So I'm not gonna say much.
I spent time mostly unwinding today, soooo no blog. Not really.

...So I'm going to be rather busy in the next couple of days. I'll be doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Lots of stuff essentially. I don't have a coherent agenda and I can't coherently say things here but, well. Work tomorrow means me not having much time so gonna make an entry and take care of stuff and go to bed.

As much as you can when your parents are out of state. (They're coming home tomorrow, but that's a good thing, since I imagine they can't mess with my plans for tomorrow. Or, well, later today.) Which in this case...was us three siblings only. Our limited palette consisted of pancakes, pancakes, and...pancakes, because that's literally all we had left which was dinner-meal-worthy.

We marathoned through the rest of Bungo Stray Dogs, at the very least, and tried browsing to find any other anime worth watching. My brother asked me if my TVTropes browsing ever brings me to good anime to watch. The answer is both a yes and a no, in that it brings me to anime I would watch, and yet I am reasonably certain they would not.

...Mainly because my standards for anime are much, much, much, much lower and you could probably put absolute garbage-tier anime on and I'd find a way to tolerate it. I'm good at finding the better aspects of shows, most of the time. Plus, even if I weren't, I figure that if someone wants to show me sometime then I can at least make comments while watching it with them. (Win-win.) Something we don't really do when we watch things as a family, sooooo...again. Nothing THEY would watch even if I would.

Ah well.

I think that's about everything to say, so I should be getting to bed soon.

My parents have been gone for well over a week at this point. Now there are some things that we kids (by which I mean, mostly my sister) can handle in the house on our own. But we can't handle everything. Or at least, we really really really don't want to.

But right now it's increasingly looking like we might be forced to.
I ran out of my fiber supplement as of tonight. I may be able to locate a replacement if we have some in the house. Even if not, while perhaps not as rich of a source I can find ways to get fiber in my diet. (In fact I already have done so by largely switching to a cereal-based diet.)

...But we're also low on other essentials. Orange juice. Milk, down to our last container. Bread. And so on and so forth. Things which might require...gasp...SHOPPING in order to fix. Us. Kids. Shopping. Or doing the lazy bachelor route and learning to live without these things by simply adapting to go without.

In that regard, not having parents around kinda sucks.

​But oh well, we'll manage.

...But then I forgot. WELP. Oh well. I guess I'll have to do a nothingness blog for the day. Ah well. What can you do. It is what it is.

Last night I lost my ring. I know the exact area it fell off in, I just can't find it. Funnily enough, this is the second ring I've lost to the folds of my computer area. WELP.

This isn't anyone's fault. Nothing recent triggered it. I don't think it was even the death of my grandfather. Rather, it was just me not noticing until today and putting the pieces together. Basically, several signs and symptoms were there. I've had a lowered appetite. It's gotten to the point where when I get up I don't feel like I can eat--it takes a couple of hours before I feel like I can stomach food. And this is a couple of hours after I actually am in fact out of bed.

Because when I say "get up", I mean "get out of bed", not "wake up". I'm waking up, then going back to sleep. To some extent, this can be attributed to me wanting to retreat inside the dreams. (Inside the dreams, the closest I had to drama was a farmboy/farmgirl protagonist that could talk to animals ranting at a Cruella DeVille lookalike that was part of a corporate conglomerate who had accidentally slain a couple of animals during a tour and was rather callous about it.)

I just. Have felt a desire to retreat within the dream world and not face the reality, not face the world and wake up. I've been sleepy easily no matter how much rest I've gotten. I've slept for hours more than I should, then extra hours. I've been feeling incredibly lonely, needy, and yet also a mess. A bunch of stuff jumbled together. Basically I'm not exactly in a good condition.

And it took me until today to realize, but this has to have been going on for quite a while.

You win some, you lose some.
And this is one I am most definitely losing.
​Not much I can do other than weather the storm.

There was bound to be interesting stuff happening. So...the day started with me bringing my stuff back which I had taken out. (Well, the essentials, anyway.) When I entered, I was blown away at how different everything looked. In my four years of employment, the pool and surrounding area has never looked this clean before.

It was weird and a little bit of cognitive dissonance. Never before have I seen such a mixture of shiny new and worn-down old in the same location, with everything cleaned and polished and lots of older stuff replaced with newer things but some things being impossible to hide their age even after a cleaning.

Buuuuuuut, overall the pool was a much better environment, and our staff room is also neater and more efficient with more space available and instead of lockers we have bins which're actually much bigger than the lockers ever were and have the advantage of being easily removed.

It was a whole lot of good stuff, so the reorientation went well I think. Of course, there was a slight oversight. Inevitable given this was my first week back and I was bound to forget something. In this case, my lifeguarding shirt. Buuuuut, since I was bringing my stuff back, that meant instead of depositing my gear I got to wear my gear.

Specifically, two of the items I bought earlier. The V-neck was wonderful, and it was light as could be. Unfortunately, while it is a staff shirt it's not a lifeguarding shirt, so over it I had to wear my hoodie, which is a bit bulkier and heavier, but with some adjustments, was livable. I got to break them in, and when my shift ended, put them in my bin when I changed back into my civilian attire.

Soyeah, that was work. I thought of a fair amount at work, but the thing which most stuck out? One of my mega-universes, Mythe. You'd recognize it as being a setting which I largely imported into Red Hood Rider. You may also recall it started out as a setting which was basically ripping off Artix Entertainment just with my own little touches added here and there. (And every story within has absolutely terrible writing.)

But one of my favorite stories in that setting, the climatic final book of that universe that I have dreamt up anyway, is what I worked on a little bit today. The plot can be summarized as, essentially, this: a gathering of all the greatest at everything has been called, intent on answering a grim threat. And by greatest at everything, we mean everything. Every fantasy job, every fantasy race (that is on the heroes' side at least), and every fantasy class (that is on the heroes' side at least), sending representatives to a council meeting.

The protagonist, a necromancer and ruler of a land, was obviously not invited since he of course is evil to the core--but with the right half-truths and taking advantage of the better parts of good-aligned people (namely, he can't hide the land he is from but he can chastise anyone for assuming him originating from a land ruled by an evil overlord necromancer--him, but they don't know that--would mean he'd be evil, when it is quite correct that people anywhere can be good or evil him included), he manages to get to the meeting anyway.

He attended more out of curiosity than anything else, but when the nature of the gathering was revealed, he was forced to volunteer with these best of everythings thanks to a common interest: a threat capable of destroying the world was well on its way to doing exactly that. Our villain protagonist is evil--not stupid. He knows that promises of mercy, of living if aligning with that foe, are empty because he lives on the planet they are trying to destroy, and has a rather vested interest in avoiding death. (Basically he has a grudge against death thanks to meeting death as a young man when everyone he knew was killed yet death refusing to take him too.)

A potentially incomplete list of all the attending abilities/traits:
-Fighter
-Warrior
-Soldier
-Guard
-Defender
-Guardian
-Knight
-Samurai
-Berserker/Barbarian
-Valkyrie/Viking
-Lancer
-Duelist (mixture of both pistols and blades, the latter which is also called a Fencer)
-Gladiator
-Martial Artist
-Monk
-Cleric
-Paladin
-Crusader
-Battle Mage
-Spellblader (part of what the protagonist is pretending to be)
-Weaponmaster
-Rogue
-Gambler
-Trapmaster
-Trickster
-Scout
-Bandit
-Pirate
-Thief
-Assassin
-Ninja/Shinobi
-Reaper/Reaver
-Archer
-Ranger
-Hunter
-Woodsman
-Arbalester
-Sniper (bow)
-Sniper (gun)
-Gunslinger
-Musketeer
-Merchant (is actually a class, yes)
-Mercenary (is actually a class, yes)
-Elemancer (can use magic of all eight elements but is limited to exclusively those)
-Pyromancer (the main thing the protagonist is pretending to be)
-Cryomancer
-(I need to look up the appropriate word for Energy)mancer
-Geomancer
-Aeromancer
-(I also need to look up an appropriate word for Light)mancer
-Shadowmancer
​-Necromancer (what our protagonist actually is but not something which is supposed to be known)
-Technomancer
-Telekinetic
-Mage
-Wizard
​-Warlock
-Witch
-Sorcerer
-Sage
-Druid
-Shaman
​-Summoner/Conjurer
​-Beast master/tamer
-Dragon master/rider/tamer/lord
-Telepath (Illusions/Hypnosis)
-Psychic
-Mirror (copies stuff, aka Mime/Blue Mage etc but Mirror is my name for it)
-Priest
-Healer
-White Mage
-Acolyte/Zealot
​-Incanter/Invoker
-Bard
-Dragonslayer
-Nightslayer (Vampire Hunter/Lycan Hunter, and similar)
-Witch hunter
-Shapeshifter
-Scholar
-Adventurer
-Caster (special class I made up)
-Ichoromancer (blood master)
-Creator (special class I made up)
-Scribe (profession)
-Blacksmith (profession)
-Accountant (profession)
-Historian/Librarian (profession)
-Runesmith (just assume profession until told otherwise)
-Alchemist
-Engineer
-Barber
-Archeologist
-Astrologer
-Diplomat
-Herbalist
-Miner
-Cook
-A vampire (well actually, half-vampire)
-A werewolf (well actually, half-werewolf)
-A dragon
-An elf
-Maybe a dwarf?
-Maybe an orc?

...The thing is. I'm not writing just about 100 characters to be on the heroes' side. I'm aiming more for 30-50: a notably large group, but a still passably small group. As a result. Multiples are possible, as in, one person being both the best vampire and the best of something else. And our protagonist--while specializing in necromancy--genuinely is a skilled pyromancer and can use it effectively in spellbladery, meaning he's both of those (secretly all three), for an example.

Another is that the telekinetic specialist isn't actually having their first specialist as telekinesis. They're firstly a cook. They use their telekinesis to effectively provide meals for an entire army singlehandedly, something impossible for anyone with anything less than absolute mastery of telekinesis.

So basically I want to eventually figure out the logistics of who specializes in what. I already know many of the main characters. The ichoromancer is a star in one of my other stories along-side the dhamphir. The lycan is also the caster and is a star in one of my other stories. Part of being a caster (which is similar to necromancy) is being tied to a partner and his partner is the best in one of the melee classes if not more than one. A few others were defined as well.

But I didn't get to narrow it down as much as I'd like. I did do a few things, such as the scholar being the bard as well and also being a scribe/accountant/historian/librarian (one of the most diverse skill sets), but for the most part these things are left blank right now even though they shouldn't be blanks.

...Oh and yes I actually can waste hours on research here especially with...distractions. I got pretty thorough but I'm pretty sure I could find more which I didn't consider duplicates or unusable if I did a little more digging than I've already done. Because, uh. Yeah. This only scratched the surface.

I love the setting and I like the story. Would require a massive rewrite to be usable but it's doable. The protagonist is one of my favorite creations of all time for good reason. (I wish I could explain more of the setting/world but I'm drawing blanks on what to say.) Good reason I imported him over into Red Hood Rider. (Admittedly he only gets a couple of cameos and references outside of the cameos but he's important all the same.)

On the very loosest of loose bases, in fact. The story that he appears in is thousand-year-old backstory for Red Hood Rider, in that events in his original source material of Mythe which his story was telling...have a very similar analogue in the Rubyverse's backstory. The funniest thing is, that wasn't even planned! It was just a funny coincidence. So in that regard, you could kinda sorta consider Red Hood Rider to be the sequel to this guy's story if not for the fact that it's in a different universe altogether. (The Mythe universe was imported into the Rubyverse, meaning that most things in Mythe happened in the Rubyverse, but vice-versa is not true in that nothing in the Rubyverse happens in Mythe unless it was originally from Mythe in the first place.)

So, in a sense, I could be said to be writing a prequel right now which also serves as a sequel to some of my other stories! Confused yet? I know I sure am!

So I do apologize if I am a bit scatterbrained here. Speaking of apologies, I owe one for putting all three entries for yesterday in...well, a single entry. I was a bit worried that they wouldn't show up in chronological order if I published them separately. Plus, this being my laptop I was publishing them on (I've since switched to my desktop), I didn't want to take the extra time two extra entries would necessitate.

But anyway. We did in fact get up reasonably early, at like 7 AM. To our surprise, our mom had cooked us all a hearty breakfast. As in, not just a little, but a lot. A big, big breakfast. In my case? Aside from the standard coffee, three eggs (done perfectly, too!), two pieces of toast (albeit not buttered and a bit burnt but oh well), bacon, and sausage.

I only had room for one piece of bacon and one sausage, but boy did I want more than that. I had as much as I felt I could eat without being at risk of vomiting. I'm a little bit sad that physically I can't eat as much as I want (and as much as I want likely translates directly into being exactly how much I actually need), but I still had a much bigger breakfast than normal (normally I'm given three burnt eggs that are somewhat putrid to the point where I'll maybe on a good day eat two of the yolks and nothing more because the rest is inedible), enough where we didn't need to stop for lunch.

Hmm...while I'm pretty sure that there's more memorable about the trip than this, the only other thing I can think about is that in our standard sibling bet for arrival time, I lost by literally 30 seconds. My older sister bet 4:15. I bet 4:22. Splitting the difference, an arrival time past 4:18:30 would mean I won. (If operating by the minute rather than by the second, then I lost by a minute.) But we arrived at exactly 4:18, no seconds attached.

This being arrival time at my brother's place, of course. From there, we started driving home. My younger sister, the driver, insisted she was heading south when my older sister asked why she was heading the northern route. She soon was proven wrong, when it was indeed shown we were taking the northern route. (Which is probably a longer drive, though honestly not by much. 35-45 minutes, versus 30-40 minutes I think.) That got us home at basically dead-on 5.

There was one other thing I did during the trip though.
I wrote a song.
This particular song, I had essentially the idea of "cram as many innuendos in from gaming as possible", more or less. It's probably not that unique as a result. Especially since I made it without internet access so I didn't exactly have an on-hand list of terms used in gaming, which would have allowed me to have much greater creativity. Ah well. I hope you still find Level-Up hilarious:

Hey, you and I make a great team
With your black hole and my white beam
I can be buffed to go fast
And with you we can have a blast

I'm telling you you'll never need a priest
Not when you have my hands' touch healing
With practice I'm sure our skills are mad
You and I have what the other lacks

Let's grind together,
Keep going 'til we're slain
Experience makes us better
All the things we will rake

Let's grind together,
Keep going 'til we're slain
Experience makes us better
All the things we will rake

Friendly fire, you hit me with lightning
No worries took a potion for my HP
We'll drink such fluids as much as we can
Having fun like that is part of my plan

You've spent your mana and are bleeding
I've got a healing shiv so hold still please
Our partnership is the best in the land (originally I had "Our partnership is meant to last" but I like this better)
Level up with me and never look back

Let's grind together,
Keep going 'til we're slain
Experience makes us better
All the things we will rake

Let's grind together,
Keep going 'til we're slain
Experience makes us better
All the things we will rake

Let's grind together,
Keep going 'til we're slain
Experience makes us better
All the things we will rake

Let's grind together,
Keep going 'til we're slain
Experience makes us better
All the things we will rake

...It's about some healing class player partnering with a more destruction-based player. Right. Yeah. Totally. In no world whatsoever could it possibly just so ever maybe be a guy hitting on a girl.

...If you rolled your eyes at anything here...I've done my job!

I was promised that when I took my shower, it would be warm. I made a ton of prep work for taking a long shower, too. I prepared a bath. I brought a rag to put soap on so that I could clean myself with soap (something I typically don't do normally). I couldn't find shampoo, but I was going to make liberal usage of the conditioner and then let it sit for a while before thoroughly washing it out. (My understanding of conditioner: don't leave it in past the shower; I was told by a professional that's very bad, but don't immediately wash it out; you lose the benefits if you just put it in to immediately be removed.)

It started out promising enough...and then, like a switch, was suddenly gone. It wasn't really gradual, either. It went from scalding-hot-when-on-max to lukewarm-on-max in an instant, and from there, slowly deteriorated to the point where it was essentially "fighting to maintain temperature but losing the battle badly bit by bit", more or less. I was less than pleased by this development. I rushed through the shower, from skipping any hope of shampoo to not using liberal amounts of conditioner (I did use some though, but I didn't cover my entire scalp, just two major areas) to immediately washing it out and so on.

Unlike at home, the bath tub we have here is actually deep enough to have a decent bath in. But unlike at home (where by the time the shower fills it to the top, it's warm water still), this one didn't have time to get warm. It was like a condensed version of a pool in temperature, more or less: I could tell that it was reasonably warm, but it was still well below body temperature, with my own body heat doing more to warm it up than anything else. Body heat, which would slowly over time be lost. Because water conducts heat. (In a small enough environment, this is a blessing, since it means the heat is maintained for longer. In too large a setting, a curse as it is seeped quickly.)

So I didn't even have a chance to have any real post-shower relaxation time. I was hoping--praying--that my time spent in there would allow me to maybe get warm again, or failing that, that I'd be able to at least relax and spend time lost in thought as is my favorite shower pastime. Nnnnnnnope! Just cold. It wasn't severe cold. But it was enough of cold to drive me out.

This came after me having been rather restless during the night. Do you know how, if you're traveling for too long sitting, you can get really, really uncomfortable? Especially on the point of contact your body makes with the seat? (I.e., your butt.) Yes, well...for some reason, I was having that same effect during the night sleeping on my bed I've used for years without trouble. I tried shifting positions multiple times, but shifting to the other side (which is the side I normally sleep on) was for some reason REALLY uncomfortable (worse even than the pain from sleeping on the side I was), sleeping facing up was uncomfortable, and sleeping facing down was murdering my back.

No matter what I did, I wasn't getting a decent rest. No position worked. I at times was for some reason worried about being delicate with things (dream logic may have been in play), but even when I threw caution to the wind and was like "I don't care what this damages, I need to find something comfortable", I...couldn't find anything even remotely comfortable.

My dreams were also strange. Part fantasy, part reality, part mixed timeline, part could-be-real-but-clearly-isn't, all very, very real-feeling at the time. In particular, one part of the dream had me absolutely convinced that we weren't down here for a funeral, but rather a wedding. One attended by square dancers I know rather exclusively. Except for a few local relatives, including my recently-deceased grandfather whose funeral we're here for. He was rather alive in the dream.

It was even using that wording: "Not a funeral, a wedding". As in, at times, there were somehow reminders of reality, and yet in the dream realm they were responded to consistently and adamantly that it was a wedding. I can even vaguely recall the faces of the couple being wed, and yet, they're not someone I can pin down from reality.

Then there was a separate section of the dream involving some hipster eco-terrorist organization I think it was, which had a particular modus operandi: some cheaply-made home explosives for an initial shock that was ultimately harmless, then a minor electronic sabotage (in one case ruining a playstation3 for their intended target) as a warning. Then, later, if their demands wouldn't be met, a much larger and rather lethal traditional explosion would be set off to level the place.

They had a bit of an unusual recruitment policy, born of caution: members don't join the organization by volunteering. That sets off red flags. Rather, instead, they would seek out members such that they would recruit them individually. I was more awake than asleep at this point and was formally woken up before I could explore this further though.

Anyway, I've been warming myself up this last half hour or so (the time it's taken to type this), and now I'm going to finish my prep work for leaving. We leave in half an hour or so, and I need to finish getting dressed and brush my teeth. Probably not in that order. Won't quite take me half an hour (probably ten minutes or so), but it'll take enough time that I want to start now, especially since you never know what I might have to do. Oh, including things like my third hair brushing. (When I take a shower, I brush my hair before, to make sure I don't have a bunch of hair come out in the shower. Then, I do it immediately after the shower, both to help accelerate the drying and to make sure it sets right. The third is a final correction.)

Soyeah. Stuff to do, and I'm gonna do it. Noon now, so a second entry is almost assuredly coming today.

The funeral is a two-part process. The first part: at the funeral home, meeting a bunch of people I don't really know who somehow know/remember me or apologize if they do not, when I have absolutely no recollection of them. Aside from those that I vaguely recall from last year which were the same thing, essentially. People who have some kind of relation to the deceased, be it neighbor or blood, that are important and yet I just have zero ability to retain memories of how.

It also is a time where lots of stuff can be done, in this case including a speech by my dad. It included a fair amount of history, things I somewhat knew and somewhat did not. I knew my grandfather was a fighter pilot in world war two, and that he was shot down over Italy and was stuck in his plane for 24 hours (he rode the plane all the way down). What I didn't know was that his whole squadron was shot down and he was the only survivor, and that the people rescuing him quickly shipped him off because he technically wasn't supposed to be there. (Presumably, shifty orders from above to do something sketchy.)

I also knew he managed an energy plant for the remainder of the war, and was vaguely aware he learned some Arabic from his Arabic subordinates. I even recalled that he learned enough to briefly be appointed a translator until his superiors learned he didn't quite know enough to get by as one. However, details like him being able to listen to a film as recently as two years ago and recognize the Arabic spoken there would not be how a native speaker would phrase it, that I didn't know. Nor did I know that he had survived riots from protesters. (Though, hurtful as it sounds to talk ill of the deceased, I couldn't help but wonder if his experience there was how his racism got transferred onto my dad).

One of the things my dad focused on was that my grandfather put family first and built a strong family which emphasized love, values he passed on. But standing from my perspective, I couldn't help but think that my grandfather, similar to my dad, had a "family as HE sees it" view, in that an outside view would have been punished severely. I did feel bad for thinking of it in that terms, but it's difficult not to.

For all intents and purposes, as far as everyone knows, my dad loves his children. Even he thinks that, and even we acknowledge his love is there and is strong...but with the dark undertone that it wouldn't be there if the truth were exposed. Meaning those outside of his narrow viewpoint of the world live in constant fear of that love NOT being unconditional and turning to hate.

There was lots of mingling and storytelling and sharing of lives and whatnot, which I am very bad at doing in-person. I'm just not good at socializing, which this was largely doing. I wouldn't say I'm the black sheep of the family since that would imply my family is white sheep, nor could I claim the inverse. It'd probably be more apt to say I'm a brown sheep in a flock of gray sheep, in that we are at opposites in many ways, yet neither could be inherently better or worse than the other.

I did reflect a little bit on death during the time I had and more or less came to find I was able to sum my thoughts up there in a neat little thing easily quotable:
Death is a celebration of life. Do not mourn by lamenting loss; instead, rejoice by remembering.

I mean, there's a little bit more to it than that, but that's a fairly laconic method of stating my viewpoint, and it's something which holds true regardless of your viewpoint on subjects such as religion (e.g. thoughts on life after death, thoughts on the meaning of life). Death is an undeniable part of the world, but it is no coincidence that many a fiction writers have written it such that mortality is actually a gift of sorts.

There's many quotes to the same effect on there, even: "What's the point in living if you can't die?". Endless numbers of fictional works have explored this subject to great extents. They've gone on and on and on about it, detailing the nuances there. Anime/manga, Comic books, Western Animation, films, and especially Literature, among many other media which have the subject be a focal point.

And to some extent, they have merit. Living Forever Is Awesome, and make no mistake, I intend to, but failing that. Failing immortality, failing living forever...having a good, long life filled with happy memories is in of itself worthy, even if you leave no visible legacy. Your actions impact others, even if they don't remember them, and while some of said actions will impact things negatively, for the MOST part, even negative actions can cause an overall raise to the happiness of others in the long-run, in any number of unpredictable ways.

I mean, obviously the negative actions in your life you will regret. You will regret the consequences of those actions, too. Even if you know said actions led to better things, you'd still feel bad about them. And factor in how most likely you WON'T know if those things led to better overall lives you're likely to assume they led to worse ones...it adds up to lots and lots of self-misery. And yet. We are human. We can't pretend we're not. We're flawed, we make mistakes, and we try to grow from them but an attempt is no guarantee we succeed.

We fail. Then we fail again, often at the same thing we just failed. And we keep failing and feeling worse about our failures. But sometimes, even if only on chance alone. Those failures end up giving us things we could never have had without them. Failing at being successful, for instance, is probably one of the only reasons why I have two girlfriends I love in the first place. Had I succeeded when I was younger, had I not been a failure, I almost assuredly would have never met either of them. I could never call that a bad thing (the opposite, having two girlfriends to love is the largest blessing I could have), even though to happen it required a lack of a good thing.

Basically, what I'm saying is...a single happy memory of a good time outweighs any number of painful memories of lesser times. And that's what death brings forward. Another often-repeated line is something to the effect of "Do not speak ill of the dead", and I actually think it is for much the same reasons I'm outlining here.

Because death is a celebration of life. While you can acknowledge the dead had shortcomings, disrespecting them, insulting them, is choosing to focus on the negative rather than the positive. It is making an active choice to not celebrate their life, to not give meaning to their positives, to the happiness they have instilled in the world.

I wish I could explain it better than that. But basically, I feel that while we all feel the pain of loss, it's an unavoidable part of life...so instead of focusing on the inevitable, we should make the choice to enjoy all the good things, no matter how big, basic, small, or complex. We can't ignore the existence of the negative. Acknowledging it is a must, since denying it is a really bad idea. But having an active focus on the negative is something I think reinforces it and I don't think that's healthy.

Which is why my mourning doesn't involve tears. (As if I could produce them anyway, but I don't feel sadness.) I do feel loss...but I also feel warmth of the good, of what was nice in life.

I hope I don't sound crazy for this.

...And it's about at this time that I realize I only described the first half. The second half, more private, is at the cemetery, where the body was lowered into the grave. Each sibling placed a rose on one of the three graves we have there. (One for our grandfather, one for our grandmother, and one for our aunt who had been dead since before any of us were born since she died in her teens and was my dad's younger sister).

That's about all I can think about. But, yeah. Today was a bit of a heavy day. I kinda wanted to talk actively with my girlfriends while at the funeral, but I knew it would be bad form to do so. I mean, I kinda sorta did so anyway even knowing I shouldn't, but I couldn't help it. I wanted them. I wanted them a lot. I still want them. I want to talk to them and I want to cuddle with them and to hold them and just be all...close. Where I would be able to feel life instead of death, as it were.

I don't want to be alone. I still feel that way because while I might have family, they don't quite get me.
...Oh, that reminds me. Just before leaving, I was asked if I needed to wear my ridiculously-stupid ring. I took it off, and was asked why I wore it. I told the truth: it's because I like to have an object on my hand to fidget with, and I use the fidget-ring all the time. This is not the whole truth, because I genuinely just like wearing rings. Buuuuuut, I'm pretty sure I'm getting some rings for Christmas now, which will be nice. My first official jewelry! Albeit based on a half-truth, butstill!

Anyway, dinner's done, so I'll be having it. I may or may not make a third entry today, depending on what we do tonight. We leave tomorrow, presumably in the morning, which means packing stuff tonight. I can't wait to get back home again. Because while I don't hate being here...I love being at home because everything I really care about is there, in that there I can contact my friends and girlfriends whereas here I cannot. And that's basically like 90% of my life I can't have. So while the 10% of me I have right now isn't bad...it's still only 10% of me.

The other 90% is all too eagerly awaiting my return. (Or so I hope!)

Mainly because stuff happened! For supper, I had lasagna, which was a gift given to us by some old lady I really don't know the name of. While my dad was eating, I did some artwork. There was a drawing I wanted to make, but I quickly learned I lacked the reference images to make it real and with no internet connection (well, not quite true: dial-up on the local desktop, which would never be able to load the needed images), so I only finished the initial sketch with a promise to do more on it later. (A promise I'll probably forget, but eh, we'll have to see.)

After that, my brother and my younger sister played cards with me. We started out with Crazy 8s (which I won), then transitioned to poker at around 6 or so. I don't know why they chose five-card-stud poker, but they did. As it so happens, I'm pretty good at playing conventional poker. The problem is, I got a harsh reality lesson: my siblings don't bluff. My siblings will call basically anything unafraid, so bluffing doesn't work. Meaning, I couldn't bluff them (what I'm good at), and if they bet, I knew I would be outplayed. Ultimately though, I'd say that putting myself at a chip disadvantage to have that knowledge was useful.

I did manage to adjust, and while for most of the game I wasn't well-off chip-wise, by the battle of luck (since literally no wits were involved as nobody was bluffing ever), I managed to mostly regain my footing. This ended up leading us to a finale where we all went all-in. (That technically shouldn't be possible but oh well.) I had a full house that round and neither of them had anything close to that, but at that point they were ready to throw the game just wanting it to end so...it ended! With me winning. At like...10:30. A full three and a half hours later. A bit monotonous and a drag which started to become more of a chore than fun (which is why it ended when it did), but it had moments making it worth at least mentioning, thus this entry.

We leave tomorrow, and last I heard, the plan was to get up "whenever (my brother) gets up". This may have been said only semi-seriously so I should go out to get an update, but regardless, it's not gonna be late. It will be, at least reasonably close, to early, which means prep work tonight: packing everything. Once again, I have no time limit on this, but unlike at home where I pulled an all-nighter, here with no internet, I'm gonna run out of tasks eventually. So I'll be fully packed tomorrow and I'll be ready to leave quickly, and I'll even get some sleep. Even if it's only 2-4 hours, the rest can be done on the trip.

Soyeah, gonna put my laptop to sleep now. Next entry will be when I've returned!