^_^ Oh goodness guys! Good job everyone! <3 We got full points!

And btw, I like your avi . :)

Wow, did we?

We are in the airport right now, and will be back in Switzerland tomorrow morning (in US time), so then I will keep up with things MUCH better. Sorry I've been so absent these last two weeks. I knew visiting family would be rough, but I didn't think they'd be as bossy and monopolizing as they were... Oh well. Our "vacation" is over, and back to life as usual...

:) That's okay, have a safe trip and try to get some rest.
I don't know about your family situation, per se, but I know that if I had family that came from out of country, I would try to spend as much time with them as I could because I, personally, can't afford to visit them. I do the same with relatives from California and Texas (and one's only a state away!) Part of it could be covering my guilt in not visiting them, but also to show that I really do love them (my terrible sense of communication says otherwise :( ). Though, I do understand the feeling of wanting to just have a fun vacation, but possibly feeling guilt or monopolization from relatives when you just want to get out.
Meh.. such is life... :( I'm sorry if I sound judgy, I ....just like people to try to understand each other, I guess. (and part of this might come from some of my own family issues..). [Great, now I'm psychoanalyzing myself again....-_-'] sigh

...I really do hope you get some peace and rest. :) Goodnight Raine!

Thank you. I didn't want to give up the vest just yet, so I made a new HA I see you put that new paint set to good use :3

:3 I'm so happy I got it! I was actually thinking to layer it with the neon paint set (or whatever it was called), but it seemed a bit too much.

Your avi makes me think steampunk detective or something. :) Like you go on adventures and solve things.

Yeah... I do want to visit with family, and it is very expensive.... We make it over to the States about once every two years, because it costs 2200 at best, and close to 4000 at worst. And of course we want to spend time with everyone. But frankly, they were all fighting over us like we were a piece of meat, and it was dreadful... Everyone was trying to manipulate us into spending our time the way they wanted it.. My grandma wanted only us visiting in the cities, and didn't want to share us with anyone else... My mum wanted us to spend all of the time in the smaller town I'm from, and she tried to force my brother not to get any time with us. She told him not to come to the cities, told him he wouldn't be welcome in her small town, and tried not to let us travel to his town. And etc....

Then even how each day was spent was a fight... My aunt wanted to take us on tours to different places, my mum wanted us to spend the time shopping instead. My grandma wanted us to spend all the time sitting quietly at her house. And then everyone wanted us to take sides in all the individual fights they've all been having with each other, and that was the worst part... The middle brother has two sons, and lives in the same town as my mum, and she's basically taking over with his kids. She seems to think his oldest son is actually hers, and she's always picking him up without asking permission, and taking him to do things, and feeding him tons of unhealthy food (even though he has a weight problem), and teaching him to have no respect for his father (which is especially bad when you add to it the fact that he's turning into a teenager, where respect is already an issue). Then, she acts like she's the evil step mum to his second son, constantly blaming everything on him and calling him evil (though he's a perfectly normal kid, though a toddler). Then my brother reacts the other way, being a bit too rough on his oldest, and letting the younger get away with an awful lot... And the two spent most of the trip trying to make us force the other of the two to act the way they want them to...

Honestly, the whole family has relied on my grandfather to keep them together and solve all of their problems for many years. He passed away several years ago, however, and so the whole family has dissolved into petty fights and arguments, and no one knows how to survive with each other. It doesn't help that almost all of the marriages involved are broken and damaged... And my grandmother is my step-grandma, actually, and my one aunt winds up taking the brunt of her crabbiness, and having to spend more time with her than any of the others, but to her, grandma is just a woman her father happened to marry after she moved out of the house. She doesn't even really consider her a relative... I had a number of people telling me about how horrible everything is and breaking into tears, or yelling at me for not fixing everything, being gone, not making decisions -- or after I made a decision, the decision I made, and blech!

Add to that that no one wanted to let us sleep... Frankly, they'd keep us up super late, then be angry when we didn't get up by 6 the next morning. Frankly, I've never been so emotionally and physically drained in my life... :(:(:(:(

So yeah, super stressful trip.

O.O" .......It's very late (read zombie tired), and I want to say more comforting things to you later. For now, I think you deserve a vacation from your vacation and a gentle (hopefully comforting) bear hug.

Aw, thanks. :)

Back. Sorry, working on HA now. Had an unpleasant couple of days. Two events being death of my phone and the dog groomer completely botching my moms two dogs hair cuts. They shaved her dogs down almost to the skin and said it was because of matting. BS! Our regular groomer left and she had seen the dogs with worse "matting" than what we brought them in for, and made them look beautiful. Now two fluffballs look like mole rats..... They shaved things that I didn't know could be shaved....

Aw, poor fluffies. Or not fluffies. Would it be too soon to quote the fuzzy wuzzy was a bear poem? But at least fur always grows back. I'm sure they'll be beautiful and fluffy again soon. Bigger bummer about your phone, though. Did something happen to it, or was it just getting older? That's the worst when you have to buy an expensive new phone, and then half the time, you lose a bunch of info in between.. :( Sorry you've been having such a rought few days. :(

The dogs are a little uneasy now without their fur, especially since I live in Colorado, right up against the Rocky Mountains. It has been in the 50 F here for the last week. As for the phone, it was...2yrs old? It randomly started crashing and going into a infinite start up loop unless I had it plug into power. In 3 days it went from working to suddenly unable to detect that it had a full battery on it. My dad had insurance on it, so we payed a little and they sent me an upgraded phone with a new warranty. Between Samsung and Google, I didn't lose any info.

I wanted to apologize for disappearing recently. Last week, I Was working on my HA then lost track of what day it was thinking I still had another day. Then this weekend has been hectic and ....I'm sorry guys.

Edit: Found out it Wasn't due Friday, but Saturday. -_-' feeling ridiculous.. Edit2: Found out we have another day or two..?

I'm going to say it's ending tonight. I don't know the status of the wardrobe right now after Bug made that announcement.

Glad you didn't lose any info.... And yeah, we had a fluffer of a dog, and once a year, my mum would pretty much shave her bald. But then we had a bunch of sweaters for her, for when she was bald, so she didn't really mind.

And yeah, Bug is and has been doing loads of wardrobe fixes. Not sure what caused the wardrobe to break so majorly, but I think it's back in good form for everyone, now. :) Incidentally, Bug is totally a member of the forum group that I practically live in! So I feel like I know a celebrity or something.. :O

Don't know if you guys are a member of the status update group (Forum Group Here, but they post an update every Thursday with things they've fixed. I was reading through those the other day, and am actually super excited about a bunch of fixes and changes they've made...

Did you know you can now turn in all of your subq invites with one click? And Bug removed the double posting of all of the achievements. :O

[Late unfinished post finally brought to you by the ever-distracting youtube videos that just wasted an unknown amount of time. :P ]

Aack! Oh GA, I'm sorry to hear about those poor fluffs. Maybe you could get a couple sweaters for them to wear until their fur gets a bit longer? I've never really had a fluffy dog, but I know my (read my parents, but I love her :) ) dachshund has really short fur and can't stand cold weather, so we had to start letting her wear one during the winter months here. But, uugh! that's terrible for them to have done that! Maybe they made a mistake in cutting and decided to do it all, but they should have owned up to it. gives a virtual snuggle to the pups As for your phone, I'm sorry to hear about that. --' I know the loss of a good phone. Mine lasted Many years, but because of that it made me more loyal to Samsung for having a good product. :) I don't actually know much about new-type phones, but I'm glad your memory was saved! .......heh! sorry, that sounded... ^^'

:) I am part of that group actually. Though I don't always read the updates, so it ends up being a nice surprise when I discover it. I didn't realize Bug was so high up in the ranks to be able to post in the news. That Is celebrity status! ^_^

--' Pray for the rebuilding of many businesses and healing of those (few, thankfully) hurt in the F2 tornado that hit here last Sat. night/Sun. morning please. I don't really watch the news much so didn't find out until a day later that it was hit, then another day before I realized much of the damage happened at the center of my (what do you call the center of every place you go to shop, relax, have fun?). There are many businesses that had to be condemned, and one that, if he can't get it back up by Nov. 1, will have to close permanently. Thankfully, it happened late at night, so there weren't many people. A coworker of mine was working summers at the Panera that was hit, so I'm hoping she's still got a job until school starts up again. sigh I know they were just businesses, but they and the people in them are a part of my community and .....is it weird to say it feels like a hurt dog that I want to hug and make feel better? =='

On at an insane hour again (for shame Hannah! .....me, not hannah....sigh, this is why I use the name 'Sky'...) ^_^ haha! and I thought I'd tell you guys we have a couple days rest. GreenRowan posted in the wee hours of the morning that she had come down with something pretty strong and was needing some rest.

...on that note, I'm having a hilarious image of myself as a racoon.... O.O hehe! .....time to sleep.....zzzzzz.z.....

Losing businesses to tragedies is always dreadful... I'm still mourning the Papa John's and the last donut shop from my hometown... We lost them both to family tragedies. Deaths in the family made them decide to close up shop. :( The Papa John's was probably fifteen years ago, but that was my favorite pizza place, and it was kind of a tradition thing... That's the pizza we always ordered for parties EVERYwhere, whether school, fun, church, whatever.

The donut shop was extra sad... We had two donut shops in town, but one of them went out of business (standard financial reasons, the town was too small for two shops, and the other shop was just better). But then, about two years later, Daylight wound up closing when a family member passed away. :( So now we not only lost an amazing donut shop that was a fixture of the town, but we now have no donuts...

Honestly, the shops in a town are such markers for memories and so important to what we do for fun, so that they're really tied to our emotions. So if you lose one that means something to you... Yeah, that's hard. And when it's a shop that closes because of a disaster of some kind, then it's a shop that lots of people are probably attached to (unlike for a shop that closes because they don't get enough business).

So I totally get you. :P

==" Oh gosh!.... My two sisters and I share rent of a house, and one sister has a cat that we all love. There are also a lot of cats in the neighborhood running around their areas. Recently, we had a very affectionate Tom cat come up to us as we go in and out of the house. Upon closer loving of this cute critter, we discovered that somebody had had him declawed. But they had left him un-neutered. ><' He was almost fur and bones because he couldn't hunt. We can't let him in our house yet, as we don't know if he has any diseases, we don't have a place to keep him separate from our own cat, and my sister doesn't want another cat. So we've been feeding and watering him on our front porch until we can find someone to take him in. (We're willing to pay vet bills, we just gotta find him a home.)

So, that's been going on a couple weeks. Now she came home yesterday to the gray (declawed) cat, and two others (possibly the ones that like to use under our porch for their dates at 2 in the morning -_-' ). When she went to glance out the back window, there was ANOTHER cat.

Now, today I look out the back window to see what our cat is looking at, and lo and behold! There's a kitten sleeping on the steps. ^^" A cute little gray one that makes me wonder if he's at all related to the big, gray declawed one. I'm trying to boil some chicken to give to him, as I was told not to give him fishy stuff, and, he being a street cat, I don't think he would go for dry food. ==" sigh I want to help the little bugger, but I'm not sure what to do for him if he runs off. There's dogs in the neighborhood that would probably kill him if he gets in their yard.

Well, I guess I'll do what I can, and pray for the best. [Anyone near OK need a cat? :) ]

EDIT: So I chopped up the plain boiled chicken into little bits for it, and went out. But he ran to our shed. Left it out there for him hoping he comes and eats some and isn't too scared. (Hopefully, the ants don't run off with it like they did the kibble we put out for the other cat..)

congrats new other captain:D I am very sorry guys. I have been sick some of the last few chapters :( I hope I can help you guys out with the new upcoming chapters^^ Hope you all are doing well! Wish I was^^;

Oh man, stray kitties make me sad. :( I wonder if the boy kitty wasn't a house kitty who escaped? I mean, it would be very irresponsible to declaw a cat and then let them go outside... Terrible...