lydamorehouse | Cat Continues (Reply)

Image: Tiny black cat, Clover, asleep on the bed, buried in the green comforter.

I'm exhausted this morning because last night we decided it might be nice to let Clover have the run of the house for once. We don't want her to be under the impression (no matter how much Willow might like it to be true) that she is forbidden anywhere downstairs. But, to give Clover free rein meant that I slept with Willow in the TV room, on the couch. Our couch is... okay, but getting a bit worn in the springs. It's a bit lumpy.

Plus, while Willow mostly tolerated being cooped up with me, Buttercup really wanted in twice in the middle of the night. He scratched at the door insistently, waking me up. I usually fall right back to sleep, but last night I didn't.

We had another good morning with a bit of grumbling, but also some sharing of space. Mostly Clover deals with Willow by trying to be very small and doing a lot of slow blinking. Clover is not all submission, though, because today when Willow decided she was done staring at the new cat and got up to hop off the bed, Clover rushed at her when he back was turned. It surprised the [bleep] out of Willow, who jumped into the hallway and looked shocked. Clover, whose tail had puffed out to six times its size, sat on the edge of the bed looking triumphant. I'm not sure what this all means, but Shawn and I both later confessed to each other during our afternoon walk that we were kind of glad to see Clover stick up for herself a bit. Obviously, we don't WANT cat fights, but at the same time it would also be nice if Clover was not so terrified of Willow that she won't come out from under the bed, you know?

Clover is really starting to show off a somewhat cranky princess personality.

Image: Blurry because her head was in motion, but I caught the elusive curling tongue cat yawn in progress.

In other news, there are six days until the final arc of the Bleach anime comes out. Yesterday, we (the fandom) found out that Bleach is breaking from Crunchyroll and will be airing on Hulu and Disney+. Luckily, I have access to both, and now all the jokes about various characters now being Disney princesses can begin. I remain of very mixed feelings about this final arc as many of you well know. But, I am hoping for an uptick in activity in my fandom, which has been fairly dead since the manga ended several years ago.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is my weekly D&D group. I'm trying to decide if I should bring the peanut butter chocolate star cookies that I made the other day, or if I should make "Elven Bread" from the official Dungeon & Dragons cookbook, Hero's Feast. Elven Bread is basically a hearty cinnamon swirl. Feel free to cast your votes in the comments. I would do a poll, but I have the worst luck making those. Anyway the only two choices are:

A. Risk someone having a peanut allergy cookies, or
B. Make cinnamon swirl "Elf" bread

In related news, after watching the zillionth ad for it while watching "Critical Role," I decided to try the D&D Beyond App for character building. I will say, it's kind of slick. Like, once you pick your class it knows what kind of equipment you're allowed and with the click of a button your inventory is filled with the standard "explorer's pack" items, etc. Which is, I have to say, really handy. You can even roll die on the app, which I might use because Jeff's set up does not really have a good table top and I don't own any kind of fancy dice tray. Plus, it's free? You only get six character slots with the free version and if I ever end up running a cleric, however, it will require me to buy some add-ons if I want anything other than Life Path, but for now it's fine. And it actually might make everything easier, because it will mean just holding my iPad and not all the sheets of my character sheet. I am kind of the disorganized player that really can use something like this. I feel pretty good that I have one notebook for all my games, but after that there are so many pieces of paper shoved into various plastic sleeves that's not even funny. I will report after tomorrow how it actually works in game.

In other gaming news, I'm attending ConFABulous next weekend. They're still hammering out their final schedule, but I'm excited to be on some paneling and also dong some gaming. I'm going to be joining the Thieves'' World game as well as the Heart of Wulin, both of which I'm very excited about.