FamilySearch and Stuff

Taxes are over and only cost me seventy dollars to file, and finally there is an end in sight to this semester, which will reduce my stress level considerably and give me more time to write things that are actually enjoyable. Naturally my motivation is in the toilet. Although 2018 has thus far been an almost uninterrupted stream of stress, loss, heartache, frustration, arthritis, and various other kinds of pain, it's only been the second worst year of my life because it's still not as bad as working at a call center and losing my dog.

​I did some stuff with FamilySearch this week. I did a face match thing to see which of my ancestors I most resemble and for that I took a new picture of myself. I think I look moderately attractive in the mirror, but in photographs I usually somehow come out looking like an unsuccessful lobotomy patient. So I limit the photographic evidence of my existence and use a picture of my dead dog on social media. Of course I was really surprised that I managed to get an acceptable picturee and if you haven't seen it yet, here it is. Notice how white I am, thanks to my English, Scottish, Danish, and Portuguese ancestry.

FamilySearch also has an option to "Add or Find Spouse" to a person's file, and of course people joke about that, but I already did it and so far I haven't gotten in trouble or had to reverse it. I expect her to show up any day now.

I can't believe all the people who don't know who Felicity Jones is and think I just picked a random name. Maybe I can trick God this way. I'll go in for the interview, and He'll be like "Hmm, so you never married" in a sort of vaguely judgmental tone. I'll be like, "Yes I did, look here, it says right here." And He'll be like "Oh yeah, my bad." Nobody tell Him about this post.

I happened to learn in the process that I'm distantly related to my bishop, my bishop's wife who is distantly related to my bishop, his first counselor, my ex-crush, and some other people. My ex-crush, in case you were wondering, is my ex-crush because someone told me I could do better. I didn't believe him at first. I thought, but didn't say out loud, how so? Is she a serial killer or something? I would actually respect that. Women are ridiculously underrepresented in the serial killing industry, and I admire any woman who manages to break through that glass ceiling. But I figured he was just saying that to be nice. I thought, but didn't say out loud, that if he wants to compliment me I'd be happy to give him a list of my positive traits so he doesn't have to make stuff up. At least if I can find the list. I may have accidentally thrown away the Tootsie roll wrapper it was written on.

This reminds me of a story. A few years ago, when I was about five or six, I had the biggest crush on Natalie Davis, who was about ten or twelve or something. I've been mostly into older women for as long as I can remember thanks to the sister missionaries who put me on their laps and tickled me when I was little, which is another story altogether. Anyway, Natalie had a twin, or maybe just a sister who looked a lot like her, I don't remember, but I could tell them apart and I knew which one I wanted. She had six siblings, if I recall correctly. My family and her family hung out a lot. I was closest to her sister Cheryl in age but sometimes I didn't get along with her and one time I called her a "sarcastic know-it-all", which was the worst insult I could think of. Natalie, or maybe her twin, was all like "How would you feel if someone called you that?" and I was all like "I wouldn't care." One night a bunch of us slept on her family's trampoline and she told us a scary bedtime story and my chest is aching from nostalgia just thinking about all this.

So one day I was at this church activity at some park somewhere and Natalie was sitting on a table talking to a friend, and I don't remember the thought process behind what I did next or even if there was one. I was very young and not entirely familiar with the principle of consent. I climbed up next to Natalie and kissed her on the cheek.

"Gasp!" said her friend.

Natalie, however, was unfazed. She said, "It's okay, we're related."

That was not what I had expected to hear. Yeah, somehow I missed that discussion of when our families met and found that out. But she's only my third cousin or something, I think, so I think that would have been all right anyway. But doing family history reminded me of her and that made me really nostalgic and motivated me to churn out several pages of the memoir that I stopped working on quite a while ago because it turns out that spelunking through my memories is super depressing.

I posted my second story for class a few weeks ago and this week it was critiqued, and while the ratio of constructive criticisms to praise was more even this time, indicating that this story was inferior to my first one just like I thought it was, it did seem to be funnier. Macie said this was the first story all semester to laugh out loud. I think the reason for that is because witty, rude, and/or sarcastic dialogue is inherently ten times funnier coming from a robot than a meatbag. Star Wars and Futurama have discovered this principle. And I think the reason for that is because robots are expected to be emotionless and subservient and logical, and humor lies in subverting expectations. Anyway, Adrian, who also happens to be the best writer in the class (I've ranked us Adrian, Natalie, me, everyone else) liked KC-1138 enough to take the initiative of drawing him for me, and that was the most flattering thing ever.

The Sisters of Mercy - When You Don't See Me

This is my second favorite Sisters of Mercy song. I don't know what to say about it other than it's awesome. And romantic. Since most of my music is gone for the foreseeable future, I've listened to the "Temple of Love 1992" single about twelve times a day.