You know, if my state were personified like the nations in Hetalia, Wyoming would be bipolar like whoa.  It's 70 degrees out, the grass is green and there's no wind.  Two days ago there was two feet of snow on the ground and both interstates were closed because of blizzard conditions.

She's also probably own two dogs (Cassidy and Cheney.  Cheney is a terrible hunting dog) and a horse (Tom Horn).  And she'd probably hate Colorado.

...I need to stop right there or Wyoming is going to eat my brain.  I was only going to mention the weather, and I have a ton of homework and cannot develop this.


her name would be Esther Ross.

 It's three-thirty in the morning.  It's THREE-THIRTY in the MORNING. I am STILL AWAKE.

I blame Nathaniel.

My brother gave me a neat tea infuser for my birthday, something I had requested.  He also gave me a tea sampler.  All of it was green tea.  So when I made a vaguely oriental dinner (okay it was oriental chicken wings and rice) I decided at the last moment to forgo the decaf black tea I normally drink for a bit of green.  It was about 6:30.  I had ONE CUP.

And now I'm awake at three thirty-three in the blasted morning.  I HATE MY LIFE.

 I'm 20 now.  Doesn't feel that much different, but I guess I'm officially a "young adult" instead of a teenager.  You know what stinks, though?  Next St. Patrick's Day, I will be five days from my 21st birthday.  I did not realize this until recently.
Ah, well.  I'm sure I can get my older brother to pick something up for me.

I have to work today.  I'm going to be late to my own party, too.  (my dad made Dutch apple pie!  the kind that's five inches high and stuffed solid with apples \o/ )  But I really do need the hours.

Today I did something different.  I got up, showered, and went to Sunday service.

I haven't been to church regularly since I turned 18 because I didn't agree with the church my family attended and I wasn't very motivated to find a new one.  I usually work on Sundays, so it wasn't really an issue.  Lately, though, I've been thinking of going back if I can find a church that is sufficiently open-minded.

I tried the only liberal religious organization in my town, a Universal Unitarian.  The service itself was very interesting, but that's not the reason I'm glad I went.

After the service was over, I stayed for the cookies-and-coffee social gathering.  One of the first people who spoke to me was an elderly lady named Maya.

Maya has a very strong accent, and when I tentatively asked when it was from we got into a long discussion.  Maya lived in Latvia in the 1930s, and she has very strong memories about the advance of Communism.  Her Grandfather was an Eastern Orthodox Priest, and he was sent to a concentration camp especially for priests and ministers.  He died there, and they were informed by one of the other prisoners, who wrote to them on a scrap of wallpaper he'd ripped off because they had no paper.  Her Grandmother was taken out in the front yard and shot because she asked what the officers had meant when they walked into her kitchen and demanded breakfast (it was five in the morning, and the bread hadn't yet risen).

She told me about how they fled Latvia to Germany, and then the United States.  She worked as a maid, then went to school and became a nurse.

After we finished talking, I walked her to her car, and on the way we passed a small flower patch the church cares for.  The weather has been unusually warm, so there were just a few bits of green poking out of the pile of grass and leaves.  There were also a few small white blossoms.  Maya told me that she helps tend to it, despite the fact that she uses two canes to walk.

Bending, she picked one of the white blossoms and snapped it off, handing it to me.  She thanked me for listening to her story.

The bloom's in a cup on my desk now.  I'm going to press it in a book.

It's one thing to read about things in a book, but there's such a huge difference when you're hearing it directly from a person who experienced it.  I'm so honored that she let me listen.

I think I'll go back next week.

I found this on /cm/--pickup lines for Lelouch.  This one stood out.

"I like my men like my governments- superficially calm with a ruthless and authoritarian inside, and a side of vigilante social-terrorism"

Just felt the need to share...

I was scared of monsters.  I had a very sheltered childhood, though (scariest thing I watched was The Twilight Zone), so I made up my own, and there were rituals I needed to do to protect myself..  There was the ghost of a murdered girl hovering outside the windows, so I had to close all of the blinds before dark.  Porcelain dolls had to be turned to face the fall or they would come to life.  And there was a skeleton living in the toilet.  It would come out after I flushed. To get away, I had to wash my hands, then flush, then run and get through two rooms before the sound stopped.

I really have to wonder about what my parents thought about me dashing out of the bathroom at full speed every time I used it for four years.  :-/

 I feel so stupid right now.  

I've had a headache all day.  This isn't anything really unusual, except that I actually got plenty of sleep last night.  I went through my activities for the day: school, lunch with Hannah, a quick walk, studying at the library, but the headache just got worse.  Eventually it got so bad that I wasn't able to concentrate on the page in front of me, so I gave up and went home, hoping that I could lie down for a bit and then feel better.

That's when I realized.  I had a headache because I hadn't had anything to drink all day. WTF, self? I was up for nearly nine hours and I didn't take three seconds to sip from the water fountain?

Four cups of tea later, my headache's much better and I finished my homework.

The stupid remains.

 Working in the cafe is the best job I've had.  I'm good at it, my coworkers are great, and it's not hard.  Plus, at the end of the day I get to go home and smell like coffee instead of french fries or tacos.  But what I like best is the magical apron.

People never, never, go to a cafe to talk about how nice the weather is or how much they love their job.  No, people go to the cafe to talk about serious business.

The apron? I love it because it makes me almost invisible.  Which means that I hear all sorts of things.  It works even better if I'm holding a broom.

One day when I needed to wipe down some tables and change the trashes, one man's friend was trying to convince him to come out to his parents, the group of ladies at the front had a woman whose fiance had cheated on her with her sister, and the couple + man with Bible were doing a marriage counseling session right there.

Last night was much the same.  One of the two women in the corner was worried that she was pregnant and her unit might be deploying soon.  The two teenaged girls in the corner were talking about semester finals and how one of the girl's cousins was caught cheating on his last year.  There was another group of teenaged boys, but they were just talking about video games.  The last couple was talking about Gaza and how he "will always support Isreal.  They're God's people and I dare not go against them."

I don't think I'm doing anything wrong by listening in.  They're talking in public, and I don't go out of my way to find out who they are.  If I recognize them, I don't tell anyone about who they were.  And I think it helps widen my views on people.  That girl with the nasally voice who wants a grande half soy half non-fat hazelnut white chocolate latte heated to exactly 155 degrees with an extra shot and make it decaf please and with caramel syrup on top but under the whip cream--she might just be in the middle of a hard time, and that means that I'm extra nice even if she stands at the end of the counter and taps her foot at me for the two minutes it takes me to make her drink.

I think everyone should just listen in on conversations around them.  Everyone's always talking and talking, but there are so many people that don't listen.  It might not be anything profound, but then again, it might be.  The apron (or any sort of uniform, really) helps because people don't pay as much attention, but it's not necessary.  Listening to people reminds me that there's a much bigger world out there.  And maybe someday I can do something to help.

For now I'll make coffee, hand you your cookie, I'll wipe off your table, and sweep your crumbs off the floor.  But I'll listen, too.  I'll never know what I'll hear.

I went to get my books for this semester and found out I only needed three.  Three of my classes don't have textbooks at all, which is strange and faintly alarming.  In one class I already have the textbook because I missed the deadline for selling them back (because my college only buys them between the hours of HAHA Stupid Bought at the Bookstore and Never).  But it worked out for the best anyways, I suppose.

For the remaining two classes, there were three books, and altogether they cost only $183.12.  *flail*  That's the least amount of money I've ever spent on books!  Plus, for the Geology book I got the only decently treated used copy they had.  One of the Shakespeare books is about the weight of a cinderblock, though, so the karma works out.

My scholarship money isn't in yet, so I asked my Aunt Vi if I could borrow a bit and pay her back in a week.  I hope it gets here soon, my cabinet is looking awfully naked.  Next thing I know it'll be coating itself in leaves and ducking behind the dishwasher.

After a craptastic start to 2009, things are looking up.  I paid my rent, bought my books, got into the classes I needed--all of which seem interesting-- and my best friend's out of the hospital and she's going to be okay. No force on earth can convince me that's anything less than a miracle because I saw that SUV, and it's about four feet tall now.  And my apartment's shimmers in the sun, it's so clean.

It's going to be a good year.

A short story written from Naruto's point of view when he's a small child.  A glimpse into his life before he could speak properly.

Genre:  Humor/Drama
Rating:  G
Warnings:  None
Summary:  Shinobi of Konoha sometimes have strange expenses. Young!Naruto

 

( Mission Expense )

 

 

Comments and critiques are always welcomed.

A light, fluffy story that was a lot of fun to write.  Not a pairing that I usually like, but I think it turned out well.

Rated: PG-13
Genre:  Humor/Romance
Warnings:  Sexual situations
Disclaimer:  I don't own Naruto.
Summary:  Sakura loves showers.  It's a pity Naruto can't take the hint.  Naruto/Sakura humor.

 

( Showers )

 

 

Comments and critiques are always welcomed.

I really loved this story.  Kushina's a great character, and it was fun to speculate about her.  I consider this to be one of my better stories.


Rated:  G
Genre: Drama
Warnings:  Character Death
Disclaimer:  I don't own Naruto.
Summary: Every day, Uzumaki Kushina adds one more reason to be happy to her list. Some days are harder than others.

 

( Kushina's List )

 

 

Many thanks to my beta, Widom. If you see any mistakes we missed, please let me know.

Comments and critiques are always welcomed.

This is currently my most popular fanfiction, standing at 49 reviews on my Fanfiction.net account.  Short and simple.

Rated: G
Genre: Drama/General
Warnings:  None
Disclaimer:  I don't own Naruto.
Summary:  There is an empty room in Konoha.  Once, it was meant to be a nursery.

 

( Empty Room )

 

 

Comments and critiques are always welcomed.

This is a story based on the nursery rhyme "Counting Crows."  When someone would see crows, they would count the crows and use this poem to predict the future.  There are several versions of the poem, but I used the form that I learned first.

Rated:  PG-13
Genre: Drama/General
Warnings:  Violence
Disclaimer:  I don't own Detective Conan
Summary:  Seven Murders, Seven motives.  One for sorrow...

 

( Counting Crows )

 

 

Comments and critiques are always welcomed.

 This was the first story that I wrote after a two year hiatus.  I like writing Naruto but, gah!  He's hard to keep in character.

Rating: G
Genre:  Drama
Warnings:  None
Disclaimer:  I don't own Naruto.
Summary: It sort of figured that the most precious gift of Naruto’s life came in such an unassuming package.

 

( Little Letter )
Comments and critiques are always welcomed.

 

When I was in high school, my creative writing teacher wanted me to write a poem.  Well, this is what he got out of me.  I really can't write poetry.

Rating:  G
Genre:  Humor/Parody
Warnings:  None
Disclaimer:  I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho.
Summary:  A parody. This is the story of a fangirl. Let's call her Mary Sue...

 

( The Tale of Mary Sue (like OMG!) )

A story inspired by an episode in Detective Conan where Conan seemed to scare the suspect.


Rated: G
Genre: Humor
Warning:  None
Disclaimer:  I don't own Detective Conan.
Summary: At the risk of sounding conceited, I rock.  This, boys and girls, is my masterpiece, my tour de force, my ultimate creation.  I have created the perfect murder.

 

( Shoot )