Monday has this friend . . .

Hello, girls! It's Monday!

So, Carlyn, I'm not sure if this is what you wanted, but here we go.

So, I have this friend. Her name isn't all that important, but her situation . . . well, I was hoping you all might be able to offer some advice -- you know, to pass along to her.

So, my friend has, uh, gotten herself into a bit of trouble. I can't go into many of the details, because it's classified, but on a very routine trip to South America, she found herself in the midst of an international ring of penguin smugglers.

Yes. You read that correctly. Penguin smugglers. In South America.

Okay, okay, I know it sounds crazy, but here's the thing. She was invited by a (very rich!) friend to go skydiving in Peru, and she thought, yeah, sure, why not? I mean, would you have turned down such an opportunity? BUT, upon jumping out of the plane, she was caught in a vicious updraft, which carried her all the way to the southern tip of the country. Well, there she was, miles away from her friend or anyone she knew, she didn't speak the language (I mean, she'd taken Spanish in high school, but let's be real. That was six years ago, so it's not like she remembers it), and it was the middle of the rainforest! Where was she supposed to go?

Well, she knew she had to start somewhere, so she just started walking, and after a while, she came upon an abandoned-looking structure. It was getting dark, and she didn't want to sleep out in the open, so she  headed inside, found an old crate, and curled up to sleep, figuring she'd figure out a better plan in the morning.

Thing is, when she woke up, she was still in the crate. She just wasn't in the building. Or the rainforest. Or Peru! No, she was on a boat, in the middle of the ocean! Well, this was quite distressing to her, as you might imagine. But she kept a good head on her shoulders, and decided rather than just sit around and wait to be discovered, she might as well explore and see what she could find.

She had hopes that this would be a friendly crew willing to help her our of her predicament, but no such luck. She did find her way to the bridge, but it was full of severely unfriendly looking men, and she decided not to take her chances just showing herself to the crew, so she hid herself and did some reconnaissance work first. And it was a good thing, too!

Turns out, she was in the midst of a band of penguin smugglers using that abandoned building in Peru as their base of operations! They'd picked up 3000 penguins from a boat returning from Antarctica just that morning and were on their way to distribute them! Well, my friend knew what she had to do. Liberate the penguins! She worked all night at it, and it wasn't easy, let me tell you! But finally, she managed to get all of them over the side of the boat and into the water.

But just then, she was discovered! The watchman spotted her, and called for reinforcements, and that's when the penguins, grateful to her for setting them free, formed a giant penguin tower and took her from the ship! They formed a kind of raft and carried her away to safety. BUT, here's the thing. Now, they're so enamored of her that they've insisted on staying with her. She can't go anywhere for the mass of penguins!

And so, the advice she needs is this:

Once you've liberated 3000 penguins, what exactly do you do with them?

Anyway, if you could please give her some advice as quickly as possible, she'd really appreciate it. My
Her apartment just wasn't made for such a high volume of aquatic birds, and her landlord is starting to get suspicious.

Oh, what? What's that noise in the background? Yeah, just ignore that. :)

And that, ladies, is what happens when Cassie just starts writing things without a plan. And has she mentioned her NaNo novel has no clear end point? Yeah, this coming month should be fun . . .

One hour to NaNoWriMo! Happy Halloween!

Week 34: I have this friend . . .

From Carlyn:

Week 34: Tell us a story (it can be true or contrived) about a "friend." You know, like, "So... I have this... friend... who has this... problem... And she keeps coming to me for advice about it... And I don't know what to tell her... Uh... Yeah."

Wednesday has had a very pet-filled life.

Christina: Things sound like they’re really moving along! That’s very exciting. I also like the idea of P-word costumes.

Cassie: Your pets had really great names. Including “Jeffrey.”

Alexandra: I don’t know what it is about cats and flat surfaces… For my cat, laptops are especially alluring when I’m attempting to use Skype.

My pets! Like Cassie, I grew up with fish. We always had them. Unlike Cassie, I also grew up with dogs, cats, and other assorted animals.

My parents had a cat when I was born. Her name was Walker. I don’t remember her. They also had Fairbanks the black Labrador. She was a good dog, and she died when I was in the fourth grade.

There’s actually a rather morbid story about that. Just as Fairbanks was sitting in her last days, we were watching the movie “Old Yeller” in class. You know, the one where the little boy has to go out and shoot his dog. It was terrible. Three years later, our new dog Abbie (also a black lab) was hit and killed by a car. The next day at school, my sister (who was then in the fourth grade and had the same exact teacher as me) had to read the book “Stone Fox,” wherein a little boy and his dog join a dogsled race and the dog runs as fast and as hard as it can until its heart explodes and it dies. Her teacher could barely believe my sister’s tearful story.

Ten days after Abbie died, we adopted Wrigley, who is the best dog ever. At this point, she’s about ten, and still about as puppy-ish as ever.

Those are my dogs. The cats are as follows…

My first cat, after Walker, was Flint. She was really dumb and ran away. After that, we adopted Dart and Ramone. Ramone was the very best cat of all. She (or so we thought, though her name [bestowed by a little girl who knew her in her old home] was a male name) was the runt of her litter and about half the size (and intellectual capacity) of a normal cat. Her face was flat, as if she had run into a wall. And she purred if you so much as looked at her. She only lasted two years with us, but she was amazing. Dart, her younger brother, lasted until about a year ago, dying peacefully at age 9.

My dad, a firefighter, met our next cat at the fire scene of a vet’s office. A tiny orange kitten climbed out of the coat of a nearby vet tech and clambered into my dad’s arms. Thus Cheddar joined our family. In the seven-ish years since, Cheddar has since become weird and quite blobbular and has a very unfortunate voice. She (whose nickname is “The Icky”) likes to sit in the middle of empty rooms and comment on things around her.

My junior year of college, I was adopted by a cat my roommate named Caroline. She is a good one, and she now lives with my family as a Christmas-present replacement for Dart. After giving Caroline to my family, I adopted Carlisle (I did not name him and call him CatCat most of the time). He is a wonderful cat, and I don’t know what I would have done without him in my first days in a new city all alone.

The summer before my senior year of college, my then-roommate and I effectively ran a kitten rescue out of our apartment. We fostered four-week-old kittens Lemon, Lucille, and Ted, and while Ted unfortunately passed away in our care, Lemon and Lucille went on to be adopted from our local humane society. That year, we also found several kittens in parking lots and fields around town and adopted them out to friends.

I’ve also owned lizards, mice, frogs, crayfish, grasshoppers, butterflies, hermit crabs, and probably some other animal that I’m forgetting about. All of them had names and I have story after story about them. However, this post is already about seven minutes late (Please don’t punish me! I started writing in what I thought would be plenty of time!), and I don’t want to bore you.

Those are my pets.

Tuesday Had a Dog and Has a Cat

Yep.

I suppose, when I was very very little, I also had a cat. Her name was Sherry - I don't know how that is spelled, to be quite honest. I never had to write it down. But my brother, he was and probably still is allergic to cats, so my grandma got the cat. She had another one named Pepper, too. She says she's too old to have cats now, too much work, which would make her the baffling counter example to the stereotypical crazy cat lady, as she had a ton of cats when my mum was a kid, but gave it up in her old age.

We had a dog, too, who died when I was... 11? Give or take. Her name was Athena. Her colouration would imply that she was at least half German Sheppard, but she wasn't big enough to be a pure breed. Very friendly, good with children sort of dog. I don't remember her particularly well, to be honest. She spent that last year sleeping, for the most part, so I think I was pretty... numb to the idea of her being put down, when she started to suffer. I wasn't surprised by it, I probably wouldn't have noticed for months if my mother hadn't told me. I do remember the day, though. Right around this time of year, actually, I remember our school was selling pies for a fundraiser and my mum bought, like, six. I probably cared more about the presence of pumpkin pie in the house. I'm not sure she ever did outright tell my brother, to be honest. I guess at some point he must have realized what happened, but it went without comment.

We didn't get another pet after that. We've always had a pond, with goldfish in it, but I certainly never thought of them as pets. They lived outside, they hibernated during the winter, one of them was eaten by a frog (we had some big frogs around where we lived), but I wasn't attached to them and I barely acknowledged them. I think at some point they died? I don't know, for all I know they're still in that pond. We still have it, at least to my knowledge (I moved out a couple of years ago), so maybe they still have a goldfish or two. We certainly have frogs, whether we want to or not, since they just come from the wilderness and set up a home there.

Now, I guess I have Charlie, who is a cat. I say 'I guess' because it's really, by all rights, my mother-in-law's cat, but as I live in her house, it is by proxy my cat, as well. I don't even know if Al thinks of it as 'his cat'. We've certainly said that once we move out, the cat is staying here. And we don't particularly want one of our own, though maybe we'll get a low maintenance pet once we have enough money to confidently support another living thing (because we're not going to have a kid, I can tell you that right now).

Charlie is a cat, which means he is annoying, but adorable. He likes to claw people by luring you into petting his tummy and then scratching and eating your hand. And he walks on your laptop and on your book and on any vaguely flat surface that has your attention. And he scratches at the window at 3 AM to come inside, because he's an outdoor cat who often ends up nocturnal, as well. But he's cool. Except for the fleas. He's brought fleas in here before, and I resent him for it. I'm not very attached to him, but he's a kitty cat, so he's nice to have around, as long as I don't have to take care of him.

Monday's face goes all a'splody

Hello, girls! It's Monday!

Alexandra: Yes, indeed, hooray NaNo! And not-so-yay cooking challenge . . . this could get interesting . . . But I look forward to NaNo updates throughout November. :)

Carlyn: At least you don't think I'm crazy. Because I've gotten that reaction to my approach to writing before.

Christina: Huzzah for sporadic and random posts! Seriously, it keeps things interesting. :) It sounds like you're having a great time in France -- and I completely understand about only wanting to teach certain students. I was an education major for about a year and a half before I changed it, and honestly, a lot of why I changes was because I want very badly to teach the students who wanted to learn, but I knew I would have no patience with the ones who didn't! So more power to you!

Also, a follow up from last week: I will be writing Deliverance's story. I have no idea where it's going to go, like at all, but that's what I'll be writing. I will keep you on informed as November goes along.

And now for this week's topic.

. . . Um, yeah. Okay. So, basically, I am allergic to any an every kind of dander and pollen. If it's a plant or has fur or feathers, I can't go near it without taking super strong prescription allergy drugs. Otherwise, my face goes all a'splody (That's pronounced just the way it looks, by the way.). As my boyfriend so perfectly put it when asked if he didn't have pets because his apartment wouldn't allow it, "My apartment is pet-friendly. My girlfriend is not."

Couple this with the fact that I grew up in parsonages that didn't belong to my family and the Board of Trustees was usually against having things there that would tear up the baseboards and carpet and yard, and the end of the equation is: Monday didn't really have pets.

There was a hermit crab named Murgatroyd that I owned for about seven months when I was eight or so. I got him on a Girl Scout trip to COSI. Then there was the semi-aquatic frog named Thaddeus that I had when I was nine, also from a Girl Scout trip to COSI. I had him from a tadpole. Then he turned into a frog and promptly died.

And then there were the goldfish. We had goldfish for a really long time. From, like, the age of eight through high school. And for a while, I was really excited about the goldfish. And by a while, I mean pretty much until the first one died. Then I was kind of over it because they didn't live very long and you couldn't really play with them and so all they did was swim and poop and eat and occasionally eat each other. Which, okay, that was pretty exciting when it happened. But for the most part, the fish were really my mom's project, and my little brother's.

So, yeah. Monday had goldfish. Because they didn't make me sneeze.

Oh, and Monday had a little brother. So there was that.

Week 33: Our Furry Little Friends

Another topic from Carlyn:

Week 33: Pets! Past, present, future.

Have at!

Friday apologizes for her poor attendance

Hello again! Sorry for being late... the internet in my room is cut off and I couldn't blog yesterday or today so I'm at the library quickly writing up a post before they close in... 8 minutes now. Okay, so here we go!

This was the first week that I actually talk students on my own: my own room, no teachers. It went well overall, I think. There are of course those few problem students who try to show off in front of their friends and are just difficult in general, and also those students who want nothing to do with school and make it well known that they don't want to be there by sulking in the corner and giving you a blank stare whenever you ask them to do so much as lift their pencil. But then there are the good students who love learning English, put effort into class, talk to you, and are overall just the best. I just love those students, I wish I could teach just them. I'm sure most all teachers feel this way... you teach for those students who want to learn and try to turn the other students into the former.

Also, I'm on vacation now! We have October 22-November 2 for La Toussaint (All Saints' Day). I'm going to be in Paris October 28-November 2 to visit my friend Sarah who lives there and before that Anna (another assistant who lives in the res hall) and I are thinking about going to Belgium (either Brussels or Bruges), so we're going to research and hopefully plan that today and tomorrow, then maybe be there Monday-Wednesday or so!

Let's see... what else can I say in two minutes? Oh, last night I went to a party! The theme was "dress as something that starts with a P" and I was a panda. It was the closest we Americans are going to get to Halloween here. It was enjoyable, but not as good as American Halloween. Okay, I have to go, I'm getting looks from the librarian who clearly wants to pack up and go home.