When to sleep

When do you sleep? When everything is shut off and you force yourself to close your eyes? What about the show that runs inside your head, refusing to remove the last reel, constantly clicking past the last frames? It is time for that to stop.

Go to sleep.

...

I'm sure she won't even notice, and that's the best part.

I'm not sure what to make of the sudden change in me - is it even more apathy? Ambivalence, melancholy, isolation? The fear of fading into obscurity is growing though, with every new person I meet. It is so obvious that we are not destined to be friends, but god damn it, I will make those pieces fit until the whole thing breaks. I cannot be content to give up on a "what could have been" or an "if only" even if it means jeopardizing my own character for someone to like me. Since I feel already lost, why deny myself further indulgence of that feeling?

I cannot make everyone like me. Some people will hate me. Some people will love me. I am not the most beautiful girl in the world. There will always be prettier, skinnier, wealthier, more secure girls than myself. My looks will eventually fade, and all I will have left is the person I've made myself to be. Please do not ever forget this.

Tokyo Disney Sea has longer lines than the DMV on a Saturday.

On our second day in Tokyo I fulfilled a dream of mine. I haven't been to Disney world since I was a kid, and Stefhan has never been, so we made plans to trek over to Tokyo Disney.

Tokyo Disney has two parks, the original Disney Land park and Tokyo Disney Sea. We heard great reviews about Disney Sea, and I went on line and discovered that Ariel is there, I was set. Turns out it is very close to the part of Tokyo where we are staying, and it only took 3 transfers and 30 minutes by metro to arrive. Like all other theme parks in the world, they price gouge you every step of the way. Oh, you thought once you arrive at Maihama you just get to walk in? Nope. Please pay another 4$ each to ride the Mickey mouse monorail. Ok thanks.

I was too hyped up on little girl excitement to be bothered by the long wait to get into the park, and we had fun being stared at by teenagers and children alike. Fucking Ariel man, who CARES.

First stop: photo op. them I dragged Stefhan to the mermaid grotto, where we realized that school is out. And not not just for high school, for almost everyone. Throngs of school girls ( in uniform, so it looked like they were playing hookey) flooded every inch of the park.

We explored, and rode rides, and had a generally great time. Then we noticed that the lines for the popular rides were getting longer. And longer. You can buy these "cut the line" passes, called fast pass on order to skip the 2.5 hour wait for the indiana jones rode, for example. But at some point in the day they suspended the sale of those tickets, and everyone has to wait in he regular line. Journey to he center of the earth ride? 240 minutes. Indiana Jones? 190 minutes. We had resigned to head home, stopping for one last ride on the tower of terror. We are led to a snaking line by an attendant who smiles at us and says "San hyapun ok? 5 hours. "

We look at each other and laugh incredulously. 5. Hours. Of. My. Life.

But i want to go on the ride SO BAD So we wait. And we wait. And we wait five hours, and the ride was Awesome! But not worth 5 hours.

Are you kidding me? Would I ever wait 5 hours for anything? FML.

We laugh and snap a picture of the wait time, which seems to be as entertaining to every other sane person, because we were all laughing at the sign. We're walking away and this man with a family comes up to me and starts asking me, in Japanese if we went on the ride. I told him no, and and he hands me two fast pass tickets. He said he didn't want them but to hurry up because we only have 5 minutes to redeem them!
Either that or he told me I owed him my first born. You know my Japanese isnt that good. We run back to the line and sure enough, cut the whole thing.

We head back to the hotel to change and eat, we were going to go to piss alley in shinjuku that night. Stef's falling asleep and decides to take a nap first. I decide I am too. Should we set an alarm? The question is breached, then immediately dismissed. No thanks. I'm on vacation. We'll wake up in an hour, no problem.

4 hours later. Well shit.

Here's to staying up as late as we can tonight!

In Tokyo!

We are back in Japan, and I'm so excited! We arrived at Narita at 3pm local time, after taking a 14 hour direct flight from Dulles. And you know... My posterior definitely started to feel it at around hour 9. I started to get antsy ass around hour 11, and started taking pictures of myself.

At about hour 11. ugh.

From start to finish, the entire flight was easy. Low stress, on time, no hassles. Except when I picked up my suitcase from the carousel and the zipper had broken open, with all my knits and wovens out in the open. I guess I know what I'm buying before I come home!

ANA food is cold buckwheat noodles, fruit, egg with spinach, and fish.

We checked into our hotel in Akasaka, showered in our futuristic shower (5 different water sources!), and headed downtown to Shibuya in search of a cell phone for Stefhan and food for my grumpy ass. Stef needs to get his alien card registered in Koriyama city before he can sign up for a phone plan, so that was a bust. On to the food plan. The last time we were in Tokyo we found this amazing udon hole-in-the-wall, and we went off in search of it again. For those of you who know me in really any capacity, it should be pretty easy to recognize my sense of direction is, well, sub par. Thankfully Stefhan's is pretty stellar, and he was able to find the noodle place without difficulty.

Exhausted, we trekked on the subway back to Akasaka, passing out at the very, very late time of 9:30.

Today is Tokyo Disney day!

Brentwood is fully stocked.

I went to Brentwood Arts Exchange to refill my cards there since they've sold quite a few in the last few months. I also dropped off FOUR sets of the scribbler books, as a nice little addition. We'll see how that goes.

Stefhan's sister, Kasie, was here visiting the other day, and came downstairs to see my newly erected crafting station. Stefhan built me an early birthday present, and I have named it "creation station."  Kasie was intrigued by the scribblers, and commissioned 4 of them on the spot! Kasie is in her plastics residency at UVA, and says she uses those little books on a regular basis to take tons of notes. She said most of the other residents do as well, and would probably be interested in some themselves! I passed on a few business cards for her to hand out.


In other news, a previous English professor from UMD contacted me the other day, with an email that simply stated "Lucy, are you interested in some graphic design work?"

Do I need to post my response?

I ended up designing a desktop calendar for her with a specific theme, for her communications company. She was pleased, and hopefully this will be a monthly gig. Getting the picture embedded into the email she was sending out, without creating an entire HTML newsletter template was a learning experience as well, but worth it.

So, hopefully I'll get some more design work for my portfolio!

SECRET

There are big things in the works! I don't want to jinx it, hype it up, or otherwise damage any chances I may have of having this thing follow through, so I'm not going to list ANY DETAILS.

Binx can't keep his mouth shut, so he doesn't know either.

But, believe me when I say, there are BIG THINGS in the works.

Backyard BarBeQuedding!

Mummy and Doyle

Well. That backyard barbeque we were all going to on Saturday? We went. We ate. We saw the food on the grill go up in flames. And then, my mother and Doyle got married.

We were all having a good time, relaxing in the warm day, maybe having a few drinks, telling stories, and shootin' the shit.  My mom calls me over.

"So. You know how we were planning on getting married on the 4th? Well Doyle's in the house now trying to ordain his brother so we can get married today!"

Doyle and my mother are not religious in the least bit, so in order to help out like-minded friends, Doyle became ordained at an online Unitarian church.  Due to modern developments, you can get ordained and off to the marrying bit pretty quickly these days.

Click. Click. Print. Done. Getting-Married-Time.

Now that I'm in on the big secret, I go back outside and try to keep my big fat mouth shut. No luck. I spill the beans to Stefhan, who is better at keeping that type of thing quiet.

Now, bear with me for the next part. Their introduction was a little... straightforward, so for the sake of a blog post, I'm going to embellish. A little.

Then all of a sudden, the music shuts off. A previously unseen smoke machine kicks on with a loud grinding noise. A cloud of smoke starts to fill the backyard, and a strobe light illuminates the gazebo where my mom and Doyle were standing just a few moments ago. Thankfully, they chose not to play the predictable "Final Countdown," but instead went for the ever so more tasteful "Spice Up Your Life."  As Mel B croons to us, those guests not already in the know start looking around, hoping that they aren't the only ones clueless to the origins of this show. They start to guess. They start to conspire. And before they can come up with a cohesive answer, Chellis and Doyle step onto the stage.

Ok. Now we'll get back to the real stuff.

"Attention, Attention," Doyle commands, " Please gather together over here, we would like to share something with you."

Knowing what's coming next, when I notice they're going to position themselves in TERRIBLE lighting, I cattleprod them over to a better spot of the yard. The group shifts in unison.

Doyle thanks everyone for coming together to celebrate their impending wedding to begin with, and tells the masses the good news: They gon' get to see a wedding after all.

"By the power invested in me, not 10 minutes ago, I now pronounce you man and wife."

Doyle's brother begins the ceremony, and asks for their vows. They don't have any written, because the two of them thought they had another 2 weeks to plan! So they went from the heart. Which is, needless to say, the best way to go. The vows were heartfelt, and honest. Mom had a few false endings in hers, which prompted not one, but two "I'm not done yet!" shouts, and Doyle kept trying to kiss her before he was allowed to.

Already wearing a white dress for the occasion.

Finally, They are married.

Both Chellis and Doyle are .00001238% Irish, so they thought they would incorporate a little Celtic ritual. Traditionally, the bride and groom would participate in a ritual called Handfasting, in which their hands would be bound together with rope or cloth.  Following in the impromptu fashion of this event, there was no rope. But, Doyle is a police officer, and my mom is a "resourceful critter" (her words), so they pull out the standard issue handcuffs.

Applied like a pro.

We toast, we watch their first dance as a married couple, we celebrate.

Congrats Chellis and Doyle, I love you both.

Celebration tomorrow. (today)

My Mummy is getting married on July 4th, but it's going to be a private ceremony just between her, her fiance Doyle, and the bare minimum of witnesses. Aka, you are not invited. But since we all love her and Doyle very much, we (really, me) suggested to have a party to invite everyone to celebrate with her and Doyle in lieu of attending the formal event.  The Barbeque is planned for tomorrow afternoon, at Doyle's house which has a little bit nicer scenery than our suburban hood.

I plan on taking pictures to document, and hopefully get one of me and Mummy since I realized we don't have any recent ones together.

I know she hates that photo but it's one of my favorite pictures of her!

SO EFFIN TRENDY RIGHT NOW

New cards in the Etsy store... I was inspired two weeks ago to get back to my foul mouthed ways, and lo-and-behold, the "so fuckin' trendy right now" line is born. We start with the two icons of trendy at the moment, fucking hipster glasses and fucking mustaches. Yes. I am aware that there are mustaches in the Etsy store. That's the joke! get it? I thought it was funny. Both of these cards come with an envelope that is lined ( a new trick I learned...). The Hipster glasses envelope has light blue paper and a silver rooster stamped inside, the mustache envelope is lined with this beautiful shimmery paper that is covered in mustaches. Its like Disney Princess paraphenalia, so easy to find the randomest crap in mustache patterns.

Illustrations in the works for other cards in this line:

Cupcakes

desserts

inanimate items with human characteristics

owls

scarves

bikes

any suggestions? Anything you would like to see on a card?

Some New Things in the Etsy Store!

I have made lined envelopes! I hand cut and mounted these printed cardstock liners into some lovely sunshine yellow envelopes. I'm working on making my own envelopes, but the biggest challenge I'm coming across is the proper paper weight for the actual envelope. Cardstock is way too heavy, and the lighter paper I found on a roll is much too light. I need 12x12" sheets of a midweight stock... dilemmas.

The cyclops card came into being yesterday, after I messed up cutting out another silhouette. His eye profile turned into a bulge.. and thus, cyclops was born! His card is the first (of many??) with rounded corners.

Since I was so busy printing out the dessert cards, I realized, I could vary the colors and make some lovely gift sets. These two are slightly different, but both come with 4 cards total. The pink cupcake card has two turquoise cards and two bubblegum pink cards. Comes with a beautiful blue mailer box.

The Sassy Ice Cream card comes with a variety of 4 different colors, cream, muslin, hot pink, and blue. The set also comes in a beautiful blue mailer box.

Visit the shop to see the new items in action!

www.hikaridesigns.etsy.com