Aud's House of Nonsense 8)

Soooo I have creepy crawly skin thanks to my nerve endings firing off random signals

Sometimes this means I'm having a CFS flareup, sometimes it means my meds are doing something weird, and sometimes it's anxiety. But whatever it is, right now I'm just all crawly from head to foot.

And some units in our apartment building have sprayed for ants recently, so they've been retreating into surrounding areas. Which means now I have ants. Not a whole lot of ants! But they're here!

Which means that for the past few days I've had phantom ants crawling all over me and also sometimes real ones.

They both feel exactly the same.

It is hellish.

Spoiler: bug talk ygghhhh

Which, as far as house guests go, ants aren't terrible--compared to some of the other pests i've had to deal with while living here, they are dainty little harmless walking punctuation marks. If they didn't do the creepy hivemind crawl-up-the-wall-in-a-line thing I could probably tolerate it better. In nature, that's neat! In my apartment it squicks me right out, I don't know why. I see them and I instantly get queasy. It's this creeping horror, like, I'm tidy and careful about food, but I never know what might be overlooked and oh god, did I leave something that attracted them, what did i doooo? I peeked under the microwave at one point and found a bit of toast they were having a little party around. Ygghhhhh. I have since searched everywhere else i could possibly think of and so far things are ok. I also put down traps, which I absolutely hate doing, but I can't stand them being here. Not with my skin crawling like this. I wish I could just poof them somewhere nice where they could do their thing far away from me.

 

Ugh, ants are such a pain! I lived in a rental house for a while that had a major ant problem and had good luck sprinkling cinnamon in/around spots where we saw them coming in, but there also wasn't any carpet in the house, so I don't know if that will be a workable alternative to ant traps. Hopefully both they and the phantom ants give up and go away soon, either way!

 

Things seem to be looking better after the traps, but I'll keep that in mind if I see more, thank you. :D

 

Another day ANOTHER FRIGGIN HUNGRY DAYS ONE PIECE COMMERCIAL



OH MY GOD IT'S VIIIIVIIIIII

And here's the nice reference dude again:

Spoiler: fjkl;sdafas

look at luffy

"you're sick nami, can i fix you with this tangerine"

aaaaaaaa

and the bit with the Xs oh my heart

 

I have named the bathroom spider Georgie.

I have made it abundantly clear that they are allowed to do whatever they want as long as they don't leave their corner while i'm in there

(which, like, i wouldn't squish Georgie or anything, i'd just cower until they went back on the ceiling again)

but when I was getting out of the shower I saw them kinda poking around and said "WE HAD A DEAL GEORGIE."

and they went back to their corner. X)

 

(also i am tentatively thinking maybe the ant problem is okay now, oooh I hope I hope I hope; I haven't seen any in a couple days now.)

 

Maybe Georgie is helping!

 

Good Things:

• Bea has been more or less cooperative with the daily pill routine, and the contract of "In exchange for popping this tiny weird thing down your throat with the pill shooter, you get pets and chicken shreds" seems to be an understood thing, but today she was sort of adorable and kept batting and nipping at me and I couldn't tell if it was annoyed or playful or both it kinda took a little while but it was cute.
• Today I discovered these wee mini chicken veggie dumpling things at Aldi and THEY ARE POSSIBLY THE BEST I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE, I ATE MOST OF THEM IN ONE GO, I NEED SEVEN MORE BAGS
• Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee
• Luka and Barb got me a quick breakfast this morning <3
• I found canned chickpeas that come already covered in curry sauce and red and yellow peppers, so I added tomatoes and spinach and some coconut milk and some spices, and now I have a big ol' batch I can just eat on for a little while.
• On the way back from a grocery run, we caught a tiny glimpse of Northfield's Winter Walk, where they block off parts of the downtown area so people can go caroling and ride in horse drawn carriages and talk to Elsa and Anna from Frozen. There were families covered in wearable christmas lights and colorful blinky LED necklaces and stuff.
• We finished the latest Castle Rock episode and, no spoilers, but: DANG THAT'S DARK.
• We also watched a tiny twelve episode show called Soul Eater: Not! that's set in the same universe as the Soul Eater anime, (and a lot of the same characters show up too) but it's from the POV of three brand new students who enrolled about a year or so before the events of the original anime, and IT'S COMPLETELY ADORABLE AND SWEET, like, there are a few sad and scary bits here and there but otherwise it is a sugarbomb for your brain and ends on a super happy note.

 

I have spotted some ants, meh. One was in my bed. But it's still not a lot, I think they're just going to take a little while to go away even with traps, especially if they're in other apartments and stuff.

But no ants in my bed, please. I did not invite you to this slumber party.

 

Soooo yesterday I saw the Fuckfield guy again.

He didn't see me--I went to the office to do my yearly rent recertification thing, and the second I recognized his voice, I ducked into the kitchenette in the back.

and Fuckfield proceeded to sit in my landlady's office and complain for twenty-seven minutes.

I didn't hear much of it, only that same weirdly sarcastic fake-smiley malicious voice while he said, "I really do -hate- Northfield, you know, I -neeever- should have listened to that *sweet* voice on the telephone." and something about psychiatrists

and the rest of it was inaudible entitled complaining

and when he left, I crept back out and she blurted "Where did you goooo?"

Apparently she'd seen me come in, and she'd told him "I have an appointment, I'm sorry, can this wait" but when she poked her head out of her office, she couldn't find me

and i said "oh my GOD I am so sorry, that guy yelled at me for like ten minutes after I asked if he wanted help with his bags down the stairs so I hid! Are you okay?? Do you need a minute??" and we both just kind of cackled at how absurd and miserable the whole situation was.

She tells me he's diagnosed as having a lot of paranoia, which isn't surprising. I wish I hadn't felt awkward about asking if he's moving out any time soon.

But the bright side to all this is that I have a feeling we can more or less avoid each other. And if he does anything, I can tell someone now who knows about him.

The recertification stuff went fine, except for the part where some paperwork I needed to have someone sign fell in the snow and the printer wouldn't work, but I can take care of that later, I think.

 

HAPPY IMPEACHMENT EVERYBLOODY

 

is that peach tea

 

It was the only friggin peach thing I could find in the winter except for a bag of frozen peaches. X)

 

Peach tea is delicious so I’d say it’s a good choice!

 

YOU GUYS

IT'S MY BABY

MY BABY IS HERE

 

cute moment of the day: I went to turn in some paperwork at the office my landlords work, and I opened the door and this tiny disembodied voice said "THERE'S SOMEBODY HERE!" so I said, "Ooh, a voice! Where's that voice coming from?" and out pops a six-year-old from behind the desk.

And so I turned in my paperwork, and she helpfully added a large corner of scrap paper she'd drawn flowers on with a pink marker.

 

Look at that SMILE
That is the happiest Wailord

 

bea got her christmas present early

 

Happy holidays from Beatrix the kitty.

 

In honor of my friend elanorpam's birthday, I'm going to tell you about her comic, The Path to Timbala.

Its intro reads:

And so in this context we meet our characters: Paru, an adventurous direct descendant of Timbala's kings who aspires to collect magic sigils and visit the home of her ancestors while kicking up as much trouble as possible*, Shilloh, a master weaver who wants nothing more than to travel around with his murdersheep, serving as a Paladin to the god of Fairness so he can fix things with ruthless kindness, and Rosenthal, an elf with the power to seal away evil who is just a little bit confused and distant from modern times ever since he woke up from a mysterious 1500 year magic-induced nap only to be kidnapped by a truly heartless plantation owner--and now that he's met our other two main characters, he needs to make sure his seals are still holding and that a certain someone is still dead. As of yet, they're still all very new to one another, and yet I can still see very well how their friendships are developing.

And that's just the main characters! There's also a nameless mystery swordswoman who dips in and out of the story--I have no idea what her purpose in the comic is yet, but it's sure to be really interesting! There's also Lord Ursulanov and his manservant Ikke Besse: their dynamic is interesting in that Lord Ursulanov speaks in a language that we, the readers, can't understand, translated by Ikke Besse. Like the mystery woman, there hasn't been much of them in the comic yet, but the glimpse we see makes them an intriguing pair indeed.

How elanorpam manages to cram so much lore and culture and intrigue into only five chapters so far is an amazing mystery. I'm still in the beginning of things and yet there's so much I know about these three kingdoms, from local social etiquette to various backward racist nonsense to Koneish cultural relics. But it doesn't extend to just lore--I know a lot about Paru's family, how much they love one another and jubilantly adopt the "live life to the fullest and fuck the haters" lifestyle, in spite and because of their posh noble status. I could read entire separate comics of just Shilloh talking about gods and what it's like to serve as a paladin. Rosenthal is still kind of new in the story, but the glimpses I get into his past and learning how so much as changed is really interesting.

The story is also damned funny. Elanorpam's talent for drawing outraged facial expressions is a thing of wonder. This comic pokes fun at all kinds of situations, from overused adventure story tropes to hilarious coincidences and social awkwardness. Paru and Shilloh are bonafide snark factories, and so are a ton of other less prominent characters.

This is a comic that's packed full of insane adventures from the very beginning. For all I'll blather all day about culture and lore and history and pretty wall hangings, there's a ton of very satisfying fights involving fists and swords and magic and really neat bits of jewelry that enhance various abilities. It's an exciting ride from start to current-chapter, and it doesn't look like things are going to slow down any time soon--it's all about enthusiastically taking on quests and chasing dreams and collecting interesting objects and visiting ancient cities set in song and story, and just reading about it is making me wanna go on adventures.

So in short: read this thing, it's pretty awesome. 8)



* all while writing letters to her loved ones in her head while events are happening, it is completely adorable