Sooo, for any of you who read my fic, I just finished the next chapter of Harrow Children!

Harrow Children: Part the Second
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I'm back in Japan!

I'm on the Shinkansen now, about to head back into Kyoto. It's...strange, in a way, being back. It's like...in America, everything was familiar (...too familiar, in some cases, argh)--I grew up there, so yeah. Everything was very comfortable. It was nice to hear English all the time and to completely understand everything.

Japan is...different. But it's comfortable in it's way as well, but it's not the same. I'm not quite sure how to put it.

But I'm glad to be back, I really am.

Oh, and my god, Americans can't dress for shit. Everyone was wearing jeans and a sweater and that was it. There was no originality, and people stared at me funny when I was out, when I was wearing clothes that were normal for me in Japan. I ended up just wearing the jeans I had bought while I was there so I blended in. It was so weird to see how alike everyone was dressed. x_X

It appears that when I am wearing my current winter coat (a sort of puffy black trenchcoat, essentially) and wearing my brimmed hat, at my height of 177cm (5'10), I can be an intimidating figure, perhaps because my mother raised me that when walking in public, particularly alone, a woman must "walk with power", a stance that says "I know where I'm going, you better not mess with me".

Why do I say this? Well, I was crossing the street today and a short woman was crossing in the other direction. We started to do that shimmy thing that sometimes happens, where you see you are going to run into the person if you keep going straight, so you veer left but they veer right at the same time, then you veer right and they veer left, and you just keep on a collision course. After the two veers we were right on top of each other, so I opened up my mouth to say "Excuse me" as I expected we would brush against each other.

Instead she kicked me in the shin!

I was, I guess, in shock, because I just kept walking, and I got a good half a block a way before my brain started to register what had happened. "Did she just kick me in the shin??? Did that really just happen? Did she kick me? In the shin?"

Yes, she really did kick me in the shin. I have a small bruise now to prove it.

I guess she interpreted my shimmies to the left and the right as trying to keep her in my sights or whatever, instead of what I was really doing, which was trying to get out of the way? I don't know. She yelled something as she kicked me, but I had my headphones on and I didn't understand what she said. It might not have even been English.

Dear Diary: Kicked by strange woman in shin. Shin status: ouch. Mind status: boggling.

I go home tomorrow! :D

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kisekileia did this and I thought it was fun. :)

Comment and I'll tell you at least one thing I like about you.

Oh, also, what I got in the woot Bag o' Crap, according to my mother:
-an American Tourister laptop bag
Edit:Apparently I conflated two separate objects here:
-an American Tourister camera bag
-a laptop cooling mat
-a digital camera with waterproof case (!)
-two Star Trek figurines
-a Something Else which I am giving to my dad for Christmas, in case he is reading this. NICE TRY, DAD.

So... depending on what the camera is like, this could be quite a nice little windfall. At any rate, just my gift for my dad was twice worth the $8, never mind the laptop bag. Edit:The camera turns out to be a cheapo 5MP one that is worth about $40, but that's still a nice return on $8.

V. v. satisfied. :D

To the asshole who tried to blow up a plane,

I hate you. I really, really, really fucking hate you.

No love but plenty of seething hate,
jou

...at least this crap happened after I flew into the US. And y'all remember what happened after the shoe bomber dude--we had to start taking off our shoes. Yeah, well, this turdmuffin was stowing the explosives in his underwear. >:|

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( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Just a quick note to say that not only am I totally betrothed BUT I TOTALLY SAW AN AWESOME FIRE ON THE WAY HOME. Like, an entire block of Broadway is ON FIRE!

OK that totally sucks for all the businesses there and the people who work there BUT I'M NOT GOING TO LIE, IT LOOKED AWESOME.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! :D

Between 11:15 and midnight PST tonight, Gordon will truly become The Betrothed, as we will be undergoing the Rite of Betrothal under the old Rituale Romanum.

This means that if he makes a sudden left turn at the Dumpsville exit, I can sue him in ecclesiastical court for breach of promise! :D

Not that I think that's going to happen lol.

Also: my engagement ring gets a special blessing. <3

Hopefully we can corral someone into taking pictures for us, since we're not actually going to have any friends or family able to come. :( But it will be like a cozy Christmas wedding in miniature! :D Very small and intimate feeling. :3

Listening to Christmas music and making spiced nuts = happy joye.

The recipe is very easy:

1 c. butter
1 jar (250 ml) chutney, your favorite kind
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 kg whole raw almonds

Melt the butter and stir in the chutney and curry powder. Stir in the almonds. Spread the almonds on baking sheets and bake at 300F for twenty minutes or until brown and toasty. Cool completely before packing up.

This makes about ten cups spiced almonds.

I'm also making spiced pecans (Tabasco, garlic and Worchestershire), sausage in brioche, and croutons. :D

Edit: Make sure your timer is working before you walk away from it.

No almonds were harmed, but it was a near thing. :O

Son of Edit: OK, some almonds were harmed. I didn't take the other cookie sheet into account. But it's ok. I'll eat those. ^_^

I hit my limit this morning, I swear to god, and the next thing I knew, I was screaming at both my little brother AND my mother to shut up. And every time either one of them opened their mouths to try and say something, I went, "NO. SHUT UP. I AM TIRED OF IT. SHUT UP. FOR JUST FIVE MINUTES, SHUT UP!"

I seriously, seriously snapped. I am sick of both of them--mom's drama and my little brother's attitude.

Yes, this will come back to bite me in the ass, because my mother is small and petty, but I do not even give a fuck right now. I hit my limit when mom threatened to call the cops on my little brother because he didn't do exactly what she said; I tried to defuse the situation and both of them were acting like spoiled children, and I just fucking snapped. And said this was exactly why I was counting the days until I was on a plane and that this was why I only came home every two years.

Normally, I would have just tried to deal with it, by I am too old for their bullshit drama, both of them. I tried to calm her down, tried to calm him down, and finally I was like, "NO."

So, yeah. Merry Christmas, y'all.

It's gonna be a long five more days. ;/

This is super last minute but we have invited our dear friend dimethirwen to come to Vancouver for Christmas.

The only issue is her pet dog Oliver. What can we do this last minute to make sure that Oliver is lovingly cared for so that Carmen can come to Vancouver?

Any ideas??? Has anyone had to arrange dog care at the last minute? What did you do?

I went out shopping with my mom and youngest little brother, and oh god, nothing makes me want to be a hermit more.

But while we were out:

runt: Oooh, I like that car. How was a Mexican have a car like that?
Me: ...
Mom: Hispanic, not Mexican.
runt: *put-upon sigh* Fine, Hispanic. How does a Hispanic guy get a car like that?
Mom: He probably fixed it up.
me: *to self* Well, at least she got him on the Hispanic not Mexican bit.

Not ten minutes later:

Mom: Well, which Walmart do you want to go to? There's the one I always go to, but there's one close to here.
me: *not giving a shit and wanting the day to be over already* I don't care. I just need to get my big brother's present. And soon, since it's electronic, and those sell out fast.
Mom: We can go to the one near here, but it's full of Hispanics.
*dead silence*
me & little bro in unison: ...AND?
*awkward silence*
Mom: ...There's nothing there. We'll just go to the other one.
me: *to self* What is this I don't even.

It's gonna be a loooooooooooooooooooooooong week.

I have to get out of here.

My family was always kinda dysfunctional, but now it's just gone sailing completely into dysfunctional land. I think my big clue was when two different people warned me to not leave my purse around because my youngest little brother might try to steal money.

Then came the other clue--that I am expected to somehow magically "fix" things. I was ordered to go "talk to" my older little brother because Mom was ready to call the cops on him (yeah, I don't know why either--OK, he didn't sweep the floor, wtf). Because god forbid she talk to him herself. And she has presented me with a list of my little brother's chores, as if I am supposed to make sure they do them. I'm kinda like, why are you talking to me about this stuff? The ones you need to be having the conversation with is THEM, not ME.

And the older little brother is a mess and refuses to see it--never mind he was in tears talking to me, and he's also very angry at me for having left in the first place.

I want out. I want out of this crazy family where I'm supposed to magically make everything better and to give up the few things I have to come back and fix all the fuck-ups everyone else stuck their head in the sand about. I've only been here three days, and already I'm tired--tired of the yelling, tired of the stress, tired of having to smooth things over and defuse crappy situations, and tired of the pressure to somehow make this shit not broken. And tired of the subtle and overt blaming of me because I got the hell out of Dodge--my little brothers wouldn't be so fucked up if I had stayed and taken care of them. Because that's apparently what I was supposed to do; the rest of the family being around be damned.

I want to go home. I want to go home and pretend none of them exist; I want to go back to my quiet, peaceful life where there is no constant screaming, no shut doors with blasting music because everyone is ignoring everyone else. And I know, if it's like this with me having only been here three days, it's just going to get worse and worse as the week goes on.

And already I've gotten the whole, "Well, you can find a job here as good as your one there, right?" thing, and there is no nice way to say that I would sooner slit my own throat than move back to the same hemisphere as them. It's funny; yesterday I was kinda like, "Wow, it's so easy in America; it's so easy being able to completely understand everything, and everything being so completely familiar," but today, I just want out.

I want off this emotional train wreck.

Yeah, let the frustration begin!

I got home safe and sound, but lord, I had forgotten how snarky my family is--even my brother's kids can snark each other already, and they do it with gleeful abandon.

My little brother has been so close to getting strangled, I swear to god. If he uses "gay" as an insult one more time I was gonna scream, and the final straw came after me, my big brother, his wife, and my little brothers went to see Avatar (which is AWESOME, by the way). My big brother wanted to stop by a DIY store to get some tiles, and the cashier for our line was Chinese-American (I know it was Chinese because of the name on her tag). She and this guy--I'm guessing Vietnamese by his accent--were trying to talk about the guy returning something and how he needed to talk to the manager, and she was having problems because English was obviously a second language for him. My little brother leans over and, in what was apparently supposed to be a joke, says, "They're both the same race, why they doing this in English?"

...Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.

And yes, I snapped and told my little brother off. Right there in the store. He got an earful about how sick I was, after a day and a half, of his ignorant statements (including his defense of Chris Brown, the guy who beat up Rihanna. asdfghjkl;) and it was a very, very tense car ride home. He's still pissed off at me, and I don't give a sweet goddamn. I made him sit down after we got home, when he was trying to ignore me, and had a talk--ok, mainly me talking and him staring at his grapes and shrugging. *headdesk* It wasn't as productive as I'd have liked, mainly because grandma showed up and sat down, then Mom showed up, and there was no way I was having an important talk with my little brother with Mom around. (I told him we'd talk later). I did get to tell him my problem wasn't the ignorance, but the hurtfulness, and added that I expected better and was disappointed in him. That seemed to get to him, so hopefully some of what I said will sink in. :/

*rips out hair, screams*

Also, in another fit of frustration, the PS3 here has decided I'm not really me, and since the save data was from "someone else," I can't do any saves in FF13 starting from my save data. Meaning my choice is start all over--and lose any progress I make because I won't be able to use that save data--or no FF13.

...Yes, there was cussing involved. And a lot of it.

Gah.

Yup. Getting raped a couple years ago. That pretty much completely wrecked my life, and I had to start everything all over--I couldn't stand where I was living or my job keeping me there (which is why I never want to teach English again--I went from really loving teaching to hating it with an intense, burning passion because trying to fill my contract so I could get the hell out of Maebashi was hell, and I started to hate teaching and having to pretend to be happy and OK all the damn time. Which is why I ended up going to language school to improve my Japanese so I could a) get the fuck out of Maebashi, b) get the fuck out of Gunma, and c) get the fuck out of having to play Happy English-Speaking Foreigner role.

And it also meant I lost faith in all of humanity as well as had my eyes opened to how much misogyny is in the world, and how much I hate the patriarchal system that teaches men that they can be rapists, and that blames women for men not being able to keep their goddamned dicks to themselves. Also, it means I don't trust men--any men--worth a sweet goddamn and I really don't like people much anymore. I always had a misanthropic bent; now I'm pretty firmly, "Yeah, I hate you all."

Ironically enough, my big brother was giving me a hard time today about having more gray hair than him. He was cheerfully picking on me, and I finally very pointedly said, "I've had a stressful couple of years," and he snapped his mouth shut, because he does know. I didn't have that much gray hair before 2006; I had a lot of it by 2007.

So, yeah. Not always positive things that change your life. :/

Twenty minutes into the film Avatar, I could have probably handed you an overview of the plot down to theme, climax, and finale. It's not the most original film I've ever seen or even the most emotionally compelling. What made Avatar, hands down, the most worthwhile movie I've seen all year is entirely the result of Cameron's creative vision and the genius of the CGI artists behind the production. Some of the scenes in the film are absolutely breathtaking, from the sheer scope of the alien terrain down to the tiniest minutiae of a character's face. Cameron's Pandora is brimming with life, constantly kinetic in its vibrancy, with the familiarity of a new Earth that is offset by a nature alien enough to lose yourself in.

Ah man, who am I kidding waxing all poetic? I really loved it.

Edit: This being said - there are some very not-so-subtle cultural issues with the movie, which unfortunately bring down some of the high of the visual experience. I don't consider myself in a position to really expound on them fully, but I'm not going to react badly to people commenting on it honestly.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE AVATAR WILL LIKELY BE IN THE COMMENTS IN THIS POST.

I'm heading off in about thirty minutes, so I'm about to pack up the comp, copy my FF13 save files, and put the last of my stuff in my bag. Y'all probably won't hear too much from me, since I don't want to use any of my journals when I'm at home on my mom's comp. ^^;;

Anywho, America, here I come! :D