What Happened in August?
Hello everyone! I feel like I’ve been saying this every month, but whew did August go by fast or what?! When the year feels like Groundhog Day, it’s hard to remember if I’ve repeated myself or not in these monthly wrap ups! Either way, August was a pretty chill month. Let me tell you about it!
I’m 27 Now
I had hoped at the beginning of this pandemic that the virus would be taken care of before my birthday. In some ways, I wasn’t totally wrong; most of the world is pretty much back to normal. Unfortunately, I live in the United States, so the pandemic is still very much an every day worry. Instead of going out to dinner and drinks with my friends, I worked on my birthday.
After work, however, my best friend Erin invited us over for a birthday dinner. Damian made chicken Alfredo lasagna (I still dream of it to this day) and we hung out in Erin’s backyard, multiple hand sanitizer bottles on the table for frequent germ destroying purposes. It was a fun time! It was a much better way of spending my birthday than I had planned (which was nothing, really!).
The Semi-Cursed Birthday Gift
I had a necklace that Matt had bought me shortly before we got married (or shortly after…either way, it was around that time!) that I absolutely loved. I wore it all the time, everyday. Eventually, the chain broke and I was really sad about it! So, for my birthday, I asked Matt for a necklace. He kept hinting that he would get me one and I was very, very excited about it!
When my birthday came, I saw the flowers he had gotten me and was excited and happy, for sure…but a part of me wondered when he would give me the necklace I had been looking forward to! As the day came and went, I realized he might had not gotten it in the mail yet (he had mentioned one of my gifts might be sent late, after all), so I decided to wait until Monday to say anything about it.
Well, Monday came and nothing happened! In the car that day, I mentioned that I thought there might have been more to the gift that he might have forgotten about.
“Oh shit!” He gasped. “I forgot to take you to the zoo!”
I guess on the 16th, we were supposed to go to the zoo, but instead I did my usual sit on the couch and hang out while he played video games all night. I had no idea, so I was indeed surprised. It made me laugh as I realized he completely forgot about the necklace I wanted.
Matt has never been the best gift giver (and he knows this, which is the only reason I’m writing about it), but he tries really hard every time a holiday or birthday rolls around so I’m never truly upset at him for gifting me something questionable. The first gift he ever gave me was a phone case that was for the wrong style phone. He hates that he mixed the style of phones to this day, but I still have it somewhere around my room because I love the face that he tried!
This year’s birthday was no different. At the end of the fiasco, all I could do was laugh. My husband is just goofy, plain and simple. This past week, he ended up buying me a necklace, so in theory, that’s the end of the story.
A day after my necklace came, the chain broke. I was furious.
In my anger, I bought a new chain online. The pendant was fine, but the chain had just snapped when I touched it. How could Matt and I justify spending so much on a gift that broke not even 24 hours later?! Oh well. Luckily, I’ve gone a few days now with the new chain and nothing bad has happened, so here’s hoping this is the end of the story!
Covid Scares
I’m not going to lie, working during this pandemic and knowing all the risks that I’ve been taking doing so is very scary. Every day I wake up and wonder: is today the day? Will I get Covid? Will Matt or Damian be unlucky enough to get it at their job? Their place of work just hired 500+ people, and all throughout the pandemic, they haven’t really…well, they haven’t really acknowledged that this pandemic is serious. It stresses me out every day to think that their company doesn’t care about their employees getting the virus.
I’m lucky to work in a place that cares about their employees so much. Small businesses have that perk! All month, I’ve been in charge of making sure all the students that work for us have their Covid tests come back negative, making sure if they can’t work due to being exposed that they take the appropriate steps, and really just doing all sorts of Covid-related paperwork. It’s not been too terrible; after all, I like having something to do at work besides wait tables.
We’ve also hired a handful of new people because the reality of people being exposed on campus is too real. These people are almost all from different Skylines (excluding two, but they have plenty of experience). It’s been a dream to train the new people, and I’m very happy that they’re taking our (aka the State’s) rules about sanitation and cleaning so seriously.
I think the only thing the managers are worried about is that not one of the customers actually care about being safe and Covid-free. It’s almost like people are begging to get the virus. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made note of people wearing their mask wrong, people taking off their mask to talk, going around the plexiglass and reaching to touch stuff, ignoring signs that block them off from touching everything…it’s driving me crazy!! I even eavesdropped on a table talking about how they had been exposed to the virus…and yet they were in my restaurant, being served by an unsuspecting server. I was so upset. How could you go and risk the lives of others for…a cheese coney? Was it really worth it? I don’t know.
Either way, I thank whoever’s in charge upstairs every day for keeping me safe and healthy during all of this. It’s been truly scary to go into public every day, but I’m lucky enough to work somewhere that values health over profit.
Maybe I Will Do NaNoWriMo This Year…
One day, I was looking at Legend of Zelda fanart on Pinterest, like I do. At some point, it went from basic LoZ fanart to Prince Sidon fanart. This was fine, mostly because Prince Sidon was and is one of my favorite characters from Breath of the Wild.
Eventually, the topic of the art shifted to Sidon and Link fanart. People were shipping them! (If you’re not familiar with fandom speak, “shipping” means that people take two in-universe characters and put them together romantically. Think like Harry and Ginny from “Harry Potter”; that’s a Canon Ship. Harry and Ron, shipped romantically, would be a Non-Canon Ship. So would Prince Sidon and Link!)
Anyways, I looked at this fanart and wondered how strange it would be to date someone who’s more than a foot taller than you. I’m an above average height lady. As someone who’s 5’8”ish, I’ve never found anyone who’s THAT tall. Matt is a tall 6’1”, so we’ve got roughly five inches of height difference between us. Imagining him being 6’8”ish is almost impossible.
As I sat here thinking about all of this, my brain caught a little spark. What if a boy was interested in another person who was taller than them at first, but as the boy grew into a man, he towered over everyone, including his love interest?
What if the boy had a sister who was friends with this love interest, and she disappeared, making room for this boy to eventually find solace in this love interest?
Oh man! The drama of it all!!
I spent a good chunk of time writing in my notebook that night, brainstorming about these characters and what they could do in this little world of mine.
The next morning, I looked at the synopsis of this story I had dreamt up the night before. I had finagled my brainstorm into a cohesive story! The way I want to tell the story (in snapshots of different POVs, not as one whole story from one POV) makes it so that I can actually conquer the longevity of the plot, in theory.
I dipped the idea into the bargain bin of my mind and came out with this:
Neighbors Mishelle, or Mishi, and Luke start a band with their friends. Stefan, Mishi’s little brother, is their number one fan. As the years go on and the band grows in popularity, young Stefan finds that Luke is more than just his sister’s best friend, and more than his favorite band member.
Tragedy strikes the band, and Luke disappears for 8 long years. Through the years, Stefan grows up a very tall young man, ignoring basketball coaches all throughout school to eventually become the star of the swim team. After his graduation, Luke comes back into town a broken man. Mishi is gone, and while Luke’s music career flourished, his heart took a toll.
Stefan and Luke take refuge in each other, their goal the same: find Mishi and find happiness. Are those things mutually exclusive? Only time will tell.
I’m hoping that I can properly tell this story, and maybe even go into NaNoWriMo this year with it. I think it’s easier to do NaNo if you already have some sort of idea in your back pocket. So, why not try my hand at this one? If I end up making some rough draft short story versions of the plot, I’ll be sure to share with you all!
Music Obsessions
This August was good for music. Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion released the hit of the summer, “WAP”; Late June released their new single “Date Night”; Planet Booty and Flynt Flossy got together on Flossy’s new album for the single “Rough Month”, and Super Guitar Bros released a video for their “Ocarina of Time” cover album.
Plus, it was my birthday after all, so I had to include some old favorites! Fold that in with some new-to-me tunes and you’ve got yourself a monthly playlist!
One thing that’s not so music related (but ended up on the playlist anyways) is the return of Dr. DisRespect. Dr. DisRespect is a video game streamer and all around online personality. His fame comes not only from his larger than life online persona, but his absolute domination in the battle royale genre of games. In July, he was permabanned from Twitch, the biggest online streaming service, for unknown reasons. His fans were worried, but in true Dr. D action, he made a huge return to streaming on YouTube this month.
Ahead of his return to streaming, Dr. DisRespect had released a handful of new songs that reflect his dark retrowave, 80s aesthetic. “Red Skies” is the single he released a day or so before making his big return to streaming. It’s not great, vocals wise…but it is the perfect example of what Dr. DisRespect is: a huge personality with big goals and the confidence he needs to pull all of those goals off flawlessly.
Next month, Animal Crossing gets a huge Fall update. I’ve been looking forward to Fall this whole year, mostly because it’s my favorite season, but also because I can live my best Fall life in Animal Crossing after our Autumn is inevitably cut short (thanks, Global Warming in the Midwest). Anyone else get annoyed at the two week Autumns we’ve been having the past 10 years?
Also, who else is annoyed that Fall and Autumn are the same thing? Can’t we all just say one or the other? Oh well…
I hope you liked this monthly wrapup! I love writing these, so thank you for reading them!! September is right around the corner…so crazy. If you liked this post, feel free to follow me on Twitter for daily Mary-isims. This week, I’ll be attempting to write a little bit of my new story idea, so here’s hoping I’ll have something to share from it next week!
