Brighid In the Heart of the Land.

I told you about this, right? the story about my Irish alter-ego? Well, here it is. It may not be historically accurate, but I like it.

My name is Brighid. I’m called Brighid in the Heart of the Land.

I make my home in Ireland, the year 523 AD. I was born on November second, in 510.

I live with my mother and father, and my two brothers on our farm.

we grow all sorts of things that fetch a good price in the market. We’re rather well off, and we even have quite a few cows. We keep a few sheep, and I am their shepherdess.

 Father says that tending the land is man’s work, but shepherding is respectable enough for a young lady to take up. The land my father owns is dotted all over with meadow buttercup, and some years the fields look more yellow than green!

When I go to watch over the sheep as they graze, I always bring my drop spindle so as to occupy me. Shepherding is such dreadfully boring work.

Sometimes, when I can sneak one out without father noticing, I bring a book to read. I’m not supposed to know how to read, but my Uncle is a priest, and a very learned man. He gives my brothers lessons and I always make sure I’m in the back of the room listening.

I’ve learned all sorts of things this way, for my father has his own library in his study. He wouldn’t like it if he knew I was borrowing his books, though, so I have to be careful.

Sometimes while I’m tending the sheep I’ll dig up some flowers and take them home to plant around our house. Mother can’t figure out why there are so many flowers around our house!

 I do know a bit about plants myself. Sometimes I get peckish while I watch the sheep, and I know just which wild plants I can pick and eat and which will give me a bellyache. Of course I always bring along a bit of bread and cheese for a midday meal. I can’t subsist on herbs alone.  

Life here is rather nice and I’ve made good friends with the sheep. I can tell them apart at a glance, though even father can’t seem to tell one from the other. Their wool makes warm clothes for us, and we’re all quite grateful. It still saddens me when father kills one for a meal, though. I suppose I’ll never get used to that.

And just because father won’t let me tend his crops doesn’t mean I don’t get to garden. Mother has a kitchen garden just outside our house with all sorts of good and fragrant herbs in it, and she lets me help with watering and weeding.

We live a good way out from town, since we own a farm, but I have a few friends who live close enough that I can walk to their homes. And of course O’Duinn visits us every day. O’Duinn is a friend of the family, a good man of about fifty years old. He comes every day to talk with us, and often brings confections of some sort. Once on a holiday he brought over corned beef! How we celebrated that day! I still wonder how he got to afford it.

RECAP!!!!!

Hey, there! The lazy blogger right here has not updated said blog in about four or five months. That's almost two entire seasons! unforgivable, says I. So. How about a recap?

The Enviroment:
Sometime the month before last, (or maybe the month before that) I convinced my mom to start line-drying our clothes again, in exchange for my pledge to help out with hanging said clothes. I've been pretty good about it so far. I've also been reminding everyone to bring canvas bags to the store, (helpful me) and trying my hardest to turn off lights which are not needed. Which, for me, doesn't mean turning off a light when I leave the room. It means turning off lights that I don't need for illumination. Natural light works just fine, people. We've become so accustomed to the idea of electric lights illuminating our every step that we've gotten this idea that we'll be blind as bats as soon as we switch off the lights. Also, that's not a legitimate phrase. Bats are not, in fact, blind, and even in the dark they "see" perfectly due to echolocation. Just making that clear. Well, anyway, in short I've been trying to be more enviromentally conscious. Or at least reminding everyone else to be more enviromentally conscious. Same thing, right?

Friends:
I made two new friends. Twin sisters, who i will just call A and K on this blog.
     I had complained to my mom about my lack of friends, (though I only did that after she nagged me about my social life) and so she sent out an e-mail to all her homeschooler internet-buddies with a list of my interests. I soon found myself E-mailing A and K, and we hit it off before we even met.
     To tell the truth, I had been a little nervous about E-mailing someone I'd never met before. I've never really liked communicating electronically. But we all liked each other, and we soon found ourselves meeting for the first time at Nomagehan park. The first thing i noticed about A and K was that we had almost absolutely everything in common. K plays the harp, (an instrument i love, though it would be hopeless for me to learn.) and likes to sing. A is hilarious, and, apparently, likes to make up random sentences. You've heard of marshmallow socks, right? (that's mine.) Well; PURPLE CABBAGE. Nuff said.
     The second time we met up was at the beach. (they live right next to the shore.) It was a new one, not sandy hook like we usually go to. We had a lot of fun in the ocean, and we found a few interesting critters. I found a sea worm, A found a hermit crab, and we all found a bunch of sandcrabs and baby shellfish. (clams?)
     Near the end of the day, K and I, (A joined in too, but it was mostly K and I.) started doing yoga near the beach. We had our own little routine going. Sun Salutation, Bamboo pose into Tree pose, Warrior pose into Crane pose, then (I believe this is the correct order) Peacock, Lion, and Bridge. we ended with another Sun Salutation. After that first routine, a stranger (a woman) came up and asked us if we could show her some poses. We (or at least I) were a bit confused, but we obliged and walked her through the routine. After we were done, two other girls came up. The same thing, only with them we ended up doing at least six repititions of Lion pose. I was confused, but heartened by the ability of strangers to just join in like that with something they thought would be fun. My heart sank a little bit, though, when Owen told me the reason later: A and K's mom, (he didn't tell me which one) had told him that there was this program called "Yoga on the Beach". Her theory was that the three young women had thought we were members. Who knows how they mistook us adolescents for members of this organization. It was a bit disheartening to learn that these strangers, most likely, hadn't joined us spontaneously out of a sense of community. But it was still fun.
     We met at that beach once again after that, and we're scheduled to meet there again on (monday?) another occasion. I just hope the days fly by.

Max:
Lately, Max has been learning a few new tricks. He's mastered "lie down", and he's pretty good about answering to his name. He's also got "Wait" pretty much in the bag, and he's learning "shake" which he's already pretty good at. Just wanted to recap that.

So... that's my recap. One last thing: to improve my writing skills, I'd like to try writing on this blog once a day. Writers are supposed to write one short thing every day, no matter how terrible it is. So... this is the way I'd like to go about it. Let's face it, with my memory it doesn't have a good chance at happening. But I'll try. My challenge shall end on August 3rd, 2013. (If we haven't all been killed by a mayan calendar by then.) Signing off.

African Violets & Rats

The last time i tried posting this, my computer shut down in the middle.
So. let's try again! Last week my grandma took me, my brother and my cousin to an african violet show. We go someplace with her every weekend. First of all, let me say i had no idea African Violets were so diverse! It was more impressive than i expected.
Second of all, at the show they were selling african violets, and my grandma bought me one.
(only two dollars. for all the violets, no matter the size.) On the ride home she lost five leaves.
then one when we got back. and one just the other day. I bought some african violet fertilizer the other day, to see if that would help. Anyway, she's probably the first flowering plant i've kept, if you don't count the petunias in my window-box. Don't get me wrong, i actually already had an african violet, it's just that i can't seem to get her to flower. she's really pretty, though. I named her Marietta and painted her pot myself. But about the new violet.
I can't think of a name for her. I mean, nothing i think of can really do her justice, you know?
her flowers are beautiful. So i've been calling her "Magenta". Not necessarily because her flowers are magenta, but because me and my grandma got into a conversation about "Blue's clues" on the way home, and it stuck in my head for some reason. Do you think i can't seem to name her because she's going to die? i mean, the last time i couldn't name a plant she died.
Well, i'll do my best to help her out. Just in case, though, i took some of the leaves that fell off and stuck them in jars of water. I'm thinking of doing the same with Marietta, too. Maybe if i start fresh with a new plant, then i can see what her flowers would look like.

Well, enough about violets. I'd like to talk to you about rats.
I've not sure if i've written about them yet, but we got two rats about a week
before we got Max. They're both boys, hooded rats, named Arthur and Rex.
the only difference is that Arthur has a smooth coat, and Rex has a... well, he has a rex coat, hence the name. basically he always looks like he just rolled out of bed. :-P
So i'm here to sum up everything i haven't said about the rats in the past few months.
When we got them, they were really shy, especially Arthur. We were expecting this.
On the website of the rat-rescue we got them from, Arthur was described as being shy, and Rex as "cuddly". we didn't play with them the first day, to get them used to their surroundings.
the next day we started taking them out of the cage. Those first few days they tensed when they were picked up, but that stopped after about a week. After a month or two, some drastic personality differences started to make themselves obvious.
Arthur, for one, no longer seemed shy. It was obvious now that despite being cautious in the beginning, this kid was a real trooper. First of all, he climbs on the ceiling. when he's in his cage, he can actually hang upside down, from the ceiling, and move forward.
Second of all, whenever the door is open, he just zooms right toward it. I think he's looking for a way out. Like, my perspective of him has shifted in a 180, from "scared little rat who thinks we're monsters" to "trained combat official who has been captured, and now has an escape plan"
he's really impressive. Rex on the other hand, hasn't changed quite so much.
Originally we thought of him as the adventurous one. Now i realize it only seemed so in contrast to Arthur, who was probably staying in the cage for the sole purpose of sizing us up.
Nowadays, Rex is really just what he was originally described as: a cuddlebun. He loves cuddling, and licking. He likes to explore too, but he can only dream of visiting places Arthur's been. He also seems to be a bit naive. it feels like Arthur is watching out for him, as an older brother would. the other day, i had let the rats out to play when i noticed Arthur trying to get some noodles out of the box of noodles we keep on top of the cage. so i placed the box on top of another box that was near the wall, and kept reading. Even as i read, i could still hear him making futile attempts to get the box down. five minutes later, i look over to see Rex pulling the bottom box out from under the noodle box, as Arthur pulls on the corner of the noodle box with his teeth. About 30 seconds later, the box came tumbling down. I didn't want them to overeat, but i gave them a few noodles because they were so smart i didn't want it to go unrewarded.
soo... yeah. in the future i'll try to post about big events like this when they actually happen.

Another Post

Hi... i know i just posted, but it seems like going back and adding more to the first post would just be... um... there's a word for it, i just don't know what it is.
Anyway, the other day i went to mudthaw with my grandma. mudthaw is an SCA event that celebrates spring. I went as Brighid, (pronounced "Breed")
or "Brighid in the Heart of the Land". Brighid is actually a variation on my own name.
So since i now had an alter ego, i took it as the perfect chance to reinvent myself.
so of course i have now thought out Brighid's life as thoroughly as possible.
Her birthday, by the way, is November second 510 AD.
I wrote out a whole story about her, but ****ing blogger won't let me copy and paste, and i don't want to copy the whole thing over manually, so... sorry. but yeah. I wonder how old Brighid would be...

Max's IQ

Okay. So you may have noticed i changed the background again.
but i've been really into celtic culture lately, and this picture just kind of looked like Ireland, so please be patient with me. Anyway, i found a dog IQ test online after reading about it on a blog i like, (her dog turned out to be retarded, by the way.) and i just had to try it out on Max.
According to the test, Max is a genius! And he's only six months old! How smart will he be when he grows up? I mean, he's only a puppy, right? He's bound to learn some more along the way.
*sniff* i'm so proud!

Sims 3

Hello! I'm back with the pictures i promised.
Here is the home i built to house my family.



And here is the lovely Clarissa.



And here is her lovely husband
(in this picture he's her fiance) Gerard.



Here's when they got married in the gazebo.
I designed Clarissa's outfit myself.



Don't they just look so precious?



After their private wedding
they sat out and watched the stars together.



Soon after, Hope came along!



And just a few days after Hope was born,
Clarissa and Gerard both had a wish for another child.
That's Tad in there.



Hope was so cute as a toddler.
In the lower left corner of the first picture you can see a snippet of Tad's head.
I actually don't have any pictures of him as a baby.




Here he is as a child, on the seesaw.



And here is my favorite picture of Hope,
taken as she plays in her treehouse, Demeter's Haven.
I just love the look on her face.
See what i mean when i say she takes after her dad?



Here she is on her first trip to france.
They slept in this bed every night they were there.
This is where Hope (and I) got interested in photography.



And here is Hope in her teenage years.
You'll notice on the wall a certificate, which commemorates
her mastery of the photography skill, and a photograph of her dad.
You can't see much of her room in this picture. I'll try to get a better one.



Here she is with her boyfriend, Stev. yes, i spelled that right.
I think he might have a future as the father of the third generation.



Recently Hope went to china to study martial arts.
She's up to her green belt.



So since she liked it so much, i built a zen garden in her neighborhood.



She seems to like it.

And... that's it. However, i do have a few more photos i feel should be shared. stay tuned!

Sims 3 and my Profile

Hello, again. the last time i posted here we had just got Max.
it's been about two months since then, and he's growing like a weed.
i think he's up to 23 pounds now. wow. the picture on my profile is even more outdated.
for one thing, those glasses broke and i've been wearing my spare pair for a while now.
for another, my hair is way longer. anyway, the reason i'm writing now is to rant about sims 3.
Now i know i usually have screenshots when i talk about sims, (because it's the only thing exciting enough to be worth the effort) but today my mom's computer is down, and that's where all the screenshots are stored. so i'll try to get pictures up later, but don't hold your breath.

So my latest sim family is called Elderstone.
it's the family made to play out my "Elderstone Legacy", a big,
intricate story packed with homemade scrapbook entries and mystical trees.
the general idea is to start with one female, have two kids in each generation,
and pick one female to carry on the family name. i'll also never move my active household from the house i've chosen before the challenge is over.
So the sim i started with is Clarissa Elderstone. i built her a home in sunset valley,
a really small one, to save money. Clarissa had the traits workaholic and neat,
so her lifetime wish was to be the CEO of a mega-corporation.
so i got her a job in the business career, bought a lot of apples she could keep in her inventory to eat on the run, and started making lots of friends. good connections are always a great idea in the business career.
so i had worked my way all the way up to level seven or eight of the business career, (level nine being the goal, and ten being the max) and i had a lot of money,
so i figured why not move to riverview. It's a nice town, frankly a lot more interesting than sunset valley, and it's got fishing spots running throughout the whole map, thus the name riverview. but i forgot one thing. once i moved, i may still have had my career, but all my friends were in a different town. i no longer had all the same connections i had back in sunset valley,
and it took me forever to get enough friends for a promotion.
So Clarissa is working her butt off, eating nothing but apples and sleeping maybe four hours each night, meanwhile I'm trying to find a place to live. once i have my first kid i can never move from the house she was born in, so i want it to be something nice. for a while I'm thinking Elderstone, Clarissa's namesake and the house i lived in when i was playing Piper, my first attempt at the challenge. but it didn't feel right. imagine if your dog died, and you named the next one Rover 2. so i looked around the town, but there was nothing.
i prefer small houses, ones i can navigate easily and don't have any unnecessary rooms.
but there aren't any. they're all either too small, or too big. i tried building my own for a while, but that didn't work out. that's when it hit me. i thought of my cousin's house, how it's nice and small, has a beautiful porch, and fits a family of four, (which is about my max for sim families.)
so i built a replica of his house, and thats what i live in today. it took about three tries to get it right, though.
so i finally move into the new house. i have a living room, a kitchen and a dining room on the first floor, not to mention an elevated porch and a backyard with a treehouse, a seesaw and a sandbox. on the second floor is a small bathroom, a master bedroom, a nursery, and a kids bedroom. not to mention a balcony built right on top of the porch.
now is when i start looking for a husband.
the first thing i think is, let's go to france. i want my heir to have interesting heritage, after all. so i travel to france and walk over to the marketplace, where i start looking around for available guys. i'm looking and looking, when i wander into the bookstore and see Gerard Morel.
we flirt until we have romantic interest status, and then i go home. once home i catch up on work and make a bit more money, until i finally have time to call Gerard and invite him to stay over. so Gerard is at my house and i keep using romantic interactions, but there's still no option to ask him to be my boyfriend. so i think, whatever, and ask him to move in with me.
once he's part of my active household, for whatever reason, the first thing i do is check his relationships, curious to see who he knows in france. and guess what? he's married.
so i go back to france and tell his wife it's over. on that same trip, i have Gerard propose to Clarissa. and that's when i think: let's have the wedding here. at first my goal is to build up enough visa points for a vacation home, and then make enough friends to have a great wedding party. but in the end i think a private wedding would be more romantic, so i go to edit town mode and modify a park in the corner of the screen to have a gazebo and a bridge (to an island in the middle of a lake) and everything. they have a private wedding in the gazebo listening to a beautiful slow song, then watch the stars under a willow tree. it was very romantic. The family name is now Morel. it's a nice name, so i've decided to keep it.
after that i go back to riverview, get Clarissa pregnant, and enable aging.
the race is on. i have big plans for the baby, who i know is a girl and plan to name Hope.
the first thing i do is go to edit town mode and modify a park called "the gazebo" to be "Hope's Park". i get rid of the gazebo and put a giant chinese elm tree in the middle of the park, put a radio there, a hopscotch court, a picnic table, and an outdoor grill. i want Hope to have early memories of the outdoors. after that i go back home and decorate Hope's future room to be really nature-y, with all sorts of plants and wooden furniture. a few days later, Hope is born.
she has the "loves the outdoors" and "good" traits. this is where i skip forwards in time.
i've made the upstairs bathroom bigger, and added a garage. there is also a second bathroom on the first floor. Clarissa and Gerard are both adults, (they started out as young adults)
Hope is a teenager, and she has a little brother, Tad, who became a teen quite recently.
There is a dog in the mix, Nellie, and Hope has her own car. would you like to know what happened to the innocent nature lover? Her character got out of hand, and Hope ended up becoming the tortured artist. she loves taking photos, and she's already mastered the photography skill. her lifetime wish is to be a "visionary", someone who has mastered both the painting and photography skills. she wears lots of black, and her room is full of modern furniture, and photos of her travels. the best part about Hope, though, in my opinion,
is that she's a carbon copy of her father. they have the same hair, the same facial structure, the same nose, the same eyes. and they both have a deep respect for each other. the whole story has gotten out of hand, and Gerard instead of Clarissa is now the main founder, Hope the main sim. Gerard has an entire gallery of photos of Hope in his room, and Hope's favorite subject is her father. they've been all over the world together, to every vacation destination. it's really a great story. there are so many more details in the mix, but it's really hard to explain. more later.