CHICKENPOX?!

As many of you recall, I'm nineteen years old, and like most kids, I had the chickenpox when I was little. I didn't have a raging case like Sorella and unlike Fratello, the freak of nature, I didn't have it twice.

Until now.

I came home from Collegeland and within six hours, I didn't feel good. I had this pain behind my ears that we deduced to be swollen lymph nodes, and I starting having a vicious cough. My energy was sapped. I have really bad sinus to begin with; I have to take medication from October to May or I get sick about every six weeks (I'm allergic to dust and animal dander). So, going from an open, relatively dust free college dorm to a closed up, dust infested home of two cats isn't the best idea.

When I woke up on Monday with a swollen eye, Mater sent me to a walk in clinic. The diagnosis? CHICKENPOX.

Or, more accurately, Shingles (the adult version).

.....WHAT.

I have no idea how I contracted it. According to the clinic, you don't need a sick kid. When you're little and get the chickenpox, you assume you're safe from every having it again, and so your parents don't get you the vaccine. Bad idea.

The chickenpox virus is like a sleeper solider; it stays in your system even after you're cured. Then, it waits for your immune system to be weak, and it attacks. This explains how Fratello had it twice.

As far as sicknesses go, it's really not that bad. I'm not sapped for energy and I can breathe through my nose. The sucky part is the swollen eye, the intense pain in my eye muscles, and the headache. It trumps all headaches I've ever had. I'm ridiculously sensitive to noise. Example: Pater keeps the TV volume anywhere from 35-50. For me, anything about 12 is too loud. It sucks ass. Worse than that, if I move too fast or cough, it feels like my brain is trying to explode out of my skull.

Oh, and the most entertaining part? Chickenpox and cold sores are variations of the Herpes virus. In order to get better, I'm on Herpes medication. They're freaking HORSE PILLS.

Wander safely (and don't get the pox!),
Arc.

I'm the Green Fairy

This is a story piece written especially for you all, based loosely on real events. Enjoy!

x(X)x

It was actually pretty stupid, if you cared to stop and think about it. You’ve known the boy for all of three hours, when Orchid decided he was your ride to a meeting you were already late for and honestly didn’t want to attend. Three hours of sitting next to each other, making stupid faces and wishing the “we-don’t-want-to-attend-but-Orchid-has-this-way-of-twisting-you-into-doing-anything” meeting would go faster. 

He had this way of catching your eye every time you glanced up to make it look like you were paying attention, and god did he have a nice smile. It lit up his whole face and it was just so sweet looking. And you’d smile back, then scrunch your nose and purse your lips to show your disdain for budget approval when you couldn’t actually vote on anything because you weren’t an official club yet, and you didn’t think his smile could get any bigger as he stifles a laugh. You’re suddenly incredibly glad you aren’t prone to blushing.

And here you are, three hours later, sitting in his dorm room and sharing a bottle of absinthe, the green liquid swirling in real glasses you made a special trip to his house for, because “you can’t drink absinthe from a plastic cup; it’s disrespectful to the liquor!”. And you know you shouldn’t be this stupid. He seems nice, sure, but so did Ted Bundy (not that you think he’s a serial murder, but a girl can never be too careful).

He has this habit of rambling, but at least he rambles about something intelligent, or at least funny. Like the time he and his friend agreed they weren’t going to get smashed, yet end up needing several people to retrieve cars just to get home, because god only knows where he ended up (he certainly didn’t). 

He teases that you drink too slowly, and you tell him he drinks too fast, already pouring himself his second class of absinthe. You toss him the partially frozen bottle by your feet and he mixes the two liquids together. He’s surprisingly coherent for starting his second glass of 140 proof liquor. More coherent than you would be, but he’s got two years and at least 30 pounds on you, so that’s to be expected. Absently, you wonder how on earth you’re going to write your paper (or exactly what you’ll end up writing) if half a glass of now more-blue-than-green liquid leaves you this light headed. The room already swirls if you move your head to quickly.

You hear your phone ring from your bag. Dad lights up on the screen, the little picture flashing with the music. “Oh, hell,” you mutter.

“Think you can pull off sober?” He asks, laughing softly.

You return the grin. “We’re about to find out,” you say before accepting the call.

He pulls out his laptop while you talk to your father, fingers only slightly clumsy on the keys as he searches for “the most beautiful music video I’ve every seen, you have to watch it”. The video leaves tingles down your spine, but you’re not sure if it’s the music or the alcohol. 

He’s sitting next to you now, instead of at the other end of his bed. You can’t help but notice how his arm rests on your knee so he can reach the mouse (you don’t understand how he can hate the trackpad). The previous uneasiness returns, but you can’t help but feel a little giddy; it’s been a long time since someone was interested in you, much less a guy. He keeps it casual, though. No bubbles invaded, just an arm resting on your knee and his shoulder against yours (but that’s more your doing than his. 140 proof liquor makes it hard to balance). 

And so it goes. Music video after music video, balance slowly getting worse as you get closer and closer to the end of your glass. But it’s okay, because he sways just as much as you do. At some point, you decide it’s high time you start that paper (it’s due in three days anyways). Despite your inebriated gyroscope, you mange to give him a hug (though by the way he titled his head as you got closer, you think he might have been expecting a kiss), and despite your overly-intoxicated fingers and blurring-if-it-moves-too-fast vision, you type your number and spell your name in his phone without too much trouble. You make an off handed joke about hoping you make it upstairs without cracking your head open, and he calls you a lightweight. You call him an alcoholic. 

You only almost fall down the stairs once and don’t fumble with your keys for too long before you’re in your room. You’ve had a horrible case of the munchies since the night before, but honestly, the idea of six flights of stairs, one of them spiral, just to get food doesn’t seem like a particularly feasible act right now. Instead, you steal a soy pudding cup (though it tastes just the same) from your suite-mate’s fridge, and laugh at yourself when you realize you really aren’t stealing anything; you bought the damn cups and they let you keep it in their fridge. 

Pudding is apparently a good way to sober up. You keep that in mind for the next time someone offers you a sober-coffee. Although if you’re more thoroughly smashed, a sober-up pudding might make things worse.

Later, when you figure you’re more hungover than drunk because of the massive headache you’re sporting, you can’t help but find it a little pathetic that you’ve gotten drunk and sober on a Friday before 9 pm. You smile, though, as you think about the last thing he said.

“We should make this a regular thing.”

x(X)x

Wander safely (and I mean safely. The above story really wasn't all that safe),

Arc.

Thursday Night, I Broke My Brain

Oh, GOD, Thursday night.

First, a recap of my day. I didn't go to bed until around three in the morning on Wednesday night and had trouble falling asleep. I woke up around five am and for some reason decided it would be a good idea to recite my presentation for class. I woke up again around eight because there are SQUIRRELS in my walls that like to scratch around and wake people up. Arc pounded on the walls for a while, missed the bus for class, forgot her presentation, and then dived head first into a lot of overdue readings she's been ignoring.

Now, picture this: it's 11:30 at night, Arc didn't sleep well, had a bad day, and has been reading about sexual revolutions and parapsychology for the last eight hours. And then she called Whimsy via Skype. Poor Whimsy.

My mind was broken. Whimsy got me talking about video games (can you guess which one in particular?). I was something like this:

"I know all about the Organization and I love them to death, they're called Organization thirteen because there are thirteen members and they're all nobodies, nobodies are people that lost their hearts but their bodies were left behind and they became new people and they're all men except for Larxene but she's scary enough to be a man so it doesn't matter and I swear to GOD they're all fucking each other because fandom took over my favorites are VIII and XIII and IX and IV and in the fandom there's a day called Akuroku day and it's 8/13 because those are their numbers and we treat it like a holiday and we post Akuroku stories on that day and sometimes they post stories on February 13th because that's Roxas's birthday and I only know that because it just happened and 6/9 is Zemyx day but not as many people celebrate that because it's not as cannon as Akuroku and I don't understand why they're the "bad guys" of the games because all they're trying to do is get their hearts back and to do that they have to kill the heartless which is a good thing because then they're helping me but for some reason I need to kill them all and I hate killing them all because I love them but they're ridiculously hard to beat and I get really into fighting them, have I mentioned I turn into an utter bitch when I play video games? I insult everyone even the characters I like, like Yuffie, she's a ninja and she's funny but she dresses like a whore so whenever I see her on the screen I call her whore and insult her, and the same thing happens with the Organization, like Demyx, he's number IX and he's really hard to beat so after six million times of fighting him I finally win and I start screaming things like "HA! WHAT NOW! IN YOUR FUCKING FACE!" and then I realize he's actually dead and I get really upset and start crying."

....Now imagine that spoken really, really fast.

This went on for a good hour or so, my mindless chatter only stopping when Whimsy started yelling and waving her arms to get my attention, which would prompt me to start giggling and slam my head into the desk. Here's another ramble, started because Whimsy mentioned Final Fantasy:

"The villain from FFVII is Sephiroth and I love him to death but that actually might be because he scares the pants off Charna and I like scaring Charna but he's also really badass he was the strongest person in SOLDIER but he was also bat shit insane, there's this thing called the Lifestream that circles the planet and everyone gets life from it and when they die they join the lifestream again and Sephiroth wanted to use the lifestream to make the planet move and crash into other planets and I swear to God he wanted to play Grand Theft: Galaxy and no one could stop because he was really really strong because Lucrectia was an idiot and didn't listen to Vincent and injected Sephiroth with all this GENETIC MUTATION SHIT while she was still pregnant with him and it made him really really strong and then he turned evil and his favorite person to bully was Cloud and he was always going on about "What do you cherish most? I want the pleasure of taking it away from you" and did I mention Cloud is really short? He's like 5'7" and Sephiroth is 6'5"and that's like Charna and Mr Eppler but you never really notices because they never show them standing next to each other expect when they're fighting but then they're always in the air when they're fighting or Cloud is jumping so they always seem eye to eye and fighting Sephiroth isn't really fair because he carries a sword that's TALLER THAN HE IS can you imagine trying to get close to him with a weapon like that? But Cloud's sword is really wide and I don't understand how he picks it up with one arm but that still doesn't make it fair because Sephiroth can just stand there and wave the sword around and there's nothing you can do. They actually put Sephiroth in KH and it's funny because he has nothing to do with the story but he's still the hardest boss and he puts Ansem to shame even though Ansem is really Xehanort who was Ansem's apprentice who went all evil and took Ansem's identity and tries to kill you in about six different forms, kind of like Maleficent, but Maleficent is more badass than Ansem/Xehanort because she doesn't flinch or make those weird "UGH" noises like Ansem/Xehanort and she TURNS INTO A FREAKING DRAGON. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO BEAT A DRAGON?"

At some point, Whimsy left before the crazy could rub off on her and Arc spent twenty minutes sitting at her desk, giggling and banging her head against it.

When I told Mater about this, she just laughed and said, "Now, that sounds more like college. I'm glad I'm getting my money's worth!".

...Gee, thanks, Mater.

Wander safely (AND DON'T BREAK YOUR BRAIN),
Arc.