Famous Last Words: Actually My Last Words

Today is my daughter's 17th birthday. We decided on Saturday morning to get some Italian takeout for lunch, and to spend the day making a crazy cake. We went with 6 layers of pastel rainbow, with sprinkles on top.

(Photos from my personal collection)

I'm also happy to report that I finally picked a graduate program last night. After spending some time with my art therapy teacher (I felt bad crashing their class, but everyone is so chill in there that no one seemed bothered by it), I've decided on a masters in human relations with a clinical mental health concentration. Afterwords I will likely get my PhD in psychology. It feels really good to have a plan finally. Now I just have to finish the application process.

I can't believe this is my last post for class. While I'm glad I have some extra time at the end of the semester, I'm also going to miss it. I'm very happy with how my project turned out, and hope all of you feel the same way when you're done. I plan to keep writing, and feel like this class has improved the way I think about writing stories. Thanks for all of the nice comments you all left me over the semester!

(Photo from Pinterest)

Famous Last Words: Five More Fridays

I realized this morning that my graduation ceremony is exactly five weeks from today. I have a lot to do before then, so it's a bit of a stressful thought. I guess I'm going to just roll with it and hope for the best. In class this week, I wrote my final story for my project. I can't believe it's about done. I started reading Carmen this week, because if I decide to write stories for the other characters, Panther would be one of the next. It's been a really fun book so far, I'm really enjoying it.

I made some grad school progress this week. Monday morning I talked to someone in one of the counseling programs. It sounded like where I might need to be. Then Monday night I got to talk to my psych teacher. She said she likes the other counseling program better (and has taught for it). She also confirmed that I can absolutely go get my PhD in psych after a master's in either counseling program, and the people she's seen do it that way have been really balanced students. This coming Monday I'm meeting with my art therapy teacher who graduated from the program my teacher recommended. And since I'll be crashing her studio class, I'm bringing my art project along to show her.

This afternoon at the veteran's center, no one wanted to do art. Most of the staff was off for the holiday and they had a big celebration yesterday. Even less people will be around the Friday after Thanksgiving, and the other art people aren't coming. I'm going to bring some new and hopefully fun things in case people show up and want to participate, and a project of my own to work on while I'm there. Whether anyone wants to do art with me or not, I need to get enough hours by the end. So I'm just going to camp out with something to do and hope some people at least come talk to me. That's why I'm really there, anyway.

I took my daughter to the mall this weekend and couldn't resist a picture of this bar of soap. Can you relate? I know I can right now.

(Photo from my personal collection)

Tech Tip: YouTube Playlist

I normally use YouTube for finding music videos, video game tutorials, and other kinds of tutorials. I look up origami videos frequently because it's much easier to see what someone in a video is doing with their hands than looking at a flat diagram. I have also looked up videos on concepts for school if I was struggling, and it really helped. Occasionally I've made playlists of songs I can't buy anywhere. For this assignment I thought it would be fun to make a playlist of videos introducing the Persona 5 characters, and I also added in videos that introduce the many other characters that Joker can have relationships with in the game.

Learning Challenge: Mental Health Testimony

The mental health video I liked best was Jeremiah Stinnett talking about social anxiety. As a psychology major, this impacts me two ways. How can I help others, and how can I help myself? I also suffer from this. I felt like the video was really powerful because as someone who has problems with this, I could see how much effort it was taking him to just be behind a video camera, knowing that not only the person filming was seeing and hearing everything, but also that many people would see the video. That's an incredibly hard thing for someone with social anxiety to do. He looked uncomfortable, which is how I look any time I have to present in a class, or talk in a group I'm not very comfortable with. It was really brave of him to even do this. It also really hit home with me when he talked about how people without social anxiety don't even think it's a thing, because that's so true. People without it think you should just suck it up and do it and it will be no big deal. Unfortunately, that's not the case for us at all.

Reading Notes: Carmen

(Photo from Pinterest)

Chapter 1 - A gentleman and his guide, Antonio, encounter a stranger who they share a cigar and food with, and seek lodging for the night with. They figure out along the way that he is Jose Navarro, the most noted bandit in Andalusia. Antonio insists on spending the night in the stable with the horses. The gentleman wakes up feeling itchy and sneaks outside. He and Antonio talk. Navarro had threatened him to not tell the gentleman who he is. Antonio plans to go get others to help take Navarro down. This angered the gentleman, as he saw no reason to turn Navarro in, as he had done nothing to them. The gentleman goes back inside and wakes Navarro, telling him that half a dozen lancers will be coming. He tells him that someone he doesn't know told him, instead of throwing Antonio under the bus. He tells Navarro to go, and as payment for the tip, to never suspect anyone (Antonio). He gives him some cigars and sends him on his way. When Antonio returns with the soldiers, he tells them the robber left 2 hours ago. Antonio was sulky with him, and they parted ways.

Chapter 2 - The gentleman went to a convent in Cordova to read a manuscript about the ancient world. In town, just before the Angellus bell rings, women gather beside the river. The bell ringing brings darkness, and the women disrobe and bathe in the river. Men gather on the upper quay to watch, even though they can barely see a thing. One evening, a woman sits down near him on the parapet. She has jasmine in her hair. She was beautiful and young. The gentleman put out his cigar out of respect. She told him she liked the smell and sometimes liked to smoke papelitos. He had some and gave her one, and they smoked and talked so long that they were alone. She says she is a gipsy and offers to read his fortune. She asks if he has ever heard of Carmencita, and says that's who she is. The gentleman had studied occult science is college and was attracted to darkness. He doubted Carmen was a full gipsy. "There was something strange and wild about her beauty." Sensuality and fierceness in her eyes. He feels funny having his fortune read in a cafe, so he asks to go home with her, and she consents.

They are let into the house by a child, and Carmen speaks in gipsy language to her. They sit and she pulls out her cards, beginning to read his fortune. A man enters and begins yelling at her in gipsy. The gentleman is wondering when he will need to grab a stool and hit the man over the head with it when the man asks if it's him. It's Don Jose. The gentleman feels sorry he saved him from the gallows (he's a pretty funny guy, this gentleman). Don Jose pulls him outside and tells him to go straight and he will come to the bridge. Don Jose runs off, and the gentleman reluctantly goes back to his inn. He realized when he gets there that his watch is missing. He can't go back and get it the next day, and is done with the manuscript, goes to Seville and spends months there, then he leaves, wanting to head back to Madrid, stopping in Cordova on the way. One of the monks welcomes him back and tells him they thought he was dead and knew he had been robbed. The monk tells him that Jose Navarro is imprisoned and going to be hung, and that he will take him to him to get his watch back. The gentleman brings him cigars, which Don Jose thanks him for. The gentleman asks if there is anything he can do to soften his sentence (pay money), and Jose asks him to have a mass said for his soul. Then he asks him to go to Vittoria and take Jose's silver medal to an old lady there, and to tell her he is dead, but not how he died. The gentleman promises, and spends the following day with Jose, listening to incidents that had happened to him.



Carmen by Prosper Mérimée. Web Source.

Week 13 Story: Akira in Wonderland

(Photo from Pinterest)

One afternoon, Akira decided to go for a walk. He was still fairly new to the city, and thought it would be a good idea to get more familiar with his surroundings. He was walking through an empty alley. Empty except for a black cat that was walking on two feet.

“Oh no,” said the cat. “I’m going to be late! Everyone will be angry with me!”

Akira thought this was rather strange, so he decided to follow the cat. As soon as the world started twisting around him, he remembered that he had met that cat before. In that strange place he accidentally wound up in on the way home from school the other day, the Metaverse. He had no idea what that place was, but when they got home, the app on his phone had welcomed them back to the real world.

By “them” he meant himself and that weird kid Ryuji from school. The one his homeroom teacher told him to stay away from. Akira was in enough trouble already and didn’t need to hang out with a delinquent. Naturally, they ended up together in that strange world.

It was taking forever to land in that place, so Akira started thinking about all kinds of stuff. I hope I’m not gone too long this time. I wonder if Sojiro will miss me if I am. Who will help him make the curry if I’m not there? Will he be able to handle the shop if I’m not there to do the dishes? he thought.

He also started to think about that kid Ryuji again. And the weird cat-monster they had met the last time they ended up here. He wished he hadn’t followed it, at least not by himself.

When he finally landed, Akira caught a glimpse of the cat. Morgana, was it? He decided to follow, and found himself in a hall full of doors. The table in the center of the hall had a very small key on it. Too small for the doors. Akira looked around some more, eventually finding a small vent with a lock on it. Peering through the vent, he could see that there was a magical looking garden down below, but there was no way he would fit through the vent.

Akira returned to the table and noticed a small bottle of potion labeled “drink me.” He shrugged and decided to go for it. It tastes like Sojiro’s special curry! There was a loud popping sound, and Akira turned into a rat. I suppose I’ll fit through the vent now, he thought with a tiny rat frown.

When he ran over to the vent, he realized that he forgot the key. Akira ran back to the table and realized that he was a tiny rat that would never reach the key. Luckily, there was a little piece of cake under the table. Akira the rat took a nibble. It tasted like coffee. Jamaican Blue! How delicious! He thought. There was another loud pop, and Akira turned back into a human. He grabbed the key, took the last swig of the potion, turned back into a rat, and scampered back to the vent. He ran through and jumped down into the garden, landing with a thud.

When he got there, he was not alone. The garden was filled with all of his friends; Skull, Panther, Fox, Oracle, Queen, Noir, Crow, and even Mona, the cat.

“Joker?” asked Fox the rat. “Is everything alright?”

“I’m not sure. A minute ago I thought I had just arrived in Tokyo, but now… I know all of you.”

“What, did you eat some bad curry this morning or something?” Skull the rat asked. “You’ve been in Tokyo for months, now.”

“We’re in a palace,” said Mona, that cat who was now a rat.

“Hey guys?” Panther asked. “How are we going to open that door over there with our, umm, paws?” asked Panther.

“That is prepawsterous,” said Fox.

That was when Akira woke up. He sure hoped it was only a dream, or else he was going to have to listen to Yusuke’s terrible rat puns in real life, too.

(Photo from Polygon)

Author’s Note:

This story is based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. In the original story, Alice follows a talking rabbit down a rabbit hole and ends up in a hall of doors. The tiny key on the table opens a very small, hidden door that Alice can’t fit through. She drinks the potion to become small, forgets the key, eats cake to become very tall, and eventually gets the door open. She goes on to have many adventures in her strange world. My retelling is based on characters from the game Persona 5. The main character, Akira (Joker), is dreaming that he followed a talking cat into the Metaverse, a cognitive world inside people’s minds. In his reality, he knows the cat, and the other people who have turned into rats are his teammates, the Phantom Thieves. When he realizes that he knows them all, his friend Yusuke (also known as Fox) makes a terrible rat pun, waking him from the dream. In the game, there is a part of the cognitive world that they enter where devices turn them into rats, and they can crawl through small vents to get to new places. It becomes a very long puzzle, because rats can’t open doors. I thought that if Akira ended up in a sort of Wonderland, he would turn into a rat, which would make his life much more complicated.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Web Source.

Reading Notes: Alice in Wonderland Part B

(Photo from Pinterest)

The March Hare and the Hatter were having a tea party, with a Dormouse sleeping between them. The table was huge, but they told Alice there was no room for her. She sat in the arm chair at the end of the table anyway and noticed that there was nothing but tea on the table. She tells them it isn't civil to not have wine, and they tell her it wasn't civil of her to sit down uninvited. They begin asking her riddles, and saying all kinds of nonsensical things. They ask if she knows the answer to the riddle yet, and that they don't know what it is either. They decide the Dormouse should tell them a story and pinch its sides to wake it up. It was awake the whole time. It tells them a story about two sisters that live at the bottom of a well. In the midst of the story, the others decide they want a clean teacup, so they all slide over one seat. Only the Hatter ends up with a clean cup. The Hare and the Hatter offend Alice, so she gets up to leave, and the Dormouse falls back to sleep. Alice finds a door back to the hall, and gets the key to the tiny door, using just enough mushroom to be the right height to get into the garden.


Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Web Source.

Reading Notes: Alice in Wonderland Part A

(Photo from Pinterest)

Alice sees a white rabbit running and muttering about how it's going to be late. She thinks maybe she's just hearing things until it takes a watch out of its pocket to check the time. She followed it down a rabbit hole, without thinking about how she would get back out. She fell for a very long time, passing strange things like jars of marmalade and thinking all kinds of random thoughts as she fell.

She ends up in a hall with many doors, but they're all locked. She finds a tiny key on the table that was too small for the doors. She explores more and finds a tiny door behind a curtain. The key fits and she can see a passage that leads to a garden, but she can't fit through. She finds a bottle on the table that says "drink me" and drinks the potion which shrinks her. She can fit through the door now, but left the key on the table, and was too small to reach it. She finds a glass box under the table with a little cake that says "eat me". She does and grows tall, and gets the key. Unfortunately she's now too big to fit through the door again.

This is the part of the story I plan to use for my story this week. It will be Akira in Wonderland, and the potion will turn him into a rat so he can crawl through the vents in a palace.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Web Source.

Learning Challenge Week 12: Happiness Jar Part 2

(Photo from my personal collection)

Last week I started a happiness jar. I am making jars full of origami lucky stars, and my own jar was completely empty while I try to fill jars I plan to give as gifts, so I decided to use it for my little notes about things that made me happy each day. It's been a week now. I really enjoyed having to think about something that made me happy each day. It was a really nice feeling. I think if I were to do it long term, it might help shift my worldview a little. In a week, I don't really feel too different. But it feels like something that would build up over a longer period of time. It would be hard to not see changes in yourself if you did this daily for a whole year.

Famous Last Words: Famous Authors and Halloween!

This post is going to be overwhelming with pictures. Sorry.

Last Saturday I took my daughter to Oklahoma Teen Book Con. It was at the Scottish Rite Temple in Guthrie, which is a really interesting building architecturally. We went to some panels to hear YA authors talk about writing fantasy, and why they like to write YA over adult fiction. We also got to meet one of our favorite authors, Maggie Stiefvater, which was a really fun experience.

This week for class I revised my third story. I really can't believe there's only one more to go. I started researching in case I decide to write stories for the rest of the Persona characters. I'm not sure when I think I'll have time to write five more stories. Christmas break, maybe? I guess we'll see. I'm a little nervous about how I'm going to pull off this last one. It's the most obvious story, and that might make it the most difficult to write.

My other classes have been a little bit odd lately. I have the same teacher for both and she hasn't been in class the past three weeks. I know her grad student that's filling in from our lab, and really like her, but I think we're all feeling sort of abandoned.

In other school news, I briefly talked to a professor in one of the grad school programs I'm interested in, and have an appointment to meet with him next week to talk more. Basically, two family members of mine told me that I shouldn't apply for that program within a couple of minutes time on Monday morning. One that doesn't really know the details, and one that should know better (and remember stuff we talk about after we talk about it). I was so mad that I started sending emails to get info I need from people that actually have it. I read an article the same morning that said people will try to talk you into programs they want you to be in, and it isn't helpful at all, because it's you that has to be happy with your path. And that's right where I am at this moment. This is about me. So I'm going to go see what this program is about and decide if it's for me or not. I have a feeling it's where I'm supposed to be, and it would be really cool to finally figure that out.

In more exciting news, yesterday was Halloween! Mario had two costumes throughout the day. He started off the day as Mona from persona 5, and then he wore his favorite bowtie all afternoon and evening. We made eggos for dinner and watched the last two episodes of Stranger Things season 2. It was a great day!

 

Tomorrow I'm having breakfast with a friend. She's the only college friend I've made in the past 7 years of pursuing this degree that I still see regularly, but it's been awhile so I'm looking forward to catching up. She's definitely my go-to person that I call when I realize my life is a chaotic wreck and I have no social life! It will be nice to connect with someone for a couple of hours. 

(All photos from my personal collection)

Week 12 Story Planning: Akira in Wonderland

Akira in Wonderland

-Akira (Joker) is out for a walk and sees a cat walking around. It's talking about being late and runs off. He follows it and falls into the Metaverse, and thinks random thoughts while he's falling into the cognitive world. He babbles more on the fall, wondering if Sojiro will miss him and if the curry will get made and if he'll be able to handle the shop without Akira there to wash the dishes.

(Photo from Pinterest)

-He finally lands, sees the cat entering a long passage, ends up in a hall of locked doors, finds a key on the table. Finds a tiny, hidden door and the key unlocks it (it's a vent). Can't fit through, sees a garden below. Goes back to the table hoping to find another key, finds a bottle that says drink me. Drinks it (it tasted like Sojiro's special curry) and turns into a rat.

(Photo from Pinterest)

-Realizes he forgot the key, goes back and can't reach the table. Finds a piece of cake that says eat me, it tastes like coffee. (Jamaican Blue, the best). He turns into a human, grabs the key, drinks the dregs of the potion from earlier, turns back into a rat.

-Now he fits in the vent and crawls through, jumps down into the garden where he finds his friends, who are also all rats.

(Photo from Polygon)

-Has an odd conversation with them about how they got here, where they are, how they became rats, how they can get back to the real world. They can't open any of the bigger doors in this place because rats are very small and have paws, and they don't see any more of the odd drink.

-Wakes up in his bed in the attic, Morgana (Mona) the cat is sound asleep next to him.



Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Web Source.