Fandom Island and Town

The dorm roof had been her smoking place of choice when she'd been a student, and while the temptation to find her way back up there existed, Katchoo didn't feel like dealing with the newer kids (also the trespassing) just for the sake of familiarity.

So the Rocky Bits it was; they were as good a spot as any to brood, and she had a lot to brood about even on days when there wasn't a giant multiversal crisis erasing friends and acquaintances and friends-of-friends from existence.

The brooding, therefore, was extra strong with Katchoo tonight as she exhaled slow streams of smoke into the cold night air and watched as they spiraled up into the sky (St. Louis was better than L.A., but there was still enough light pollution to make Fandom's stars stunning by comparison) and dissipated.

[OOC: Broody, yes, but open.]

It was hard to miss the unfamiliar people in the dorms and everything radio had said for the past two nights; people had dead loved ones showing up everywhere.

She'd been watching, waiting to see if Emma might show up for her, but there had been nothing so far, and at this point Katchoo had given up hoping. The more macabre parts of her wondered if she'd see Emma the way she remembered her from the years in L.A., or the way she'd looked lying in that hospice bed in Toronto; with her luck she'd have expected the latter, and while that was an excuse to tell herself it was better this way, it was still ample motive for a good brood.

It would've been too easy, too pat, to see Emma one last time . . . but she couldn't deny that it would have been nice to do that. To introduce her to Francine. To show her this crazy, insane, messed-up island that she'd fallen in love with, and thank her for making her come in the first place.

The radio stayed off today, and Katchoo kept staring out the window of the shop, pencil hovering over a blank sketchbook page that was likely to stay blank at this rate.

[OOC: The OCD melted. It's hot, yo.]

Katchoo had dodged three mariachi bands on her way to work, not being in the mood to deal with any of them. She wished Clocky hadn't stayed home today, or she'd have sicced the damn thing on them just for the fleeting visceral satisfaction. Her feelings about the last few days were considerably mixed, and the ingredients in that mix were dubious and wildly varied.

Once she got to the store, she turned on a Griffin Silver CD and slouched behind the counter, poking absently at a cup of drafting pencils on display near the register. No idea if Arthur would come in today or not (feeling she knew him well enough to make a guess, she suspected not), but someone had to poke at the supplies on the counter on a Wednesday, dammit.

Last Wednesday shift for a while, even.

God, this was all depressing.

[OOC: I was sleepy enough a while ago to actually walk into a wall. The OCD fell and rolled away out of reach upon impact.]

No random horses today; that was . . . nice, and yet at the same time made the walk from the dorms to the store seem a lot longer. Relatively, of course -- it wasn't as if the walk had been all that long to begin with, but geez.

As she set up her supplies to start working on that belated birthday painting for Karla (she'd contributed to her joint present with Francine, but she wanted to add something a little more personal) Katchoo was . . . probably engaging in some incredibly long-winded and overly eloquent internal monologue about the end of her high school career and the space of two days between her and that diploma, what it all meant and how much exactly you could cram into that period of time.

If it were a comic book, it'd take up about four pages.

[OOC: The OCD is trapped in one of Chewie's canon internal monologues. Seriously, those things are crazy. Also I'm totally just using this icon to earworm bitch_prince.]

Seriously. Seriously, how had it gotten to be finals week already? It was a very good question, a pressing one even --

And one Katchoo would have been contemplating at extensive, broody length all day today if not for an inexplicable and persistent earworm of "Like a Prayer," and she had no idea what that was all about.

But there was humming going on, and on the bright side she . . . was on the bright side, comparatively. That was a little scary in and of itself. Quite possibly, the entire atmosphere of the store felt off as a result.

[OOC: The OCD is staying home to rewatch last night's Glee multiple times. Slower-than-usual SP highly likely today due to new insane project of doom. Send booze.]

Freancine had been -- calling it subdued would be generous. Quiet and melancholy ever since they'd had to let the kids go. Katchoo, actually, wasn't much better, and today that might be evidenced by the highly localized weather system. Not thunderheads, like you might have expected from her, but a low, heavy cloud cover accompanied by mist and a slow, steady drizzle.

It made being inside the shop a damaging prospect, so instead Katchoo was sitting out on the porch, water dripping into her eyes from hair that had long ago gone beyond damp, sheltering her cigarette inside an empty coffee-grounds can.

The forecast for the rest of the day looked about the same: 70-100% chance of rain with low visibility, but not so much as a vague severe weather alert for thunder. At all.

[OOC: The OCD is sleeping in for me. Post is open, with the caveat that I'm going to work on two hours' sleep, ahahaha, and can't guarantee the sanity of my tags at all.]

It was stupidly late in the semester for this, but she'd said she was going to do it, and she was; instead of being slouched over a sketchbook or in front of her easel like she normally was while on the clock, Katchoo was sitting at the counter with her head in one hand and several art school brochures spread out in front of her. (The brochure for the Foster Wolfe School of Art Experience had already been tossed unceremoniously in the trash. Bunch of pretentious scammy crap.)

The prerequisites were going to be a bitch, and she might have some work left to do in putting together a portfolio, but -- this just might actually be workable. It just might.

She wouldn't get her hopes up too high just yet, though.

[OOC: The OCD is too traumatized to show. Shop's open though.]

It wasn't that Katchoo didn't know how to plan parties; it was just that the kind of parties she knew how to plan were really, really not what was called for here, and would probably get her in trouble. If she could afford to throw that kind of party, anyway. Which she wasn't.

Poring over a page in the back of her sketchbook, drumming the end of her pencil against the side of her head -- she could have been drawing, for all you know. But no, mostly planning things.

[OOC: I feel like this post is seriously subpar today. The OCD can't do that thing any more; it can't be the thing it was before.]

Class and work on the same day meant, as far as Katchoo was concerned, that she was completely justified in not doing a damn bit of anything until well into the next week. Well, except for the club meeting later in the day, but since it all meant that the majority of the time she had to spend around other people was crammed into a small portion of her week she could deal.

Anyway, she'd apparently come to think of the store on her workdays as her space, and she kind of wished she hadn't realized that now. Not with graduation creeping up closer every day, and still no idea what the hell she was going to do with the rest of her life.

Even if she could safely get to that three quarters of a million dollars in that Swiss bank account, it wouldn't last her forever, and since she couldn't, it was a moot point anyway. There was always the possibility of doing something with the growing stack of artwork piled up in the store's back room, her closet in her dorm room, and wherever else she could find space to cram the damn things in.

So today she was painting -- big surprise -- again, an easel set up in prominent view through the store's front window and what looked like the beginnings of a male nude figure taking shape on the very large canvas. Katchoo might have issues with men, but that didn't stop her from doing oversized studies of masculinity via paint and brushes. Maybe that had something to do with having several male friends these days, and how the hell did that happen again?

[OOC: There's this stupid four-inch-deep trench all the way across one of the main streets on my commute? The OCD fell out the car window when I hit it on my way to work.]

The mostly finished painting from yesterday, Katchoo's interpretation of herself from the other Fandom as gleaned from what she'd gotten out of the other Francine over the weekend, was still set up on the easel by the counter this morning but Katchoo wasn't working on it. The radio was tuned to some station that seemed set on playing the ultimate Lilith Fair lineup as Katchoo would define it: more Heart and Emmylou Harris than Jewel and Sarah McLachlan, so the balance worked out . . . though she was starting to decide she really liked Sara Bareilles.

The music wasn't her primary concern, anyway; mostly, she was sitting on the stool beside the easel, contemplating the portrait and wondering if, after all, it was best left unfinished. Some things didn't need to be fully realized.

Or maybe that was too pretentious?

Screw it -- she reached for her paints and got back to work.

[OOC: Wherever my ability to leave the house on time today went, there shall the OCD be found.]

Taking pictures with ponies. Seriously. Katchoo had long since passed the point of being exasperated with Deadpool's weird $(*!)@ classes or even wanting to throw up her hands and mutter in incoherent disbelief. It took a lot to get Katchoo to the "I'm just going to sigh and ignore it" point, so congratulations on that, Vice-Principal.

None of which had a thing to do with the painting she'd started working on today, to the tune of some very loud bagpipe-and-percussion music she'd stumbled across randomly while goofing off in the computer lab. But then again, when what you were painting looked like a bizarre recreation of a Napoleonic battle scene on a hockey rink while gremlins looked on from the stands, did you really want to explain where it came from?

Katchoo sure as hell didn't know.

[OOC: And neither do I. Also, I ate the OCD.]

Having a class movie day (which translated to 'Chewie wears out a pencil sketching her way through class' day) knocked the chances of the mood in the store being volatile down a notch or two; a good yelling match with Arthur (which was, perhaps not inexplicably, good for the soul) accounted for the loss of another ten percentage points of that chance.

With one more class to get through tomorrow before break started, Katchoo was almost relaxed, the loud punk-Celtic-fusion fiddle music coming from the stereo notwithstanding. Even her cynical self hadn't been able to resist the Olympic opening ceremonies, apparently.

She'd set up her canvas near the counter; after a few minutes of contemplating it, she picked up a brush and started to slap heavy, paint-laden streaks of reds and deep blues across it in time with the music. She wasn't sure what it would be yet, but she had the feeling it was going to be interesting . . . probably in the 'oh my god, were you on drugs when you did this?' way.

[OOC: Oh, did I mention the post is open? And the OCD facepalmed itself into oblivion (shut up, it's anthropomorphic OCD and can totally do that) at my impulse-buying iTunes habit.]

Katchoo did have a mug today, thank you, and could take advantage of that shiny new coffee machine. The mug was from Lacey, who clearly thought she was hilarious; the mug, however, was accurate.

Particularly when Katchoo burned herself on the steam coming from the top of the machine, which was what happened when you opened it up too soon after brewing.

Clocky had tried to say 'I told you so,' but as Katchoo told it repeatedly, did she speak alarm? No.

But at least she had coffee.

[OOC: OCD went wherever the hell my posting mojo and my Farmville gifts keep going, because I'm not getting them. :(]

Some people were smart and stayed in their rooms, or went to the clinic, when they got sick. Katchoo was the one who went to work, bitching not-so-under her breath the entire way (about insane vice-principals and stupid allergies and whoever was to blame for the invention of the cacao bean), stormed into the shop, and slouched behind the counter with a large-format sketchbook.

Could she really help it if lifelike renderings of massive M&M carnage in colored pencil were that cathartic?

No. Didn't think so.

[OOC: I can't throw the phone out the window, so I threw the OCD instead. Open shop is open, if you want to get the chocolate fever.]

Still yawning after movie-day naptime in Modeling class (again, what the frikkin' hell), Katchoo showed up at work with a triple-strength mocha clutched possessively in both hands. She had to relinquish half her grip on it to open the door, of course, but she'd had to out-attitude the barista at the Perk to get herself a mocha that was 90% espresso, 6% chocolate, and 4% milk and you weren't getting that cup away from her for anything. She'd worked damn hard to get it.

She'd left the window cracked yesterday to get rid of some of the lingering chemical fumes, but there was still enough of a lingering odor to make her grimace and mutter to herself as soon as she stepped inside. The door was going to have to stay propped open again today; good thing she was decently layered.

Anyway, whatever cleanup she hadn't finished yesterday -- funny how talking to Arthur took up a lot of her time, and was actually far more fun -- would be enough physical activity to keep her warm; there were several boxes of trash to take out to the dumpster, half of the drafting section still needed to be restocked, and then the fun of updating inventory lists and prepping the next supply order would have to start.

Katchoo wasn't looking forward to that part, but the radio station she'd tuned into today was playing a marathon of Queen. It'd take the edge off.

[OOC: The OCD fell into a pothole and then got covered up with asphalt. Thanks, CalTrans! I do not want my commute to be an X-Games event every day.]

There was a sandbag right in the doorway of the store for some reason, and Katchoo nearly tripped on it on her way in.

The sandbag immediately got flung out into the middle of the street, but with the lack of typical swearing and ranting you might expect -- the good mood might be getting a touch creepy now, huh?

If it was, Katchoo would probably tell you to suck it up.

Almost cheerfully.

[OOC: The OCD got washed away in the flash flooding and mudslides we're getting here. Training someone again today, so may be AFK for stretches.]

One last semester. One last semester, and you'd think she could get away without the office moose (she still swore that damn thing was to blame) screwing her over one more time. Modeling for Dummies, what the hell? That was bad enough, but coming in to work afterward only reminded her of gremlin-bitten Deadpool dancing like an 80's pop star in here that one time and jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, the trauma never ended.

Today, at least, god, did Katchoo ever wish she hadn't promised to try and quit drinking.

Yesterday's paint-covered canvas was just going to have to take another one for the team today, to the tune of some very, very loud Griffin Silver.

Sorry, Strokes of Genius floor. You were taking one for the team too, since Katchoo was going to spend a good chunk of the day flinging paint somewhat indiscriminately.

[OOC: OCD is hiding from the Pollock impersonation, and SP will be epic between about 12 and 3 EST while I'm running a training session. Whee.]

Katchoo had finally gotten "Feliz Navidad" out of her head, only to have replaced it with "The Wren in the Furze," something she'd heard on the traditional Christmas station yesterday.

. . . earworms were an extra bitch when, on top of not knowing 3/4 of the lyrics, you had no idea what the hell the song was about. Not being anything in half a galaxy's vicinity of religious meant that the question "what the hell is St. Stephen's Day, anyway?" was going to bother Katchoo all day.

Said earworm and nagging question had her well enough distracted that when she got into the shop and started straightening things out on the shelves, she caught sight of her own hand and thought she hadn't managed to scrub the damn splotches from yesterday's snow off after all.

Then she looked up to where the usual hanging lamp was . . .

"Huh. Christmas lights aren't actually a bad look up there."

Go figure.

[OOC: I sent the OCD off to go find my Chieftains' Bells of Dublin CD. "The Wren in the Furze?" I am not kidding. Earworm'd.]

Her head was still full of thoughts of ladies, tigers, idiot kings, sexist archaic crap, and new boots by the time Katchoo arrived at work, and it was really the last of those thoughts that had her whistling occasional broken snippets of classic showtunes around the shelves as she restocked.

Mmm, clunky heels. She was a little sorry about the lack of cookies today, just because she could've crushed 'em under said clunky heels.

She'd have to settle for breaking out a new set of watercolors instead. Oddly, Katchoo was fine with that.

[OOC: Farmville did that thing again where it ate some of my gifts. It took the OCD with them.]