I couldn't think of a good title for the particular post.

Sarah was my best friend in high school. Her family is my family. Her parents have always treated me like one of their own. Sarah's brothers are like the cool older brothers I never had, except Paul, who was like the annoying younger brother I thank God I never had. While we were at AACC, Sarah's mom was diagnosed with cancer. She underwent treatment, and last I heard, she was fine. I think the chemo wore her down and she wasn't able to work anymore, but the cancer was beaten back, and life went on.

So when I called Sarah today to see if she wanted to hop on Gaia's MMO, for some beta-testing, I was utterly destroyed when she told me that her mom is dying. Apparently the medication had stopped working, and it had been making her feel so miserable that she quit taking it altogether. The doctors think she has about three months to live. Right now she's in a rehab center trying to build up the muscles in her legs and get her strong enough to walk again. When she gets out she's going to move in with one of Sarah's older sisters, who has the time and ability to take care of her.

Even though I haven't really been able to see her very much since I moved out to St. Louis, I am just devastated. Linda has been my second mom for years, she's taken care of me, helped me when I needed it, and looked out for me like one of her own. I just can't believe in few short months she's going to be gone.

I can't even imagine how the family is taking in. From what Sarah said, Paul is an absolute wreck. He's the youngest kid and the only one still living at home (plus he was always a little sensitive). Ethan and Kricket are probably handling the news well considering. Both of those guys are laid-back and can deal with anything by cracking jokes. I imagine they'll probably feel in on the inside, but will want everyone to cheer up on the outside. Donna and Krista I don't know well enough to make any kind of judgements, and I can't even begin to imagine how David must be doing. The man is about to loose his wife, and he doesn't have the time to help take care of her because his job is slowly beating him to death with a brick.

The whole situation is just depressing. I don't know how Sarah got through our phone call without crying, because god knows I didn't. Being young and not having a close relation with Death leaves me totally bewildered as to what to do. I don't know what to say to try to convey my sorrow, I certainly don't know how I could try and console the family when I feel like I need consoling myself. And all I can think is how much more it's going to hurt when she's gone.

I hope that her last few months are peaceful and surrounded by family. And for my own bit of selfishness, I hope she doesn't die around Thanksgiving, Christmas, or my brother's bootcamp graduation, since I'd really like to fly out to MD to pay my last respects when it happens.

My prayers are with Sarah's family.

So, I don't think I have con plague or anything, but I've been loosing my voice since Saturday night. I haven't been coughing or sneezing or feeling icky like you mostly do with con plague, I think had just talked too much over the weekend and my throat is a little sore. Except that my throat didn't hurt at all until today. So now I'm sucking on Halls and hoping that I'm not actually any sicker than just this.

Note to self: Must start bringing vitamins to cons to decrease chances of con-plague. I've never gotten sick at Otakon, but at Naka-kon and Anime St. Louis, I got sick (actually, I was sick prior to both of those cons seeing as how I was sick for two straight months with mini-relapses every couple of weeks). So I think it's that tight environment that breeds illness. Even though Otakon is thousands of more people, everything is so spread with really high ceilings and lots of AC pumping air. Plus the con is so lame that you end up not going to half of the things that would actually put you in close, constant proximity to other people (they cancel every panel and show you're interested in).

On the upside, I can use my sore throat as part of my reasons not to go to Cotter this weekend. Mom and Dad want to drag me down to Bumblefuck, Arkansas to visit some relatives and go antique shopping. I actually want to go because the leaves might be starting to change already, and it's really a beautiful town that I would love to take pictures of. But I have so much I should be doing that I don't want to go. Besides, with the 'rents away for the weekend, I'll have some quiet time in the house to put my audition together (assuming my voice comes back). Plus I'd really like to hang out with Natale this weekend, she's my only MO friend who doesn't result in drama, and I need breaks from con people in order not to go crazy.

The sad reality is that I don't have a whole lot of friends in MO. I mean, I know a lot of people who I'm friendly with, and I guess I would call them friends. But I don't have a lot of people that I'm close to like I did back in MD (miss j00 Rei!). And the people who I do know the best are all part of the convention, with is so full of stress and drama that it strains friendship sometimes. And the more stressful it becomes, the harder it becomes not to associate the con staff with stress and trouble. I want to spend time with my friends without being reminded of all the drama, but I'm such an over-thinker... It doesn't help that everytime we get together, con stuff always gets mentioned, and when it's not mentioned I'm thinking about it.

That's why seeing Natale every week or so is good for me. I can talk and joke with her without drama being the back of my mind. And for this reason, I miss Audry sooooo much. Audry is the one friend I've ever had who has never ever annoyed me. We agree on just about everything (except on Code Geass, she likes Lelouch, I think he's a douche). Plus Audry is so easy-going and uncaring of what other people think of her. It's so refreshing since lots of people I know trip over themselves when they get the least bit emotional or stressed (I'm like that too). With a lot of my friends it's: "Oh no, I made a mistake! I must apologize obsessively and feel guilty for the next week and let it ruin my day, thereby ruining the day of everyone around me!" With her it's like: "Whoops, my bad. Let me fix that." I love her laid back attitude, I wish I were anything like that >__< Plus Audry is one of those people who knows my tastes perfectly, like Bradwen. If either of those two recommend a show to me, it's guaranteed I'll like it (the one exception being Higurashi, which was not my cup of tea). Audry got me into Stargate and West Wing (which is now my favorite show ever), and I sucked her into Heroes and Lost.

So strangely enough, I get along better with Audry than I do my best friend. This is totally okay though, since Rei-chan and I wouldn't be BFFs were it not for our major personality differences and our ability to forgive and forget problems. She's the House to my Wilson (minus the part where she gets my girlfriend killed, resulting in me leaving the hospital and her hiring a PI to stalk me).

Um, so yeah, watching more Reborn. Finally got to the good stuff. I was actually pretty amazed at how much they left out before starting plot. Reborn is pretty uncommon in that a large part of it is episodic, with no real plot for many many chapters. It makes it feel like constant filler, which is really annoying for someone like me, who is plot-obsessed. So even though the chapters are laid out perfectly to be episodes, the anime still leaves stuff out for no reason I can fathom, which just makes their job harder since they have to fill in certain holes. Like, leaving out the sakura-viewing party where Hibari gets stung by Shamal's Trident Mosquito and develops the sakura disease thing makes it awfully hard to shove Shamal in at the last minute so Mukuro can still use sakura against him in their fight. Duuuuuumb! But yay, I'm happy to be watching the Kokuyo Arc, since Mukuro fighting is a little confusing in the manga.

I'm a little irked with the show though, since I don't really like a lot of the main voice actors. I heard some complaints before I started watching, and Reborn's voice is so very annoying that I have to mute him saying his own name during the eyecatches. Tsuna's voice had to grow on me. I love the way the voice actress says "Na!" in surprise, it's very funny. Out of the main cast, I actually think the best voice is Lambo's, which is funny, because Lambo is the most annoying character. Of course, it's helps that Lambo's voice actress is the *incredibly* talented Junko Takeuchi, who voices Naruto and Gon. It seems like most of the other seiyuu in the show are pretty okay, no one who makes me go "Holy crap, that's awesome!" except Takeuchi.

Back from Archon! The weekend turned out great; the con was a lot more fun than I expected.

Thanks to Josh and Nick, my badge was ready by the time Josh and Ken and I met up Thursday night to go over our panels. So I didn't have to put any money down for my badge, which was nice since I didn't have any cash the whole weekend xP At con, our own convention had a fan table, which I manned almost the whole weekend. This kind of table is akin to an Artist's Alley table, minus the selling of anything. And it was free ;3 So basically I sat at a table with fliers and cookies all day for three days. Of course, we had some panels. On Friday, we did a panel on Separating Anime from Japan, which had a lot of fun discussion, except that this annoying guy kept trying to talk. Now, in his defense, the annoying guy is probably autistic with any number of other mental and physical disorders, but everytime we brought up an interesting, valid discussion point, he would interrupt someone and ask a stupid fucking question about something entirely unrelated. And I could probably handle that to some extent, but nearly every single time he opened his mouth, it was about Gatchaman. After the umpteenth time he brought it up, I specifically asked him not to mention it again during the panel, and not five minutes later, he brought it up. ARGH! Most annoying guy ever. Thankfully he didn't make it into any of my other panels. On Saturday we did panels on: Anime 101, Anime vs Manga, Pirates vs Ninja, and Naruto, with a final panel on Suzumiya Haruhi on Sunday.

I have to say, I've run a number of panels in the past year, but I have never been so thrilled or proud of panel as the Anime vs Manga panel. It was AMAZING! We structured it like a *very* informal debate. We asked two people from the audience to defend each side, Anime and Manga. The audience divided themselves up on either side. Then we posed a debate question, and let the representatives talk to their 'team' for a few minutes. Then we flipped a coin, and one of the reps started the debate, raising points and issues that makes their side better. I have to say, we picked really great people to be the reps, because they were so incredible, debating back and forth in such a calm and professional manner. Those of us running the panel were just floored at how well everything went, how intense the discussions became, how into it everyone got. One of the debaters looked like Vince Vaughn, he took notes and wrote down little statements. I swear, he must have been on his school debate team. I took a video of some of the debate I was so impressed.

You would think that with on a few hours a day being dedicated to panels, that I would get bored being at the table for so long. On the contrary, since Ashely was there, things were quite entertaining. I love Ashley, she is so crazy and easily entertained that keeping each other company while sitting all day was fun. It was mostly a lot of chatting with strangers, making friends, talking about con issues, getting flirted with by drunk guys. While on the subject, let me just say, I haven't been so blatantly hit on by that many guys for a looong time. Like, that one all day Latin music festival in Columbia, MD that I worked at. Yeah, it was like that, just less Hispanics. Same amount of drinking though... Now, getting hit on that much is flattering, but I still would have liked it if the staring was a little less obvious.

I did have nice (and at times awkward) conversations with a guy called Magi, who reminded so much of Kricket that every time he flirted with me it felt reeeeally awkward. Kricket is like an older brother to me, so much so that we might as well be related. So anyone who reminds me of Kricket gets thrown into "Older Brotheresque" category. Aki from the bar at Kandai-mae reminded me of Kricket, and so does this guy Magi. He looks a whole lot like him too. So he was fun to talk with, but it was a little awkward (which thankfully he picked up on).

Needless to say, I got to talk to a lot of people over the weekend, and I feel really good about it. Since I started working for Anime St. Louis, I haven't felt as though I've been really able to connect to the attendees. I know a lot of usernames and a little bit of some personalities, but with one exception, I wouldn't know anyone on sight. But after this weekend, I feel like I'm really starting to get into the fandom community in this area. Even if I can't remember real names, I'll know some faces and remember what we talked about, what our common interests are, etc. It's nice to finally feel like I'm fitting in the community.

So, this weekend was yay. Except that my voice is halfway gone. My throat doesn't even hurt that much, so that's kind of annoying.

Oh, and I'm now watching Reborn since I caught up on reading it. I'm interested to see how much was changed in transition. What I've seen so far has been kind of disappointing. For example, they didn't really set up Yamamoto's character the same way. In the anime, they completely leave out the part where he tried to kill himself and Tsuna savs him. It's the whole foundation of their friendship and the anime throws some BS in there because suicide is too touchy a subject. And they introduce characters too early, too quickly. They show Hibari and Sasagawa in the first episode, which lessens the impact of their eventual entrances into the show. It helps develop the characters a little, but it still annoys me.

Why, oh why, do I finally get inspired when I'm busy? I finally have something to write about in one of my many fanfictions, only to realize that Archon is this weekend, and I still haven't done any panel planning. And I don't even want to go! I'm going because it'll be good advertising for Anime St. Louis. If the con wasn't paying for it, I wouldn't go. $60 for a convention? I get it, it's the alcohol, but I'm not really a drinker, and I'll be working, so that's waaay too expensive for what I'm getting.

So, I need to hurry up and plan seven panels that probably won't even get any business since Archon is a sci-fi/fantasy convention. And when I'm not working panels, I'll be sitting at a table trying to advertise for Anime St. Louis. I probably won't venture into any other panels since I've seen the panel list, and I could care less. I do kind of want to see Laura Hamilton, but I don't have anything to get autographed. I'd loved to get a copy of one her books, get it signed, and mail it to Kricket and Kate, who got me into Hamilton's series.

Since we're carpooling, I'm gonna end up crashing on someone else's couch, which means I probably won't get a shower, and I probably won't sleep either. Con funk xP

Archon craziness wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't also working on Cosplay Bazaar. It seems I'm the only thinking about the little details. Like, if we want to have a contest, we need to lay down rules, and someone has to write them up. Guess who that's gonna end up being? Plus it seems no one has it together enough to do the flier rounds that Ken planned, which pisses me off since I stayed up for hours on the computer with a sprained wrist to work on putting a flier together in time, and then everyone bails.

She's going to be there, at Archon. I know I'm going to run into her. I'm not looking forward to that, not at all.

So all of that, with two more episodes to translate for Anime Midstream, why do I suddenly have the urge to write? I blame Rei, she always writes Ouran fanfic while busy. I wrote ten pages of Sailor Moon fanfiction last night. And by the way, anyone who makes fun of me for writing Sailor Moon fanfiction gets hit in the face with a rake. Sailor Moon is an amazing, complex story... in the manga. And I write from the manga. I'm also writing fanfics for Slayers, Rurouni Kenshin, Fushigi Yuugi, and Naruto. And occasionally I try to write some of the novel ideas that I had. I never get very far because my muse wanders off and does something else while I'm trying to write. But finally Hayate (my muse) settled on Sailor Moon, and I churned out three chapters. This is a big deal for me since I can never get more than a few paragraphs before quitting V.V This is why I could never go into writing professionally, or post regularly on fanfiction.net. I swear I'll get something of my own on that site some day! Granted, I do have fanfic there, but Rei writes it, and I make it sound pretty. And that fic isn't a serious piece, otherwise it wouldn't be a self-insertion fic that exists because my best friend and I are total fangirls for Kaoru and Mori. Ah... Mori...

OMG! I just realized that Yamamoto from Katekyo Hitman Reborn looks a lot like Mori O.O And they both have the kendo thing going on. And their first names are Takashi and Takeshi. *flails* Mori's long lost tiwn! *dies*

And to those who haven't realized it, I'm totally in love with Katekyo Hitman Reborn. What can I say? I'm a sucker for Jump Comics. I love most manga they serialize; Naruto, Bleach, Gintama, etc. They're all my type of comic, and Reborn is no exception. It started a little slow, unusually episodic for a manga. And then when the plot kicked in full gear, it was epic. The characters are SO great. This is a manga where I can't actually pick a favorite character. I love Gokudera and Yamamoto and Dino and Sasagawa *w* There's heaps of other great characters. I should do a full review as my next blog. Flippin' amazing manga.

I guess I'm kind of a morbid person. I'm not emo, I'm not goth, I'm not a pessimist or anything like that. But I think about death just about everyday. Every time that I'm in a car, I think about how I could die whilst in said vehicle. Whenever I'm someplace high, I think about falling. I think about drowning, suffocating, etc. I suppose thinking about death is pretty normal, I just wonder if I think about it too much. And it's not always me, I think about what would happen if some random person I saw on the street suddenly keeled over. It's not like I think about what it would be like to die, I mostly just think about what the reactions of other people would be like. For example, if I were to witness a car accident, would I be the first to dial 911? If I were to dial 911, would I be able to give an accurate street address? If one of my friends was thinking about committing suicide, who would I call? If I were to die, how would my parents deal with it? What would they do with my stuff? I think I think about death so much because I really want to be prepared for any situation.

I bring this up because today we had the second death in the family in a very short while. Bob Schmidt had been in failing health for quite a while, his death is actually a bit of a relief; his suffering is over, the family can stop worrying and everyone can rest easy.

I wasn't in any way close to Bob, so while his death is sad, it affects me very little. However, not that long ago, our family had another death, and it disturbs me profoundly.

John Malaney was my second cousin. My mom's cousin's son. I vaguely remember my cousin Lucy and I fighting with John and his brother Spencer when we were kids. Since I was only in St. Louis a few times growing up, I never got close to my second cousins. But my mom's cousin, Uncle Tim, has always been very close to my grandmother, so I actually remember his kids a little.

The Malaney family had its ups and downs... maybe a few more downs than ups. There were some serious family issues going unresolved in that house. I don't know too much about it, and I rarely saw Spencer or John. Although, John and his mother came to our house a few months ago to celebrate Mother's Day. John's mother is in poor health, so it seemed like he was often going out of his way to help her out.

Since I moved to St. Louis, I've been hearing little bits and pieces of information about the Malaney brothers. I could never keep the stories straight. It was always "Spencer did this" and "John did that" and I could never remember which one got fired and which one wanted to go back to school, etc.

Well, not that long ago, we got a phone call saying that John had killed himself. He had attempted suicide before, he just... succeeded this time. I know he had a relapsing drug problem, and his home life wasn't perfect, but still....

I guess on some level I can understand the desire to take your own life. If you live in overwhelming despair, if you don't have the mental fortitude to deal with your problems, if you can't find anything in life worth living for, then I guess not living is an option. But I just don't know how people can actually feel like that.

It's the same as people with depression or alcoholism or anorexia. People with these afflictions, their minds work differently. It's easy to call someone who commits suicide selfish because they're hurting other people by hurting themselves. If they cared about other people, they wouldn't do such things. It's easy to feel that way. It's easy to think that someone who's anorexic has an over-developed sense of vanity, that an alcoholic has no willpower. I've always thought of myself as an open-minded person, but I realized that there are some things even an open mind can't comprehend. The first time I experienced this was with a friend who had been diagnosed with depression. I had never been so close to someone with depression, so I had no idea how to deal with her behavior. How much of it was her depression? How much of it was side-effects of her medication? How much of it was her personality? I had no idea, and her irrational behavior was beyond what I could tolerate. I realized later that there are just some things that I will never understand. And that's okay; human beings weren't meant to wrap their brains around everything. If I can't draw the line between the way something thinks and the way someone acts, then I'm just gonna have to live with that.

And that's the really hard part. Living without being able to understand the people you want to help. In John's case, there were people who wanted to help him. Whether or not he wanted help, I don't know.

Truthfully, I didn't know John that well. I know Uncle Tim better than John. But as one of the people left behind, his death is still important to me. It had been a long time since I had seen my family deal with death. I gotta say, I love my family. We had a small memorial to John; casual clothes, potluck lunch, and pictures of John. We all gave Tim a hug, and gossiped with the family like it was any other potluck. People outside the family came dressed up, a few with flowers, one with a card. You could tell the family apart from the non-family, we were all in jeans xD

And then John's mother came. Being of poor health, she always looked a little run-down, but that day she looked miserable. And she hugged the family and cried and cried. And when I saw the tears she shed for her lost son, I thought about the line from The Two Towers movie; "No parent should have to bury their child." The strained faces of the parents, trying to smile away the crushing loss, the regret... that's why I'll never be able to understand why people kill themselves. I would rather live in hell than let others suffer it because of me. But minds just work differently.

It was a sad day to be sure. But I've never been so proud of my aunt Kathy as I was that day. Many of John's friends came to the memorial that day. Many of them were the people who pressured him to start using again when he was trying to get clean. They sat in a little circle away from the family, swapping stories and the like. And my aunt Kathy sat herself right down with them, and lectured them for half an hour (don't do drugs, don't pressure other people, think about other people, your future, etc). I fancy myself an extremely empathetic person (which is while I cry ALL the time), and much like the Japanese, I don't like to see people embarrassed or uncomfortable. But for once I thought, "Screw their embarrassment, those guys should hear this everyday for the rest of their lives." I try not to shove my moral agenda on other people; it's not my place to say if what someone does is right or wrong. But if, somehow, a life could be saved by making someone feel uncomfortable and guilty for half an hour, then it's worth it.

It was John's choice to end his life. Those of us left behind are left with the task of dealing with how his choice makes us feel. It's unsettling to me because I know people my and John's age who are in much shakier situations, and the idea that some people close to me might decide to end it all has crossed my mind often. And I'm not an expert, I wouldn't know the signs if I ran into them, and I wouldn't know how to address the issue if it happened to a close friend.

All I know is that suicide is something I can't fathom myself doing. I'm with Eddie Izzard: "I wanna live until I die. No more. No less."

I'm fairly certain my wrist is sprained. I sprained my left wrist a few years ago, so now that my right wrist is hurting, I kind of know what a sprain feels like. This is extremely frustrating because I had to spend most of last night typing things for forum announcements and fliers. Ouch >.<

Today I'm just going to ice the poor wrist and avoid using the computer too much, which means this message has been typed primarily with my left hand :P

Kinda pissed at the moment. At various people. People need to actually listen to one another, stop assuming shit about other people, and lighten the fuck up.