Now everything is killing us. That cat litter’s on sale. It’s the 5th already and I haven’t paid rent. Don’t forget to water the plants. At least it’s inventory day tomorrow — I won’t have to talk to customers. I move through the labyrinth. I look for sunlight. I sniff the air and listen. I try that new whitening toothpaste.

You see, we all thought that when the next apocalypse came, we’d be ready. You had those extra cans of refried beans and a shotgun. I welded spikes on the front of my Escort. But the apocalypse snuck up on us, you know. It’s been happening for a while. We missed the signs. There was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

It’s not too late. We need to find each other. Remember how it was? The hawk faltered in its dive for prey. I’m not trying to be nostalgic, but I felt alive then. Every second I felt alive.

Do you hear me? I don’t know why the Americans are here. My brother was killed by a bomb. I held my sister back so she wouldn’t see the body; she screamed and her fingernails clawed my face.

My father’s own father was hardly a good man. You could say he loved his family in a certain way, but he was a gambler and had a temperament not suited for domestic responsibilities. One night my grandmother met him in the doorway with a boning knife. She had packed his dufflebag with neatly folded shirts.

Why do I tell you these things? It’s because you felt hurt. I just remembered that you’re human and that these things matter to you. All the fighting. It can’t be easy. Tell me how the Tapirapé paint their bodies. Tell me how the airplanes came, dropping whiskey, and guns, and crisp dollar bills. I will listen and everything will be all right.

It seems like a long time. It seems like a very long time. Well, for you, at least. The truth is that for me it’s been a few days, tops.

I was sent on a mission. It’s a secret. It’s a space mission, and I travel faster than the speed of light. For me, a second ticks by like clockwork, but months pass for you. I’m sorry I didn’t say good bye, but I needed to get to the future–fast. I’ll be back on October 13, 4772. The falcon told me. My mother’s mother fed me the blood-caked corn, but I am grown now. Oh, it’s not a secret, really: I just need to save the world again.

As always, I need your help. The GPS went out on this thing, and I need to find my way back. Put a candle in your window, will you? I’m millions of miles away by now, and all the little specks look the same. Is that Earth or A1689-zD1? The light won’t help—I’m moving too fast for that—but love travels faster than anything.

Love,

Esteban

But seriously.

Imagine if Twilight had been written for grown ups, by me? You might like it then, right? Maybe? Perhaps?

I think you should find out for yourself!

You can check this out as a blog post over at Twitarded. Or you can visit the story as it unfolds at its own subdomain here.

And if you are a big fan of Twilight and the rest of the series, and are over the age of 18? You may really like it quite a bit. And if you are over the age of 25? You might like it even more. And if you’re older than that but are Twilight obsessed? This fic’s for you.

And if you do stop by to read at those other places? Please, please say hello and let me know you came from SL.

hearts and puffy things to you,

Myg

I read this short but thought provoking piece, “Good as Dead”  by Tateru Nino about a month ago about what happens when someone disappears from their virtual world, and I felt so bad I almost posted. Almost. The reason I didn’t was really a matter of how much time and energy I’ve got these days, which is next to none, and what little of it there is, is spent with them: 

Can you blame me?

Then most of my spare time, of which there is, actually, none, I am asleep. Because folks, it’s been over 5 months now and the babies still aren’t getting through the night without getting up at least once. Between two kids, that makes for one spotty night of slumber.  Which, ironically, reminds me of the first several months of Mygdala March’s entrance into Second Life.

Funny the parallels there. Back in November 2006 I gave birth to my online self, Myg. The nurturing of that self took a tremendous amount of time and energy, and was also a labor of love. It was a time of play and exploration and creation and possibility, which is what drove me to spend hours upon hours in world, and no, I don’t regret a minute of it. I love Second Life. I love Topgol and the places we’ve created there. I love and miss you, my digital companions. I dare say I will be back, but I can’t say when. When I learn to better manage my time, I suppose. When the kids sleep through the night and take regular naps, perhaps.

Some of you have an interest in my life outside of Second Life, and I’ve been able to keep in touch. If you are at all interested in the whole Myg, you’re invited to follow me at Wisermom.org, where I blog mostly about the “holy shit” experience of being a new mom. You can also connect with me on Plurk or on Twitter, which I’ve re-embraced along with Oprah. No, I haven’t literally embraced Oprah, nor her talk show.

Some of you aren’t interested in my life outside of Second Life, and hey, that’s alright too. I totally understand that. This started out as a Second Life blog, and I do intend to keep it that way. But unlike real life, or first life, or whatever you like to call it, my Second Life can wait a little while.

But those adorable little monkeys in diapers and onesies in that photo up there? They don’t do “wait.”

I can’t imagine where they got that quality from, either.

Graham is on the left, and Liam is on the right. They are 9 day sold here. They were born on 1/22/09. Mom and babies are home and doing swell.

Now, let’s all take a nap.

Hope whatever you do, you have a happy.

Super special top secret shenanigans are anticipated for this event. Two clues: it involves a shotgun and a memory about something that happened last Christmas Eve at Clockwork.

Music by Esteban Moody, Romana Wei, DJ keTchUp and maybe more.

Party starts at 5pm SLT and goes until whenever. We’re convening at our loft in Topgol (bring your lag-proof suits, please.)

Hope you can make it!

I wish this scene could be taking place in my real life, but the truth is this Christmas I’ll either be confined to my bed or if I’m unlucky, confined to a hospital bed. If I’m very unlucky, well I don’t want to consider that possibility out loud so I’m not going to.

I don’t want to complain about it, even though I sometimes do. I am really happy to be pregnant, especially with twins. I secretly always hoped for twins and feel super extra lucky like it’s a wish come true. But it does mean that pregnancy is a bit more complicated for me, but not as complicated as it could be so I’m just glad for that.

Now back to Christmas. I don’t know if we’ll even do a tree this year, which sort of breaks my heart but then if I can’t be downstairs to really look at it what’s the point? I’ve got a nice poinsettia on my dresser right now at least.

We won’t be going anywhere, like every mad Christmas since we met. Normally it’s to my father’s house for a big Christmas eve party, to Alex’s family for Christmas morning and then a 5 hour drive to my mom’s for Christmas dinner, followed by several days of hanging out on her super excellent farm. If it snows, which it rarely does, the scene from the back window would look like this:

Yes, that’s my RL mom’s place in VA, and yes, it really is all that. But I didn’t grow up there. I had the great luck to grow up in a shitty suburban ranch in central NJ, which was better than it sounds – retrospectively. Think free, public education good enough to get you into an ivy league university and perfect pizza in every strip mall (no Papa Johns or Pizza Hut or Dominoes for chrissakes).

Mom and my stepdad moved after I was out on my own, back when there was a real estate market bangin’ enough to yield such things as a kick ass country place complete with quintessential red barn (Mom’s a realtor). Now they’re just hanging onto what they’ve got, like the rest of us.

But I digress. That’s okay, it’s my blog and I’m still feeling a little crappy today.

Ah, Christmas.

This will be our last holiday without the twinkies, and it will be unusually quiet and non-event-filled for us. I wish we could do something romantic or spontaneous or even just normal with the awareness of an impending huge life changing event. But as it is, we’ll be home alone thinking such thoughts and spooning leftovers in front of Firefly re-runs.

Actually that doesn’t sound half bad.

Hope your holiday plans are shaping up just how you like, whether it’s a low-keyed day filled with television Christmas specials (or the fireplace channel!) or family/friend filled madness involving trekking all over the country.

Have a happy.

So, here is the BIG PRIZE I TOTALLY WON after spending the better part of very late last night poking around at Plod.

It is an utterly silly shoulder bag, one of the truly most useless items one can own in SL. But the silliness and the detail and the style of it – I had to have.

Now I don’t normally do hunts. Why? They are a pain in the ass. They take effort that normally I’d put into, oh, I don’t know, changing socks or turning onto my other side while in lying in bed. In other words, I am lazy (and have a doctor’s note to justify it) and would usually rather plunk down $L for something I want and NOT have to spend a bunch precious time and patience looking around for it. Especially the patience, because I have very little of that to spare. Plus I can’t even find my damn car keys in my own purse. Finding stuff hidden around a sim? Not my idea of a good time.

So with that disclosure, you may be wondering how indeed I did get sucked into the holiday hunt at Plod. It started out innocently. I got a notice from the Boing Frommage group about Elka’s new location at the Plod sim. Now, I own pretty much everything that Boing Frommage has put out, but I was curious to see the new spot so I went for a visit.

I just loved the look of this place. As I get back into content creation, I am in the middle of pondering different design styles in SL, because I am drawn to many different types. But in the end I am the biggest sucker for a good imaginary/storybook or comic book feel. Such as the one captured here:

This is the inside of a store called – uh oh – I hope I remembered it right – Kurotusubaki. Hoo. Those Japanese stores do NOT make things easy on us poor monolinguals. You can buy a few cute things here, like an animal hat with ears, a few poses, an animated rug. NONE of the cool stuff in this photo, mind you. But I’m blogging it for the build, not the merchandise. (Apologies Kurotsubaki, your merchandise is totally cute, but your build in Plod is what really got me.)

Plod has all the elements of an immersive storybook SL experience. And you know what? That stupid holiday hunt gave me the right “mission” to go exploring. Their products are really whimsical feeling, like the dirty bag I won with a lit miniature Xmas tree and a tiny animated squirrel hanging off of it. The builds are also well worth exploring, and some things you can buy and take with you like this treehouse:

So if you are into this kind of style, go take a look. And if you want the bag, be prepared to work for it. You will have to find yourself in some fairly weird places, such as the land of bigass squirrels:

I will say one thing. The people behind Plod are waaaaay into squirrels. I don’t know what that says about them, but don’t be alarmed if you find yourself here staring at a hungry looking bushy-tailed rat that’s 12 times the size of your avatar.

As for hints? I won’t give away too much, but I will tell you that you can find two of the elusive snowmen that you must collect (ten in all) in the last two photos. They are small and only count once. You won’t find any in any stores that are not Plod (another hint!)

So while I normally hate holiday hunts (though I appreciate the creators who work so hard to put the stuff together and make the event happen – kudos to all of you, and it is great marketing, as I did manage to spend a decent amount of $L whilst hunting last night), I have to tell you I had fun. It got me talking to strangers again, something I haven’t done in SL in a long time and seriously one of the more entertaining things to do there.

And the bag! It’s like so cute!