A Whole Bunch of Stuff

Kid reported his father missing

Police torture him into making him confess to killing his father

You can’t have serious conversations about your mental illness and you can’t even mention having one of the more stigmatized mental illnesses.

I can't believe I forgot about that. Imogen, Fearne, Chetney, and FCG freed a celestial bull or something. There was pvp but no one died, and the resolution was romance.

Orym, Laudna, and Ashton were deceived by someone who appeared to be a friend but turned out to be malicious. Followers of gods were doing bad things, too. Laudna looked to Orym, he nodded for the kill, and Laudna went one step further to suck the life out of Bor'dor for trying to kill them.

The party split actually explains so much about the current Bells Hells dynamic. Orym wants desperately to trust but believes he can't and shouldn't, not completely. Laudna thinks the world is trying to kill her, which is flawed but not preposterous.

Ashton admittedly is more guilty than self-destructive after he nearly killed himself, but has recently gotten confirmation through FCG's sacrifice that they couldn't save a self-destructive friend. It's a mindfuck. (I mean at least Ashton doesn't think they will be abandoned anymore?)

Orym tried to give up his life and freedom to guarantee their party's survival, and he didn't tell anyone. Laudna, without pausing to discuss Delilah's plans with anyone, actively initiated inter-party conflict. Ashton didn't reveal a potentially life-threatening plan to anyone except Fearne, and distressed a lot of people.

The cleric’s spell list is just the ACME catalogue.

for some reason you still have to roll on the wild magic sorcery table for half the spells.

At a certain level, you trade in your voice for speech cards. This removes the need for verbal components for spells and increases the interpersonal hilarity.

ACME is a god of chaos, hubris, and ingenuity. They have palpable disdain for their customers (worshipers). They love TNT.

So my birthday is this Sunday (May 26th). My mom ordered some presents for me but one of them (an Etsy purchase) was seemingly stuck in transit and might not make it on time. I tell my mom all good, no worries. She gets in contact with the seller. After a long delay in response they get back with "Right we'll fix it!" It ships, tracking label and everything, good to go! ETA May 22nd (yesterday.)

During the work day I check the tracking and it says it's been delivered in/at mailbox! I double check with my mom "hey, is it mailbox size?" because if not, I don't want it sitting at the front door where anyone walking by could snag it.

She says "it's definitely NOT mailbox size." Okay. I text my neighbors in the building "Anyone seen a package delivered? It's a birthday gift from my mom and I wanna make sure it gets inside!" Success! Floor 2 David (not to be confused with Floor 1 David) had brought it inside. Inform my mom. All good!

I stop by home briefly around 4pm, because yesterday was hot-hot and I just installed my window A/C that morning in the living room, and according to my cat cam my stupid cat hasn't spent a single second in the climate controlled living room and is, instead, voluntarily baking herself elsewhere so I'm like "great" and hop on my bike to go home (10 minute ride) to check on her.

I get in the building door. Patches is crying from the top floor because she heard me. I maneuver my bike in the front hall. The ugliest fucking 6-foot-tall cat tree(?)/totem(?)/statue(?) I've seen in my entire life is just. Standing there.

My first thought is "What the fuck is that." My second thought is "Oh fuck that is for me." I look around at the floor in case there's perhaps anything else that might, in fact, be the gift.

No. Me and Cat Pole.

It's taller than me. I turn it around to face me and its face is painted and this is, in fact, uglier than it looked from the back.

Um.

Patches is crying. So I just haul it up to my level. MAYBE it was supposed to come with twine that I wrap around it (and hide its face from the world) for Patches to scratch. Maybe this is a prank. Maybe this is an inside joke, because when my mom moved into her current house the neighborhood gifted her some ugly-as-hell totem that apparently, by tradition, each newest-comer to the neighborhood is required to have and display in their window so maybe this is a very good riff on that.

Patches rubs against it. She's not afraid of this horrid facsimile of her kind.

Great.

Meanwhile SHE'S fine and the condo is a little toasty but totally liveable so I'm like "Good, cool, you're not baking. You're having a good time. Enjoy your new sister, I guess, I'll see you later."

I go back to work because this is a problem for later me.

After work, after my run, after whatever, I get home and it's like 8:00pm and Patches is so happy to see me and the totem pole is still just. There.

I text my friends like "so a bday gift is here from my mom and it's the Biggest Ugliest cat pole I've seen in my life. Is this a bit? Did my mom go 'that's so ugly haha! send!' Maybe she genuinely found it cute. How do I navigate this." My friend Sarah has the good advice to maybe text my mom neutrally like "Got the cat pole!" and feel the waters whether my mom is like "Isn't it ugly? 😂" or "Hope Patches likes it! 🥰"

My mom goes to bed early so I don't do any of that yet. Problem for tomorrow me.

This morning, Patches wakes me up for breakfast. I get her situated and I'm staring at the fucking Cat Pole again. I wonder if my Mom's been wondering all night what I thought of it.

I take a picture. I text her.

Okay.

I get on call with my mom. I ask for clarity that the ungodly horrid thing is NOT my birthday gift and is in fact a mix-up from the seller who sent me this instead of my actual gift. She's wheezing between words. She thinks I'm being too charitable for the amount of Absolute Fucking Ugly this is. I have to gently talk her out of using the word "monstrosity" while messaging the seller asking what the hell happened here.

I tell her I need to apologize for harming her dignity with Floor 2 David, who thinks this fucking thing is my mom's idea of a great birthday gift for her to-be-28-year-old daughter.

I receive a call from my mother in the middle of the day while I'm at work. I can't answer but I tell her I can call her back.

She texts me instead. Was there any return information on the cat pole? The Etsy seller responded and said he's never seen this thing in his life.

Okay.

There is in fact no return information, which I know for a fact because I scrutinized this thing up and down for any kind of "Happy birthday Chrissy!" note or "I promise this is a joke love Mom" that could have cued me in to what farce I was forcibly ensnarled in.

No information. No return address. Not from the Etsy seller, who I'd mentally profiled as some artisan of the ugliest hand-crafted cat paraphernalia possible and turns out, is some kind of t-shirt maker.

So if this is NOT from the Etsy seller and is NOT the missent present from my mom then I am left grappling with the reopened mystery of "Who the FUCK sent me this cat pole for my birthday." This comes with the spine-chilling possibility that this was an earnest, well-meaning, kind-hearted act of one of my friends who I may have already told about "my mom's butt-fucking-ugly-ass cat-pole gift."

Question also remains unanswered of "Where is my gift from mom."

Mom asks if Floor 2 David saw the mailman. Makes the point that the USPS would not deliver an unwrapped package, which makes sense and which I had not fully considered in the moment due to being poisoned with cat pole emotions. This answers even fewer things.

I make a net-zero of unanswered questions in the moment by reconsidering a different package which I did receive, and had thought was a later delivery from a friend, which I had not even considered could have been the Etsy gift from Mom because I really cannot overstate how much seeing the cat totem IRL resulted in a hostile takeover of 95% of my brain capacity. So that DIFFERENT package perhaps IS my mom's gift to me and leaves the cat pole... entirely unaddressed.

I need to text my neighbors about the false feline idol. I further poison my text history with the following.

And I receive a quick response.

My mom has apologized to the Etsy seller for cat-totem-pole related accusations.

Cat totem pole has been returned to the front hall to begin her new life as an ongoing source of strife between Molly's mother and Molly's father, I guess.

Here she is in all her glory.

as always l The Oatmeal l ⬇txt-edited

RIP Kabosu, who inspired one of the most influential memes of all time; Doge.