largely unscathed

and wading through a giant stack of pictures to show you guys from Lady Arin's house. Looky: She has a creek, and I am jealous. Oh look, and dark and blurry picture of me dabbling about in said creek. In my period clothing. Lol, Milady gets it.

This after I lent her my scarf, and I found a nice log to stand on:

Oh, the sidekick switched skirts with Her Ladyship while standing in the water so that we could take this picture. It was so boss, you don't even know. And look, the sidekick's shiny new camera adds these horrid red numbers to everything. Gaah.

Oh, we finally sawed that heinous stock-thing off my flintlock sidearm! And sanded down the jagged edges with the belt sander and everything, and we still have all our fingers. And look there, a feather in my ear. Whoa, whose camera was this, anyway?

And there I am, being deceased. The sidekick had a friend over that night as well, so we all went out and took extremely violent pictures in the middle of the night. It was fabulous.

Wait a minute, what's that there? (Besides more period clothing on teh Kippeh.)

Why, I do believe it's a path. Milady's most excellent father apparently mowed a path through the forest for no discernable reason. When I discovered this, I took off running down it immediately, not bothering with shoes or any of that nonsense. Milady made me run down it about twenty times again, trying to get a good picture. All of them are blurry.

This is the dreaded Witch's Villa. Just look at that bright red trim. Clearly unnatural and sinister. Psh, NOT. I love that freaking cabin.

The maiden, like all clever maidens eventually do at some point in their lives, decides to spy upon the witch, in order to discern if there is any method by which the she-monster might be slain.

Wooden stake through the gut. Yep, that generally does the trick. Now for this blasted door...

Whoops, the maiden got a little distracted. Yay for multiple layers of skirts.

Um, yes. Winning much.

Oh yes, I remember, there was smiting to be done! Back to that now.

I love the fact that there's a doorway in the middle of the forest there for no particular reason whatsoever. Totally makes my day.

The sidekick invented these little guys. They're called squidges, and they are the best thing ever. You can throw them back and forth, and squeeze them and cuddle them and splatter them all over the ground. Multipurpose squidges.

Also, delightful cupcakes were had.

So there is my epic four-day weekend with Her Ladyship. As a side note, we watched The Princess Bride because neither Milady nor the sidekick had seen it previously, and the sidekick's associate and I were mortified. But they've seen it now, so it's okay. YAY TEAM WESTLEY because it's the pirate/ninja alliance in disguise! LOLWIN. We also watched Proof, which has Jake Gyllenhaal in it and is quite brilliant, although sort of depressing. Couple of great lines though. And by the way, I gave the Lady her REAL birthday present, not just the little temporary one, and I think she liked it, so yay. It was fun to make, in any case.

Which reminds me - Arin had a fabulous idea while I was there. She suggested we draw a completely random picture of whatever, and then write whatever comes to mind about it, curving the words around the actual drawing. We ended up with a biker fairy who's muttering grouchily about this girl who won't have him. It's pretty hilarious. Anyway, I was inspired to try something similar with this boring sketch of my new character Thomas, who sprouted right out of a video we watched in history class about the Vietnam War last month.

Oh, you know what sucks? My parents' scanner, that's freaking what. But in any case, the text reads thusly (don't be too frightened):

"Go back!" I screamed, waving an arm, but the thunder of mortars drowned me out. Thomas kept on coming, and I watched the others fall: first Wizard, then Beans and Trigger, then the world went swirling off to black.

(there ought to have been a paragraph break there, but no room)

When I woke up later, everybody was screaming at everybody else.

"I can't believe you, Private! We lost three great guys because of that stunt you pulled back there. Dangit, Thomas, what were you thinking, just running out onto the no man's land like that?" Sarge was beet red in the face, going on fuschia. "Never do anything like that again, you hear? Never again!"

"What was I supposed to do?" Thomas shouted back. "Leave Russel out there to bleed to death? I mean, hello! He's part of the team too, isn't he?"

"If by 'part of the team' you mean 'degenerate freak', then sure," snapped Bunny, crossing his arms.

Saigon elbowed him in the ribs. "Hey, man, Rachel saved your sorry butt at least a dozen times on that last patrol."

You probably think I'm going to explain what's going on here. Well. Too bad. I'm not. All I will say is that I had fun thinking of nicknames for the other army guys. And by the way, Rachel and Russel are the same guy, in case that was way too confusing. And there was very little good writing going on here, because word choice had a lot to do with what I could fit on the page. So yeah, never mind. Thomas is supposed to have dark hair, by the way, but I didn't want to chew through an entire stick of mechanical pencil lead just to color his hair in, so no.

You know what made me laugh? I showed this picture to one of my brother's friends (an eleven-year-old) and the first thing he said was, "So, is that a guy, or..." Haaaa, yes, dear. It is. Despite the eyelashes, I promise you, Thomas is very much a boy. And may I remind you all that my own darling brother wore just as many dresses as shorts up until about the age of six, and the rest of the time he went naked. So there.

Mmkay, madre gave me the day off in return for babysitting the bro and his cohorts all afternoon, so I'm gonna go sit down and write the rest of that freaking Showdown. I know exactly what needs to happen; now I just gotta make myself gak up some words.

Long enough post for you?

Commander Kip

*scary raspy voice* THE PIT OF DE - ack, choke - *regular voice* The Pit of Despair.

Normal is overrated!