Goth

I've spent the last week digging through my closet, looking for some of the old clothes I wore in high school. I will say, I was a goth with purple hair for awhile. After I graduated and spent some time out in the college world, my closet and my personal style transformed into brighter pastels or geeky t-shirts. Lately, I've been yearning for my black clothes again, wanting to wear my dark lipstick, and paint my fingernails black. Even while I had worn the brighter colors, I still loved the goth and punk styles but guided myself towards clothes that were "more adult" in my mind.

I've been looking online and in thrift stores for clothes that look like what I want to wear with not much luck. The closest that I have been able to find has been the Maleficent line at Hot Topic

Who wants to pay $50+ dollars though, and unfortunately by the time I can swing that extra money around it would have gone out the doors and into other's closets. I can sew, however, so I will have to get back to designing clothes and actually going through with making them. First though, I will need to make a dress form as described in the pinterest pages I have come by. Hopefully by that time I can maybe go back to purple hair, with a 9-5 job.

Redecorating

Alright, so it is Memorial Day weekend, which means I have plenty of time to get projects finished (or started). I have been in the process of redecorating the room I moved into after my brother moved out. I can safely say after spending half the day working on the ceiling fan, the ceiling is finished.

First, I want to show you what the ceiling looked like before:

Yeah, it was that bad. My brother was a huge fan of Linkin Park and he had a giant version of their logo on the ceiling. I will admit, it was his request and I did it for him, but that was way before the thought of still being at home after he left crossed my mind. So after moving in, it took me a little while, but I got the walls and ceiling repainted.

Green walls with a tan ceiling, but the ceiling fan remained largely untouched for a few more months. One afternoon I decided that I needed to replace the glass part of the ceiling fan (there's got to be a technical term, but honestly I can't come up with it right now). So I discovered these beauties at Menards and on clearance no less!

I let it sit for about another month before I decided I really needed to finish this project. I decided on a paint color for the blades and went out and bought it, waiting for a weekend or an afternoon where I can get to it. That time finally came around, I spent the entire afternoon this Saturday taking down, painting, and putting back up, the blades.

I can finally call my ceiling finished and I am incredibly happy. Next this weekend I think will be to finally get up some curtains in the room.

My Week

So I set off this past week with the intention of just kicking back and hanging out with my boyfriend while he is on spring break from grad school. Sunday I got an early phone call from my family telling me that they were rushing my dad to the hospital. I spent all day that day making life changing decisions while my dad fought for his life, having a stroke. He had a blood clot in his brain and as they looked him over they informed us that it was a very massive stroke. 25 on their scale, with 0 being perfectly normal, single digits being a good chance of survival, teens an okay chance at survival, and a very low chance of survival in the 20s. We went through with a surgery to remove the clot and was able to get some of it but not all. Luckily the brain automatically started redirecting blood to try and get to the part that was blocked.

He has spent the rest of the week fighting for his life, with most of the week trying to prevent the brain from swelling too much.

There has been a glimmer of hope, he's been able to stay conscious for a little while, can speak the phrase "I don't care," and has been trying to say more, and he recognizes those who are in the room and most of his communication has been facial expressions and hand squeezing. Today he's been using more of the side of the body that was affected by the stroke as well.

Next week will be a lot of taking care of the house and pets while my mom stays by his side and prepping for my new job at a local hospital as a scheduling specialist. When I was offered the job at a higher rate than they had originally offered me, I knew this was meant to be and it couldn't have happened at a better time.

I will have extra funds to help out around the house, pay off my student loans, and hopefully get a very badly needed car.

What Catwoman Means to Me

If you know me, you have probably been the victim of me fangirling about Selena Kyle, Catwoman. Catwoman comics are my go to for anything, I absolutely adore them. When asked why I like Catwoman, I'll give the superficial answers: she plays by her own rules, she's a strong woman: THE femme fatale, she's beautiful in any imagining of her. If I had the opportunity to become Selena Kyle, I would think seriously hard about it. Didn't expect that part did you?

 Here's a little bit about me:

Several years ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity to become anyone, especially a drop dead gorgeous super thief, even if my facebook relationship status would have to change to "It's Complicated." This was before I started to see myself through the fog.

In high school during my junior year, maybe only half the school year into it something happened. I, who had a group of friends I could talk books or boys with, basketball player, softball player, flutist, youth and government participant, thespian, bibliophile changed somehow. I lost that spark, the thing that made me care about doing things at all, let alone well... it just fizzled out. I trudged through the days, at first trying to pretend like everything was okay, assuring teachers and the counselor that I was fine, but then I just stopped pretending. I forgot what it was like to be happy and because of this the group of friends I thought would be there for me just started leaving me out of conversations until I became almost entirely invisible unless someone was making fun of me. It's high school, the bullies like easy targets.

This continued until I was attempting to get through college while not on academic probation due to the days I was unable to climb out of bed, let alone get the required homework done. Finally one night I swallowed a handful of pills that I had smuggled into my room and climbed into bed to wait for death. I don't remember anything until about 5pm the next day, I don't remember if I had managed to go to the bathroom and throw up the pills or if I had simply not taken enough but I woke up still unhappy but somehow relieved to see the sunshine. I started researching. Wishing for death, the scars I covered up on my arms with oversized hoodies, they weren't me... this wasn't who I wanted to be and I finally realized that something had to be wrong. The next day I went to the doctors and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I started taking a medication that I still take today and slowly began to rebuild my life.

First was trying to remember what having fun was like again, it may sound strange but I couldn't remember what made me happy or how to enjoy a day. Through the months of self discovery I found comic books, my first hero actually wasn't Catwoman, it was X-23. I devoured the series and then DC launched their New 52. I saw the Catwoman comic on the shelf and there was a click in my mind, I grabbed it and read it that day at a coffee shop. Shortly after that I took the next step: My brother had been dating a girl, we'll call her Aislin, and he encouraged me to talk to her.

After a little bit of talking, I invited Aislin to what would be both of our first comic book convention. We laughed, and talked, and I left with a bag full of Catwoman comics. That was 2 years ago. At that point I realized I was hooked: Batgirl is great, Batwoman is pretty cool, there's a connection I feel with Catwoman.

Maybe it's that nobody really understands what goes on in her head, maybe it's the cat scratches she uses as a weapon. I had used blades as a weapon too only instead of using them on others, I used them on myself. I had been a cutter for awhile, I have not cut in about a year. I had used my cats as story to explain the scratches to get people who saw them when I pulled up my sleeves even before I discovered Catwoman, people always drop it after that.

Throughout the process of making new friends and learning that real friends won't stop talking to you because you're depressed or hyperactive, sometimes in the same day, discovering table-top games thanks to Aislin, and meeting a very special man who I share a strong connection to (also thanks to Aislin), Catwoman had been there through it all. She had been a distraction on the really bad days, a rush of excitement when new issues came out, and an ever growing connection as I continue to dive into the story surrounding Catwoman.

Tomorrow, Aislin and I will again go to that small comic book convention that was our first step into a really good friendship that has brought so much happiness into my life. I hope to find more Catwoman comics.

Long Time No See

So it's been awhile since I've updated this. November was the last time I posted anything. The last several months have been a whirlwind adventure of job searching, role-playing, family time, crafting, and organizing.

I was a part of a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire campaign that finished last week and in that game I got to alternate weeks playing 2 different characters (1 per week) in the same universe and working for the same employer. It was a blast, but that's not to say that there were some hiccups. There were a few people who seemed to have taken player knowledge and used it as character knowledge which caused a large enough issue that made somebody leave the game (or at least that is the reason I gathered he left). Overall though, I really enjoyed it. The GM is one who encourages role-playing as opposed to just stating what your character is doing and rolling the dice as was my experience with a few games at Armored Gopher Games. What was great was that the system really encourages role-playing in which the dice have triumphs, successes, advantages, despairs, failures, and disadvantages to gauge how an action gets accomplished. Depending on what you roll something could fail but if you get enough advantages, something good comes out of that failure. I also got to create Dia (pictured below) a Twi'lek Assassin who was trained by a slave master but was mysteriously freed and spent some time trying to change herself into a scholar. That is until she got herself arrested for protesting alien slaving and was freed and employed by Honest Cid who knew about her special skills. It was fun playing a Twi'lek who is not very typical even though by end game she had lost almost everyone she had come to love.

I have joined a few other games to take up the time that this game after ending, left open. So I will be giving 13th Age another try as well as a Star Wars: Age of Rebellion (I will be playing without the book until the finished copy comes out as the game is still in Beta, with the finished copy coming out some time this quarter). I have also joined a Shadowrun game which is a very complex game with a lot more strategy than I am used to, but based on my older character concepts, I have had some practice in. Basically I will be playing a B&E expert with a bit of a Catwoman fetish. She grew up in a Russian immigrant household and fell in love with the character Selena. So when she turned criminal and became a Shadowrunner she took the name Selena with her secret identities being named for actresses who had played the femme-fatale on screen.

I plan on keeping up with this blog again now that I am not in school, having graduated in December with an Associates. A Bachelors is to follow but not for a little bit at least.

Organization

Everybody knows that I am super organized. I even go as far as to organize my game boxes if I play them often enough. I still live with my parents and that means I have to share a bathroom for my younger sister, so I only get a drawer to myself and it constantly is getting stuff shoved into it. When I was looking for my tweezers today, I finally got fed up with it. This is the before:

Ick, right? So I pulled everything out and decided to measure the drawer and make an organizer. I pilfered the recycling and pulled out a couple cereal boxes, a pie box, and a few misc. boxes. I sat down and measured each of the boxes and how they were going to fit best into the drawer.

When I got them cut, taped back so they had square bottoms and stationed them where I wanted them to go. I put pretty paper in the interior of the boxes so that it looked nice, paper clipped the boxes together, taped over the paperclips and edges so they were sure to stay together and I ended up with this:

I have a place for my bobby pins (which I use frequently), hair ties, lipstick/eyeliner, teeth stuff, eye shadow, and the rest of the drawer was for things that I knew wouldn't fit in the nice little boxes like my foundation, hairbrushes, and deodorant. Overall I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Should I have taken the time away from homework to do this? Probably not, but I was able to concentrate on my homework again after this was done.

Happy Halloween

Today is Halloween, it is my favorite holiday and of course I am spending it studying. Taking on a 15 hr work load for classes, add in the fact that it's expected to put in 2 hours of study time per credit hour, there's another 30 for a grand total of 45 expected hours of school work. That's a full time job there, plus I work about 20 hours a week at Hobby Lobby and try to squeeze in time for my second job which is very much come when you can (which is hardly ever, I will admit). Needless to say, I am getting burnt out, but I have to keep pushing onward.

Not that I'm trying to complain, I am very lucky to have supportive parents who are helping me go to school instead of being pushed into working a full-time minimum wage job. And I have been able to find time to do festive Halloween stuff like my pumpkin above, my Batgirl costume, and Halloween hair bows.

Happy Halloween! I'm gonna try and finish my studying so maybe I can watch a spooky movie tonight.