Sadness, but it's getting better.

My sweet Lovey died this week. She was nearly 15, and goldens never live that long. She was a real sweetheart. I'm doing ok with this, but I still sort of wish I'd been home.

Also, allergies are horrible because Besak can't decide on a season. I got some phytotherapeutic allergy meds this morning (the only thing at the pharmacy that wouldn't make me drowsy) so hopefully they'll improve soon. Between these two things, I've gone through a lot of tissues over the past few days...

I've started on the requested sketches. Rachel A, the card is ready but I have to photograph it before posting. Rachel M, I'll do yours today. Art is good. Jess, I still have to decide what I love most.

So yesterday Dad said I looked very French in the photo where I'm in front of Notre Dame, and he asked if I felt French. I said no, mostly I feel like a very out-of-place conservative American, and he said that's probably a good thing. And I think it's true. I'm pretty proud of wanting friendship before anything relationshippy, and relationshippiness before anything romantic. Here, things tend to go in reverse. You have sex with someone, then you get to know them, and maybe you become friends. That doesn't work for me. I'm gonna hold onto my conservative Americanness. Also, European men are weird. As are all men who try too hard to be European. Yesterday I made a great effort to avoid any and all male personages, because there were all of two men in the world that I wanted to see or talk to: my dad and Ken. The only men I've really related to, atypical men at that. Good men. Hugs to both.

Wow that was a Rachely paragraph. Made up lots of fun words. Hobbitty love, do you agree?

Too much coffee and not enough breakfast makes Bessie something something.

I miss Galesburg. I miss having vacation after exams, and eating lots of rich food with my family, and meal night, and pug. I miss Rhode Island. It's vacation time, but I won't have a vacation until Christmas. So very strange, this France place.

Is it bad that I've decided to live a Lovey-like life? Sweet, not judging, warm and fuzzy... Begging based on cuteness... Full of love and joy. I think it's a good goal.

Also, I should have internet in my room by next week. Joy and IM for all!

Much love to all,
~Bess the red-eyed

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see these slots? They're for the first 10 people who comment on this journal with a sketch idea that they want done. I'll sketch whatever you suggest. But be nice...

And I've already done Gitta's inner bitch, so that's not an option.

Meanwhile, I've taken up calligraphy. Sensei Mike said I had potential, albeit seven years ago, and heck if it's ever fun. So if you want calligraphy instead, I'll try to grant your wishes.

Things I Did in Paris

1. walk around a lot in the jardin de luxembourg
2. drink tea
3. eat crêpes
4. adore the musée d'orsay
5. detest sam in the musée d'orsay
6. bought boots of doom
7. took pictures of decapitated martyrs for jess
8. eat cheeses of various sorts
9. NOT get hangovers
10. go to mass at Notre Dame
11. purchase an awesome hat
12. watch a guy on the metro doing the goblin king ball thing
13. sing madrigals in the metro
14. see "le cid" at the comedie française
15. play with a pug at a church
16. see St. Mike squishing Satan in a public square
17. last-minute sweater shopping
18. translate the mass for Sable
19. forget boys for a while
20. write postcards
21. miss you all terribly

Gaming tomorrow for the first time since Larsson came to visit. 7th Sea is so, SO very needed right now... I got "posée un lapin" (stood up; literally given a rabbit) yet again and I'm still frustrated with Sam (but who isn't?). 7th Sea cures all... Especially when you make your teacher into a villian. Oh, the campaigns I shall bring you!

Love and pugs,
Bess, the Bisontine Wonder

Paris is truly wonderful. Photos are up and uploading... more to come tomorrow. For the moment, there are a bunch on Facebook and a few in the devArt.

So Katie, Sable, and I were walking around trying to find the Comédie Française on Saturday when we saw a church with absolutely beautiful architecture. We went behind the fence to see it up close. All of a sudden, while examining martyrs, Sable shouts out, "Bess! Pug!" And lo, there was a little black pug running around. Her mistress called her, and she ran away. Then they passed by the fence, and I kneeled down and the pug came up to me! I petted a pug in Paris! Then the pretty pug went away.

Sable said, "Bess, you got a pug at a church. God loves you!" And when the Pope says that, you know it's true. Even if it is the Pope of another religion.


Nightlights 5 by ~Natural20 on deviantART

Je vais à Paris!!!!!

For those of you with slightly less French,
I'M GOING TO PARIS!!!!!!

Pictures to be posted when I get back. Please read and comment on the lit below while I'm away.

I love you all with affection unspeakable,
Bess

new photos up on the devart.

Sketches and Thoughts from France and Elsewhere

Cat's Version of the Casting Call for Lord of the Rings:
Casting crew: Do you have a horse?...Can you grow a beard?...Excellent, you're all in. Don't bathe for a week. The scruffiest and smelliest among you shall be your king. You there, what's your name?
An actor: Viggo.
Casting crew: You're king. And you, the other one.
Another actor: Bernard.
Casting crew: You can be the other king. Not quite as important, but you get a better palace.
Bernard: Sweet!
Casting crew: Now, which one of you is really crazy... John!
John: Yeah?
Casting crew: Do you want to light yourself on fire?
John: Hell yes!
Casting crew: Excellent. Now, who looks like John? David and Sean, you're his sons.
*David and Sean high-five*
Casting crew: Now, we need two women... There are two women here... And one of you speaks Elvish! Excellent!

7th Sea Thoughts

Scene: Samuel Bastos' apartment. Carol sits in an uncomfortable chair with impeccable posture. Samuel swirls a glass of wine in his hand.

Sam: They despise me, Carol.
Carol: I know, Sam.
Sam: They truly hate me. I give them too much work, they say. I set odd class hours and ignore proper punctuation.
Carol: I know, Sam.
Sam: I don't know what to do. (sighs) It's all going according to plan. Nothing to do but sit back and wait. Sometimes it's truly boring to be a mastermind.
Carol: Do you honestly think you can get away with it? (she struggles against her bonds)
Sam: Of course I can. They're so exhausted from running all over Besancon that they have no energy left in their little American brains to figure out obscure French university-educated plots.
Carol: You would think so, wouldn't you? (she smiles internally; the cat on the windowsill nods) I'll be free of your prison in no time.
Sam: (laughs) They'll never finish this jeu de piste! What makes you so sure the little drunkards will find _you_?
Carol: (with her small smile) You fool, Samuel. You sent Katie and Bess to the 17th century Citadelle.
Sam: (his face falls into a glare) What was that?
(Carol doesn't answer. Mincie bats a shiny d10 across the windowsill.)

L'enfance qui ronronne... ~Carla Bruni

I think my childhood purrs. It was fairly happy, and remembering it makes me smile. It's comforting to look back, about as comforting as a cat against my stomach or on my feet.

To ensure that the rest of my life purrs, I shall become a cat lady. I will live in a small apartment in Besancon with two cats. Small children will come to my apartment and ask for American cookies with "pepittes de chocolat" and pet my cats. My cats will purr and I will be happy. I will have smile lines and white hair.

Dicethoughts

For the moment, we wait. Huddled in our satin strings for warmth, we rest. We wait to generate random events that fall into a plan and out of the sensible. Life doesn't need to follow rules; you need to make your own corebook.

Writing Journal Feb. 29, 2005

“Why won’t you clean your room?” Mom bellowed up the stairs.

“Because it is my room! Because I can have no other!” Cat shouted back. She was big on twisting literature to suit her arguments. Besides, we were never going to get that disaster area anywhere near clean enough for Mom’s standards.

Cat flopped back down on the bed next to Pug. His name is really Bruce, but it’s just so much more fun to refer to him by his breed. You can call out “Pugpugpug!” and he’ll come running, too-big tongue flapping out of his tiny mouth and skidding around corners. The little thing doesn’t even answer to “Bruce,” much to my brother’s dismay.

Anyway, she flopped down next to Pug and opened her textbook. I was sitting on my bed knitting a scarf (the only thing I can knit) and reading a story for class. The cat, who was non-chalantly lying next to my leg, pretended not to notice the yarn, so that I wouldn’t suspect when she found an opportune moment and pounced on something else.

“I hate modern literature,” I muttered as the cat bit the hem of my pants.

“Why-ever so?” Cat asked with biting sarcasm as she stabbed at a photo of Hemingway with her mechanical pencil. “Stupid Hemingway.”

I dangled my shirt sleeve in front of the cat, who promptly attacked my shoe in a fit of jealous rage. “Because the writers of this bleak era have decided that nothing exciting happens anymore.”

“Oh, quit whining about it,” Cat said. “I have to deal with Hemingway again.”

“Yeah, Lenz loves Hemingway,” I said. That was understating the situation. Cat’s English teacher adored the writer, practically worshipped his every word. “We’re kind of in the same boat, you know? You have to read ‘Indian Camp’ for the second year in a row, and I have to read every aspiring author’s attempts to be Hemingway.”

“Hah, your life sucks,” she said, throwing Pug across the empty space between our beds and landing him on top of the cat. The cat immediately flew onto the top of my dresser and settled down between a vase and a stuffed raccoon. Pug tried to follow, squashed his face further, if possible, than usual, and jumped back onto my bed as though nothing had happened. He has the shortest memory of any dog I’ve ever met. Well, of any pug, anyway. Pugs aren’t really dogs. Cat and I decided that a long time ago.

“Maybe it does,” I said, stroking his soft ears and examining the ugly-cute face, “but I don’t have to publish its every detail to prove so.”

“Amen, sister,” Cat hollered, throwing her hands to the sky before hurling her textbook to the floor in righteous happiness. It flumped softly onto a pile of dirty clothes that I should have picked up last week.

ok, trying something new. hope this works!


Sam et la Vache by ~Natural20 on deviantART

can you see sam and the cow? please respond... i think this will work better than the strip o' pictures.

also... pug!


Pugshots 10: Pug on a chair by ~Natural20 on deviantART