WINTERISH AND SPRINGISH MONTHS

In which I make plans, I have plans fall apart and we get robbed.

The first half of the year was nondescript enough that not even I have a particularly good memory of it. Despite an earnest New Year’s resolution to follow through on all of my creative impulses, I soon found myself unable to live up to my desire to create a set of costumes based on the classical alchemical planets. I had finally finished my coat made out of skinned furbies at the tail end of 2010, and my artistic impulses tend to run in short concentrated bursts of mania in which burn out after several frenetic weeks of productivity. I was also faced with a wedding to plan, and thoroughly loathed the task – as the only real joy I could glean from Ivan and I throwing a party to celebrate our change in tax status was that it was a chance to showcase my eccentric flair and good taste, which was little consolation in the face of my neurotic fear of phones, my hatred of spending money, and my crippling social anxiety when faced with crowded situations in which I am not an imaginary vampire. On that note, UnMasqued finally ended at the year’s opening – as we found ourselves sadly faced with a game with one attendee. I have no regrets in setting aside my LARPer hat at long last, as I had been blessed with having two of the most fantastic interactive story arcs one could ever hope for in the field of imaginary vampirism, and as I was getting increasingly perturbed at how Clevelanders and decrepit alumni had begun to outweigh active Oberlin students in the player pool. I made the decision, thereafter, to return to more isolated forms of nerdery – and proceeded to play more 90s video games and to get back into the habit of writing pretentious fanfiction about obscure things nobody cares about. (I’ll kill you if you find the evidence.)

It felt refreshingly fourteenish again in light of this. A few days after Ash Wednesday, Ivan and I got robbed – which was a rather jarring invasion of our sense of space, but ultimately netted us no material loss. The thief climbed in through the window and absconded with Sasha’s X-Box and cache of video games (except, for some reason, Sneak King) and then went on to attempt to sell said cache within thirty-six hours of the crime. Given that Sasha is a man of insufferably pretentious tastes, the assortment stood out rather immediately and the young vagabond was soon after apprehended. We got the entire collection back sometime around Easter, which was rather convenient as Sasha had given up video games for Lent.

In the midst of this, I watched the Arab Spring and its fallout. I got nervous over the “defund Planned Parenthood” whackjobbery. I gained about ten pounds and stopped volunteering as much as I fell into a bit of a depressive slump. I read a lot of African American literature. I collected edible plants. I reentered therapy. I started photo-blogging my dumpster diving experiences. It was not a bad time, but it didn’t stand out overmuch in my mind.

SUMMERISH MONTHS

In which I rescue numerous adorable woodland creatures and start several cockamamy plans to generate income

It’s hard to feel even vaguely slumpish in the midst of Trashapalooza – the high holy day of dumpster diving when students move out and a glut of glorious material wealth ripe for the harvesting is left in their wake. After re-decorating much of my home and gaining an uncanny amount of dived alcohol, I felt once more somewhat inspired to embark on new adventures. I took to collecting wild mushrooms and eating them along with the fancy tapenades I’d found in the trash. I finished my English translation of the Lingua Ignota. I scanned some obscure manga. I read up on ethnobotany.

Sometime in the midst of this warm and bounteous season, I found that my apartment was visited with a plague of vermin, and being a terrible bleeding heart hippie, I hadn’t the heart to murder them. After finding that all the live-catch traps available for purchase were little more than fancy vermin-feeding stations, I took to the unusual plan of laying out horribly inhumane glue traps whenever I was home – waiting to hear the various rodents get caught in them that I might free them with a bath of vegetable oil and put them in a handy pest-containment unit to chill out and recover such they could be released the following day.

This worked wonderfully, save that I managed to ensnare a pregnant vermin-mother who bore five sausagine mini-pests before she was to be released. Unwilling to abandon these helpless pinkies and their parent to the wilds before they were weaned, I became the unwitting caretaker to a hutch of adorable fuzzy mouse-babies for a few weeks, and decided to preemptively fill the rodent-shaped hole I knew they would someday leave in my heart by procuring some adorably bumbly domestic pet rats (Mosh and Columna). At the time that the mice were freed, however, I found one little fellow who was unwilling to scatter with the others, and who hopped affectionately into my hand as I attempted to shoe him away. Moved by its seeming love of me, I took the evolutionarily maladapted varmint home and have kept him relatively comfortable in a paradise of mesh baskets and infinite nibbles ever since. A few months later, I would also manage to rescue an orphaned baby squirrel, which climbed into my arms as though I was entrapped in some manner of early 20th century Disney film.

As the summer wore on and I grew to bond with my clutch of rodents, I also slowly came to the conclusion that owing to my various psychiatric abnormalities, it might be in my best interests to pursue a non-traditional career – preferably something that would allow me to work at home and to showcase my assortment of rather unique skills. At first, I attempted to hawk various crafts and trinkets I made… without success. Later, I would endeavor to train myself in the use of graphics editors that I might produce attractive pieces of digital artwork, hoping to capitalize on the demand for bizarre and obscure forms of drawn pornography. Again, I found myself without luck, although I did achieve some modicum of notice given how few anthropomorphic intestine-girl pinups (NSFW) existed on the Internet before my intervention.It was only in fall that I discovered that while people wouldn’t pay for my art, they would pay for brand name clothing that had been retrieved from the garbage – and I slowly began to build what I hope will be a business of selling designer purses back to the sort of people who will probably throw them out again.

MARRIAGE, DEATH AND FRIENDSHIP

In which I get married, attend the funeral of my last grandparent, and visit my best friend

Also in fall, Sasha finally broke with his dreams of marrying me in a non-private ceremony – a fact which brought me much relief and joy when I realized I would at long last be able to have the quiet down-played courthouse wedding of my dreams. Despite feeling a little disappointment with regards to my now somewhat overreaching engagement announcement video, I was exhilarated to not have to be a spectacle to anyone but Sasha. We wed in a quiet ceremony on “Talk Like a Pirate Day” in an empty courtroom. My new husband was even kind enough to actually say “I do,” instead of “Yar!”

Around the same time, I faced the death of my last living grandparent – a tough as nails old lady who had smoked and drunk herself into a state of preservation that allowed her to long outlive all of my other elders. I was unsure how to react, as I had recently attempted to rekindle some contact with her, and had exchanged the occasional letter and true crime novel over the past year. Hating the ceremony and pomp of funerals with almost the same fervor as weddings, I nevertheless traveled to Michigan to pay my respects – and found a quizzical consolation in discussing an imaginary production of Goethe’s Faust with my younger brother and watching this YouTube video on continual repeat. I’m bad at traditional mourning it seems.

Weeks later, Sasha and I made a journey to Maine to see Nikki – my best and dearest friend who is now destined for educational management in Inner Mongolia. It had been an odd up and down from marital joy to awkward grief to the refreshing rekindling of deep held friendship, and we were glad to drop about a fifth of what would have been our wedding budget on plane tickets and travel expenses. Once together, the three of us relapsed immediately into the same activities we’d enjoyed when we had seen each other on a weekly basis. We watched several decade old anime, ate inadvisable amounts of junk food and purchased a fifty cent movie called Acid Rain from a Goodwill and watched it in between mouthfuls of horrible tasting apricot brandy. It was a vacation and reunion without much by the way of plans or major events, and I cherished it for it’s informality.

RECENTLY

Prowlers and loose ends.

Outside of these events, the only other major item of import I can really bring to mind is that one night, I discovered the lower half of man furiously masturbating at my window while I was up late in shape-concealing sweat pants and a sweater. This led to a considerable amount of isolation on my part, as my brush with this sinister sweat-suit fetishist left me rather disinclined to practice my chosen trade of capering about late at night to rummage through trash.

This however was several weeks ago, and I’ve since rebounded – taking stock of the amount of pepper spray I carry on my person for dumpster runs. Other than that, this past month has been a quiet and simple time – where I’ve primarily concerned myself with cooking, cleaning, stockpiling inventory and trying my best to slowly get back into the habit of running.

Rachel: Man… why is there so much Team Fortress 2 porn?

Sasha: It’s a popular thing.

Rachel: GTA4 is a popular thing and I can barely find any porn of it.

Sasha: Yes, well… Team Fortress 2 is a better shooting game, and what is the essence of a shooter but reaching out to touch somebody…

Rachel: …

Sasha: … with bullets.

I have a long history of awkward pet names in my relationships. Sasha is lucky he wasn’t saddled with “cheese bucket.”

It’s a spider. For your Internet.

Quarter Life Crisis Action Hero, although updated sporadically, will still prove home to my occasional meandering stories of woe and witty exchanges with Sasha.

Also, noting my past slip ups and finding that I care less than I thought, comments are now enabled.

(For those who are confused, check out A Moment of Peace)

My wedding will be about being awesome and making my siblings feel awkward. The dress and shit is incidental.

Rachel: No. But its always a nice thing to hear from one’s mother.

Sasha: Is it now?

Rachel: I guess not so much for a guy…

Sasha: But it is for a woman?

[long pause]

Rachel: Yes… it’s like a rite of passage.

[slightly shorter long pause]

Sasha: Having your mother tell you that you could kill her in a cage match is a rite of passage?

Rachel: Shut up.

Go to sleep!
Go to sleep!
Or the monsters will eat you!
And you’ll die!
And you’ll die!
So go to sleep! Don’t cry!

I know few people on or off Earth who have never engaged in this verbal deferral of their emotions, and I freely admit my guilt. However, I don’t deal with the whole process well when it comes from Sasha.

Thankfully, we’re the awesomest couple to ever inhabit space since space stopped being a singularity! So instead of turning this whole process into a grounds for some manner of silly domestic argument the last time it occurred, I drew him a chart!

Figure 1: At first,we are engaging in pleasant conversation.  I am utterly unaware that anything could be wrong.

Figure 2: Suddenly, I realize that a manifest wall of sad has appeared in the room.

Figure 3: I attempt to inform Sasha of the wall of sad, but it is too late!

Figure 4: Chaos and sorrow.

End Result: Sasha was cheered greatly from whatever ungodly palpable despair he suffered. He now threatens to try to induce despair more often given the cuteness of his anthropomorphic angst.