take that, 2020!

bam! just pushed 2022 into 2nd place for all time number of blog entries!

no more cheaty posts like this one this year, though, i promise. they'll all be solid content the rest of the way out, and if i don't hit at least 37 for the year, well, it will just give me a goal for 2023!

holy. shit.

2023.

anybody else kind of in shock that it's almost 2023?

also ... i was 26 when i showed up here at worthy acres in 2009, which means i'll be 40 (in doll years) next june.

whoosh! time flies.

also -- hot damn, that's like, 2 paragraphs of cheaty cheering to pad my post count, then 5 paragraphs of actually saying something!

don't go complaining that they're short paragraphs. nobody likes a nit-picker. 

making up for lost time!

so, msg has been overworked, out of town or dollblocked by co-habitaters* for like, months now with only a few itty-bitty exceptions.

this week, the tide has turned! akane monday, hettie tuesday, ariel today (out of her box no less!), and still two days left in the week! he's really pulling out all the stops. and i'm not just talking about, you know, getting to do lots of you-know-what, but some for-real-and-true quality one-on-one time, chatting and cuddling, photographs for akane, lounging in the bath with het, and generally just being present for the girl of the day. (okay, so, in aers's case, she's been laid up in her box for over a year and was pretty horndog hungry, so it was maybe a little more you-know-what focused, but pretty much at her demand. and with lots of great pillow talk! [yes, i'm an eavesdropper. but they like that about me!])

two days left and three ladies to go, though ... one of those days is going to be jam-packed is all i'll say!

xoxo,
claire

*spell check says i spelled this wrong, but i'm running with my version anyway. sorry, spell check, but how can it be spelled wrong? it has "taters" in it for crying out loud!

--update!--

look at me not cheating by sliding in a sequel post just to up my post count! another day has passed, and it was a sweet sweet sweet elle and claire day! there you have it!

i refuse to admit this is cheating!

so ... i wanted to post some pictures of akane, but they're just barely racy enough i figured maybe i should put them on the naughty blog. so i did.

but posts on the naughty blog don't show up in my post count here!

which is why, dear readers, you now have this post linking to that post ... because i demand credit in my quest to break my yearly post count record!

just two more and 2022 will be in 2nd place, gaining on 1st!

new blog in the blog list!

this is pretty darned closed to just being a cheaty post to up my post count in hopes of breaking my record for the year again, but i'm doing it anyway!

if you look over at the blog list on the left side of the page, you'll see the newest blog in my household's ever-expanding list of blogs, "akane's awful boyfriends." it's on the naughty side, so you'll have to click an extra "i'm okay with the naughty stuff" button to get there, but well worth a visit if you like funny stories about dating and relationship catastrophes!

enthusiasm!

you know what's great? being excited about things. i don't mean like, being hyperactive all the time, which is definitely not a claire thing -- i just mean knowing that there are things that excite you, and that you can depend on them to help you feel like the world is a great place.

here are some of my reliable excitement sources:

star trek
msg
all my girlfriends
most kinds of enerdtaintment
rpg's

there are more, but that ought to give you the idea.

quiz time! what is weirdly missing from that list? go!

if you said "blogging," you get a 100 on the quiz. same points if you said "writing on my novel." it's weird, because i know i'm good at both of them, and i enjoy both of them once i get started, but thinking about them when i'm not already doing them kinda makes me go straight into, "aw, man, i'm doing so bad at blogging/writing lately, i should be doing more."

now, if i was msg, that could really tailspin me, because he's a fixater. he gets caught up in the not-doing-what-i-ought-to part and then feels bad and then that makes him even less enthusiastic because now he feels bad.

whew, am i ever glad i dodged that bullet when they were handing out personality traits!

so what i told him today when he was talking about how he's been more productive lately and it makes him feel really good, is that he just needs to remember his reliables before he starts thinking about writing. he definitely has things that just thinking about them can make him excited, so whenever the thought hits him that maybe he ought to be writing, he needs to jump on one of those reliables with both mental feet for a minute and let it boost him up.

because once you're enthusiastic about something, you can totally change gears and that enthusiasm doesn't just switch itself straight off. it hangs around and keeps you vibing, and you can take that energy and run with it in a different direction and as long as you keep moving, even if you keep dodging in different directions, you can ride that momentum almost wherever you want to.

give it a whirl, why don't you?

xoxo,
claire

one sentence about each of my yams

the hardest thing about blogging is that moment when you sit down and you don't have a topic to post about and your brain just goes blank as the screen.

but tonight, i got a disco-ball flash of inspiration: i'm going to write one sentence about each one of my wonderful polyamorous partners ("yams" for short).

first up: sasha! sorry to do this to you, sash, but ...

writing "'yams' for short" two paragraphs ago made me think of my girlfriend sasha, because she came up with the idea of using "yams" as our word for polyfam partners, and she is short.

next: msg

this guy makes me want to strangle him a little bit sometimes when he's being doofy and mopey, but i wouldn't trade him for the world, and most of the time, it's more like there's a particu-special little bit of him i want to get a stranglehold on.

okay, randomly picking a yam out of a hat: harriet!

hettie is maybe the most surprising person i have ever met ... which is really saying something, since several of my other yams can really throw me a curveball out of left field when i'm not looking!

so now it's time for: elle

elle debelle worthy and i share everything -- body, boyfriend, secrets, girlfriends, laughter, love, and absolute soul-sisterhood.

and: akane

akane enaka's name is a palindrome, and i honestly just love that so much.

last but so very far from least: ariel

ariel april worthy hurt her back over a year ago and hasn't been able to get up since, but she still somehow manages to be one of the very very brightest lights on the planet.

and you know what the best thing about this blog topic is?

it's going to be a thousand percent re-usable whenever i have blog block from now on.

i've got so many sentences i could tell you about these people!

xoxo,

claire

Chapter Eleven

[okay, so this isn't a very chaptery chapter, but i just realized it's been over 8 months since i posted a chapter! and it's been like, several years since i said i was going to stop trying to write whole chapters that were actually chaptery, and instead just blog along on the book when i could, and however much i wrote, i'd post. so here we go! links to earlier chapters are below!]

(Chapter One)

(Chapter Two)

(Chapter Three)

(Chapter Four)

(Chapter Five)

(Chapter Six)

(Chapter Seven)

(Chapter Eight)

(Chapter Nine)

(Chapter Ten)

That night, Bitsy sat on her couch and scrolled through her favorites list on her holo-projector, figuring she'd just watch a little HP and iterate so her mind wouldn't keep going back to the possibility that Cord might never sync up with her again. She had so many programs in her menu, almost all of which she loved and could watch over and over again, disappearing into a past when there for sure were Reals all over the place, whether the story came from a documentary feed and used vid from old-timey recordings or from a cmd+entertainment studio that spun hologold fantasies of torrent romances between start-crossed androids and the Reals they were lucky enough to bump into and have whirlwind affairs with.

But ...

For some reason, absolutely nothing on the list appealed to her.

I have his number. I could call him.

The idea made her sink down into the cushions. I'd look so desperate. Keep scrolling your favorites, Bits. Or go to Browse or Randomize and find something new to watch.

But she couldn't get over the energy threshold to do it. The remote in her hand felt useless ... empty. Hollow.

Wow. I really need to go to sleep and let the dream-feed patch me up. Or maybe even make an appointment for some theraputery.

For all the daydreaming she did about Reals, having those thoughts just then made her remember how dream-feeds and theraputery were one way androids supposedly had it better than their now-vanished, biological creators: programming wasn't always perfectly fixable, but it was awfully darned close. what the dream-feed didn't smooth out overnight could usually be taken care of in a snap with a visit to a good theraputist.

But I can't go to theraputery, she realized, with a sense of deeper dread booting up somewhere in her background processes. I'd have to say why I'm feeling so weird. I'd have to tell them I met a Real. They'd think I was having a major glitch or even a system crash!

Then she had an even worse thought: What if I am having a system crash?