T. B. A. S.

so, i woke up from some dream i was having about going back to school after all this time out of school. when i woke up, it was 11:11. i was like oh neat! awesome! it's 11:11! i should probably get up then. but i just kinda... closed my eyes and went back to sleep lol. and was promptly punished with a Bad Dream!

so in this dream i was riding in my sister's car, with her driving. [i don't even know what car she drives irl lol, but that's what was happening] and it was really dark and rainy and traffic became increasingly dangerous. like we dodged a boat just rolling free down the road, its trailer had become detached from whatever vehicle was towing it. not long after that, we came upon an intersection with all the lights out. even the stoplights were completely dark. we were like wtf is this. and there seemed to be a lot of slowed down cars and people on the side of the road. and the only relatively free lane was the one we were in, but then in front of us in the middle of the intersection, some people walked out in front of our car, dragging some children in front of themselves, i guess to force us to stop our cars. that part was very cinematic and vivid, kinda reminded me of sense8. and as soon as that happened and my sister was slowing down, immediately i knew what this was.

and yep, i was right. they made us stop the car and give us our bags. but we didn't have anything of interest, or so i thought. i guess my sister had some money, but they poked through my two bags [they were these really neat pokemon bags]. they thought about stealing my instax camera, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth anything. they were really rough with my stuff [these were the bags from my previous dream about school, incidentally, ha], turning them right over and dumping them out onto the ground. a few of my pokemon toys bounced right out of the bags and rolled away and i was very upset watching my Mew power bouncer just roll off. my sister said she'd get it, but she never did. it was a weirdly friendly discussion, i guess we were keeping it purposely light to relieve tension while they did what they "had" to do.

eventually the thieves stole most of what was in one of my bags, including my pokemon toys and sketchbooks. and i was dismayed and confused, why would they steal my art? but at the same time, that might have been the worst thing they could have stolen, because it was the only thing that couldn't ever be replaced. i mourned for a second about what had been taken, and then i woke up abruptly, like you do after a bad dream, and quickly grounded myself in reality, just a dream, etc.

then i looked at the clock. it was 11:30. hahahaha

dream was: at the old house. as dreams almost always are. that bubblespace may be named referring to that eventually.

a neighbor from down the street at that house was having a yard sale, so i stopped by. he had an entertainment center that i wanted. but the more i looked at it, the more i realized that it looked exactly like the one i had when i was a kid. it even still had all the equipment in it... all of dad's fancy audio equipment [that's probably all obsolete and worthless now, but you best believe he still has it all somewhere], our VCR, our tape deck, our huge old TV... i looked inside the cabinets and drawers and all of the old tapes were still in there... even junk just tossed in there. random toys and cards, towels, underwear, one-third of a random audiobook in tape form just scattered in there... i found some old pokemon stuff, so i guess this counts as one of those dreams...

so i bought it immediately. i said dude! this was in my house when i was a kid. i took it home, and there it was. in our old living room. and i was pondering what i'd do with all of the game systems and how i'd hook them up, when i woke up.



--

i've stopped posting dreams again, so i must resume that. having a dreamlog is important. :D
in other news i'm seemingly getting a cold sore, just in time for the beach. ain't that literally always the way. haven't had a cold sore since my last vacation. i mean, at least that was triggered by the stress of the plane ride [it was great, but stressful]... this one is just completely random. joy. hooray for herpetic lesions~ >:|
not much else to say. 3 days until beach! i work all of those days, including the night right before we leave, so i have no idea how sleep is gonna work there, lol.

haha what do i even write? more sappy shit bc today that's how i'm feelin'. fell asleep at 6 and slept until the sun went down. had a crazy long dream about driving to weird places with bb, sometimes in one car and sometimes in our separate cars, at some point we got underneath a big rig and had to maneuver our way out without getting killed???? idk but

when we finally arrived at wherever it was, some kinda restaurant... Bird was there. with some friends. and i'm not sure if i knew she'd be there or not but it started out real casual and then i realized that we hadn't ever met in the flesh before. and then shit got really snuggly. in the dream i was shorter than her although irl i think i am just a little bit taller. she would stand behind me with her arms around me and her chin rested right on top of my head. and it was nice. and her hair was rly soft and smelled so nice and it was just. ugh.
and i woke up like ohhhh fuck. i'm screwed. laying there alone in the bed with all my clothes on wanting nothing more than to touch someone far away. and it was not an unfamiliar feeling at all. ten years ago this exact thing was happening to me, except now i'm a lot older and wiser about relationships and it's way healthier. [oops. did i just call this a relationship? is it a relationship? like in That Way? i don't know. i shouldn't say for sure haha.] but like... the irony is killin' me. it was exactly ten years ago that this happened the first time. and i'm not comparing the two events really except for timing and the fact they're both long distance [and like... the same distance... tucson vs salt lake basically... wtf] but... wow. ya.

and part of me feels like "didn't i learn last time? why'd i let myself go this far again?" as if it's a mistake. as if last time was a mistake. Dale and i are still great friends and i love him dearly. our relationship was kind of... intense and not incredibly healthy but i learned from it, we both did, and it was alright. we were young'ns who both came from a family whose only knowledge of love was pretty toxic. i'm pretty proud of how much i've taught myself over the years about how love really works. what's healthy and what's poisonous. so many people never get that chance.

the great thing about love is that you'll always kinda have that little spark. what happened between dale and i lasted all of two years and then was over, and we had a little rough patch at times but i still look towards him with soft eyes, tbh. would i ever date him again, probably not, and that's fine. but if we ever do meet up, i feel like it would be a shame not to kiss him one good time HAHA. how many times did i want more than anything and never got to as a teenager?

idk man. feelz. i love this year so much thus far and it's only a quarter of the way through. the best is yet to come.


in non sappy updates we finally got groceries for the first time yooo. my bank account is pissed off at me bc i haven't been very kind to it this week. >_>' but... i have roughly half the plane ticket fees saved up... hopefully that can stay that way and the car inspection and stuff won't totally kill that lmao. and it's saint Patrick's day [yooo my middle name~] so we went and got some honey whiskey. FINALLY I HAVE HONEY WHISKEY AGAIN yeeeesss. my favorite liquor of all time i think. god i love that shit. it's Bushmills which... i really prefer Jack but i mean. we had to get the irish one. salute to my irish roots. [i have German and English and Cherokee roots as well among others but... ya know.] so i'm gonna drink a little bit, not overmuch. and probably get EVEN SAPPIER. i'm ok with this. and YOU KNOW WHAT'S RLY SPECIAL? i'm also pretty sure Bird is ok with this. do you know what a huge step that is for me to not tell myself no one wants to hear about my feelings, that they are too heavy or too scary or inappropriate? that they don't feel the same and don't want to know that i do in the first place? not telling myself, if someone doesn't respond immediately to something i said, that it was offensive and weird and gross and stupid and they're reconsidering their choice to hang around me??? THAT'S A P BIG DEAL Y'ALL. <3

also help me she calls me Ollie people are actually calling me Ollie as a real name for me and i love it so much abloobloobloo ;www;


and in inner news... hiccup has wandered off a little bit. been feeling him pulling away. not because he doesn't want to be around me, the opposite in fact. like he wasn't letting himself go and travel and wander. he NEEDS to. he needs space and time to fly. i don't want him to feel nailed down. i didn't really want to be up here without him after so long, but... i can't lie to myself. i know i'm strong enough now. before i fell asleep i felt him wheeling high above, now i don't feel him anywhere around. i wonder how long he'll be out there. but i know if i called him he'd immediately come to me, and that's a comfort. i'll be fine. i hope he knows that. i think he does. i think i do too. <3

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]

it's not quite 5am, i just walked in the door from work. i just wanted to share what a success tonight was for me and us, because i'm scared i'll forget when i wake up to talk about it.

so, it was saturday night. aka hell night. tonight was exceptionally crazy due to some event going on in the city, and we were short staffed as always, and the staff we did have were new, etc. so it was pretty much a disaster all night. there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth among the crew, morale was really low. no one got a break last night. but somehow... miraculously?... i survived intact. i fully expected this shift to be emotionally devastating to me, like many before it had been, but somehow... my spirit was untouched, my flow unstopped.

i feel somehow like i have two things to thank for carrying me through:

one, when i first walked in the door and went to the back room to check some things, the song Magic by Coldplay was on the radio. and there's just something about the chill, yet spiritual and romantic humming flow of that song that really got to me. i couldn't stop singing it to myself all the night through. when i'd shift to other songs i'd start to feel more tense, because my other songs typically are a little more rousing and maybe higher tension. but the chill sweetness of this song just carried me like a little boat. i listened to it on the ride home again, and the relaxed groove just is... really nice. just what i needed tonight i guess.

two: my heart. not my organic one, the one i wear around my neck. and have since 2010. i put it on literally, as a spare heart. extra courage, extra compassion. and extra power to take on tough things, extra protection from the cruelty of people sometimes. the past few days i'd been carrying Lugia around in my pocket, and it'd just been absolute madness and chaos. but then i wore my extra heart, and it went amazingly smoothly. i had a clear head the whole time. no fuzz, no confusion, no blanking out, no being unable to handle anything. not asshole or angry customers, not the incredible busy crazyness that happened between 1 to 3 am, nothing. i flowed through all of it no problem. and it was amazing.

Hiccup and Thirteen and the Toy Soldier and Trolley and Jewel and the new girl, who on the ride up there i think named herself "Apostrophe"... they were all within reach, pretty much the whole night. yes, even Trolley! even the Toy Soldier! i don't think it's necessarily that they're closer, but i am getting so much better at tapping in and staying tapped into the world within! being able to focus on them both, not get overwhelmed in "dreams" or in the "waking" either!

speaking of dreams, i need to get to bed. it's gonna be a long day. i may continue this entry, or i may start a new one, we'll see how i feel when i wake up.



-later-
today makes one year since Pokemon X&Y came out. let me wax emotional for a bit over this, mk? :D
i NEVER anticipated the effect these games would have over me. i was excited like all the rest, but when i got my hands on it... holy wow. i didn't actually get to play it until January 2nd when i bought myself a 3DS XL, but when i did... man oh man. i beat the game for the first time in about four weeks. that's CRAZY for me, especially since i never used to beat the storyline anyway.
fletchling. that pokemon and its line. oh man. you don't know what they mean to me! i remember the first time i played with Jacqueline, my Talonflame, as a tiny Fletchling in pokemon-amie. i burst into excited tears. i finally get to interact with my pokemon. and it was SO FUCKING CUTE I COULDN'T STAND IT TINY ADORABLE BIRD FRIEND
and just. JUST. the scenery. all your friends that you have. even your mom, she's actually sort of a character in this game! all of the pokemon are great, there's not a single pokemon in gen 6 that i don't like. ALL of them.
and the legENDARIES oh my god. best legendaries since gen 2 hands fucking down. i LOVE how they're going back to more basic, organic animal-based designs instead of crazy robot looking things. i love Yveltal so so much. and Xerneas too but Yveltal is definitely my favorite. and Zygarde is amazing and will be even more so when we learn more about him [WE BETTER GET AN EFFIN' Z VERSION PLZ ALTHOUGH X2 AND Y2 WOULD BE CLEVER].
i cried like a fucking baby the first time i beat the game. holy shit. that final shot of Fletchling, echoing the very first thing i saw when I began my first Kalos adventure... that compounded with what Fletchling had come to mean to me!! i cried so hard. it was wonderful.
the first time i beat the game was during a power outage and my 3DS was blinking red power during the last fight with AZ and man it was INTENSE!!! i think i ended up having to redo that last fight and watch the credits again, but it autosaves before that so it was ok.
but like. dude. i never EVER expected what i would find within that tiny cartridge when i first played Y version. i NEVER expected any region to beat out Kanto as my all time favorite. i had always believed that as good as a new pokemon game gets, it will never beat out the original in my heart. but guess what? Kalos unseated the champion. not because it's of superior quality necessarily [I don't really think you can compare them honestly!], but just going by the sheer emotional power it had on me, I guess. all i know is i love all regions, but Kalos is the first place I would travel to in the pokemon world, had I the chance.


man, christmas is coming, and that means supermarkets like target and walmart and such all have their super awesome christmas toy type stuff on the shelves. and i WANT IT. EUGH
like that big Toothless. i am determined to bring him home. he is absolutely beautiful even if i have nowhere to put him. when i move out, i will have somewhere for sure.

it just strikes me how... so many other adults will pretend like they don't get excited over toys. or not let themselves. or like not allow themselves to know what's going on in "kids stuff" these days. animation, movies, tv shows, games etc. i think if you're an adult and you say you don't like or want toys anymore, you're lying.


time to play Drakan. man i knew i missed this game, but i didn't know just how much. it's been years and years since i've played. this is probably my favorite PS2 title. i love it. the weapons, the enemies, the kinda shitty fight system, AROKH, FLYING AROKH.... yaaassss.

you know... it just struck me. i was looking over here while playing and i have 1,210 words before i started writing this paragraph. and that's nothing, just one average day's worth of writing. isn't NaNoWriMo supposed to be at least 10,000 words?? damn... i've always wanted to do it but never thought about it in time... maybe i have time this year to start preparing for something to write???
it probably wouldn't be a novel, but maybe a series of stories or tales about the Order, the System and such... i bet i could do that. 10,000 words over the course of a month sounds easy.
oh, nope. it's 50,000 words. i guess that's a bit more of a challenge. BUT, hey. i might just do it anyway.

not sure why i'm making a distinction between system update and journal entries? but it feels necessary so i will continue. i think there's some kind of internal pressure to talk about my outerlife in journal entries, and my innerlife in system updates. idk?

people close to the front lately: me [Oli], Hiccup, Thirteen, Summer, Jewel, Trolley, Nentor, the Toy Soldier, Josiah, Apostrophe, Kacie

so like 7-10 people if you include spirits??? holy crap. that's CRAZY. i'm so glad. it used to be so hard for me to reach anyone except maybe Thirteen.
and out of those, four or five are suspected Bloodline members. we need to come up with a name. maybe Apostrophe. she said she likes naming things.

so far the Bloodline goes in order:
Summer, Apostrophe, Thirteen, me
could be more or less, i'm not sure.


so i was super hungry but wasn't feeding myself, but work time is coming. so instead of digging up whatever unhealthy crap i could find, i ate a couple of the lembas bread/ship's biscuits he made for the festival since it's Sunday and he had a lot left over. but i was still hungry, so i dug through the crisper... and found we had a ton of broccoli left as well as celery, carrots and grapes!? and they were getting old so i just piled a ton of veggies and fruit onto a plate and i'm gonna fill myself with veggies and one more ship's biscuit. aw yeah. and i'm gonna use these leftover ranch cups from DQ and jack in the box. because i like them but rarely have a use for them. >_>

it rained yesterday, it's been grey and drizzly all day today, and my phone just warned me it's gonna rain tomorrow too. awww yeah. this is my kind of weather. just gotta get through the ten hour work shift tonight, then i'm finally free for a bit.

oh! something else quick, before i go. i think Hiccup's existence has kind of lightened headspace's feelings about fictives, because... i've been feeling flashes of Raditz lately. yeah, fucking Raditz of all people. he's connected through Kacie, i don't think he'd ever be here on his own, but he does mean a lot to us and I suspect, to Apostrophe in particular. [and another note: if Raditz is here, he's definitely been here, in some form, since fucking 2001. that's insane.]

Apostrophe and Summer have an interesting connection, they're both from around the same time in our past, but both have very separate interests. they definitely both hold very different parts of our mind from back then. for example, although Summer is stuck in 1999-2002, she doesn't really care about pokemon at all. unlike Apostrophe, who is totally crazy obsessed. remember a week ago or so, wandering around in walmart, and someone we didn't know was fronting and very angry that there was no pokemon stuff? that was most likely Apostrophe!