Barely Active

Here is the fudgiest brownie in a mug recipe I’ve found

Here are some fun sites

Here is a master post of Adventure Time episodes and comics

Here is a master post of movies including Disney and Studio Ghibli

Here is a master post of other master posts to TV shows and movies

*tucks you in with fuzzy blanket* *pats your head*

Here’s an emergency compliment

Here you can play 2048

Here’s a playlist of Bob ross

Here’s a website to watch movie’s and shows for free

Here’s a website to watch documentaries for free

Here you can to nothing for two minutes

Here you can break something. It’s good for anger

Here’s a button to press to make everything okay

Here’s a site to cut something up (TRIGGER WARNING)

Here’s a site that makes you a website depending on a song you choose

Here’s a gay comic. It’s adorable

Here you can spend Bill Gate’s money

Here you can draw your own island

Here you can learn about patterns website’s use

Here you can get your life stats

Here you can listen to the Tucker Zone (Headphones needed)

Here you can see how fast you’re moving

Here you can see the progress of time

Here’s the butterfly project

Here’s a snickerdoodle mug cake

Here’s a link to some free audiobooks

Here’s something to read when you feel like a burden

Here’s a secret

Here’s my playlist of some sea shanties 

Here’s another secret

Here’s a link to some cool websites 

Here’s a blog that gives you recipes for when you’re low on spoons

Here’s 100,000 stars

Here you can control the weather (TW FLASHING IMAGES)

Here you can weave silk

Here you can make a castle of your own

Here you can make a kaleidoscope drawing

Here you can explore recursion

Here you can draw with pasta

Here you can draw logo’s from memory

Here you can play this is sand, here you draw cool sand designs

Here you can play The Organ Trail

Here’s a customizable white noise website

Here you can simulate gravity

Here you can create your own guardian of the galaxy

Here you can make your own galaxy

Mochi. Has decided that the best place to sleep is between my feet on the footrest. and when I have my laptop open I tend to. forget that he’s there.

I am going to dump him onto the floor.

In other news, 

I tried to give mochi a headscritch while he was on the stairs.

my stairs are basically carpet-covered slabs of wood, with no “backing” so you can see through them.  They’re also directly above the stairs that go down to the basement, so there’s a bit of a drop.

mochi

rolled over for bellyrubs

and fell

through the stairs

about six feet

before rolling over mid-air and catching himself on the floor/ledge above the basement stairs, claws digging into the wood like mufasa during that one scene that fucked up everyone’s childhood.

Unlike Mufasa

Mochi is both strong and not predestined to die for narrative purposes

so he hauled his fat ginger ass up over the ledge as I got to the bottom of the stairs.

he stared at me.

I stared at him.

Mochi then bellowed his loudest and most victorious of cat bellows, and threw himself into my chair and rolled over for bellyrubs.  Which i gave him.

i am afraid

as Mochi is a ginger like my husband his father

I just got off the phone with mom, and we came to the realization that my family has lived in a series of unplottable houses for a couple generations now.

-The First Unplottable House is on my dad’s side of the family, in Delphi, Iowa.  The directions to it are the stuff of Buried Treasure:  Turn off the county road with a fraction in it’s name, to the Named Dirt Road, then turn at The Discount Eggs Sign on to the Unnamed dirt road that takes a meandering path THROUGH a corn field, DO NOT take any forks on that road or the farmer will shoot your ass, then take the paved road that dead-ends on ALL the way to the end- No, farther, the road keeps going it’s not a cliff-The only indication that You Have Arrived At The Correct Driveway is that a fat gray pony will charge the car, screaming, then escort you the rest of the way there.

It’s on the side of an enormous river, they’ve owned the property since 1911, and that’s the ONLY route there.

-The Second Unplottable house is in Bedford, Ohio and belonged to my mother’s parents.  It’s at the corner of two side-streets, right across from the tiny Italian grocery store.  Due to strange development decisions, the house is about 30 feet above street level and rendered invisible by a chestnut tree so majestic Hyao Myazaki would probably put it in a movie.  The driveway, however, is VERY visible from any of the surrounding houses, the grocer, or the street.  

At least in theory and old photos, becuase if you actually GO there,  your eyes slide right past it to the neighbor’s lillac bush, or to the retro neons of the grocery store or up the Chestnut tree.  it is literally HARD to look at that driveway, all the world around it wants to pull you away.

-The Third Unplottable house is in Salinas, CA, home of my paternal grandparents.  It is the single most BORING house possible- like, if you were to ask a third-grader to draw a prototypical house, they would draw my grandparent’s house.  Utterly Unremarkable. 

Except for the part where my Grandfather, spurred by his success with the “non-fruiting” peach tree, decided to plant a California Redwood Tree, and it grew to approximately 150 feet over the course of a few short decades.  It is the tallest damn thing for miles around, and SOMEHOW deliveries keep being missed, mail is delivered to the neighbors, and any non-blood family that tried to visit would end up on the other side of town.

-The Fourth Unplottable House was the one I grew up in CA.  The Directions to it are as follows:  It’s the Bright Orange house Right Across From The School.  You know, the one with six flamingos and the Volunteer Avacado Tree.

SOMEHOW, we got everyone’s mail but OURS (we still wonder about the letter from Fort Knox for Mr. Thomas Saxophone), the other kids got lost trying to visit and ended up in Mr.Phan’s yard on the other end of the block.  Officer Brown, Mom and Dad’s friend, who had GPS back in the early 90′s becuase silicon valley, regularly got lost looking for our place.  The Flamingos did nothing.

-My parent’s current house is the second house on the right  after two right turns off the state highway that runs through town.  Sounds easy, right?  

Except that due to a couple small trees and a bend in the road, the house is invisible from the road.  I have to stand out in the road if i want my pizza delivered.  The Mailman is the only person who could reliably find the box, but he drives a subaru that’s older than my sister from the passenger side by leaning over, and delivers mail based on the aztec lunar calendar, so he’s probably not actually human.  I tried to host a party, tied rainbow balloons to the mailbox, and all nine friends had to be waved in from the street.

-My current apartment building Does Not Exist, according to my Bank, medicaid, Google, and City Hall which was a bit exciting when I first moved in and had to call everyone that yes, I was sitting in a building that really exists.   

Guliya’s roommate recalls me dropping her off at the dorms, which is really peculiar.  Another classmate, Jeff, was at the party with Guliya, and they thought it was my place too.  Jeff is a jackass and I’d never invite him to my place.

No sooner do I set foot in the door, and Mrs. Nguyen snaps up and shrieks YOU!!  and I am much distressed and confused, because I adore Mrs. Nguyen.  She kept My Intended alive last passover when the cafeteria covered literally everything in flour.

She insists that some time in august I had dined with a large group of friends and then skipped out on a $200 dollar tab.  This is even more distressing and also impossible, as I had been in Oregon at the time, and only have like 3 IRL friends.  She is livid, and absolutely insistent that it was me, and that I pay the tab or she’ll call the police.  Being very distressed and not eager to have a panic attack in front of police, I pay up $216.87 and am banned forever.  I go home in tears, without my Pho and am very sick for a fortnight.

Two months later, it’s Polish Butter Christmas, and I locate the source of my woes.

Polish Butter Christmas is the invention of my Intended’s friend/domesticated internet troll, where everyone deemed a friend or at least interesting party diversion is invited to their house and we all consume massive amounts of Traditional Polish Cooking, which is about 60% butter by weight.  everyone eats way too much, most people also get shitfaced and i usually end up on the floor playing with 4-6 corgis, depending on who’s invited that year.  in 2014, it was all six of them, rustling under the table like a pack of obese furry sausages.  

Among the guests invited are myself, my Intended, The Troll’s girlfriend, and her friend.  The latter is 5′2″, whiter than mayonnaise, with bright purple hair and green glasses.  I also am 5′2″, glow under black lights, had bright purple hair and still have green glasses.  We learn furthermore, that we have the same first name and live on the same side of town.  This is laughed off as Most Amusing, at first.

The celebration goes on, and I become steadily less amused as I learn that Not-Me is a BITCH.  Racist jokes, yelling at the dogs to make them cower becuase “They look so funny!”, and generally abrasive and cruel.  Everyone is uncomfortable and Troll confides quietly to me in the kitchen that she is not invited next year, but needs an excuse to throw her out, or his dad will have a fit.  Troll’s family is as much a gang of cryptids as mine, and cannot go around Un-Inviting people without Due Cause.  So we agree to suffer quietly and laugh about it next year.

Eventually, the conversation turns to “Youthful Shenanigans”, and while most people have the sense to tell stories where they did something dumb but not actually illegal, Not-Me recounts with utter glee “That time me and my hoes dine-and-dashed that one chink place hahaha”

I suddenly put two and two together and realize that This Bitch Has Personally Wronged Me.

“You CUNT.” I tell her, furious at the realization ad the fact that she’s been steadily ruining Polish Butter Christmas for the last three hours. “Mrs. Nguyen thinks I did that! I HAD TO PAY THE TAB!”

“Oh, uh my bad, haha…” She laughed awkwardly.

“HA. YES. FUNNY. WE ARE GOING TO THE PLACE, YOU ARE APOLOGIZING TO MRS. NGUYEN AND PAYING ME BACK YOU INSUFFERABLE BITCH.”  I yelled, grabbing her arm and dragging her towards the door, Corgis yapping excitedly at our ankles.

“Whaa?  No!  fuck you!”  She said, winching her arm out of my grip and doing an amazing four-inch-heel-sprint for the bathroom, locking herself in.  

She has made a rather serious error in the Troll is both 1. a 6′6″ Sasquatch of a man, and 2. TOTALLY WILLING to take a crowbar to the bathroom window he’d been planning on renovating anyway, esp if it mean he gets to haul a bitch out and toss her into the back of the minivan with the three least-obese corgis, so that we may drive her, sobbing about injustice the whole way.

Nothing in my life will ever be so satisfying as dragging Not-Me into Pho 67, and seeing the look of horror and recognition cross Mrs. Nguyen’s face as she realized what had happened, then having Not-Me withdraw the money from the ATM at the front.

We then returned to Polish Butter Christmas and had a splendid time feeding buttered pork to the corgis.

So last night I’m out walking Charlie at 2AM becuase it was the first break in the lightning we’d had since 6PM, and I go around the corner and literally for half  second I thought I was about to walk into a mirror becuase I found  my local doppelganger and this time it’s WEIRD.

I’ve got weird curly brown hair that goes kind of Bride-Of-Frankenstein when it gets long, have a weird hound mix from AZ, and am art major with a science background.  I grew up in the bay area and moved to CO in middle school.  I’m a night owl with a bad habit of signing up for morning classes.  I’ve got a super-common first and middle name, and a less-common irish surname.  I’m in 105D

SHE has got the same hair and face, her dog is a weird hound mix that’s like a paletteswap of charlie also from AZ, possibly the same ranch, She’s a biology major with an art minor, grew up in CO and moved to the bay area in middle school, is a morning person with afternoon classes. We have the same first and middle names, in reverse order, and she has the other spelling of my last name.  She’s in 105A.

Statistically, some of this is not surprising- both combinations of names are common, and there was a lot of cross-traffic between CO and CA in 2004, all Rez dogs are shaped the same, and Art/science isn’t that odd a major/minor combo.

She did throw that party back in novemeber, and I was much relived, and she was glad to find out I exist-  We’ve somehow gotten into the same circle of art/science/queer friends without meeting up, and Guliya was bugging her telling stories of My Shenanigans, and attributing them to her.

This coffeehouse has bathrooms located at the end of a U-shaped hallway, so I was going to wait in the hall and Doppelganger in the main part of the cafe.  After a bit of chatting, D would get up to use the restroom and we’d swap places.  The idea was to see how many times we could swap before Guliya noticed something was amiss.  I hear Guliya arrive, and wait.

After about 15 minutes, D comes down the hall, gives me a quick update on the convo so far- the self-inflicted-illness of a professor and the astonishing number of bears about- and I go out.

Guliya notices NOTHING.

We talk more about bears and the terrifying lack of life skills some freshmen have and I go back, complaining of bladder issues.  D and I swap places 3 more times like this, before Guliya notices that we seem to be ill and she can recommend a specialist, so we decide to end the game.  We both walk out while Guliiya is texting someone and sit down across from her.

Knowledge is often described as “dawning’ on people, the soft illumination of understanding. This was like watching someone get caught by the totality of an unscheduled eclipse.  She looked up from her phone, delighted to continue the conversation and watching her face collapse into wall-eyed horror is something that I will treasure for ages.

“There are two of you!”  

“Yes!”  We said, in unintentional creepy unison.

She stared at us for a few moments, surprise giving way to puzzlement, then, relief.

“Thank Fuck.”  She sighed. “I was beginning to wonder when the hell you slept.”

Apparently she had conflated out two identities into some sort of double-major two-jobs constantly-awake superbeing and had been worried about keeping up with Us.

“I mean I don’t anyway. I have terrible insomnia.” I said, unhelpfully.

“Which one of you has the rant about Carvaggio?”  She asked.

“That’s both of us.”

“And the one who nearly got eaten by bears?”

“Still both of us.”

“Well how am I supposed to tell you apart?”  She grumbled.

“I’m the one passed out on the chemistry building couch, they’re the one on the figure-drawing couch.” D offered.

“We can only sleep when surrounded by dangerous chemicals and poor judgement.”  I explained.

“It reminds us of our home dimension of Madness.” D continued.

“Fuck both of you, and any other of you out there.” said Gulia, downing more macchiato for strength.

“Don’t be mean to 27.” I said.

“He had nothing to do with this.” D continued.

D graduated with her degree in Zoology and is planning to take a year off to travel through the National Park System before going to Grad school in New York.

She finds her anonymous internet fame amusing and is amazed more people haven’t got similar stories, as I’m her second doppelganger so far.

D has also grown her hair out to her shoulders and I’ve kept mine at something approaching a buzzcut so at least Guliya can tell us apart now.

She’s Very Disappointed by this.

Guliya is pronounced “Julia” but her parents liked the unusual spelling.

The gargoyle prof/botany prof trip to Moscow has been postponed due to the state of International Politics right now, but they have managed to verify that the rare mushroom plates are, in fact, safe.

They’re going to Greece instead.

Domestic Troll and his girlfriend have invited us to Polish Butter Christmas again this year. 

Girlfriend heard a rumor that Bitch!Doppelganger is now living in Nebraska, possibly after getting in trouble with the law in CO.

There are a frankly insane number of Black Bears in Durango, CO and many of them are far too human-acclimated. Neither of us were in danger of being eaten (Guliya is prone to dramatics) but I nearly walked right up to the local sow walking the dog last summer, and D had to stay late in the Bio building one night becuase one was climbing all over her car like it was a jungle gym.  

Person: then study

my 7th grade social studies/8th grade science teacher (he did both classes. Somehow…) had a snake lovingly named Hisser. Hisser would occasionally be taken out to crawl and he was held by kids and when there were fire alarms Hisser was taken along, usually to his chagrin. 

This was one of those days where we had in class work time and most of us were just chilling and so Mr. A got Hisser out and started passing him around.

Every girl student that he came to, he would immediately snuggle up to, wrap around their arms, and get cozy. With boy students, he would just sort of sit in the coiled lump that he’d been handed in. This was true with just about every single student, and Mr. A said that Hisser likes girls a lot better than guys and this has been thoroughly proven by Hisser’s attitude.

Then Hisser was handed to me. He was a loveable cold scaley rope as you would expect, but he didn’t coil around my arms. He didn’t get cozy. He just sat there. And Mr. Anderson said, “Huh. That’s weird. He usually likes girls.” 

I passed the snake to my friend and surely enough, Hisser wrapped around her arms and got cozy. 

I came out as a trans guy about 7-8 years later, and just recently realized that Hisser was right about me not being a girl all along.