R. Lee Smith's Blog, page 2

Serial Saturday Update

Day 17,981 of Quarantine.

All of us here at the Smomestead are still doing well as far as our physical health, although my mental health is definitely taking some hits. I had a legit panic attack the other day, but I had it as an author, which is probably not as serious as it might otherwise have been, because I recognized immediately what it was and instead of living in THAT moment, I took some mental notes so that, in the future, should I write a scene where my character has a panic attack, I can do it realistically. I did the same thing in the time leading up to each of my surgeries. I’m not sure if it’s a healthy coping mechanism or not, but it’s super-effective, and probably healthier than my main coping mechanism, which is to bake metric fucktons of cookies, cupcakes and pies. #QuarantineFifteen is real, yo.

The weather around here is doing its usual springtime bipolar thing, bouncing back and forth between hot and muggy, and cold and windy, with buffers of thunderstorms and tornado warnings inbetwixt. This has not helped my anxiety. We actually lost power for a bit this morning due to some storm that blew through out of nowhere. If you’ve every wondered how self-isolating during Quarantine could be even worse, try doing it without power. I only had to deal with that for an hour and it nearly ended me. It wasn’t the lack of internet that did the damage, either. Hell, I’ve been an old fogey in a young fogey’s body practically since birth. Can’t watch TV? No problem, I’ll read a book. Only between the storm and this house’s near-total lack of window, it was too dark to read. We found some candles, but the flickering light, tiny typeset and my old-fogey eyes combined to make reading, if not impossible, at least not pleasant. Ditto painting. Turns out light is a pretty vital element of painting. So I figured I’d make breakfast, only, ya know, no power so no toaster, microwave or stove. Or coffeepot. Nothing to do really, except sit in the dark and wait for the power to come back on. But that’s okay, right? It’s good to have a little quiet-time, just sit and be alone with your thoughts….thoughts like, ‘Is this really just a bad storm or is a tornado out to rip off the roof and smear me from here to Oz?’….thoughts like, ‘I bet the sump-pump needs electricity too, so if it keeps raining like this, the basement’s going to flood again.’…thoughts like, ‘Why does my dog keep crawling into my lap and shivering? They say animals can sense things like tornados. Is she sensing one? Or does she just hate the noise and she thinks I can make it stop? Dumb dog, I can’t fix this. I can’t make it okay. I’m not even okay, how do you expect me to help you? Wait, now she’s leaving. Why is she leaving? Does THAT mean she senses the tornado? No, she’s just getting her frog plushie. There’s probably no tornado. I wish I had a frog plushie that could fix this. Oh, she’s bringing it to me. She thinks I need it more than she does. That’s cute, but also, is that the tornado?’

Obviously, I survived and even more surprisingly, so did everyone else trapped in the house with me, but it really makes you appreciate how our forefathers and foremothers had to go through their various times of hardship in the age before Netflix and coffeemakers. They had dogs, though. Which is probably how they did it.

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We don’t deserve them.

And as I sit here writing this, I can hear thunder. The storms are coming back. Serious storms? Who knows. And yes, before you ask, I do have a weather-app, but the last time we had an actual tornado warning, one so close that I literally, no joke, stood out on my front porch and WATCHED the funnel form DIRECTLY across the street, I checked that stupid app and it told me the temperature and said there was a 15% chance of rain that evening, so yeah. My faith in apps was somewhat shaken. Better finish this up, pack some snacks and head down to the basement, just in case. And if you, like me, are going to be huddled in the corner of your storm shelter tonight with a candle and your dog and your dog’s plushie frog toy, best download some reading material now, before the power goes out and you lose your wifi. Might I suggest the latest chapter of my Five Nights at Freddy’s fanfiction, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones! You can find it at archiveofourown.org and fanfiction.net, whichever platform you prefer. It’s a biggun, too. I probably should have split it down, but that seemed like a lot of work and I was having trouble focusing today for weather-related reasons.

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To be fair, nothing about Fred Faust’s animatronics was simple, but these were the least complicated parts and he could barely cope with them. When it came to things like the cooling system, the facial rig, and of course, the ways and means of making the animatronic walk on its own, Yoshi freely admitted he was in way over his head. That wouldn’t be so bad except that he had an irritating habit of insisting she was in over her head, too. When she suggested modifications to improve maneuverability and balance, he flatly told her it wouldn’t work. Even after she took the keyboard away from him and proved it could be done—as far as a schematic could prove anything before simulations had been run—he just sat there, shaking his head.

At least until his phone buzzed at him.

“Sorry,” he said, like he always said when his phone went off, but just like he always did, sorry or not, he took it out and thumbed at it. “This will just take a second and then we’ll get right back at it.”

“Right,” muttered Ana, rubbing at her throbbing head.

“Or are you hungry?” Yoshi asked, texting madly. “Maybe we should grab some lunch or something. It seems like a good stopping place.”

A good stopping place. Ana glanced at the door closing off the shop, where Freddy lay in pieces and the other three stood untouched. Yesterday, they had managed to analyze, scan and upload two animatronic legs. Today was half gone and they hadn’t even finished scanning one arm.

Fuck this.

“Sounds good,” Ana said and pulled out her own phone. “You mind if I make a quick call first?”

“No, go ahead,” said Yoshi with flustered relief. “I’ll just…um…yeah.”

Ana tapped open her contacts and selected the one at the top of her fairly short list. She turned a polite angle away from Yoshi while it rang through, symbolically separating herself from his personal space while making sure he could hear every word she was about to say.

The other end picked up.

Ana said, “Hey Rider.”

 

Serial Saturday Updates

Day 6001 of Quarantine: Created a serial killer in my Sims game to take out all the townies who wear that stupid eyeball ring, alphabetized my spice rack, and organized a slumber party for some stuffed animals.

Okay, one of those is a lie. I have never alphabetized a spice rack in my life.

I hope everyone’s staying safe out there. I appreciate all your happy thoughts and well-wishing. So far, my family and I are all doing well. We’re taking care of ourselves, washing our hands, self-isolating (or just living normally, if you’re me) and doing everything we can to protect ourselves and our community. It has really made me think, though. Last year, I embarked on the first leg of my epic quest to improve my health by, among other things, changing my diet, which meant learning how to cook more meals from scratch, meal-planning, and freezer-prepping. As a result, when the COVID hit the fan, my freezer was full of casseroles and I actually knew how to turn the random components in my pantry into real food. Quarantine isn’t fun for anyone, but I have to admit I’m having a much less difficult time than I would be having, if I hadn’t had a year to hone those skills.

I said in my last post that I wanted to use this time to improve myself in some fashion and I have actually been working at that, decluttering the house and tackling some of those little to-do tasks that pile up in the corners of all houses. I haven’t gotten as far as setting up an exercise routine yet, and I really need to, because I’m one of those people who bake away my anxieties, which would be fine if that was all I did, but then I’m trapped in quarantine in a house full of delicious baked goods, so…yeah, I need to stop using the treadmill as a hat-rack and use it as, ya know, a treadmill. I’ve also done some painting along with The Art Sherpa‘s free tutorials on YouTube (I encourage everyone who’s ever wanted to paint to click that link), reread some of my favorite books (including The Stand by Stephen King, because irony, and also Tiffany Roberts‘ always delightful Kraken series), and watching way too much Netflix. What are you all binging on these days?

And yes, I’m writing. I’m so close to the end of Part IV of my FNAF fanfic, and I know I’ve been saying that for 200 pages now, but I’m 200 pages closer and that’s pretty dang close to the end. I’m going to take a quick break before I start Part V so that I can write something else real quick (HA! Remember when I thought this fanfic series was going to take one year to complete? Ohhh, me and ‘real quick’ have about the same relationship as me and ‘real short’) but then I’ll be back at it. It’s the age-old problem: so many books, so little time.

But for now, I have a new chapter up on archiveofourown.org and fanfiction.net, so if you’re reading my fanfic, Everything Is All Right, follow the link of your choice to check out the freshness.

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Foxy spent the night in a bad mood, for which his own arse-headedness was only partly to blame. Cards had just not been a good idea. On the rare occasion that they played back at the pizzeria, whichever pizzeria that was, Freddy was always dealer (and, coincidentally, always won). His absence now cast a gloom over the good time they were supposed to be having. They didn’t fight, exactly, but there was some bickering over rules, sore losers and sore winners, and a lot of silence.

The quiet made it possible to listen through the thin walls that separated Yoshi’s workshop from the office where Ana thrashed and moaned in her sleep. Foxy was no expert, having only sat up with Ana on two previous occasions, but it didn’t take an expert to know that she was having a bad time of it tonight. Worse than usual? He didn’t know. It seemed to him that she’d done some twitching and mewing the other times, but she hadn’t exactly been sober then either. Maybe it was something to do with the smoking, maybe not. He didn’t know enough about Ana’s sleeping habits—or anyone’s sleeping habits—to have any kind of intelligent opinion on the reasons or wherefores. He only knew it was hard to listen to, and worse even than that was knowing Bon was listening too, and taking it just as hard. Maybe harder. Just like he had some kind of personal stake in the girl’s well-being.

“Just friends, me fuzzy arse,” Foxy muttered and tossed a few bolts in the poker pot.

 

Checking In

I know I’ve been quiet too long lately, and I realize this is exactly the wrong time for someone with a history of health issues to suddenly go dark, so at the risk of making it all about me, let me just start by saying, all’s well at the Smomestead. These are scary times and I am very aware that what we’re going through now will probably end up in history books someday. I know so many people at risk. I’m one of them. My sisters, my father, my friends…It’s a very helpless feeling, when the best line of defense is to wash your hands.

I’m not going to say more about that. I’m not a health professional, am hardly qualified to speak intelligently about any part of this whole ordeal, except for my own experiences, and I’d rather not. All I really want to say is…Please, people, let’s try to stay safe.  Be alert, but not afraid, and take every opportunity to be kind. Now, more than ever, it is so important to be kind.

Okay.

I have a new chapter of my fanfic up at archiveofourown.org and fanfiction.net, and while I know I’ve gotten more and more unreliable about updates lately, I’m going to do better.  I want to use my quarantine-time positively and see if I can figure out how to manage my time like a damn adult, set up a schedule for writing, paint regularly, and what the hell, maybe start an exercise program. I want to see progress come out of this, for me and for all of us.

 

Serial Sickness Continues

I think I may have skipped an upload week. I honestly don’t know. I was sick…and then I got some kind of infection…and after a week of pretty intense medication, I’m finally recovered enough to get sick again, or maybe it’s just allergies? I’ve been doing a lot of spring cleaning at the old Smomestead and that kicks up a lot of dust, mainly because I only clean in the spring. But I’m a bottom line kind of person and the bottom line is, I don’t remember much of February and I kind of want to sleep until March. I would have given this upload a miss and just gone to bed if I wasn’t like 80% sure I already did that once. So here I am! Uploading! On schedule, sort of, maybe?

So once again, there is a new chapter of my fanfic, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones (ugh, I just sat here for a solid thirty seconds trying to remember the name of my own book before giving up and looking at the open document…and now I just forgot where I was going with this…I should really write these posts in the morning. I have all kinds of energy in the morning. I’m like Cinderella, I turn into a zombie at eleven. That’s how Cinderella went, right? Oh yeah! I remember what I was going to say now. Thanks for attending my parenthetical aside. It was a journey), so if you’re reading along, head on over to archiveofourown.org or fanfiction.net and check it out! In the meantime, I have a snippet! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m taking a double-shot of Nyquil and going to bed. See you in a fortnight! Hopefully.

I swear I’m not always sick. Sometimes, I’m injured. Or asleep. But mostly, I’m sick.

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It took nearly an hour just to take all the pictures he insisted on before he was ready to start taking things apart, and then it was her turn to bring momentum to a crashing halt while she impressed upon him the importance of listening for the beep. She didn’t really think she had anything to worry about as far as that went. Technology had advanced considerably over the last fifty years and unlike the men who had disregarded a young Fred Faust’s warnings to follow the protocol before removing hardware they knew nothing about, Yoshi had probably fried a thumb drive in his time. When she told him to listen for the beep, he agreed immediately and his enthusiasm for following that rule did not wane no matter how many times she said it.

The practice run was a dissection of Freddy’s dismembered legs and it was there that Ana began to understand just what a grueling process this was really going to be. Freddy’s left leg was composed of one upper leg bone, two lower leg bones, three joints—hip, knee and ankle—and a foot. How many parts was that, seven? One would think so, but no, because the bones were capped with connecting plates and fasteners, the joints were complex mechanisms in their own rights, and the foot…there had to be a hundred separate parts in the foot alone. Plus, there were pumps acting as muscles, tension springs acting as tendons, numerous sensor pads acting as nerve clusters, separators, contractors, flexors and stabilizers. Each of these components had to be matched to their Toy-sized equivalents, from which the new endoskeletons would be assembled, and those corresponding parts scanned into the system, and even that wasn’t as simple as it sounded, not just because the scanner took for-freaking-ever (although it did), but because Yoshi had to first create a file for each piece, identify all its component materials with his analyzer, get its precise weight and measurements, and then teach the program how that part connected to other parts, and give the program a way to cross-reference the files for those parts, and if they needed auxiliary objects of function, most of which had to be ‘built’ inside the program from their own separate parts, all of which needed to first be scanned in, which meant Yoshi had to create a file…

It was a painstaking process and of course, pains should be taken. This repetitive, brain-melting tedium was what was going to restore her animatronics to their full potential and keep them alive for years to come. One mistake could mean the difference between Freddy Fazbear and Freddy Fazmobile. She was glad to see Yoshi taking it seriously, she just wished he’d take it seriously a little faster.

She suspected he was taking longer than he had to, but if he was trying to impress her with how methodical he could be, she had no one to blame but herself. That she even wanted to blame someone was only a testament to her own mood, which had steadily eroded under the strain of thinking through her headache and steadying her trembling hands, until all she wanted to do was…whatever she had to do to make it stop.

But she didn’t. She was not an alcoholic.

 

 

 

Serial Saturday Updates

So I was right last week…about a lot of things, I’m sure, but specifically, that I was getting sick. So here I am, wrapped in a blanket with a warm dog on my tender tummy, looking like I just woke up, which I did, and let me tell you, after I finish this post, I’m going right back to bed. Me being sick is deeply distressing to my dog, Dobby, who has spent most of her time attempting to comfort me in dog-ways. She brings me her toys, defends me against the cat (who could not care less about me on the best of days and actively wants nothing to do with me when I’m sick), and does her best to heal me according to the ancient dog-wisdom of licking me until the germs are so soggy and disgusted that they leave on their own. Unfortunately, my germs are, like me, too tired to go anywhere. Posting the newest chapter of my FNAF fanfic, Everything is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones is the most productive I’ve been all week and it’s Friday.  But hey, grab your victories wherever you can, right? And I won’t be sick forever. (‘True. Eventually, I’ll die.’ ‘Shut up, brain.’)

Anyway, new chapter. Head on over to archiveofourown.org or fanfiction.net and check it out. See you next fortnight!

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“I’ll go get the others,” Ana said, turning the empty cart around and tucking the restraints up around the handle. “You coming?”

“No, I think I’m going to make a little more space here.”

Ana nodded, but her eyes narrowed. “Okay, so…before I step out, I’m going to say something and I need to hear you say you understand and you agree.”

“I’m listening,” Yoshi said with a quizzical smile.

“Good. I don’t want you touching my toys unless I’m there to watch you do it. You can catalogue the spare parts, work on the new skins, or do whatever voodoo you do on the computers, but unless I am physically present, you keep your hands off my animatronics like they were made of spiders, you got that?”

“I’m sorry…what?”

“You heard me. And I’m aware it’s unreasonable, but this is a hard line and I want to hear you say you’ll toe it or we have no deal. You’re going to have plenty of chances to do something sneaky behind my back, but believe me, I will find out about it and when I do, I will make you very sorry for a very, very short span of time. Do right by me and that will be the only time I ever threaten you,” Ana went on, quietly overriding Yoshi’s startled stammering. “Do me wrong…” She paused, pretending to think while holding his gaze, then affected a little shrug and finished, “Well, that’ll still be the last time, but it’ll end a whole lot worse. You need to ask me what that means?”

Yoshi stared, then slowly raised his hand and said, “Are you being serious right now?”

“Is that your way of telling me I need to convince you before you take me seriously?” Ana put a hand on the nearest worktable, close to, but not quite touching, a large screwdriver. “Because we can do that.”

“No! I just…um…want to make sure you’re not messing with me, because…you know…people mess with me a lot. And I can take a joke! If it’s a joke.”

“It’s not. These guys are special to me,” she said, looking over at Bonnie. “If I seem like a bitch right now, it’s only because they are so important to me. Shit happens and most of the time, I can be very sympathetic toward the author of the unintended fuck-up, but where these guys are concerned—” She shifted her gaze from Bonnie to Yoshi, giving him the full force of her icy blue stare. “—I have no chill at all.”

Serial Saturday Updates

Today has been…one of those days. A drop-your-coffee, trip-over-the-dog, everything-hurts-and-I-think-I’m-getting-sick kind of day. The kind of day where you spend damn near an hour meal prepping soup ingredients and then drop all over the kitchen floor that you haven’t swept or mopped in what I’m going to say is at least a week, but we all know at most it’s a whole lot longer. The kind of day where you spend four hours typing on your book and then Word shuts off for NO APPARENT REASON and you lose everything you did. The kind of day where you just have to take a Sims break and your stupid Sim goes to his final exam in his athletic wear and a cold snap moves in and HE FREEZES TO DEATH INSIDE THE STUPID EXAM BUILDING BEFORE YOU EVEN HAVE A CHANCE TO CHANGE HIS CLOTHES!!! The kind of day where you have to force yourself to walk to dog and you feel guilty about how little you want to do it because she’s so excited, and in fact her excitement leads her to bounce all around you in the yard and you trip over her for the second time that day and go down like an AT-AT on Hoth.

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So it’s been a day, is what I think I’m trying to say, but even if I accomplished literally nothing else (less than nothing, actually, but I have to redo all the stuff that I did and dropped/spilled/vanished into the void because Word hates me), I remembered it was Upload Night. So here is a new chapter of my FNAF fanfic, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones, in which things are not going well for our heroes either. Hop on over to archiveofourown.org or fanfiction.net and check it out! I’m going to bed early, because there’s still an hour left in this day and I don’t want to know how much more worse it can get.

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Bonnie had never really travelled anywhere before, but this wasn’t what he thought travelling would be like. It wasn’t supposed to be a joyride, he knew that. And being trapped in a box not much bigger than the Vault where they were stored between pizzerias wasn’t the start of what anyone would call a fun time. Still, he was finally seeing some of the real world beyond what Ana called the Edge of Nowhere and he wanted to enjoy some of it, because that was sure never going to happen again.

Ana had cut little slots in the side of the truck so they could see outside, making sure that they all had one directly behind them on the benches, so they didn’t have to get out of their restraints when the truck was moving. Although Bonnie appreciated the gesture, he didn’t use his very much and whenever he did, what he saw didn’t look a whole lot different from what he’d been looking at all his life. The snowy mountain (with all its curvy roads on the outside of the truck and Foxy barfing up his boots on the inside) had some different trees and some soft blues and greens that were interesting for a while, but then they came right back down into the same dull red desert he thought they’d left behind in Mammon.

In fact, Chica was the only one who got any real use out of the little windows. She spent the whole trip peeking out and exclaiming over what she saw, oblivious to the complete lack of excitement from the rest of them. Foxy spent the whole time either puking or trying not to before Ana shut him off, and Freddy was so deep in his own head that he might as well have been shut off, too. Bonnie tried to fake some enthusiasm whenever Chica gushed over whatever stupid landmark caught her eye outside, but his thoughts, as always, were with Ana.

After the last stop, she said it would be another hour before they got to Yoshi’s place. Bonnie’s internal clock had popped up in the corner of his vision when the restaurant ‘opened,’ and she was right: Exactly sixty minutes after she started driving again, Chica said, “I think I see it. MechaTech, right?”

“I don’t remember, but that sounds familiar.”

“She’s slowing down,” Chica said, fingertips nervously tapping at the wall of the truck as she peered outside. “This is it.”

Freddy roused himself out of his funk when the truck turned off the paved road onto an uneven gravel drive and looked out the window behind him for the first time on the whole trip. “I’m on the wrong side, I think,” he said. “What does it look like?”

“Um…well…there’s a building,” Chica said dubiously.

Bonnie unbuckled himself and got up.

“What are you doing?” Freddy said sharply. “Wait for the truck to stop! You’ll fall!”

“Relax, we’re going, like, a tenth of a mile an hour. Aaaand we’re stopped.” Bonnie pushed Foxy’s body off to one side so he could use the window behind him. “There is a building,” he confirmed. “And a house. They both look kind of sketchy to me.”

2020 Begins and Serial Saturday Continues

No, I haven’t forgotten about…

 

Oh, hang on. First of all, let me say thank you to everyone who has sent me a welcome-back, get-well, merry-Christmas or Happy-New-Year. I wish I could have responded to each and every one of them, but…I know it sounds like an excuse, but I’m just so damn tired. I read them all, though, and each one made me smile. There have been days when even that ticks my energy bar down, so I’m sorry I couldn’t write you all the personal thanks you all deserved.

Secondly, no, I haven’t forgotten about my Road Trip Adventures here, and I know I’m now TWO months behind in documenting it….

Wow. Two months.

I feel like it’s only been a couple weeks, and I’ve slept through most of it, which is weird, because if anything, I’m sleeping LESS than ever before. What I’m doing is more like sleep-waking through my days. I’m okay. Sutures closed, everything healing better than I had any right to expect, but I’m…just…so…tired. Not sleepy. Tired. And I’m learning that there’s a huge difference. Then the holidays came around, with all that comes with it, and while I had a great Christmas with my family, it took a toll. They told me the road to recovery was going to be measured in months, but I really thought when the pain was behind me that I would bounce back, and that hasn’t happened. It will, but it’s taking it’s own sweet time, and in the meantime, I have to pick and choose what I do with my limited energy. So you will see more of Cupcake, just please understand why it’s taking so much longer than I planned/promised.

However, I do have another chapter of my fanfiction ready for reading (I hope. Because that’s the worst part of the fog that’s eclipsed my brain these days–finding words is so much harder, and that’s coming from someone for whom finding words has NEVER been hard). I think last week was actually when it was due to go up, but…yeah. I don’t even remember last Friday being a thing that happened. It’s a short chapter, but only because, once again, it was originally over 30 pages long and I had to break it down. This is just where it broke best, in terms of the flow of the story. And we’re coming close to the end of this book, after which there will only be one more and then I come to the end of this series. I’ll miss it. I’ve had more fun writing this than I’ve had writing anything in a long time, just because there’s absolutely no pressure to make it saleable. It’s dark, darker than anything I’ve ever written, and it’s got an undeniably goofy-looking cast of characters, but I can honestly say I’m proud of it, and as excited as I am to start the next project, there’s still a part of me that’s sorry to leave Scott Cawthon’s sandbox and return to my own backyard.

Anyway, the next chapter is up, so if you’re reading Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones, head on over to archiveofourown.org or fanfiction.net and check it out! I promise I’ll try to update Cupcake’s Road Trip Adventures before the next chapter is due…and hey, Ana’s on a Road Trip, too! Must be Fate. With a capital F.

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Ana’s GPS had promised the drive was less than three hours, so Ana planned for four, but at the three-hour mark, she was still in Utah. Away from Mammon, city-traffic was full of commuters who were all convinced they were going to heaven and didn’t mind who they took with them. Exits were closed. Detours were confusingly marked, if at all. Ana had years of experience driving in Los Angeles, but she’d gotten too damn used to Mammon’s empty streets and relaxed atmosphere. By the time the first hour was behind her, she had a splitting stress headache on top of everything else.

Even if the highway had been empty, she would have been late. As much as she wanted to get there, this was a heavily-loaded unfamiliar truck on unfamiliar roads in heavy rain. She took it slow, stayed alert and drove defensively, but no matter what she did, it could never be careful enough to appease the nervous bear in the back. Anytime she changed lanes or had to brake suddenly to avoid hitting some other jackhat, or hell, if the road itself just curved a little too much, she could expect a knock on the cab window, followed by Bonnie’s increasingly long-suffering voice passing on Freddy’s request that they stop somewhere because ‘she’ needed a break.

She tried not to let herself get too impatient with him, she really did. She understood that this was his first road trip, since he’d been shut down for transport in the past (something she came to appreciate more and more as these delays stacked up). He was making a hell of an effort here and the least she could do was meet him halfway, so yeah, she pulled over at a lot of scenic turnouts and read a lot of historical markers through the viewing holes as Chica exclaimed excitedly over everything she saw.

But it was easy to be sympathetic for the first two or three stops. After five or six, sympathy was in short supply. With eight came annoyance and by the tenth, she was just trying not to swear at him.

At last she came to the mountains, where the storm that had been following her since leaving Mammon turned to flurries of snow and sheeting ice, and the next time that knock came on the window behind her, she told Bonnie flatly that she was not going to stop in the pass and to quit asking or so help her God, she’d go right off the edge of one of these narrow winding roads and plummet a thousand feet down a steep icy slope and explode on the rocks at the bottom. She needed her goddamn concentration for other things, so they’d better find their fucking happy places and leave her the fuck alone.

“You heard her,” she heard Bonnie say in a tone that made it plain he had reached his limit with this shit, too. “Just deal with it.”

Serial Saturday Updates At Last!

I really didn’t mean to leave it this long, folks. On the flip side of that coin, I could have easily left it another month. I cannot believe how tired I STILL am, more than a month after the surgery (which went very well, let me repeat, and I have every expectation that this improvement will continue!).  I’m not sleeping more than usual; it’s not that kind of tired. It’s more like the Sims, when you have a cheap bed and just kind of slump around with an orange plumbob above your head, groaning and complaining and drinking coffee. It’s not really a serious issue, is what I think I’m saying. More of a moodlet.

Anyway, I had every intention of letting this week’s update slide, because I know you all will wait for it…and this is a good place to say a giant thank you to all of you. I’ve had nothing but well-wishing and positive vibes, not a single even slightly negative jab at when the next chapter/book is coming, and statistically speaking, that’s amazing. So I knew I could wait on it, but I also wanted to show my appreciation for all your patience, so I kind of brute-forced my way through this fog that’s settled on my brain. It’s a long chapter, like…L O N G…but I really couldn’t do anything about that. Which is to say, I tried to see where I could split it in half, but at this point, my plumbob is bright red and all I managed to do was stare at the document and then wonder what I was doing and eventually, I wandered off and made toast. I figure my readers would forgive my excesses. Heck, it’s not the longest chapter I’ve ever written (it’s a little sad that that’s true).

So here we go, the next mega-chapter of my FNAF fanfiction, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones. You can find it at archiveofourown.org or fanfiction.net, whichever platform you prefer. And here’s an appetizer! Let’s hope the main course is meaty enough to keep you full for a while, because I can’t promise to be back on schedule yet. But I’m trying.

Road Trip Diaries Part III

November 2

I am not an early riser, but I am a bundle of nerves and sleeping in a strange bed, so I wake up before dawn to find I’m still the last one up. My sister has been up for hours and typing away on her latest book while Cupcake quietly reads.

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What’s he got there, you might well ask? My copy of Weird Texas. And he’s just been introduced to the legend of the Goatman’s bridge. It just so happens that we’re not that damn far from it, and with nothing else to do and no good reason to hang around an uncomfortable hotel room if we’re not sleeping, we load up and roll on over to have a look. Sadly, but not surprisingly, we can’t see much because it’s still before dawn. Which is too bad, because by daylight (and when not being chased by goatmen, one presumes) it’s quite pretty.

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We drive up and down the dark road a couple times making bleating noises out the window, but do not succeed in luring out the Goatman, which is probably for the best, since I’ve got somewhere important to be in a couple days and do not have time for romantic shenanigans. We move on, but only as far as the nearest IHOP, so we can fuel up on coffee and make terrible life choices.

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There’s an avocado on my omelette. That means it’s healthy, right?

we get our first look at the legendary scenic beauty that Texas has to offer.

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Eventually, we encounter signs of human existence again, where Cupcake spots a truly epic travel center called Buc-ee’s. It’s early yet and for a change, I don’t really need a break, so I try to talk him out of stopping, but come on, who can say no to that face?

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I really should have said no to that face.

Buc-ee’s is the devil, ya’ll. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. That place was HUGE and even so, it managed somehow to be even bigger on the inside. They had aisles and aisles of stuff, all laid out in every direction so that if you were dumb enough to wander into the cheesy poof area, it was impossible to leave without stumbling through a delicious selection of bottled preserves, sarcastic hoodies and regional cookbooks first. And the aisles were taller than I was, so my only navigational aides were the helpful signs hanging down from the ceiling, only none of them pointed at the exit or even at the checkout, but just directed you deeper into Buc-ees. This way to Postcard Peninsula (watch out for Shot Glass Shoals!). That way to Scented Candle Canyon! Oh, you’ve gone too far and stumbled into Toy Town! Get out before the motion-activated Christmas carolers see you, but beware the Diet-Demons of the Deli Counter!

Kitchy tourist crap was all around me. Was it heaven? Was it hell? I don’t even know. It was a damn labyrinth is what it was, only instead of a sexy minotaur at the center, they had a fudge counter the size of my living room. Yes, I bought some.

It felt like hours later before we finally stumbled out into the sunlight and escaped. We drove on, but not much further because as it happened, we were fairly close to my next planned stop: Aurora Cemetery. Now, I like cemeteries, as I’ve said, but I had a special reason for wanting to visit this one.

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If you didn’t catch that in the words floating around Cupcake’s head, Aurora was allegedly the site of an alien encounter, in which a ship ‘not of this world’ fell out of the sky, smashed through a windmill, and crashed on Earth. The incident supposedly occurred on April 17, 1897 (and was reported in The Dallas Morning News two days later), and the ‘pilot’ of the ship was said not to have survived the crash. Displaying some of that pragmatic pioneering spirit the settlers of the day were known for, the local townsfolk gave the deceased a Christian burial somewhere in the cemetery, then dumped the wreckage of the ship down a well, which was sealed up about fifty years later.

Is there an alien buried in Aurora Cemetery? Or is the story a hundred-year-old hoax? Who cares? It’s an awesome story and the understated way in which the incident is mentioned on the historical marker is delightful to me. There wasn’t anything else to see, but it made a great hors d’oeuvre as we drove on through the majestic scenery toward the main course…

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We’re going to Roswell, baby.

 

 

Road Trip Diaries Part II

It was my intention to do each day as its own diary entry, but you know how it is. I took more pictures on some days than others, plus I got distracted last night and then just plumb forgot I was doing a thing until I had no energy left to finish. Did you know it took actual physical energy to blog? Neither did I until I had this last surgery. I’m learning all sorts of things about my body now, mostly about how petty-minded and resentful it apparently is. Anyhoo, I came back to the computer to discover my unfinished post and had a choice between finishing it right there, which seemed impossible, or finishing it today, which seemed demoralizing as that was literally the ONE thing on my To-Do list yesterday, or publishing it incomplete, and we all know what I went with.

I don’t even know why I’m telling you any of this. I could say anything at all about what day certain pics were taken and you’d have no way of fact-checking me. And even if you did, I’m a pathological liar for a living. I could be convincing. But I’d always know the truth and there’s nothing sadder than someone who has to lie in their own diary.

Anyhoo, moving on. Still November 1

We made a couple of stops that first morning, mostly at gas stations just long enough to stretch our legs and refill our thermoses, so by the time we reached our first checkpoint, I was so ready to get out and really walk around. Those who know me will probably not be surprised to learn that all of my planned stops along our route were of the…less conventional variety, and if you don’t know me, this should serve as a fun introduction to the kind of person I am.

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This, as you can probably read, is the grave of Elmer McCurdy. You can read more about this extraordinarily mediocre outlaw’s life by clicking that link, but of course, the real legend begins after the poor guy died. After getting shot down by the law following a botched train robbery, McCurdy’s body was taken to the local undertaker for embalming, where it went unclaimed. As was the custom in those good ol’ days, without loved ones to object to the mistreatment of a corpse, the undertaker put it on display and charged the law-abiding folks a nickel apiece to see the Bandit That Wouldn’t Die. FIVE YEARS LATER, a man claiming to be McCurdy’s brother showed up and took possession of the corpse (I like to imagine he did so with a few nasty words to the undertaker about the immorality of commercializing a body that ought to be laid to rest with Christian forgiveness and love), then took it with him to San Francisco and put it on display himself, for, PLOT TWIST, he was NOT McCurdy’s brother at all, but one of a pair of con artists attached to a traveling carnival. After SIX MORE YEARS of exhibiting the “Embalmed Bandit”, the corpse was sold to another carnival. Six years after that, it was sold again…and again…and again…

By this time, as one can well imagine, the corpse no longer looked very lifelike, but it continued to make the rounds as a horror prop until it ended up hanging in the funhouse at The Pike, an amusement park in Long Beach, California. During the filming of an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, the ‘fake mummy’ was moved, only to have its arm break off in handling, revealing human bones. A lengthy investigation followed, ultimately revealing the particulars of McCurdy’s amazingly well-traveled afterlife. It’s the sort of story that almost certainly would have led to more exhibitions, but fortunately, more socially-conscious heads prevailed, and McCurdy was sent on his last adventure and laid to rest in the Boot Hill section of the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma…under half a ton of concrete.

I first read about McCurdy in my Big Book of Death and visiting his grave to pay my respects has been on my bucket list ever since. Plus, cemeteries are just good places to walk around. Quiet, peaceful…and the really old ones like Summit View have some beautiful old monuments. There are some interesting, hilarious and heart-breaking stories written between the lines of the epitaphs.

We left Summit View well-rested and in good spirits (my sister had never heard of Elmer McCurdy; she thought I was referencing an episode of CSI when I told her about him) and traveled on to our second and last major stop for the day:

 

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The Museum of Osteology

The building is out on the edge of town, not easy to find but real easy to drive past even while earnestly looking for it. Makes a person grateful for GPS navigational systems, because if I just had an address and a map like in the good old days, I’d have probably given up. Fortunately, we’ve been conditioned to mindlessly obey when a robotic voice tells us to turn, so we did, and we found it! The lady behind the desk assured me I could take all the pictures I wanted, and boy, did I! I’m not going to put all of them here, but I want you to know that it was almost physically painful to have to choose just a few of them to represent the sheer awesomeness that is inside that unassuming brick building. If you have an interest in skeletons or want to see flesh-eating beetles in action–

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Who doesn’t, am I right?

–or just like the smell of bones in a purely platonic way, you have got to visit this place. I had a blast, and Cupcake had so much fun that he jumped out of his carrier and nearly got left behind. He’d have gone on to have his own epic adventures, I’m sure, but I’d have been devastated, so I’m glad I found him right away.

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Ha, classic Cupcake! He has the enthusiasm and energy of a toddler, always climbing on stuff and hopping away from the group.

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Cupcake, posing with the Rules For Safety.

The second-coolest thing about the Museum of Osteology is how they pose the skeletons, so that they seem to be enjoying the same activities they did in life. The monkeys are climbing on branches and peering curiously out at the viewers. Birds are perching. The otter is swimming. The raccoon is digging through trash. Honestly, the museum is not all THAT big, but we spent an easy two hours there, just taking it all in.

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Speaking of taking it all in, Cupcake and I are so mature, we were able to stop giggling long enough to get this picture.

We left the museum with a bag of souvenirs and drove directly to a restaurant called Mama Lou’s for our only sit-down meal of the day (We had healthy homemade snacks in the car, I promise).  My sister had soup and a sandwich, and Cupcake and I split the mushroom swiss burger. I was too tired to eat much, but it was really good food, and I highly recommend them.

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Then it was back in the car and on down the road for another hour or two, just over the border into Texas, to our last stop of the first day: a motel.

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Cupcake was asleep as soon as his frosting hit the pillow. I managed to stay awake long enough to snap this pic, and then I joined him. It was a big, big day, but a fun one, and I finally got that omen-souvenir at the Museum of Osteology, an awesome little magnet with a bone on it that says It’s Going Tibia Okay. It’s hanging on my fridge now that I’m home, where I see it each and every day, and so far, it hasn’t failed to make me smile yet.