January 1st:
I quickly checked my watch and drew a line through the date that I scribbled onto the first page of my journal and frowned. I then slowly pushed my pink pleather-bound journal to the side of my drafting desk to the pile of untouched journals I got this Christmas. You mention one time that you journal and all of a sudden everyone buys you a journal every time they don't want to think too critically when it's Gift Times. I've got about 12-20 fresh new journals that honestly might remain untouched. I kinda burned out on Journaling after fall this last year. I only picked up the journal Lola got me on a whim. "New Year: New Me" and all that. But maybe I'll wait until things pick up before I feel the need to organize my thoughts in a physical way. Or maybe the concept of a New Lincoln Loud is someone who actually keeps his thoughts to himself instead of hamming them up in a journal for my sisters to read to make me seem more complex than how I really am.
It's less reading material for Lola, but I've been enjoying having tea with her every Friday to catch up on things. It's kinda fun having her grill me about my week, it also helps me keep things organized On The Fly instead of relying on the handicap of written down notes.
Anyways,
It's technically the second of the month. I'll be in school for the first time this year in a couple of hours. It's an odd feeling, standing at the midpoint of 6th Grade. This winter break proved to be pretty interesting, a lot of my elder sisters had their own things going on so Christmas at 1216 Franklin Avenue was a bit weird. Not a bad weird- just a bit different. Maybe someone else, another me, would try to get the family together for the holidays. But if I really wanted to see them I could just move things around on my schedule and spend some time with them.
Which is precisely what I did this winter break.
Lori has finally caught onto the swing of things over at FU, and has perfected the balance of Takin' It Easy and Serious Times. The memory of going on another pseudo double-date with her and Bobby and RA and I is a moment that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. I'm sure the idea of a roller-rink date is something that most people think of as charming or relaxing, but when you put RA and I onto something that happens on wheels it turns into an Occasion that ends up with us getting banned from the establishment and read about on the papers. Me and Ronnie still feel kinda bad for ruining Lori's dream of having a double-date with us that doesn't turn into an Incredibly Awkward Ordeal, but she should know better by now. I feel like I owe her a favor. I'd swallow my pride and try to rope RA into playing along for a Serious double-date, but I don't actually want to do that. Not because I'm afraid of staring down any deep-seated longings or anything, but because a Double Date sounds Incredibly Stupid and a Waste of My Time on a conceptual level. I'd go into it, but even I think the topic is kind of boring. Maybe later, when the exposition (for this new year) is over.
Leni is acclimating smoothly as the Eldest Sibling in the house. She recently got a promotion at Reininger's, Ms. Carmichael relied on her a lot during this Winter's Spring Season Sale. Apparently people who care about fashion stockpile their outfits before the season starts, kind of like how a party of adventurers stock up on provisioning and potions before a particularly harrowing dungeon run. I used to be the kind of Dude who poo-pooed the concept of fashion but I kind of see the appeal now. I've spent so much time trying to convince other people using my words that I've kinda neglected that people see me just as much as they hear me. A well put-together outfit can make all the difference in a conversation, make the other party feel comfortable or trust you more. I keep a collection of clothes in my locker now just in case something comes up. I spent a weekend with the Carol Carpool checking out the sights at GLC with everyone, Fiona and Miguel almost didn't make it out in one piece. It's a little bit worrying since they'll be enrolling in GLCU this coming fall semester, but I'm not their dad. So I don't really care.
Luna almost fainted when Stella and I handed her that guitar pedal to her for her birthday. Apparently nobody has thought to reproduce that particular pedal yet. Now that I'm thinking of it, it might be a lucrative business opportunity to start up a guitar pedal business with Stella. It's not like she's got anything else going on. I went sailing with Sam and Luna and Sam's little brother Simon. You wouldn't know this by looking at him, but that kid Simon is pretty handy on a sailboat. Winter is usually the worst time to sail on Lake Eddy, but I would say that the end of fishing season with the errant whirlpools and currents that change in accordance to auras and psychic intentions is a bit more precarious. I just wore a thick jacket. Sam is drilling Luna on how to be an elder sibling since she'll be taking the reign's this fall. Note to self: inquire about that Loud Life Insurance Policy thing Lisa was talking about and see if it covers stress-induced heart attacks.
Luan's various projects and plays are getting more elaborate in production and number. After snagging the win at the MIFA one act play circuit RWHS's theater budget got an unanticipated windfall of cash from all kinds of Patrons of the Arts. Luan has been using this money wisely, her last student directed play was an adaptation of the movie Nowhere directed by Gregg Araki was praised by critics for the audience interaction and usage of Splash Zones for the final scenes. It was a grisly and visceral affair, but one that I was glad to be a part of. Her and Benny are doing fine, they convinced me to drag along Jordan to one of their Bev and Duster dates and we had a good time. For the most part. Like I've mentioned a bit before Jordan has a tendency to ham it up and act all guarded whenever you throw my elder family members into the occasion. I had a lot of fun despite that, honestly. It's enough to make a Dude wonder if-
Excuse me, I need to down a tonic water. One of the newest editions to my room is a beat up mini-fridge Lana picked up for me when I jotted it down on the Junkyard Wish List. I honestly like the taste of tonic water, all my sisters think it tastes like "drinking dirt". Except for Lana, she says it tastes like "drinking soap". Which is odd because I don't think Lana has ever let soap touch her without her depersonalizing herself to the point of losing all senses beforehand.
That's better.
Lynn gave me some advice earlier that if I ever find myself having particularly intrusive thoughts about other people that I should down some water to get over it. Pretty handy advice, honestly.
Speaking of Lynn, she and I entered some sledding competition in Beaver Creek sponsored by Red Boar energy and got a signed Game Station 5 and a signed copy of ProSledder 4: Winter Wasteland Featuring Tony Hawk. I don't know what Mr. Hawk is doing with slapping his name on a game about sledding since I'm pretty sure he's a skateboarder, but the only difference between a sled and a skateboard are wheels. We also got a signed Birdhouse sled and a lifetime supply of Red Boar but I guess I don't really drink a lot of energy drinks lately. I've been really into tea lately, something to bond over with Lola. Either way, it's another trophy to throw into the case. I've been racking them up recently, usually joint-ventures with my sisters. But I'll take what I can get.
Speaking of Lola, we are on Lucy so you'll have to wait.
Lucy and I are fighting right now. Nothing too serious, just a minor disagreement about some of Harriet's things. She claims that everything within Harriet's chest is her's by "birthright" but Harriet herself left me a note in her Field Notes that it's okay for me to poke around the chest so long as I remember to record The Real Housewives of Royal Palms for her on the DVR. I tried to show Lucy the note but she claimed that it was a forgery. But it's all in good fun, I replace all the cartridges in her fountain pens with pink ink and she publishes a scathing review of my old Ace Savvy Fics on Do3. Jokes on her since nobody actually reads those, and everyone who does read them only does it to laugh at me anyways. I guess if it came out that I wrote fics about the comic book I'm technically working on that could be a Big Deal, but probably not. Our Holiday Ceasefire is ending as soon as she wakes up today and I replaced her entire wardrobe with orange polos and blue jeans in her size and hid her clothes somewhere where she would never think to look.
Lana, Lisa, and I put some hours into that project we were daydreaming about last summer. A lot of the properties around Great Aunt Ruth's timeshare have pretty faulty foundations. Since they are lake houses they're all built on these wooden stilts that are driven into the ground real deep in case a flood happens and washes them all away. The houses that have not been built to withstand the increasingly tumultuous waters of Lake Eddy (that Lisa might have something to do with) are pretty much all toast. Most of the homeowners have cut their losses and sold them off to the bank or real estate speculators, leaving these homes open for Bed and Breakfast type slumlords. By bombing these places with bad reviews we can continue driving investors away from that particular site. I had Stella help set me up the bot for it and the three of us surveyed the area to see what our next move will be. Still waiting on how low we can drive prices before some other blowhard tries to make a move.
Lola twisted her ankle something fierce while ice skating and had to sit out the Little Miss Holiday Times Pageant. I tried not to be too upset with her about it since she was obviously looking forward to it as much as I was. Luckily, Meli was available in that three-day time window and Lisa helped us out a little bit. Her hair texture was actually much more manageable than Lola's. Lola still feels side-effects of the "Oscillation Introjection Feedback" (or whatever Lisa calls it) but it's not really that bad, she just has a weird tendency to always know when Meli is hungry. Meli also mentioned that her dreams have been getting weird, but it's probably completely inconsequential.
Lisa recently got a contract with some private pharmaceutical company based out of Georgia to make a bunch of weird flavors like "Drywall" and "Poached Quail Eggs", I helped taste test them. I've got a case of "Eraser Shavings" and "Old Cast Iron Skillet" lying around, a little contingency plan if I ever need to drive someone absolutely insane by making everything they eat taste like dirt. They paid Lisa incredibly handsomely and she gave me half of it since I was such a good test subject, she didn't even have to blackmail me to take the offer. I hope she doesn't get used to that though, I stopped using pencils because I kept catching myself trying to eat my erasers.
Lily is a baby. So she doesn't have a lot going on. This is a bad thing. Her being a baby with no responsibilities and no day-care to keep her entertained she's been particularly unhinged this winter break. Unlike Luna who does pranks for the joke (even if they are all only really funny to her) Lily stirs up trouble just to do it. It isn't because she's starved for attention, or because she dislikes anyone or anything, she's just kinda… insane. Lori, Leni, Luna, and Luna all agree that she "doesn't hold a candle" to me when I was a kid, which is kinda mean. I had legitimate reasons behind all my schemes, even as a baby with no moral compass, and I only lit Luna's hair on fire once.
But I can kind of understand where they are coming from. It's easy to zero-in on negative aspects of people or bad memories. I try to calm myself down whenever I find myself about to vomit from embarrassment from residual memories of all the horrible (and/or) awkward things I've done. And the fact that I wrote down most of them makes those memories kinda stick out more. I've thought about burning my journals, just delete all of it from my memory to clear up space for new ones. But, honestly?
There is probably just as much Good as there was Bad. And even if that's a lie I'm telling myself to make myself feel better I'm sure I'll be making even worse memories this new year. So who cares? Might as well ride it out.
My battery is dying on my cellphone so I figure now would be a good time for me to clean up my room and find my cellphone charger instead of bumming one from one of my sisters or friends. Maybe this year I'll just stick to digital journaling or something, I'd say "blogging" but that implies I'm posting it. I'm not, it's just in the notes of my Rumblr account to never see the light of day. With as much house explosions and crazy weather we've been having lately it might be a good idea to digitize my thoughts and upload them on the cloud for the sake of Future Lincoln. So, if you're reading this, future me: quit being so ding dang nosy and live your own life.
In the process of cleaning my room I have found at least 5 cellphone chargers that fit my Nebula Note 5. 3 of them are still in their blister packaging, one of them also came with a powerbank courtesy of Stella. Possibly a subtle hint that she was not really happy with my habitual ganking of her charger. This is understandable.
Buying gifts for friends as opposed to family is a much more "cut and dry" affair than buying presents for my sisters, I don't have to worry about the competitive nature of my fellow Louds all bashing our weirdly thick skulls against each other to dish out the most needlessly opulent or incredibly personal present. Lisa got Lana a little dinosaur for Christmas, some kind of odd mini-velociraptor looking thing that Lana named "Mr. Champion". Ethical implications aside: it was a Most Badass Gift, it's gonna take a while for any of us other siblings to get on that level. I thought I came kinda close with booking Luna and Sam a stay at a Bed and Breakfast in Seattle that one of her favorite musicians used to live in, but they ended up having a weird time. Which is a shame because the greenhouse looked really pretty from the photos.
Anyways, I got Stella a really nice soldering iron for Christmas. She got me that battery bank thing, she got all weird because my present was more expensive than hers and I had to remind her that I make crazy bank with the whole "comic book royalties" thing. She claimed that it wasn't a problem about with the money and said she'd give me a more proper and thoughtful present soon. Ladies be weird sometimes because my other bros didn't really have a weird Crisis about their presents.
I got Clyde one of those cool messenger bags that I see advertised on Instagrim all the ding dang time. It's got hella pockets so he can organize to his heart's content. Clyde and I have a shared passion for Storage Solutions. He worked with Lana and Leni to get me this really nice drafting desk that architects use to plot out blueprints, refinished to a really nice dark orange lacquer. I can't even imagine how many times they had to lay down layers of paint to get it as shiny as it is. It's pretty big and takes up about a third of the room, even with the added space from the twins room and Lisa and Lily's. But it's got a lot of drawers.
I picked up some cologne for Rusty which turned out to be a bad idea. Rocky hit me up on friendbook to complain that he's been practically bathing in the stuff ever since I gave it to him. Probably my fault since I got him a literal gallon of the stuff that we synthesized during that whole flavor test thing that I did with Lisa. So now he constantly smells like cedar wood, patchouli, Cyprus, and hinoki. Now, that was a solution that smelled better than what it tasted like. Rusty got me some pomade that was banned by the FDA for illegal testing on monkeys. The story goes that the monkeys looked so good with the pomade on that they developed signs of depression after the pomade was washed off and looked at their reflections. I guess I'll break it out for special occasions, I already have enough Problems and Complications. I don't need to add Post Pomade Depression on that list.
Zach got me a Perfect Grade Macrodum Ghee-Emm Striker Custom with a bunch of cool accessories he 3D printed using the printer at the library. A pretty expensive gift, but I went halfsies with him so it evens itself out. I finished putting it together 2 nights back and am going to sand it down a bit and wash it before I bring it over to his place to get it painted. I find putting models together to be very meditative, did you know that Benny likes making models too? He doesn't weather his so they look all glossy and perfect. I wonder what his freaking problem is.
Liam got me a rare mint condition VHS copy of Ace Savvy the Movie. Panned by critics at it's release back in 1978 for it's incredibly low-budget special effects and disregard for canon, it's VHS release might as well have been Landfill Exclusive. The only rip you can find online is, like, 140p and has someone breathing heavily on the microphone. I've been thinking about asking Boy Jordan for help in trying to get it digitized since he's pretty handy with old formats like that, but he goes to a different school now. It would be kinda weird to just show up to Ketcham Park Middle School and corner him and be all: "Bro, Help Me Do This Thing". I got Liam a DVD/Blueray player that I picked up for cheap at a Woodland County auction, it was made to play informational videos to Burpin' Burger employees at the failed Beaver Creek location and has a ton of branding on it. It's kinda hard to make out the picture in low-light since the glowing LED emblems on it shine so brightly, so Liam just covered them up with duct tape.
I got Mollie a new jacket seeing as Christina accidentally spilled black printer ink all over her old one, Christina can be really clumsy sometimes. It's honestly kind of endeari-
Another thing I've been trying out is infused waters. Just cut up some fruit slices (I usually do oranges) and throw them into a pitcher of water. Really refreshing.
Anyways, Mollie got me a fishing pole.
Mom and Dad pulled out all the stops this Christmas since I've been a "Good Boy" with all the Buddy Group stuff and my grades so they got me a Gaming PC!
About freakin' time.
I spent a lot of last year during the first half of this year sleeping on all the new releases since I was kinda goin' nuts with having to juggle club stuff, council stuff, and Buddy Group stuff. Now I've kinda learned my lesson and let the Rusty take the helm on most of the club stuff, Stella has been helping out Jordan in my stead (they are weirdly close now), and Haiku and Clyde have pretty much made the Buddy Group an autonomous machine. Now I can focus on what is really important: gaming and comic books.
Finally got around to trying out Xtreme Badminton Island 3: Gaia Getaway. Had to install a VPN because of the region lock. It's kinda lame since it's one of those predatory Gacha games that Lori plays the heck out of on her cellphone. The Badminton system is sort of bogus since it's all automated, you can set up the strategies that the girls use while in matches at least.
Kinda weird how the swimsuits determine the stats of the girls, but Leni and Lynn tell me that it makes total sense. And I kinda understand too, I'm no stranger to having certain Outfits that I use for activities. Leni enjoyed playing the game with me because there are tons of swimsuits in the game. I ended up just installing a mod to just add everything into it since I wasn't about to drop 30,000 dollars USD just for some textures. Luan and Lisa had some things to say about how all the boobies were kinda messed up in like a basic anatomy kind of way (I am no expert when it comes to boobies so I tend to default to my sisters opinions on the cubject), but Luna says that it's "Pretty much the most righteous video game" she has ever played. Her favorite character is Valeria, she's the blonde German lady who enjoys marine biology and needle felting.
Playing the games with my sisters reminds me of how Lori would sometimes load up those fun dress-up flash games on the ol' family computer growing up. We'd all fight over what accessories looked the best. Now that there are appropriate stats related to the clothing it's all pretty cut and dry. The story is pretty boring, but Luna finds it particularly engaging. Basically you are appointed as the new manager of a resort island where a bunch of ladies who kill people for money spend their vacations at. You have to keep them happy or they might kill you, I'm pretty good at managing that. All you need to do is give them treats every once in a while and talk to them about their problems and they are happy. Kinda like real life: I enjoy treats and having someone to talk to. I should ask the bros what their favorite treats are. Luna makes me choose all the dialogue choices after she got 4 Bad Ends in a row with Valeria.
Playing the game got me thinking:
It would be pretty freakin' awesome if we all got a vacation. Camp Mastodon is cool and all, but I was thinking that maybe this summer we could all save up some scratch and go on a cruise or something this Spring Break. Not just the fam, but The Gang too. I know one of Lucy's friends' parents work on a cruise, maybe I can work something out with them. Too bad me and Lucy are Feuding right now. Might need to bury the hatchet soon.
We were able to scrounge up enough cash to afford Ace Savvy Con last year, shouldn't be too hard to get some dough. Maybe sell some Drywall flavored flippees or something.
Welp, I'm going to go ahead and load up the washing machine with some of the dirty clothes I picked up while cleaning my room. Also found some of my old diaries when I was in 3rd grade, I'd look through them but I don't have the mental fortitude to survive the second-hand embarrassment and potential psychic damage. Maybe some other time. I'll check in again with you soon, hopefully this new semester starts off with no problems.
"Drenched in sweat,
But just on the precipice.
You shrink me down to an adjective
Before anything's left my lips.
Yeah, you see me,
Having a demon's scheme.
Oh, stop me now, it might prove
You've been wrong this whole time."
Kno Me by Jerry Paper
Uh, hey there. I kinda know where this Lincoln is going now so I'm returning back to his story. If you have no idea what I mean by that and you haven't read LDNT then that's fine, I don't really understand anything either. I started LDNT before season 5 premiered and am doing the same thing with season 6 because I haven't learned my lesson. I bet there is an episode coming up that gives Girl Jordan a last name and I'll get so mad about it I'll shit my pants. Don't expect this one to update as frequently as LDNT did because I'm kinda busy with my job (this is a lie, I'm just very lazy). LR is still a thing too.
