Staying Alive

Only my husband would show my mother in the assisted living home for the elderly how to use the jukebox in the lobby by playing "Staying Alive."

Training wheels

So, I'm driving along with my husband and we see an older biker in leathers driving an interesting vehicle. Looks like a cool trike at first, and my husband, Joe, said something like, "Hmm, I wouldn't mind having a trike like that, except that's not a trike. It's strange. It has four wheels, one in the back. It's some sort of ..."

Me, "It's a motorcyle, with training wheels."  Giggle. Laugh.

Joe, "Don't laugh at the biker, honey." (In the same tone of voice one would say, "It's not nice to laugh at the handicapped, honey.")

Me: Laugh so loud the biker couldn't possibly avoid hearing me, not to mention anyone else in a 2 block raidus.

I haven't laughed that hard in ages.

Motorcycle with training wheels. Heh.

Paige

Damson Dragon Moved

I created a new blog just for Damson Dragon Diary - http://damsondragon.blogspot.com/

If you're looking for my favorite scaly amethyst superheroine, that's the place to go.

Paige

Paige Post - Got hit by a .. well, just a fender bump actually

Busy week at work. Still feel like I'm running a hundred miles an hour and falling further and further behind. The stress level is very wearing.

We went out to Golden Corral for dinner tonight, and got bumped in the parking lot by someone in a big pickup who couldn't see my little blue car behind them. Minor fender damage, no big, but annoying.

So glad it's the weekend, but not sure that means I can slow down any. Epic is pushing toward opening day. Final dress is day after tomorow, and we'll have audience there. Freaky stuff.

Puppy wakes us up every night, can't remember the last time I got a night's uninterrupted sleep. Really, amazingly, bone deep tired.

Paige

Dinner with Dracula

I had dinner with Dracula today. Or, breakfast, I guess, since it was after my shift was over in the morning, but my brain tends to think of that as dinner since I eat it after work and before going to bed. Working graveyard shift can really mess with your biological clock.

In any case, Jack and I had just finished cleaning up the bodies at a motorcycle-meets-18-wheeler accident on I35. The couple on the bike were way past saving when we got there. I was feeling tired, and a little depressed. Jack hugged me in the parking lot just before he got in his car and that helped a little.

Right after Jack drove off, this guy came up behind me all quiet and wearing black, and invaded my personal space. I spun and hit him in the chest, an open palm strike since I didn’t intend to kill a random mugger. It was enough to take him off his feet and land him on his back on the hood of a parked car, but he didn’t seem hurt at all. He laughed.

Now, I did pull the punch, but generally, when I hit someone, they don’t laugh.

He apologized for “startling me” and offered to buy me dinner at the Omelettry. I asked him who he was and he did this old fashioned bow. “I am Vlad Dracul” and he had the accent, too, that eastern European accent that folks always use when they pretend to be vampires.

I told him he was a little late for Halloween.

He grinned and showed me fangs. Not movie quality fakes. Fangs like mine, long and needle sharp that fold back beside the top teeth when not in use. He was a dragon.

More precisely, he was the guy in Houston that Fafnir told me about. He said the guy’s name was Vlad and he was young, “only” 700 years old or so. Fafnir has some funny ideas about what qualifies as young. But aside from that, we hadn’t really talked about the other dragon in Houston much. I was too busy asking him questions like “Will my scales cover my whole body eventually, even my face?” (Fafnir said yes, probably, but that I should be able to master the “turn into a normal human” trick before then. I sure hope he’s right.)

So, Dracula bought me dinner. He seems like a nice enough guy, not really what I would have expected from someone most famous for impaling hundreds of people to death in his younger days. He said he and Bram Stoker got drunk together one night, and he blabbed some stuff he shouldn’t have, and that’s how the whole Dracula legend thing got going. (There are good reasons why I don’t drink, aside from the fact that alcohol smells vile.)

Vlad’s not bad looking in a sort of Euro polished, well-dressed, slightly gay kind of way. Not that I think he is gay, he just sort of has that vibe, but he flirted with me unrelentingly all through the meal, so pretty sure he’s not gay. He looks about 25 and has really pretty dark eyes with thick lashes. Reminds me a little of Johnny Depp.

I didn’t let him kiss me afterward. Jack’s my guy, and I’m no two-timer. He kissed my hand instead. He said he’d call me. I think I just had my second date, at least he seemed to think it was a date. Not sure how I feel about this guy, but he is a dragon, and the way Fafnir figures things, we’re sort of the same age.

He’s got me all confused about things I thought I was finally getting straight.

Chaos Inside and Out

Sometimes I think that writing things down in my diary is the only thing keeping me sane. I’m going to have to send a thank you letter to that shrink with the broken leg who recommended I talk things out with a blank page if I couldn’t talk to people about what was stressing me out.

It’s not Jack stressing me. He’s been great. Things are a little less casual and easy between us at work, but it’s because there’s always this little flutter just under the surface. It’s kind of awkward and nervy, but in a good way. Him knowing my secret has made my job a lot easier, too. I don’t have to remember to try to pretend I can’t lift heavy stuff. If we need a big piece of equipment, Jack just assumes I’ll grab it, and he grabs the other stuff. If we get a patient who might not make it with conventional help, Jack keeps watch for me so I can bite them without being seen. He even distracted a conscious patient with a crushed leg for me last shift, and convinced the guy I was giving him an injection. Thanks to Jack, that guy will walk again, on both legs. I may have taken a while to get around to picking a guy to date, but I seem to be pretty good at picking them.

I guess work might be part of what’s making me want to put my fist through a wall. Lord Vile’s goons went on a rampage and half the city looks like a war zone. I saw the White Knight in the thick of the fight a few times while Jack and I were on the sidelines trying to keep the civilian casualties to a minimum. I know the Knight’s a Georgian and he’d kill me if he knew what I was, but seeing him fight Vile’s red-shirted, black goggled minions and protect bystanders, I don’t know. I just kept thinking that if I had let Fafnir kill him, those bystanders would be dead, and the Protectors would be short one front line soldier. I may not like the guy, but this city needs him.

Jack and I have been working double shifts all week because of the chaos, so no chance for a second date yet. The flowers he brought me are still bright and beautiful on my dresser. And they remind me that for once in my life, I’m not alone. There’s one person I can really talk to.  More than one, even.

I called Fafnir the other morning when I was too wired to sleep after my shift. He has a heavy Norwegian accent that makes it a little hard to understand him, but he’s been really helpful. Fafnir treats me like an indulgent uncle with a five-year-old who is constantly asking questions like “Why is the sky blue?” He answers, but laughs at me a lot for asking things he thinks of as kindergarten basic. I’m just starting to get an inkling of how incredibly old he is, so I guess it’s normal for him to think of me as a kid. Annoying, but normal.

So, if working every day with my new boyfriend, a supervillain mob attack on the city, and being treated like a baby by the only other member of my species that I know isn’t stressing me, you might wonder what is? Ma. She’s making me nuts. She’s a nervous wreck and it’s contagious.

She asked about my date when I got home the other night, and I made the mistake of telling her what happened. All of it. It was pretty hard to tell her about Fafnir falling through the ceiling without explaining what knocked him out of the sky. Now that she knows the White Knight is a Georgian, she has all her things packed and keeps harping on me to pull up stakes and leave town. She’s already contacted our usual guy to get us new ID’s and such.

I think it’s the first time in our relationship that I’ve put my foot down and just said, “No.”

I’m not moving.

Ma is way too old to deal with all the hassles of losing our trail, finding a new place to settle and establishing new identities. She won’t admit it, but her health isn’t the best and another move might finish her. But even if that wasn’t true, I don’t want to run again.

I like it here. I’ve got a job where I get to use my special abilities to save lives on a daily basis. I’m not wearing a costume and getting medals and endorsement deals like the Protectors and the All American Alliance heroes, but there are a lot of folks in this town who are breathing and whole because of me, and I’m proud of that.

And those flowers over there on my dresser are another good reason to stay. Guys like Jack who can take my differences in stride don’t grow on trees. For the first time in my life, there’s one person I’m not related to that I can be myself around. I’m just starting to appreciate how much that means.

Ma says that if one Georgian knows who I am, then they all do, but I don’t think the White Knight saw my scales or my wing, either at the theatre, or when we were fighting that fire thrower. He was pretty preoccupied with Fafnir, and the fire guy. I’ve told her that, but since I’m only 90% sure, Ma doesn’t think that’s good enough. I think if the White Knight knew I was a dragon, he’s got enough info about me, from the ambulance itself, to find me. And he hasn’t come after me. So, I figure I’ve got an edge. I know what he is, but he doesn’t know what I am. As long as it stays that way, I’m not going anywhere.

And, if he figures it out, well, then, we’ll see. For the first time, I’ve got something worth staying and fighting for. It’s going to take a lot to make me run this time.

D Dragon

Paige Post - Roller coaster day - Beware day job rant

So, I went to work this morning, and forget to eat breakfast. Pulled in to park, looked down, saw Joe's wallet sitting beside me. Called him, said, hey, get me some breakfast tacos, and come get your wallet. Oops, hard to buy tacos with no wallet. But he figured it out.

He had other fish to fry, though, and it was 2 hours before I got breakfast. Made tea somewhere in there, but running like a madwoman, didn't get to drink it. Trying to get an advertising piece done by today, for the German market. Arguing about what kind of content, who's in charge of it. My work blog has only had one post the last 2 weeks, both by someone other than me. Got 5 other blogs wanting me to send them posts, got about 30 videos that need editing, gotta rebuild website from scratch in dot net nuke, ... Basically, I'm going freakin bananas.

Oh, and it's quarterly ops review today, the day when everyone gets in a room with the top execs in the company and talks about what they did this quarter to earn their paychecks. This did not help my stress level. Got everything done the other day, so no prep for it, just a long day of nerves, especially when the previous departments ran long, and we got started an hour and a half late. So, really long day. But, when it was all over, CEO said, "That is the best marketing report I've heard, ever, since I started here in 1994. I've been here for 9 hours, and I'm listening more intently now than I was at hour 3 or 4."

We're all doing some pretty amazing stuff. My only real complaint is that I'm trying to do way too much at once, and everything is top priority.  I keep juggling, trying to do everything, trying to get whatever is topmost priority at that moment out the door and running to the next thing. I'm a good juggler, but people keep throwing me more balls, it really stresses me out knowing that eventually I'm bound to drop something important.

Paige