Best posts made by eye8urcake

I don't know if this belongs here or in RL things I love, but it's mu*-adjacent so I'll go with here.

It's really cool that years after a stupid fight that I got the opportunity to talk to someone I met in a mu* and really liked to engage with, both IC and OOC and patch things up.

In addition, making it doubly cool is the fact that this happened less than twenty-four hours after I finally managed to see through and peel a manipulative emotional vampire barnacle that I also met in a mu* off my ass for the final time, so... net gain.

I did it! I made it through the wedding and reception and all the things!

My dress and shoes fit (not my new underwear but 2/3 ain't bad), my hair worked out (I will die on the banana clip hill plus I found a sun hat to match), my makeup worked out (I managed to not-goth and just look a little pale vs dead).

The estranged daughter and I have a lot of shit to work on, but a lot of information was traded and things discussed and there's definitely progress toward working out said shit that needs woring on. The mother/son dance went great, we danced together and sang 'Wonderwall' and we could hear other people singing with us and it turned into A Moment.

I even gave a toast speech completely off the cuff. I don't feel quite as weird about the in-laws anymore since so many of them made it a point to come introduce themselves and talk to me that there's a Godfather joke in there somewhere. Then we all danced to 'Low' and who can be all standoffish after that, really?

Then, everything at home was as wel left it. I couldn't really ask for a more perfect day.

Everybody who was like 'it'll be great, celebrate your son and his family and just ride the wave' when I bled into the 'RL Peeves' section - you were all right, and I couldn't be happier that you were.

Baby's home! They managed to jumpstart her system without any invasive procedures. The very last thing to worry about is the cystic fibrosis test which they had to redo after some cock-up of her initial bloodwork and then, if the genes are there or whatever, the sweat test confirmation. Hopefully negative there.

So glad she's home and, for now at least, everybody's happy and cozy and breathing more easily.

Since January my SO and I have been having a 'date night' once a week where we go to the only restaurant in our little town of 300 (nearest city 40 miles one way) for dinner. In the beginning it was because they'd started a new 'Friday special' that was something the cook, a really cool lady, would make herself as opposed to a regular bar and grill greasy spoon menu item.

I got to eat some really good food I'd never have tried on my own because of it, then about a month ago, they stopped having the special, which was a real bummer, but we still go every Friday because it's nice to have one day a week where I don't cook all three meals and we never really get to do anything that's not a duty.

Tonight we went in and were talking to her and the bartender/owner while browsing the menu when she beckoned us over to the corner by the register to tell us she'd made(!) and frozen(!) one of her own recipes and brought it to heat up just for us!

It probably sounds SO silly to be SO chuffed about such a thing, but she really is a wonderful cook plus just how sweet and thoughtful even THINKING of doing that is, much less convincing the owner to let her offer us the meal despite the owner having been the one to put the kibosh on the specials has made my otherwise kind of blah week.

I decided to play a bit of my game to relax since I'm epicly stressed, likely not the best of ideas but I can't really think of anything else and I'm sick of chasing my tail. I've been studiously avoiding running into other people, though, so I felt like that could work out well.

Enter unintended antagonistic RP aimed my way. Immediately I panic. Cue up delete. Cue up self-destruct. Realize I'm being fucking stupid and interact as my PC would.

End up getting unexpectedly hilarious RP that makes me glad I didn't just give in to whatever gremlins are eating my brain right now and the fallout of which has given me new options for RP when I've evicted said gremlins. (Saturday. They move Saturday, whether they like it or not.)

Thank you, MU* people, for being unpredictable and insane in just the right way at just the right times.

Since we're empty-nesters for the second year in a row and neither of us bothers with our trash families, my husband and I don't really do much for holidays we used to go crazy on because of the kids. I still cook us 'holiday' meals but mostly because that sort of stuff is too hard on our budgets but is on sale during those times, not because we're actually celebrating.

This year we were going to go to Daughter #2's house 7 hours away because she's eight months into a really hard pregnancy that's going to require neo-natal surgery and she wanted family around for holidays but I didn't want them driving. Blizzards rolled through the Sierras and her oven igniter ate shit so we've postponed, and I went ahead and bought November holiday dinner fixings for us, and as usual I bought too much.

Cut to my son, who is also expecting a baby with his fiance and since they just bought their house in April, they were going to stay home and do their new little family thing. Turns out the fiance's mom ended up hooking her into a trip to Texas for moral support because the awful branch of the family decided to show up, so my son called and asked if he could come to us for dinner. Fuck yeah, score!

SO Thanksgiving went from 'meh' to 'woohoo' because every course went perfect (last year I dropped a pie in the litter box, for an example of how things usually go wrong), and even though I miscalculated the turkey cooking time (as usual), drafting my ridiculously huge 80s toaster oven ensured that everything was ready and served simultaneously and I got to sit down with husband and son to watch The Irishman.

My RL thing I love for today is that one day you get the best of good luck amidst a whole year of just suffering and fuckery.

ETA: Getting my husband to agree to try 'Mass Effect' because I could download an XB360 version for $5 was just a cherry on top.

Making it through my first scene in like two years... and it was completely by accident, as I was trying to sneak out to look around at the map and just blundered right into gasp PEOPLE!

I loved every minute of it and finally remember why I stuck with this hobby all those years before.

/sings, "Merry Christmas to me... Merry Christmas TO me... Merry Christmas to Ca-aaaake... Merry Christmas to me."

ETA: Special thanks to @Sunny and @OldFrightful.

This is Luci. He 'adopted' us in December, and by 'adopted' I mean materialized in the motorcycle room one day, got caught, decided pets were OMG TO DIE FOR and moved in for them, then promptly got deathly ill two days later. Now he thinks I'm his mom/teething biscuit.

Participating in my first event in Arx and not only being able to follow, roll when appropriate(ish), and function, but also thoroughly enjoying myself doing all those things.

Thanks to a great batch of people for making this fun and painless and I'm looking forward to more.

Story/event runners who not only welcome the input that they're hitting a hard boundary for you that the info that brought you to join the event didn't even hint at or warn of and who then changes their path rather than just send you home, so you get to see it through.

That was a first, and definitely a welcome one, for me.

Lived through Xmas and the baby shower, and now my daughter's in labor. Fingers crossed it goes well.

I think, right now, I just love the fact that MU* exists so I can pretend to be a beautiful badass swordmaiden out of Heavy Metal instead of raging (impotently) against the dying of the light in my life right now.

@Rinel said in RL Anger:

@TiredEwok
Good luck. I know it's hard. It will get better.

This. This x2. This x1000000.

Just adding my bit here to what @Rinel said...a couple of years ago, my youngest (then 18) went for a week-long visit to some friends who live in an actual city a little under 400 miles from here. Cut to about ten days later when I get a random text from one of those friends who has no idea she's texting my daughter's mother (I'm under a Star Wars name in her contacts as a family joke) stating she'd been coded into a facility by police and emergency personnel, but was 'probably' going to be alright.

I spend an hour trying to get hold of the girl on my daughter's phone to no avail, until I threatened to SWAT them if I wasn't contacted in 30 minutes or less and included a screenshot of the GPS of where the phone I pay for was located.

Pathos ensues during which my husband, I, and three of her siblings basically have to long-distance torture these 'friends' to get something as simple as a fucking facility name out of them, which allowed us to find out the next day that yes, she was on a psychiatric hold. 400 miles away.

She was not okay. She very much needed to be there, it turned out, and the follow-up involved a lot of weirdness, a lot of conflict, a lot of drama, and a lot of guilt, some of which is still present. It also included a lot of on-again, off-again medication juggles, as is the norm for mental health, unfortunately, some of which created and compounded her conditions to the point of necessitating more hospitalizations, though never for more than a few days.

Fast forward to now, two going on three years later and said daughter has held a job down for a year, including promotions. She's got two semesters of college under her belt. She's kept a roof over her head (with roommates) this whole time and has pets she is responsible for, a boyfriend that she loves who loves her and as he has his own set of psychological baggage they are mutually supportive of each other's issues. She's gotten her driver's license in that time (we got her a beater and keep it insured - that, plus keeping her on the family phone plan are our only constant financial support at this time) and had no incidents with it.

After some bumps, we are as we were - very close.

I don't mean to overshare, it makes me irrationally irritated to see people sharing photos of every meal and requesting prayers for every hangnail but when it was happening to her, this situation terrified me and I'm offering the story up not to make it about me/us, but to maybe give you a tiny light toward the end of your tunnel.

I'm pulling for you and your family and have all the feels and best wishes for you in this crisis and that you get to look back to see it as a horrible thing that touched off positive changes for your family like it ended up being for us, and sooner, rather than later.

ETA: Maybe don't let your kids keep you as 'The Overlord' in their contacts, too. This apparently muddies things in crisis situations.

Dropping by good old MSB to scope out anything new and interesting to play over my God-awful winter and being relieved of the desire to play within five minutes of beginning to catch up on posts.

I love you guys. You've always got my back.

ETA: I'll include apologies for upvotes on month-old posts here, too. I forget how long I go between visits and ding away on everything, and ever since I read a post where someone was weirded out by people who do this, I've been self-conscious about it so... sorry.

My son's wedding is Saturday, at 4pm, outdoors in the middle of the northeastern Nevadan high desert during what's apparently going to be the next heat bubble mess. I've been stressing out a lot over this, for various reasons, and while I'm absolutely dreading it I'm also looking forward to it hoping after it finally ends, I'll feel like I have a modicum of my sanity back. That's the tl;dr.

***Serious powerleveling and unraveling. Do not pass GO if you don't like whining.***

I'm not a praying woman, and I don't believe in gods but I really do hope that I make it through this without embarrassing my son, getting insulted by my daughter, and with some tenuous grasp on my quickly eroding sanity.

ETA: Fucking Gs.

This is really FUCKING cool.

Update: This hospital is part of the Children's Miracle network so I guess scuffed and dinged neonates are a specialty. Their NICU has a camera on each unit that the parents get login info for so they can see their babies even when they can't be there. This is really cool and has really made my daughter and son-in-law feel a lot better about taking care of other things, like their older child.

I'm someone who cringes about the proliferation of surveillance like... everywhere but, wow, if there's a good use, I feel like this is definitely one.

Watching POS games full of POS players melt the fuck down when all the main POSes split up and start POSing at each other.

I have this little cat named Pazuzu. She's black, roughly oval balloon-shaped, with short, stubby little legs and tail and long black fur. She's always been kind of a weird cat, and this summer she went off her food for a couple of days and got all spiney and sucked up until I manhandled her and forced her to eat/take fluids.

Ever since then she's made a nest on the top of the couch back cushion I sit at the most and she always rolls over to stick her legs out so she pushes her feet (gently and without claws) against my back, not quite sponging but still kneading, kind of right between my shoulder blades.

I'm so grateful for these 'cat massages', it's unreal.

@greenflashlight said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@eye8urcake Just to be clear, have you asked your son if he cares if you return fire, should they start something? I ask because I don't know if he'd get vicarious pleasure out of that.

I don't know, either, to be honest. I have not asked him, it's awkward to bring up. He's friendly enough with them that he goes on family trips and the like, and they have a very positive relationship despite my son being, generally speaking, as liberal as we are - I assume he just doesn't discuss these things with them.

I also know that if they do come at me in any way other than passive-aggressive that he knows there will be one of two outcomes - I either unload on them, or hubs and I just make a quiet exit.

Chances are, it'd be the former and not the latter, but one of the major things stressing me out is that I actually like his wife - we've worked hard to overcome a lot of awkwardness between us, I was there for her when she had some post-partum issues, and I really don't want to be the one who shits on her special day. I know my temperament, and I know my recent stress-level, and I know I'm building it up more in my head than I ought to because of that.

Likely, it will be a nice, pleasant day made only mildly weird by me having to bring a crippled chicken in his cat-carrier house and me and my estranged daughter pretending to be nice to each other. BUT I WORRY SO MUCH.

ETA Also, you guys are such a weirdly good support system to have for things like that, that I feel are weird things 'normal' people won't get. You have a way of breaking things down that brings me up for air from deep within anxiety spirals. Thank you all for that.