I feel sorry for my foster daughter sometimes. She is the game master for one of our two D&D groups. It used to meet on Thursday nights, but some of the members of the various groups have had scheduling conflicts, so we swapped, and now it's the Wednesday night group. Three of us in the group have known each other for roughly 30 years. The other two long-term members are our neighbor who is basically one of the family, and our foster daughter's husband, who also is one of the family. None of us behaves. Not one. We three old farts who used to live together in college back in the late 80s are the least controllable. She has run this pre-planned campaign three times now, and she knows all of the cast of characters. We refuse to refer to them as their proper names. There was one adversary who was called Nawalia (I think). We never once called her that. Every time, we said, "It's Nuwanda, Dammit." We have butchered other names. Now we are supposed to be finding someone with a name like Xenia (I really don't know exactly). Last time it became "Xander," and this week it was "Xanadu." Our GM is ready to give up on us entirely. I'm pretty sure she has stopped taking us seriously, as she should, months ago. Our neighbor has said we give him hope. He's closer in age to our foster kids, but he looks at us and says that he now realizes when he is in his 40s and 50s, he can still act like an "immature jackass." We set such a good example.
I'm still plugging away at my mega to-do list. I counted before I started writing tonight. If I read it right, I'm slightly better than halfway through, with 33 things done to 31 yet to complete before Saturday night. This is the most organized I have been in months, maybe years. I'm feeling so good about it. There are still several big, important tasks on there, but for the first time in a long time, I think most of them will actually happen on schedule.
I have suffered some losses lately. Not all of them are tragic. More than one has been caused by Harvey. I've had at least three glasses shattered in as many weeks. The day my exchange student arrived, Harvey woke me at dawn by throwing a water glass (officially a beer pint glass) on the floor and breaking it. A week later, he broke Mr S-P's favorite coffee mug. Tonight, neighbor knocked a small brandy snifter on the floor, near where he and I were sitting in sock feet. I hope we have managed to get three weeks' worth of broken glass properly swept up from the floor where humans and cats walk barefooted all the time. We might have to start wearing shoes inside, and no one wants that. Especially me, with my gimpy feet with no arches. (At least my MRI is in less than 8 hours, as I write, and I will soon have answers about what to do to make walking sort of comfortable again.)
My final loss was more significant than a coffee mug or beer glass. I had noticed as soon as I let the lizard who replaced Agnes loose in the tank that she had something going on under her tail. When the girl at the pet shop captured her, she spontaneously exclaimed something along the lines of "whoops, sorry!" to the lizard. I don't know what happened, but I have a suspicion that she injured her gravely without meaning to. I don't want to get too descriptive, but I think she squeezed or crushed her pelvic region. Once she was in my tank, she never once hunted. She was already thin when she arrived, so the injury might have been extant before I bought her. Nevertheless, she wasted away rapidly. I thought she had died yesterday mid-day, but she moved before I had a chance to pull her out of the tank. This morning I found her definitely dead, slumped over the bowl that holds cricket meal. I took her back to the store and got a refund, but I feel awful for not being able to save her any better than I did Agnes. After consulting with Mr S-P, we have decided to refer to her as Charlotte. The second most suggested name was Clara, and he said she couldn't have been Clara, because she was the Impossible Girl. I have not yet decided what to do about finding another companion for Bruno. I feel like he must be traumatized at this point. And do I consider the next lizard the "D" anole, or will she actually be Clara Oswin Oswald? (If you follow Dr Who, you'll know why it would be acceptable to name her that.) I'll wait until I actually meet the next anole to decide who she is.
No comments:
Post a Comment