yes, we are still here. four of us, going strong. well, five, if you count our pit crew, but we've been letter her take naps since none of us really needed a gopher and she had a long day before she came here to help out. but the point is yes, we are still here. hallucinating slightly, having trouble connecting brain to words to fingers to type. or maybe that's just me. we're getting there. less than three hours now. i wish i could do something to make the time go faster but honestly, anything i can think of would only make me fall asleep more easily.

okay...i have to call it quits. sorry guys. i made it so far but i just can't make it any longer. thansk for all the support from everyone and i had a good time. if anything, this has made me more prepared to finish out next year.

getting closer to the end and ideas are not coming well. unfortunately, there's not much action here either as we are all pretty drained. luckily my husband just logged on from home and told me to post about backyardigans. so i'll post a little about zack and backyardigans.

i don't know if many people reading this (if there is anyone reading it) are familiar with this particular children's show, but it's a computer-animated cartoon about a little group of animal friends and they do all kinds of imaginative adventures with catchy songs and all that normal little kid stuff. zack ADORES this show, and honestly, me and my husband have become pretty big fans too. but zack is the backyardigans king. he memorizes entire episodes, including songs, and performs them for us randomly complete with accurate gestures and choreography. zack will practice a line several times in a row until he gets every bit of it right and it's adorable. he's very dramatic. maybe he'll be in theater some day.

three more hours. almost done.

i have...seven?...six?....more to blog entries to go. it's getting closer and we will finish this. it's harder not to fall asleep before entries now because we're not talking as much and now my eyes are starting to defocus all by themselves so i think i will have to leave the computer for a few minutes after this entry and try to fix them. slowly but surely we are making our way to that 24-hour goal. i think the rain stopped and the sun is rising...it's pretty. there's some thunder. nope, still raining. okay, this post is getting a little boring to the point of silliness now.

the last seven hours are definitely the slowest. i know the first fourteen hours felt like nothing. seriously, the day passed by ridiculously quickly. now we're all struggling to stay awake between entries. or some of us are just making long enough entries that we essentially never have to stop typing. that seems like an excellent idea but i can't do it. so here is your random entry for the half hour.

i don't know if the storm passed over or is just quieter than i expected. no power outages or anything...then again, i'm used to being in the boonies where we lose power constantly. so maybe it's different here. i'm looking forward to sleep time. yeah.

four and a half hours to go and we lost one teammate. poor flutterby1 just couldn't make it the rest of the way and that's okay, we still love her and are still very proud of her. i can see lightning in the distance when i stand on the porch...but it's pretty far. i can't hear any thunder. if it does get to us, hopefully it won't be until after 9 a.m. :)

since i posted a little about my stepdaughter and son, i think it's time to post about my daughter. no, my daughter is not autistic and does not have aspergers. as far as we know she is completely "normal", unless you count the fact that she can talk anyone under the table and is far too smart for her own good (but i'm told that's kinda normal for a seven-year-old). she is amazingly smart...and no, i'm not just saying that because i'm her mom. and i'm not really trying to brag, i'm just so proud of her. she's about to start second grade and she's already reading at least two grade levels ahead. she catches onto things quickly and loves to learn new things. she is a bookworm like me. she has a bit of a behavior problem and some bullying issues that we're working on but all in all i couldn't ask for a much better seven-and-a-half-year-old. i think one of the main reasons i have to mention her here is because she is amazing with her younger brother. zack knows his colors and shapes mostly because of her. she reads him doctor seuss books for HOURS at a time. they have the normal brother-and-sister squabbles here and there but overall she is so helpful and great with him that i really can't complain much.

the rain has started. it's thundering too. send us happy electricity vibes, please.

next year i'm really going to be much more organized for this...my friends/teammates have prepared lists of prompts and so-forth and it really seems to be a great idea. or if i could at least come up with a shtick for next year like some others i've been following...something to keep the flow. it's really a learning process, isn't it? this is my first blogathon, i don't know if i mentioned that. two of my teammates blogathoned last year as well (is there really a good conjugation for blogathon as a verb? there should be) and my other two teammates are first year blogathoners as well. (verb or noun or both? that is the true question). i haven't done an all-nighter in years, to be completely honest. and without a screaming baby to rock around, it's somehow different. sleep is more precious when you lose the option to choose it. yeah, that makes sense in my head but may not make sense to you and if it doesn't, i apologize. we have a really great one-woman pit crew here who has been supplying us with drinks, food, and general entertainment and it's been a real help. and of course the thought of how nice this futon is going to be when i can finally fall asleep on it is helpful as well.

i admit it, i really can't think of anything more to write right now. i think that i went as far as i could with the cat thing for now...although if i'm as intrigued with the idea in a few days as i was at two in the morning i might explore it at a later date, perhaps for nano. but honestly, i'm barely keeping the eyes open and forming real words on the keyboard right now. i am going to keep this up, keep blogging for my cause (go here to donate please), but i can't promise that i'll keep writing fiction. i'm just going to pretty much go with whatever pops into my head now since that's really all i'll be able to process.

i have an awesome team so if you're cheering me on please consider checking out my friends page and helping them out too. most of them are still keeping up the fiction writing which i give them major props for. they are what i want to be when i grow up.

38 down, 10 to go. just five more hours. we can do this.

it wasn't that ramdes didn't trust the newcomer...a lack of trust would imply an uncertainty to his intentions. ramdes knew what klios was up to. maybe not details or times or places or things, but he knew how klios was thinking because he had been here before. judgement time would come quickly and the board would pick through any inconsistencies and curtains he would use. it was just a matter of time and then he might become deported. ramdes had seen it before. it was always a learning experience to see the ones who put themselves on the highest pedestals come crashing down to the earth with the rest of them. he chuckled under his breath and stretched. just a matter of time...

klios didn't understand the point of the humans. they didn't teach, they didn't guide, they just listened and talked to them. tesla and the one that they called rachel tried to teach him their language but he didn't understand why he should be bothered with it. as he saw it, with their primitive fuel sources and transportation devices. he can't learn anything from them, and as long as he was trapped in this form they wouldn't learn anything from him, if they were capable of learning.

he couldn't trust ramdes, which was a bad instinct to have with one's guardian. that one would follow klios around in and out and if he wasn't physically following him, klios could feel those eyes on him. he missed his extrasensory abilities and cursed this new, diminished form he was stuck with for at least a month and a year. and what about the board? who did they consist of, or what? would they question his intentions, his purpose? would that slow the journey to klios' final goal?

rachel didn't really learn about her gift until she was thirteen, the same age her mother had been and her aunt and her grandmother. of course, even before then she had heard their voices and songs...but her mother had explained them away as child's play.

the songs were her favorite thing to fall asleep to. some nights, if tesla wasn't studying or working with klios, she would sing softly to rachel for hours and rachel would get so caught up in the ghostly melodies and foreign words that tesla would finally have to stop so that they could both get some sleep.

and the stories they told...ramdes could talk for hours about the first battle between the slos and the griffs, the monuments that they built in honor of the fallen, the weaponry, the armor. tesla reminisced about all of the creatures that had existed in her world - flays, who were delicate, beautiful, fast, and hunted for their wings....hambits, who were used for travel and work, the size of a small dog with a leathery grey hide like an elephant and the strength of several workhorses.

klios was the hardest worker, though. he would steal tesla away for hours to pour over the books in the library, or walk into the woods and study the plants, or late at night to discuss astronomy and astrology.

klios had to be initiated...ramdes would bring him through an orientation of sorts, tesla and rachel would start to teach him languages and customs of the natives. there would be recreation...the expected chasing of balls and strings was more fun than people would think. and then there was the napping. napping wasn't bad either. but one always had to keep the deadline in mind.

"the deadline," explained tesla the first day in the garden, "is a month. that is how long you have to get through the orientation. the studying portion is yearly...gathering materials, and the mandatory storytelling, and then of course you present your findings and go to the board. it's all really simple."

"and after the board?" klios asked, his eye on a bee that hovered over a nearby flowerbud.

"the board will meet with you, then they will give you their decision. according to their rulings, you can decide to go back to your homeland and use what you learned here, or you can stay behind and become a guardian or teacher like ramdes and i. so it's all really your own choice. there are certain paths you must follow, but other branches of those paths that you can choose. and of course, ramdes and rachel and i will be here to help you along the way."

"you forgot to tell him about the deportation process," ramdes growled from behind them.

"we don't need to worry about that now, ramdes. hopefully that won't be a problem." tesla glared at him in a way that only a cat can and laid down in a patch of sunlight.

rachel had always known that cats were something more than they seemed. there's a reason, after all, that they had been worshipped as gods and treated like royalty for so many generations. some cats, the really old souls, have a certain wisdom in their eyes.

tesla was one of those cats. to any unfamiliar person she was grey and white, dainty, a little shy and skeptical. but to those who knew her and could talk to her she was one of the oldest in the house...her soul was that of worlds so long gone that they were thought of as fairytales.

ramdes was another old soul. his body was black and fluffy, his eyes clear green. he could tell rachel stories of wars fought on planets too far to ever think of discovering, races that most humans would never see or believe.

klios, on the other hand, was a new soul, one just brought into this body. ramdes was his guardian, tesla his teacher. klios didn't see that this wasn't the degradation that he thought it was....this was an honor, a chance to live again and learn more and maybe, if he succeeded in learning enough, bring the knowledge back to his people. but klios had to accept that position, and ramdes and tesla could only guide him.

the house stared down at the street through stained glass windows and sheets of rain. the street was dark except for the pool of light on the corner where the boy stood, shivering in a blue raincoat and corduroys. he managed to just stay in the edges of the shadows, blending in with the trees along the property lines. if anyone had been on the street that night they probably wouldn't have noticed him, and he liked it that way. he had to practice moving in shadows, blending the sound of his footsteps with the wind and splashes from the raindrops. he had to learn to be invisible.

the wind changed, a slight alter in the current, and the boy paused. he had to be invisible but he still had to hear and see and be aware of everything if he wanted to survive. the ones that hunted him were invisible too, and they had studied longer, and they were faster. the boy would have to think like them, and learn to feel the wind changes and smell the sweat on the breeze.

sarah knew it was time to clean that room. it had been a year, after all, and everyone - the doctors, the neighbors, her husband and friends - said that grief takes a year to reach completion...you must celebrate each anniversary and holiday and memory again, from the person's birthday to the person's deathday...and realize that you can emerge whole. yesterday was his death day. one year to the day, and she didn't feel whole. sarah felt like the teddy bear that a child has outgrown...battered and torn and tossed aside for flashier toys with more features. one year ago and one day after her best friend had died, she finally went into his room.

it was dark, which was all wrong to begin with. david had always had the room full of light, and even when it wasn't bright inside he made the room bright. that was david. maybe not to everyone but to sarah, david was the light. sarah groped around a bit until she found the light switch and turned the light on. it wasn't as dusty as she had expected it to be. or as clean. it really looked like it always had, like he would be getting home from work any minute, coming up the stairs and through the door, handing sarah an iced coffee and telling her to shield her eyes so he could change out of his work clothes. his bed was still unmade...sarah had always teased him about that. david would just shrug and say, "what's the point of making the bed if i'll just sleep in it again later anyway?" and she couldn't argue with that, really. the water glass was on the bedside table, like always. the closet door was open and dirty clothes still littered the floor around the hamper where they had landed after david had tried to toss them from across the room. "ten points if you break something!" sarah remembers him saying.

roger was literally starting from scratch. his guitar and car were gone, he hadn't had a real "home" since he'd left nyc and pretty much was down to the clothes he was wearing and the notebook and pen he'd gotten at the bus station. he had to write that song that had been playing at the edges of his sleep, the same tune that echoed in the traffic of santa fe, the same lyrics that had screamed in his head. he just had to put them all together, find the right rhythm, string the melody along just right...

their faces were on the people he saw in the bus station and on the bus and on the streets that they traveled back towards new york. that girl in the coffee house was mimi, the guy walking the dog was collins, there's joanne, there's angel, there's maureen, there's bennie, there's...mark. mark was everywhere, the last words he'd spoken to roger on every man's lips. for someone who's always been let down, who's heading out of town? he was right. mark knows him best, after all. roger couldn't run away from that forever.

i've got nothing again, but this is for a good reason and actually it brings up a good time for me to start thanking some people. i have no fiction to post because just as i went to start typing something i got a phone call on my cell phone from one of my best friends, cathy. she just wanted to call me and show me her support tonight and that meant so much to me because she is a busy lady with a family of her own and everything so the fact that she taken the time to call just to cheer me on a little was really great and made me really happy. i've also had a supportive phone call from dragons_den74, which was also very nice, and lots of support from my awesome husband and even a short video chat with zack, which is always nice. and of course, the most important of all, my four teammates here who are helping to keep eachother's spirits high and glasses full of caffeine and stuff. so thank you all, i appreciate everything and all your help in your own ways. and now i promise there will be fiction next time :)

i was gonna try another rent fanfic for this entry but i'm starting to go downhill and need some caffeine before i can attempt anything creative, let alone the mark and roger porn that sylverwriter and thesilentpoet are insisting i will eventually get to. so i'm gonna do a bit of an update of the camp here.

things were desperate for a little while. our awesome one-woman pit crew missed and train and was a little late getting here with food and caffeine. luckily she made it here in one piece and no bloggers had to be killed and eaten. so there will be no "alive: blogathon version" coming to a theater near you.

okay, i need to go get some iced coffee here now sooooooo...yeah. more in half an hour then.

mark put the equipment back in the truck and slammed the door closed, rubbing his hands together in an effort to keep warm. as sweet as his mother's efforts were, the fingerless gloves just weren't helping much in the mid-december new york chill. and you needed fingers to work cameras so...yeah.

he got into the cab of the van with the rest of the crew and stared blankly out the window as they drove through the city. he thought about roger...of course, he always thought about roger. the bastard didn't call. he didn't even call to say he'd gotten there in one piece, which was a definite uncertainty after mark had seen that car he was driving. and since angel had passed collins wasn't around as much...and in all honest, mark wasn't in the right kind of mood to spend any time with mimi, maureen or joanne, even if THEY ever came around.

when he got home he went straight up to the roof. new york city roofs are one of the most unappreciated parts of new york city, in mark's opinion. he and roger would come up here on hot summer nights with sleeping bags...roger always had his guitar, sometimes mark would bring the camera....and they would sleep on the roof under the stars and the moon with all of the city and its noise and problems beneath them. roger had told him once that this was the only place he ever felt he could really free his mind and get in tune with his thoughts and feelings, especially after april and the test. mark wanted to be up here now, breathing in the cold air and clearing his mind.

then he heard roger behind him and he froze, partly in confusion, partly disbelief, partly scared that if he moved or breathed or said a word that he wouldn't be there.

no matter how hard he tried, he always ends up alone. and even when he doesn't try, when he pulls away and hopes that he'll get pulled back in, he ends up alone. first he's a seventh wheel with maureen and joanne, collins and angel, mimi and roger. then angel's gone, and maureen takes off, and roger goes to santa fe. and he's alone. again. at least sometimes there were distractions to keep his mind off of what he wanted most. maureen was a loud, colorful distraction. his movies weren't distractions, more like escapes. but mimi...mark knew that everything would be different when mimi came along. seeing the sparkle that she put back into roger's life was a relief after missing it for so long. but the pain of the separation made him want to go out and work on his movie a lot more...escape...distract...whatever.

"well, there is a funny side to this whole mess." roger says drily, warming his hands by the fire.

"we just lost our power and we're being threatened with eviction...and last i knew, neither of us has hit the lotto recently. so what's the funny part?" mark finished cleaning his camera and wraps his scarf around his neck a couple more times. roger came around the back of the couch and hugged him.

"we can't use the hotplate your mom gave us for christmas...oh, sorry, channukah." roger pulls away, laughing, and opens all of the empty kitchen cupboards. "and think of the huge christmas feast we could be cooking right now!"

mark couldn't help laughing. it was nice to see roger joking, even if it was at their own expense. he hadn't done a lot of joking or even smiling, for that matter, in a long time.

"the downside, of course, is that if your mom does hear about this, she'll be knitting me a sweater and scarf to match yours in record time." roger winked as he threw some more paper onto the fire.