Yeah, so my fingers are numb.

by Alicja Rodzik
I came out of the bedroom this morning adorned in a hat, scarf, and sweater since it was so windy the day before and my mom thinks I won't need any of it. Well guess what. I'm still freezing my arse off. So there.

I'd like to do something for Halloween, but parties are not my thing and I'm too old to trick or treat, unfortunately. And I don't really know what else there is to be done on Halloween, so I get to stay home and buy candy for the little kiddies because my mom refuses to participate on this particular holiday. She's such a party pooper.

I know that a bunch of you, like myself, are Harry Potter fans, but I don't know if any of you read fanfiction? I have a weird preference myself, a Hermione/Severus ship. Yeah, I hear those sniggers, but seriously, it usually works out because they just fit if you've never thought about it before.

I've got a couple of favorite stories if you want to read them. They do have a couple of romantically raunchy chapters each, though. Not that that's a bad thing. Hurhur. But you'll need to have an account to read the R rated fictions, so you can borrow mine! Yay! Just don't abuse it, I tell you, like sending weird messages to the authors.

username: pherenike
password: xVmXUNYRum

The Phantom of Hogwarts
This story sort of mashes together some Phantom of the Opera with Harry Potter via the students of Hogwarts putting on the play for a triwizard competition between themselves, Durmstrang, and Beauxbatons. However, Severus is unexpectedly (not!) cast as the phantom while Hermione is cast as Christine Daae. Since they play opposite each other, they have to spend quite a bit of time together, ahem ahem. WARNING: This story is ridiculously long. I mean, if you were to copy and paste this story into a word document, it would probably be more than two thousand pages. And it's still going. So good luck!

The Problem With Purity
This is one of my favorites because the characters' personalities are so true to canon and the storyline is clever and original, and I love how the relationships between characters is so believable. Hermione and Harry both find out that they are both considered Pure Adults, a term given to those witches and wizards who are still virgins by the time they turn 17. According to the author, that's a very rare condition amongst the wizarding population, as the last Pure Adult was alive several hundred years prior, and so the two of them try to keep this a secret from the rest of wizarding society.

Stomping on egg shells.

by Mariah Helena Kordzadze
I was reading up on an old friend's profile on facebook and he wrote in his "about me" section, the following: "I get really upset when complete strangers don't go out of their way to make my life easier." Cracked the heck up. It was a good laugh.

On a more serious note, I'm opening up a lot more to the people around me about my personal life.

Charissa: Hey, what's wrong?
Me: Oh, I feel like crap. I need a nap, advil, and a snuggle. So, I'm probably PMSing.
Charissa: Dude, I know what you mean. Don't you have a snuggle buddy, eh?
Me: Not anymore.
Charissa: Well, what happened!

This is where the blow by blow of the whole of my relationship between myself and Granma took place. Every last detail, pretty much everything I've said on this blog during the months of July and August, and then some. But instead of saying things like "what a deuche bag" in response, she says, "If you ask me, he was just scared."

(I gave her a look.)
Charissa: No, I'm serious. I have tons of guy friends and they dump their girlfriends because they're not ready for a serious relationship yet. I mean, they're too scared to have a relationship that they'd let the perfect girl for them go just like that? That's ridiculous. And you two have so much in common; no wonder you like him so much!
Me: You know what's really exhausting? There hasn't been a single day since I've met him that I haven't thought about him. Not one day.
(Granma walks past the window and winks at me.)
Me: Oh, God. He just winked at me.
Charissa: Did you smile back at him?
Me: Myep.
Charissa: You two are so cute.
Me: Yeah, shut up.
Charissa: Girl, I'll tell you this. I'm convinced that over time the two of you will bloom.
(I laughed out loud, for sure.)
Charissa: No! Seriously, you both get along so well even after you've been through a break up, sitting together during your lunches... And he must have really liked you enough to have gone on at least six dates with you and make out with you and everything. It's going to happen.

So with all this talk about Granma, I was inspired to get us to hang out again. After work when he was driving out of the parking lot, he waited for me to approach the car where I asked if he'd have time for dinner.

But he had a pained look on his face before he said no, that he's going to a costume party. I don't know if the pained look was for the reason that he would actually have wanted to have dinner with me and couldn't, or for the reason that he's pained that I'm still trying to be with him even though we're clearly not together anymore. I don't know what to think.

But after I asked him, I realized that I'm now in the mindset of, "Who cares if we broke up before? I want to go out with him now." Which is dumb. Cute, but dumb.

Anyway, I'm glad I had this talk with Charissa so that someone knows what's going on and can give me advice, show sympathy, and help motivate me. I never would have thought I needed to tell all of this to someone in person (no offense you all), but I feel so much better after having done so.