T. B. A. S.

man, my mental state today since i woke up has not been very good. worse than yesterday. less anxiety, but more depression and kinda feel sick to boot. i don't want to eat, i don't want to do... anything. my brain is telling its typical lies VERY LOUDLY, even more irrationally than usual, and i'm more prone to actually believing them. i'm acting out, getting in stupid LJ comment fights which make me feel terrible... wtf, man. am i in a funk or what? i need to snap out of it!

today's the day that i guess i'll make a break with my volunteer job. since last week i was basically told i wasn't going to have anything to come back to. i think i'm just not going to show up, and what happens happens. idk. i'm just tired and kinda running out of spoons to drive there every monday and wednesday. it was really fun and i did it for almost the whole year, but i think i'm done now. next i'd like to volunteer with the waterfowl rescue.

my nose is running or stuffy, phlegm in my throat, i'm sneezing, ugh. i feel like that endless work week took it out of me. then again, i was a bit sneezy last night at work, too.

maybe i'll find a movie or something and do some art. idk.

today we switched out the fan for the big space heater! and mom and wayne ignited the kerosene heater. last night i saw my breath for the first time since spring came. it got down to about 42 degrees. the Dark Year is here for sure.

dream last night... the thing i remember most is going to the dam and there being a huge, MASSIVE turtle [sea turtle? soft shelled?] with a gigantic leathery, oddly soft shell covered with moss, just languidly swimming through Lake Lee. i hung onto the turtle, climbed on its back and it just paddled along calmly, even when i touched its face it didn't mind at all. it was like the lake spirit. maybe that's what it is, maybe i now know the local spirit of Lake Lee. <3 [it actually makes a lot of sense, because Lake Lee is always SWARMING with turtles. everywhere. it's a sign of a very healthy ecosystem, because turtles thrive on fish eggs, so a lot of turtles means a HUGE number of fish, and considering how often i see people fishing there and there's still enough fish to support all those turtles? that's very good.]




so, after moping about feeling depressed and poopy for a few hours, bb made me some earl grey tea and it was delicious and soft and comfy. -w-

and then i played some Pokemon, my digital Y version. i had completely forgotten about getting my Kanto starter?!?! omg. i had no plans to use both starters, thought my team was planned out - Chespin, Pidgey, Dunsparce, Flabebe, Furfrou and Litleo - but... then i got a female Squirtle out of the blue! with an Adamant nature?! omg. like, i thought the ones you battled with on Prof Sycamore's team were the same ones you have the option to adopt? but it seems that's not the case, because the Squirtle on his team was male, so imagine my surprise when this one's female! i named her Ginkgo and now i'm seriously debating keeping Dandelion, my Dunsparce, on my team long-term. ;_; i love Dunsparce so much and i wanna burn the haters by taking her to the pokemon league, but like... kinda want this squirtle on my team now. and i already have Pidgey for normal type coverage... weeehh. i love Dandelion. she is the cutest. ;~; and so chill. i know if i decide to take her off the team, she will be okay. i just have to show her that i love her no matter what. <333
hell, who knows, i might even remove Chespin from my team. i'm not a huge Chespin fan, though i don't dislike him at all. we'll see. although that would give me an entirely female team... >_> single-sex teams are kind of a bad idea because, you know, Attract exists. but it's not a huge problem.

if only i could always have this chance to get three copies of the game, even though having a superfluous Y version is slightly silly... it does give me the chance to raise SO many more pokemon than i normally would! and it gave me the chance to get all six starters available!

[and then i did a mass search of everyone i could think of from middle and high school, which was very much acting out and left me in a v bad state of mind]

important memories from last night:

the ride home, listening to Clock Lock Works [it's a Miku vocaloid song] and during the instrumental break, the Toy Soldier appeared before me. looked me in the eye, and from within the vicinity of his chest came a soft sound: the whirring and clicking clockwork sounds in the song i was listening to. it was such a stunning image -- of course it makes sense for him to have clockwork and/or a metronome inside him where his heart would be, accept no substitutes -- and him pointedly making clockwork noises at me means something important, i know.

idk if i mentioned, but i got my shiny Gengar holding a Mega Stone yesterday at game stop! the guy told me that I had to preorder it to get it???? which is NOT how it's supposed to be, i wonder what shady manager told them that. luckily, since he likes me and sees me around often [bc pokemon lmao], he gave me one free. i'm going to try and get two more, for my three copies of XY. even if i have to travel around to different gamestops, ahaha.
why do i have three copies of XY, you ask? [specifically one X and two Ys?] WELL... mostly just because i bought my cartridge Y version first, which is still my main one and the one on which i store all my pokemon, then a few months later i bought X version used, and THEN... they were doing a sale in March of this year where if you buy animal crossing [among a few other games], you can download a copy of X or Y for free! i already had two copies, but how was i going to pass that up?? me and bb both did it. :D i don't regret it at all, i love the teams i have on all three versions, and it's been a different ride every time. MAN i love pokemon did i say that enough yet???

so total topic change:
last night i got told a number of times, as i do pretty regularly lately, that I have a great voice and should do voice over/radio/audiobook type work. i'm kinda starting to legitimately look into that kind of work. only one thing... i'm planning on CHANGING my voice! shit! i have a great "friendly female voice" when i want to, but like... who knows if i'll be able to go back to that, who knows if my voice will still sound as pleasant when i transition?? you know?? so i'm a little hesitant to dive headfirst into this sort of thing, at least not the corporate world of voice work anyway. maybe something more indie, where i'm not tied to a contract or whatever? but i can control my work a bit, maybe. i don't know. it's kind of an acting job, which is fine, but i know that actors get manipulated like crazy. i've seen it firsthand with my bb already. EEHH but on the other hand I don't want to let my hesitation stop me from a possible career! [and hey, maybe after my voice changes i will still be able to go back to my "old" voice and switch between the two for SUPER GOOD NARRATION SKILLS??]

ugh! suddenly i remember my dream! or... sort of?? i suddenly got flashes of it, of where i was, but not clearly enough to write down. but i feel like it was important to something! i hate that.

i'm watching Kyurem and the Swords of Justice again. that's gotta be one of my favorite pokemon movies, right up there with the 5th movie with Latios and Latias. the latter is the first pokemon movie to actually make me cry since the first one. i never expected i'd be so touched by another one again!

this will probably be a shorter entry since my volunteer job took longer than expected, and i'm trying to watch this movie... yeah, bout that... today might be the last time i volunteer there for a while?? when i got there, this woman was nearby on the phone, and i thought at first she was looking to adopt a cat, but it turned out she was with the rescue that owns the cats. she told me she was here to get them all out of here by tonight, apparently the boards under the floor of the cats' cubicles were damp and there was a roach problem, people had reported seeing the cats eating roaches or getting climbed on by them?? ugh. and i saw one young female have bloody diarrhea while the lady was there. not good.
she told me they were getting the cats out of there, and they might have to rip the whole cat area down and rebuild it which could take a month or more. so, idk if i will be back next week, or ever. poor kitties. :/ she's right though, many of them are quite unhappy there. i hope this will be for the better. i'll be ok with not volunteering anymore, i just couldn't quite find it in my heart to stop coming even though i know i have been there far longer than anyone expected me to. i also kinda hoped it would help me get a job at petsmart? maybe it will still, a lot of the staff knows me and likes me by now, after almost a year of coming in there twice a week.
so yeah, there's that... poor kitties. i think this will help them. i'd gladly foster one if i thought i could help, but that would involve quarantine and stuff that i don't think i can manage with my family being the way they are.

man, Keldeo gives me so much hope. the way he fights Kyurem even though it's totally hopeless, even when he knows he's going to lose, he never backs down. i've gotta be like that at work. "i'm not through!!"

as for headspace, Hiccup has continued to be closer than usual. it's always nice to have him close by <3 he's such a good friend to me, has been since he tumbled headfirst into this world, starry-eyed, confused and full of purpose. Forbidden Friendship came on when he was already close to the front, and - I felt it like a gentle wave washing over the body - he found himself in the front without even meaning to. he fronts so effortlessly sometimes, stronger than almost anyone else. i think he's just got an incredibly strong spirit and force of will. [insert joke about stubborn Vikings here.]
it's just really nice having him around. it's interesting, how strongly the soundtrack for his own source material seems to affect him. i haven't had an outspacer [i like that term far better than fictive, thank you Lightrayes] who's come from a movie before, maybe this is typical? i have no clue.

tentative list of outspacers that i either suspect or know are somewhere within the bounds of the System or its associated worlds:

- Hiccup [HTTYD]
- Raditz? [DBZ]
- Richeson Francis Chamblee [Ghost Soldier]

yeah, i think Rich is still around!!? i read Ghost Soldier as a little kid, and then in march of 2010 or 11, i read it again and had an obsessive spell about ghosts and the american civil war because of it. he 'ghosted' around outside my head with me for quite a while [lol], but once that stopped and the spell passed, i figured he was gone. but maybe he isn't? every time i smell oranges out of nowhere, i feel a chill and i know he's somewhere near. even though it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for him to be there, i think he is.

back to pokemon... i really love the Swords of Justice. Terrakion seems like a great friend, Virizion seems like a wonderful patient teacher, and Cobalion is just a badass and worthy of respect for sure. i would love to meet them all.

oh, the end of the movie really touches me, when Keldeo unlocks his Secret Sword and his stronger Forme [i can't remember its name lmao]. [edit: Resolute Forme] when he leaps through the ice gate and says, "That's it... I've never, ever been alone... My friends have been with me the whole time!" and there's just shots of him playing with Terrakion, eating fruit with Virizion, running with Cobalion... and him standing at the edge of a cliff with the other three gathered around by his side... man, it reminds me of the System so much. i may be stuck up here in the front a lot of the time, and shut myself off easily when stressed out, but i'm never, ever alone. i have so many good friends, and they're beside me everywhere i go. <3 <3 i have to remember that when i'm stressed out at work or something, feeling like this is my whole life... it's so totally not. no matter what enemy i face, even if it seems helpless, even if there's Black Kyurem bearing down upon me... i'm never alone. <3

"Fear is your greatest enemy. You must learn to conquer the fear that is in your heart. Once you have conquered your fear, then you are free!"

"My sword is my horn!!"

today, i brought home a pair of Kalosian pokemon plushes from Target! they're Tyrunt and Amaura, of course. <3 when i saw the two of them together i just couldn't resist. because of course they are Jesse and Bamboozle, in young/plush form!! i love them both. i'm gonna snuggle the shit out of them. ;w; i also saw Pancham, Bunnelby and Litleo in Target... if they had had Fletchling i woulda been screwed ;o;

so yeah, welcome to the family kids! i'm going to channel the spirit of Jesse and Bamboozle into them, so that these two are like their real life anchors. i would love to have that for a bunch more of them. <3

i need to work on organizing the pokemon situation in headspace. i know that there is in-space data for certain pokemon we own in our various games, mainly those important to us. but we haven't extrapolated it yet, brought them out into full form. i guess you could say they're still all in their pokeballs, in pure energy state. i have suspicions that Apostrophe might be their official caretaker, although she tells me they would probably obey orders from anyone of the Bloodline, because we're technically the same individual in different times/forms/etc. i'll open up my 3DS here in a bit and catalog them on this document, probably. but first... more drakan. FLY EVERYWHERE

god, i love Drakan. have i mentioned that lately??

back to pokemon: there are also individual pokemon that are, afaik, wild. they don't belong to anyone. such as Jezebel the Nidoqueen, and of course Jewel the Goodra although i'm not so sure about her, as she has an in-game counterpart.

today's the last day of september! the annual "last day of single digit month dates" of the year! always notable to me, idk.

so yesterday was pretty cool, on a whim [more like upon seeing an important facebook update] we got dressed in a hurry and zoomed up to Save Point Games up in charlotte. because they had a whole bunch of old pokemon toys for sale! they were selling extremely quickly and over half were gone by the time i came in, but i still managed to get some good ones. they still had over half of the power bouncers!!!... but since they were 5 bucks apiece [still in package of course] i only took two... Charmander and Charizard! hell yeah. i also got this interesting venusaur, which after a quick google to make sure it was legit, turned out to be a bath toy made by an obscure company back in the day. sweet! and i got two old Burger King toys, both tops, Chansey and Magnemite. they're scuffed up but i promise you, unless you get them in mint condition, you're almost never going to find ones that are NOT scuffed up just due to the nature of a: what kind of toy they are, and b: how much freakin' fun they are to use, lmao. also i'm glad i got Magnemite, because i've seen that if you balance him just right, he can breakdance on his top screw. o_o

i'm still so unsure if i'm going to unbox the power bouncers ;_; i think i will, but if i do, i will do it on video. :D because the packaging is yellowed, so i'm not going to throw it out, but i think i should remove the power bouncers from the yellow plastic!

speaking of pokemon, i've been doing some mental puzzling and sleuthing over the past couple of days trying to figure out when, exactly, the Golden Years were. meaning when did i actually get into pokemon, and when was The Greatest Christmas [meaning the one where i asked for all pokemon stuff and DID, in fact, get all pokemon stuff... except like the n64 games that weren't pokemon but i totally didn't count that bc it was nintendo and still great and mostly still pokemon anyway... at least i'm 90% sure that was the same christmas]. i was remembering when y2k happened, i was holding onto my pikachu toy. which i had just gotten that year, which said to me that it was christmas of 1999 that was The Greatest Christmas. so by then i was heavily into pokemon already. at that point i was 8 years old.
and now i have confused myself slightly, because i was thinking about my birthdays, but now i'm not so sure i'm straight on which one was which. my tenth birthday was when we rented a cabin in cane creek, that was the birthday of the Jewel cd and the one where we got pokemon stadium 2. that game came out in america in march of 2001, and may of 2001 would have been my tenth birthday.

so the year before that, my 9th birthday, is i'm pretty sure the one that was held at my house. that one was heavily pokemon themed, with pokemon streamers and dinnerware and cake, and most of the gifts pokemon themed. [i also remember T.D., who i'm pretty sure was there, having a heavily pokemon influenced birthday around that time at his house too. his birthday was almost the exact same day as mine, so that might have been the same week, even, as my 9th] i remember getting the round pokemon poker card deck that year. and the charmander and pikachu cake toppers.

the year before THAT was my eighth birthday. and if i was into pokemon by then, i wasn't so obsessed that all of my stuff was pokemon stuff, or if i was, then no one knew it yet. and i tended to tell everyone, so i probably hadn't heard of it yet. i had my eighth birthday at cane creek too, i'm pretty sure. that was the year of "boy toy" A.W., the year of laying on the dock and watching vultures circle over me curiously, the year of the stuffed beanie unicorn and winged mouse duo [i still intend to make characters out of them, i loved those two so much] and the coloring book of stuffed animals that i loved. the year of the camper that smelled kinda mildewy. that birthday would have been 1999.

i don't clearly remember my seventh birthday, in 1998, unless it was the one at that skating rink which has closed down now, which i barely remember except in photos. but i feel like that may have been my sixth birthday.

this is one of those things that i desperately want to get in touch with my dad and receive photos for. anything from 1997-2003 would be especially great. as soon as he started taking digital photos, basically. or any physical photo albums he has that my mom doesn't have. because i think he took some of them.

yep. i'm gonna do some sleuthing of the time between the summer of 1998 and the spring of 2001. to figure out exactly when i fell in love with pokemon. because i THINK it was in 1998 - and in fact on this exact date, september 30th, in 1998, pokemon red and blue came out in america - but it could have been the following year.

let's see when relevant pokemon things came out in america:

r&b: september 1998
super smash bros: [i basically considered this a pokemon game] april 1999
pokemon snap: july 1999
yellow: october 1999
pokemon the first movie: november 1999 [not sure if i saw in theaters or not? but i think i did bc i have promo cards]
first pokemon burger king promo [gold cards]: november 8-december 31, 1999
pokemon stadium: february 2000
pokemon the movie 2000: july 2000 [i'm positive i saw this one in theaters]
second pokemon burger king promo: july 24-august 30, 2000
pokemon puzzle league: september 2000
g&s: october 2000**
hey you pikachu!: december 2000
pokemon stadium 2: march 2001
crystal: july 2001

so, we can attest:
by christmas 1999, the following was out: RBY, pokemon snap, and smash.
by christmas 2000, the following was out: pokemon stadium, puzzle league, gold and silver, and hey you pikachu.
i couldn't have gotten crystal until at least christmas of 2001 most likely, and i know i got stadium 2 in may of 2001, not long after it came out.

i KNOW that i had Pikachu by december 31, 1999, and i got him on The Greatest Christmas, memory of sitting at the dining room table to eat christmas dinner with him in my lap [sister too, as she also got one of her own] attests to this. so i am pretty sure that The Greatest Christmas, the one where i got ALL the pokemon toys and also my yellow gameboy, was a separate event than the n64 christmas, which was most likely the following year on christmas of 2000. there once was video evidence of both these events, but due to carelessness they have both most likely been lost.

so, an interesting thought, that i didn't get the n64 until late 2000, near the end of its lifespan. majora's mask, another notable game i own, came out in america in october of 2000, so i could have definitely gotten it then, and data agrees that i did, as i definitely remember getting the player's guide that christmas and a subscription to nintendo power with it. [but i'm pretty sure i had a subscription beforehand?? or at least got a few issues because that's where i got all my Johto info that i couldn't find online]

so i wasn't the earliest bandwagon-jumper when i got into pokemon, but i remember getting into it in third grade.
second grade was 1998-1999. [ages 7-8]
third grade was 1999-2000. [ages 8-9]
fourth grade was 2000-2001. [ages 9-10]
fifth grade was 2001-2002. [ages 10-11]
wow, it actually happened a lot earlier than i realized. so, i guess, pokemon first made it to america when i was starting second grade. seemingly sometime in between second and third grade, possibly over the summer, was when i discovered it. i'm not sure how - magazines, the anime, from friends or from reading it online?
the very first pokemon material i remember is a small magazine, kinda like those disney adventurer or whatever magazines, that i somehow got my hands on in the beginning of third grade. either the teacher handed them out, or i got it from a classmate, or i just found it or something? i don't know. what i do know is that little magazine may well have introduced me to pokemon, and the first pokemon i remember knowing about, aside from Pikachu probably, was Caterpie, on the cover with a bunch of others.

UPDATE: after a quick Google of around the date of me starting third grade, in fact it might HAVE been Disney Adventures magazine! because the september 1999 issue was all about Pokemon! so, yes! i need to get my hands on a copy of this issue because this might be important historical material for me! i did get an issue of this magazine once in a while - i don't think we had a subscription, but maybe we got it from the grocery store or something occasionally.

so we should view The Greatest Christmas, also can be called the Gameboy Christmas, and the N64 Christmas as separate events. i had a gameboy for about a year before i got an n64. so the GBC is definitely the first console i had.

** gold and silver came out in november of 1999. almost a year before it came out in america, in october of 2000. i remember a LOT about that time in between of figuring out everything i could about the new games. learning all of their names in japanese from nintendo power, not knowing if they would ever translate... the pokemon factory and their weird sometimes legit seeming, sometimes blatantly fake, "new pokemon" like pikablu-marrill... getting a very shitty, very early ROM of gold and silver from my mom [who was also into it then], badly translated into english with all the pokemon giving out weird double-cries...


this would normally be the part where i apologize for going on at such length about something that no one else would care about, but listen up! this is literally only written for me and me alone! and i care about it Very Much so fuck off to that corner of my brain :3


yay! i'm glad i figured that out. and now bb is going to play spyro on the ps2. :D




- later -
so i went and ran some errands and then went to walmart, because i needed to replace my FM transmitter. but they had something cool and different this time! this is the first time i've replaced it since i've had an ipod, and like... having an ipod as opposed to a third party mp3 player opens up SO many more possibilities, omg. and it turned out that they had this thing that was kinda like a GPS holder, with a flexible neck, that plugged into your cigarette lighter slot and charged your ipod while also being an FM transmitter. so i don't have to hold the thing between my legs and hold the ipod to keep it from falling out on turns anymore! AND i can look at the pretty album art on the screen! and i don't have to look like i'm texting while looking down at my lap all the time and being wary of cops! yassss
so far the audio quality seems a bit less than the older one? but i'm not sure that i'm doing it completely right yet. it's kinda hard when your clock display doesn't work 80% of the time and you have to guess what frequency you're on. luckily it has a preset that's .1 FM away from the one i was already on?? so i hope when i get it over to 88.2 instead of 88.3, it will sound a bit better, because it's rather staticky now. nothing i can't handle, and it might push me to listen to my ipod more when i'm not in the car, but still.
also it's cute and says HI when you turn it on :3c


so while in walmart i think someone else was fronting with me? someone little? i'm not sure who they were though. just that they were little, seemed like a boy, and was REALLY disappointed that there was a lack of pokemon stuff in walmart. he was upset because he remembered walmart being pokemon central. which i totally understand. it was once a haven for pokemon toys, but no longer, i'm afraid.
[there WAS, however, a SUPER AWESOME, really nice looking 20" model of Toothless in his mega glowy form for 23 bucks. it's a christmas toy type thing. mannnn it's pretty awesome. i might get that as a gift to myself at some point. it's HUGE and i have no idea where i'd put it but... worth it. it's the best looking Toothless model i've seen.
the body was also really really dehydrated while out and about. so much so that i had us buy a stupidly expensive bottle of water just so we could stay away from being dangerously dehydrated. you never know when you won't make it home in a timely manner.
seriously... it was a dollar 61 with tax. do you know what a bottle of Mistic would have cost me? 1.07. it's like... you could have JUST water for this much, or you could have this water that we added unhealthy artificial shit and dyes to for a lot less. ????? water? expensive. water, plus some dyes and bullshit added in? cheaper than just water.
it's not really a mystery as to why this is, though. water is a basic need. they know you need it, so they drive up the price. fuck that shit.

i think i'm going to open up another document, this one is getting quite long.