger (on the street, in the supermarket, et cetera) who was so unbelievably gorgeous that, years later, you still remember them?
No.

25. What's your favorite fraction?
Two out of three, because it ain't bad.

*

I really think God must hate me. Why else would he start a war now, right when things were finally going well with John? It was bad enough having him gone five days a week, training at Fort Knox, and me trapped here in tiny Memphis on my parents' tiny farm; now he's being deployed to Alaska, of all places, to help with the resistance against the Japanese.

Alaska, seriously? Seriously, God? Just when we were getting somewhere, finally? At this time last month, with my classes on break for repairs, I was nearly going crazy, wondering whether he'd call and when, whether there was something going on between him and that little girl from Mississippi...then suddenly he was coming around more often, stopping by when I didn't expect him, smiling at me out of the corners of his handsome dark eyes. Even my mother noticed, asked whether it was too soon to call him a "prospect."

And just when I was ready to say yes, maybe, John might well be my ticket out of nursing school, here we are, a nation at war, every last handsome colored boy shuttled off to horrid remote places like the Alaskan islands, the far reaches of Europe, and John along with them. Dying, some of them. My cousin Lily's husband, in his second year of service with the Navy, came home from Germany last week in a pine coffin. Sad, yes, he was only thirty, but at least they'd had their three babies already, the first born when Lily was a year younger than I am.

So then, yes, God hates me. I don't remember ever saying I wanted to be a nurse, but without a marriage on the horizon, and having outgrown my helpfulness here on this bleak farm, registering for trade classes seemed like the only real choice I had.

We're dissecting cats now, with cadavers only two units away. I have never wanted to see the inside of a dead human. I have only ever wanted to fall in love, to be in love, to marry, to marry John. Had I snagged him by now, on his army salary, even with him stationed in Canada or Alaska or wherever he ships to next, I could manage groceries, two or three babies of my own.

We were finally getting somewhere, our gazes lasting longer than before.

I hope the war ends soon.