My life had found it's way back to the rut, and you know what? I didn't mind. No excitement meant no tragedy, and it also meant comfort. I was comfortable with my life. I had forgotten how much I loved family life, and I began to wish I had never abandoned my parents the way I did. I was glad I'd come to the city, if I hadn't I wouldn't have my beautiful children, would never have met Buster.. but I wish I had kept in touch with my Mom and Dad. Gone back to visit before they were gone..
I hope they knew I loved them. Being unmarried and not having much to do while the kids were occupied led to me thinking of things like that much too often.
When the girls were off at school and the toddlers were busy entertaining themselves, I found myself spending a lot of extra time in my own little private sanctuary - my music room. Actually, it wasn't private. Anyone could use my instruments, but it was connected to my bedroom, so I liked to call it my own little private sanctuary. I really wanted to perfect my skills in all of the instruments, but I was so far from it I was beginning to think I should just give up on that.
I mentioned several things I love about the new house before, but one I forgot to mention was the fact that we could have family dinners together, because the table was big enough. We took every chance we got to sit down at the table for dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, though breakfast was rare since I slept in quite late and the girls had to get off to school early.
The girls were so helpful, and loved to spend time with their little siblings. Especially since it was coming up very soon for Lyric's birthday, and we all wanted as much time with them as toddlers as we could get.
I wanted to throw Lyric a birthday party, so I called up many of my friends and the few of the girls' friends that I knew of, and planned it for 9 AM the next morning. I didn't want it to be so soon, but I couldn't help that. She was going to grow up sooner or later, and it was better to throw an early party than let her grow up by herself. In my opinion, at least.
I just needed to busy myself until the party, so I wouldn't think about the fact that my second youngest was going to be going to school soon. First off, I worked out again. What was it with my agent and telling me to work out for four hours? I was an old lady now, I didn't have anything left to flaunt. But if he really insisted..
After I worked out, I wasn't tired enough to go to bed so I sat down with Rhett, and started teaching him how to talk. "Seeds. Can you say seeds Rhett?"
"..." He blinked at me, then his gaze strayed over to the wall. I glanced over and there was nothing there, so sighed and looked back at him.
"What about rose?" Why I was so into the botany, I don't know, but I was saying the first things that came to mind.
"WOSE!" he chirped quickly at that one, turning and looking at me and excitedly wiggling. "Wose, wose, wose fo' mama!"
I gasped in delight, and stared at my little charmer for a moment, then clapped my hands. "Good job, Rhett! Thank yooou. When you get old enough you can buy roses for mama, okay?"
"Wose fo' mama!"
If this was any indication, he was going to be quite the romantic later in life.
I never went to bed before the first guest arrived, but that was okay. I'd slept in impossibly late the day before, so I wasn't as tired as I often was back in the original apartment.
As people started flooding in - I use the term 'flooding' lightly, I didn't invite many people - some of them that I wasn't as close to seemed to realize who I was. Kearn Gai's twin sister, Meg, was the first one to gasp and squeal over me. "YOU'RE SEAN PARODI! DUH! Oh my gosh, I completely forgot it was you.."
Flattering. End sarcasm. I smiled at her, and shrugged lightly.
"Can I have your autograph?!"
I sighed, hoping that wouldn't happen. This was supposed to be Lyric's day, but if people wanted my autograph that badly, I wasn't gonna protest. Being famous got tiring sometimes. I grabbed a piece of paper, and wrote down my usual autograph signature, then handed it over. Almost as soon as I had finished, Deon Quirke rushed over, with his own piece of paper.
"Can.. can I have your autograph, too?"
I wanted to say that this wasn't an autograph signing session, but I didn't. I just smiled. "Sure." Then I signed the paper. "Now it's time for Lyric to blow out her candles." Gotta get it done quickly before I'm asked for more autographs!
Lyric was excited for her birthday, and giggled happily about it the entire time. Her face as I helped her blow out her candles was so precious, I had to have someone take a picture. I set her down on the floor, and she clapped and giggled for several minutes, before aging up into a beautiful little lady. Unfortunately, it seemed she'd gotten my nearsightedness, but like I had been was excited to wear glasses. Then, she went to style herself how she wanted, and.. well, the dress was cute, but her stockings had skulls. I knew she liked black, but this surprised me. I hoped she would grow out of it, but somehow I just knew that she would just grow into it. Oh well. My old best friend Emma had been obsessed with the goth/punk/emo styles, and I had been too, for a little while, and we turned out fine.
We all wanted to go for a vacation, get away for a while. The last time we'd gone on a vacation was just before Buster passed, and we all agreed that we should go to France for Lyric's birthday present. So I called up the travel agency, and we headed off for the airport.
When the flight landed, we all went to do our own things. I went to work on my skill with the guitar, Lyric went to play with a mirror, Dee went to read, and Naomi went to find an adventure, wanting to improve her visa level to one. I think I will turn this over to Naomi for a while, since I have to admit I was pretty boring, and she'll be able to tell it better than I can.
Greetings, hello, bonjour, ni hao, konnichiwa and annyeonghaseyo! This is Naomi Parodi, and I'm taking over the story telling for the next little bit.
I scanned the adventure board, looking for a good adventure, and finally I found one. All I had to do was find a bottle of nectar, and though that sounded kind of boring at first, I thought it was a good baby-steps sorta adventure. I'd never adventured, so I needed to get myself used to it first, right?
After calling up the number on the page and telling them I'd get them a bottle of nectar, I ran inside and shouted, "DEIRDRE! LYRIC! LET'S GO TO THE MARKET!"
"But Naomi, I'm-"
"I don't care if you're reading I wanna go with you guys to the market! Stop playing with your reflection, Lyric, we all know you're pretty! Come on come on come on come on!" I shouted up the stairs, then turned and ran out the door, towards the marketplace. I wanted to go with my sisters, and if they wanted to read or play with a mirror they could do it at the market.
Eventually they all finally followed me to the market, but Lyric went to the park instead of any of the stores. I thought it was a pretty cool idea, going to the park, and I would have to do it later but first I had to interview a local, because I'd been assigned that for school. So had Dee. Upon stepping foot inside the general store, Dee and I stopped in our tracks and gasped. There, standing in the middle of the room, was a ghost woman. Couldn't they not come out in the daytime unless they'd been born that way? This woman obviously wasn't born that way, her husband was nearby sobbing his head off.
"I call dibs on interviewing the ghost woman!" Dee exclaimed, and I whined after her.
"No fair, Deirdre!"
She just blew a raspberry at me, then rushed over to the blue ghost woman (she'd drowned, evidently), and greeted her in standard French tradition. I huffed and grumbled, before walking over to the cashier and greeted him, then asked him if I could interview him. He said yes, so I did.
I've never felt so famous in all my life! After Dee and I finished our interviews with the locals, a paparazzi came in - or, wait, the singular is paparazzo, right? - and started taking pictures of me and Dee. Then, the ghostly lady wanted to take a cell phone picture of me. I never even knew ghosts could have cell phones - guess you learn something new every day, right? Yay!
After buying some supplies, when the hubbub about me and Dee died down, I then was off to the nectary. I mean, what better place to get nectar than a nectary, right? Right? I thought it made sense.
Before buying some nectar, I went downstairs, and nearly squealed in delight. "There's a dive well! I wanna look in there!" I don't know why I wanted to explore it, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time, so I climbed onto the side and leaped high, doing a fancy dive into the dive well. I thought it was appropriate! And wouldn't you know it? There was some nectar at the bottom of the well. How lucky was that, I didn't even have to worry about spending money (that we don't have, Mom tried to keep our money troubles hidden from us but I knew we were in deep trouble).
Oh, I forgot to mention that my sisters followed me to the nectary, too. But they're not nearly as interesting as me, so I'll just tell you that Lyric stood outside at the back, staring at some barrels - strange kid - and Dee drank nectar.
Now that that's out of the way, since I had the nectar, I went to find the guy that had hired me. I found him and gave him the nectar, then he asked me to also find some food that went well with the nectar. I beamed at him, and eagerly agreed, then headed off to the Catania Cafe to buy a cheese plate. I mean, what else would you get to go with nectar?
I went to the cafe and got out my money, preparing to buy the cheese plate. Before I could hand her the money after telling her what I wanted, though, she waved her hands frantic. "No! No, you do not need to pay, Ms. Parodi! For payment, a picture, s'il vous plaît?" she requested, and I was more than happy to oblige. I'm extremely photogenic, you know, and I loved being famous so I happy posed for her.
While I was off being interesting (and texting school friends about my adventures), Dee was playing chess at the park and Lyric was still at the nectary. But she was being far more interesting than before, she'd gone downstairs to stare at barrels. What was with that girl and barrels? See what I mean, I'm far more interesting than my sisters.
So.. after I went to deliver the food to the guy, he told me he didn't accept bought food. So I had to fix my own. He coulda told me he didn't accept bought, but oh well. I rushed back home and set about fixing the only thing I knew how - autumn salad. And the paparazzo from before was there, and taking pictures of me being domestic. Cool! That meant people could see all sides of me. I made sure to pose for him occasionally. When I was done, I quickly headed off to find the guy again, and when I found him I gave him the salad, hoping he'd accept it this time. He did, to my luck! Now I wanted to go home and go to bed, so I did.
In the morning, I woke up to the sounds of Mom playing bass. How'd she manage to bring THAT along without anyone noticing? My mom's magical I think. I watched her play for a little bit, before heading to the kitchen to eat. And then read for a little bit. Oh, I guess I got uninteresting, I better hand it over to Mom..
OH BUT LOOK THERE, I GOT INTERESTING AGAIN.
I still had a level zero visa, and I wanted level one so I had to continue adventuring. Someone wanted someone else to collect some pieces of unsmelted titanium so they could build a nectar making machine thingy, so I called and accepted, then went off to find some unsmelted titanium. How hard could it be?
It was harder than I thought, but I did find the titanium eventually. Once I had them, I went back to the nectary to drop the rocks with the girl that ran it.
The lady thanked me, and then asked me if I could get this nectowhiz gadget from this guy that was somewhere in town. I agreed, but told her I may do that later because I wanted to learn how to make nectar first. She agreed, and said she was always happy to have someone learn to make nectar in her nectary.
Making nectar = one of the funnest things I have ever done! First step: add fruit. Second step: squish fruit with your feet! I was so glad I'd worn my swimsuit under my clothes that day instead of my regular underwear, 'cause when I was squishing the fruit I fell and went splat. Ewww. It was gross, but at the same time really fun still. When I was done squishing it was time for step three, turn the crank and type in settings. Then it was step four, the wait.
At the place where we stayed, Mom played keyboard (seriously?! She brought it too? How did she do that?), and Dee and Lyr had a conversation. I dunno what they said.
I decided to try some nectar. It was pretty good, though there was a weird flavor in it I didn't quite like. Not long later, when I got my nectar from the machine and was about to start making some more, my stomach agreed with my taste buds on the one flavor, and I had to rush to the bathroom to get rid of it. Guess I don't wanna drink that stuff again..
But I did wanna make it again! What fun! Seriously, I never had so much fun before in my life. Though my stomach hadn't gotten over the whole, drinking nectar ordeal.. turned out that the nectar I drank had plasma fruit in it, though. Really, they should put warning labels on those bottles. I puked again, but I'm not gonna show you that.
Sooo, back at our home-ish place, it turns out Mom knew the paparazzi-o that kept stalking me. He'd stalked her on her first trip to France. Aw, how cute! She'd been wanting to get married, maybe she'd marry him? I didn't know my opinion on the matter, but if she wanted to marry him, she'd marry him.
Well, I'm not done here, but this is getting a little long so I'm gonna say that I'll continue this next time!
(A/N: I wanted to finish this but it was getting really long and kinda late here, so I decided it was gonna be continued tomorrow. It was REALLY fun writing as Naomi for this. She's a hyper girl. XD)
I hope they knew I loved them. Being unmarried and not having much to do while the kids were occupied led to me thinking of things like that much too often.
When the girls were off at school and the toddlers were busy entertaining themselves, I found myself spending a lot of extra time in my own little private sanctuary - my music room. Actually, it wasn't private. Anyone could use my instruments, but it was connected to my bedroom, so I liked to call it my own little private sanctuary. I really wanted to perfect my skills in all of the instruments, but I was so far from it I was beginning to think I should just give up on that.
I mentioned several things I love about the new house before, but one I forgot to mention was the fact that we could have family dinners together, because the table was big enough. We took every chance we got to sit down at the table for dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, though breakfast was rare since I slept in quite late and the girls had to get off to school early.
The girls were so helpful, and loved to spend time with their little siblings. Especially since it was coming up very soon for Lyric's birthday, and we all wanted as much time with them as toddlers as we could get.
I wanted to throw Lyric a birthday party, so I called up many of my friends and the few of the girls' friends that I knew of, and planned it for 9 AM the next morning. I didn't want it to be so soon, but I couldn't help that. She was going to grow up sooner or later, and it was better to throw an early party than let her grow up by herself. In my opinion, at least.
I just needed to busy myself until the party, so I wouldn't think about the fact that my second youngest was going to be going to school soon. First off, I worked out again. What was it with my agent and telling me to work out for four hours? I was an old lady now, I didn't have anything left to flaunt. But if he really insisted..
After I worked out, I wasn't tired enough to go to bed so I sat down with Rhett, and started teaching him how to talk. "Seeds. Can you say seeds Rhett?"
"..." He blinked at me, then his gaze strayed over to the wall. I glanced over and there was nothing there, so sighed and looked back at him.
"What about rose?" Why I was so into the botany, I don't know, but I was saying the first things that came to mind.
"WOSE!" he chirped quickly at that one, turning and looking at me and excitedly wiggling. "Wose, wose, wose fo' mama!"
I gasped in delight, and stared at my little charmer for a moment, then clapped my hands. "Good job, Rhett! Thank yooou. When you get old enough you can buy roses for mama, okay?"
"Wose fo' mama!"
If this was any indication, he was going to be quite the romantic later in life.
I never went to bed before the first guest arrived, but that was okay. I'd slept in impossibly late the day before, so I wasn't as tired as I often was back in the original apartment.
As people started flooding in - I use the term 'flooding' lightly, I didn't invite many people - some of them that I wasn't as close to seemed to realize who I was. Kearn Gai's twin sister, Meg, was the first one to gasp and squeal over me. "YOU'RE SEAN PARODI! DUH! Oh my gosh, I completely forgot it was you.."
Flattering. End sarcasm. I smiled at her, and shrugged lightly.
"Can I have your autograph?!"
I sighed, hoping that wouldn't happen. This was supposed to be Lyric's day, but if people wanted my autograph that badly, I wasn't gonna protest. Being famous got tiring sometimes. I grabbed a piece of paper, and wrote down my usual autograph signature, then handed it over. Almost as soon as I had finished, Deon Quirke rushed over, with his own piece of paper.
"Can.. can I have your autograph, too?"
I wanted to say that this wasn't an autograph signing session, but I didn't. I just smiled. "Sure." Then I signed the paper. "Now it's time for Lyric to blow out her candles." Gotta get it done quickly before I'm asked for more autographs!
Lyric was excited for her birthday, and giggled happily about it the entire time. Her face as I helped her blow out her candles was so precious, I had to have someone take a picture. I set her down on the floor, and she clapped and giggled for several minutes, before aging up into a beautiful little lady. Unfortunately, it seemed she'd gotten my nearsightedness, but like I had been was excited to wear glasses. Then, she went to style herself how she wanted, and.. well, the dress was cute, but her stockings had skulls. I knew she liked black, but this surprised me. I hoped she would grow out of it, but somehow I just knew that she would just grow into it. Oh well. My old best friend Emma had been obsessed with the goth/punk/emo styles, and I had been too, for a little while, and we turned out fine.
We all wanted to go for a vacation, get away for a while. The last time we'd gone on a vacation was just before Buster passed, and we all agreed that we should go to France for Lyric's birthday present. So I called up the travel agency, and we headed off for the airport.
When the flight landed, we all went to do our own things. I went to work on my skill with the guitar, Lyric went to play with a mirror, Dee went to read, and Naomi went to find an adventure, wanting to improve her visa level to one. I think I will turn this over to Naomi for a while, since I have to admit I was pretty boring, and she'll be able to tell it better than I can.
Greetings, hello, bonjour, ni hao, konnichiwa and annyeonghaseyo! This is Naomi Parodi, and I'm taking over the story telling for the next little bit.
I scanned the adventure board, looking for a good adventure, and finally I found one. All I had to do was find a bottle of nectar, and though that sounded kind of boring at first, I thought it was a good baby-steps sorta adventure. I'd never adventured, so I needed to get myself used to it first, right?
After calling up the number on the page and telling them I'd get them a bottle of nectar, I ran inside and shouted, "DEIRDRE! LYRIC! LET'S GO TO THE MARKET!"
"But Naomi, I'm-"
"I don't care if you're reading I wanna go with you guys to the market! Stop playing with your reflection, Lyric, we all know you're pretty! Come on come on come on come on!" I shouted up the stairs, then turned and ran out the door, towards the marketplace. I wanted to go with my sisters, and if they wanted to read or play with a mirror they could do it at the market.
Eventually they all finally followed me to the market, but Lyric went to the park instead of any of the stores. I thought it was a pretty cool idea, going to the park, and I would have to do it later but first I had to interview a local, because I'd been assigned that for school. So had Dee. Upon stepping foot inside the general store, Dee and I stopped in our tracks and gasped. There, standing in the middle of the room, was a ghost woman. Couldn't they not come out in the daytime unless they'd been born that way? This woman obviously wasn't born that way, her husband was nearby sobbing his head off.
"I call dibs on interviewing the ghost woman!" Dee exclaimed, and I whined after her.
"No fair, Deirdre!"
She just blew a raspberry at me, then rushed over to the blue ghost woman (she'd drowned, evidently), and greeted her in standard French tradition. I huffed and grumbled, before walking over to the cashier and greeted him, then asked him if I could interview him. He said yes, so I did.
I've never felt so famous in all my life! After Dee and I finished our interviews with the locals, a paparazzi came in - or, wait, the singular is paparazzo, right? - and started taking pictures of me and Dee. Then, the ghostly lady wanted to take a cell phone picture of me. I never even knew ghosts could have cell phones - guess you learn something new every day, right? Yay!
After buying some supplies, when the hubbub about me and Dee died down, I then was off to the nectary. I mean, what better place to get nectar than a nectary, right? Right? I thought it made sense.
Before buying some nectar, I went downstairs, and nearly squealed in delight. "There's a dive well! I wanna look in there!" I don't know why I wanted to explore it, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time, so I climbed onto the side and leaped high, doing a fancy dive into the dive well. I thought it was appropriate! And wouldn't you know it? There was some nectar at the bottom of the well. How lucky was that, I didn't even have to worry about spending money (that we don't have, Mom tried to keep our money troubles hidden from us but I knew we were in deep trouble).
Oh, I forgot to mention that my sisters followed me to the nectary, too. But they're not nearly as interesting as me, so I'll just tell you that Lyric stood outside at the back, staring at some barrels - strange kid - and Dee drank nectar.
Now that that's out of the way, since I had the nectar, I went to find the guy that had hired me. I found him and gave him the nectar, then he asked me to also find some food that went well with the nectar. I beamed at him, and eagerly agreed, then headed off to the Catania Cafe to buy a cheese plate. I mean, what else would you get to go with nectar?
I went to the cafe and got out my money, preparing to buy the cheese plate. Before I could hand her the money after telling her what I wanted, though, she waved her hands frantic. "No! No, you do not need to pay, Ms. Parodi! For payment, a picture, s'il vous plaît?" she requested, and I was more than happy to oblige. I'm extremely photogenic, you know, and I loved being famous so I happy posed for her.
While I was off being interesting (and texting school friends about my adventures), Dee was playing chess at the park and Lyric was still at the nectary. But she was being far more interesting than before, she'd gone downstairs to stare at barrels. What was with that girl and barrels? See what I mean, I'm far more interesting than my sisters.
So.. after I went to deliver the food to the guy, he told me he didn't accept bought food. So I had to fix my own. He coulda told me he didn't accept bought, but oh well. I rushed back home and set about fixing the only thing I knew how - autumn salad. And the paparazzo from before was there, and taking pictures of me being domestic. Cool! That meant people could see all sides of me. I made sure to pose for him occasionally. When I was done, I quickly headed off to find the guy again, and when I found him I gave him the salad, hoping he'd accept it this time. He did, to my luck! Now I wanted to go home and go to bed, so I did.
In the morning, I woke up to the sounds of Mom playing bass. How'd she manage to bring THAT along without anyone noticing? My mom's magical I think. I watched her play for a little bit, before heading to the kitchen to eat. And then read for a little bit. Oh, I guess I got uninteresting, I better hand it over to Mom..
OH BUT LOOK THERE, I GOT INTERESTING AGAIN.
I still had a level zero visa, and I wanted level one so I had to continue adventuring. Someone wanted someone else to collect some pieces of unsmelted titanium so they could build a nectar making machine thingy, so I called and accepted, then went off to find some unsmelted titanium. How hard could it be?
It was harder than I thought, but I did find the titanium eventually. Once I had them, I went back to the nectary to drop the rocks with the girl that ran it.
The lady thanked me, and then asked me if I could get this nectowhiz gadget from this guy that was somewhere in town. I agreed, but told her I may do that later because I wanted to learn how to make nectar first. She agreed, and said she was always happy to have someone learn to make nectar in her nectary.
Making nectar = one of the funnest things I have ever done! First step: add fruit. Second step: squish fruit with your feet! I was so glad I'd worn my swimsuit under my clothes that day instead of my regular underwear, 'cause when I was squishing the fruit I fell and went splat. Ewww. It was gross, but at the same time really fun still. When I was done squishing it was time for step three, turn the crank and type in settings. Then it was step four, the wait.
At the place where we stayed, Mom played keyboard (seriously?! She brought it too? How did she do that?), and Dee and Lyr had a conversation. I dunno what they said.
I decided to try some nectar. It was pretty good, though there was a weird flavor in it I didn't quite like. Not long later, when I got my nectar from the machine and was about to start making some more, my stomach agreed with my taste buds on the one flavor, and I had to rush to the bathroom to get rid of it. Guess I don't wanna drink that stuff again..
But I did wanna make it again! What fun! Seriously, I never had so much fun before in my life. Though my stomach hadn't gotten over the whole, drinking nectar ordeal.. turned out that the nectar I drank had plasma fruit in it, though. Really, they should put warning labels on those bottles. I puked again, but I'm not gonna show you that.
Sooo, back at our home-ish place, it turns out Mom knew the paparazzi-o that kept stalking me. He'd stalked her on her first trip to France. Aw, how cute! She'd been wanting to get married, maybe she'd marry him? I didn't know my opinion on the matter, but if she wanted to marry him, she'd marry him.
Well, I'm not done here, but this is getting a little long so I'm gonna say that I'll continue this next time!
(A/N: I wanted to finish this but it was getting really long and kinda late here, so I decided it was gonna be continued tomorrow. It was REALLY fun writing as Naomi for this. She's a hyper girl. XD)
1 comments:
Great chapter! Fun to see Naomi's point of view!
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