That could have gone better. :P

So today Katy (my older sister) came home from college for dinner and brought one of her roommates, Kiley, with her. My parents made a nice dinner and we were all sitting around the living room table, chatting about stuff and eventually got on the subject of how Nate (my little brother) had a job as a referee. Then my dad made the comment on how I make mounds of fake money and, as Annie Dillard said when she was in a similar situation, “all hell broke loose.”

First we had to define fake money and how one earns it. I get it from playing Wajas, an online breeding game where you raise wolf-type animals of varying breeds. CWP costs real money to buy, unlike the usual WC that’s the normal currency in the game. Each CWP is worth the equivalent of $1 USD, so if I’m doing a commission for someone on Wajas I might say, “They’re paying me twenty-five dollars” rather than CWP, since they’re worth the same and ‘dollars’ is easier to say. CWP are used to buy upgrades, customs, and other expensive items on Wajas, and for someone who really enjoys the game like me, are something we all strive for. To sit there and listen to my family discuss it as fake money (especially my Tante BiBi, who was just blown away by the whole concept) was kind of offensive. They talk about it, and my earning of it, like it’s completely stupid. At least my mom didn’t come in with her whole ‘all people on the Internet are fake’ ideal too, that would have been really bad.

Also, my mom has to tell her that I’m always drawing Wajas, which I’m most definitely not. I say that, no, I draw just about anything, and very rarely Wajas. It’s just that I sold adoptables on Wajas for a while (something where I draw a lineart and recolor it repeatedly to look like different people’s Wajas), did at least a couple hundred of those pretty-much effortless works before closing up shop and moving on to actual commissions, and now she’s gotten it into her head that that’s all I do. Nate at least came to my defense, since he sees most of what I do, and mentioned that I draw humans too, but no one really listens to him.

Anyways, eventually we did get off that subject, but then Kiley said I should take Graphic Design, which is what she’s majoring in. I quietly disagreed, saying I didn’t particularly like art classes, and was about to go on and say that I had other things I was far more interested in anyways when my mom interrupted.

“Mary hates art classes. She doesn’t want people telling her how to draw, what to draw, or when to have it finished (although if that’s not a commission, I don’t know what is). She doesn’t like any seeing her art either, except those silly Internet people.” (Huh?)

Kiley said, “Oh, well, then I guess not. Graphic design has a lot of hard critiquing.”

I speak up again here. “No, I love critiques, I just don’t like my mom talking about it.” She’s stupid, there’s no two ways about it. Yes, she has a Ph.D., but when it comes to most things I do, she’s just dumb and annoying, as has already become very apparent in the conversation.

My mom sighs. “I don’t know what I said, but she hates me ever seeing what she’s doing.”

“It’s because I can be drawing anything at all and you come in and say, “Is that one of those Wajas?”!” It’s a pain in the butt! Anyways, that’s the first time I’ve really spoken up, and everyone just kind of looks around in shock. “No, I could be drawing a dragon or a human or whatever else, but you have no clue and it’s stupid! I don’t like listening to all your dumb comments.”

“Well, what is a Waja?”

Everyone has a different idea for this, although I have no clue where they got it from. A whole new conversation starts, and I try over and over to tell them that basically they’re wolves, but no one’s interested in what they are, they just want to speculate. Eventually I say, “Wajas is Navajo for wolf, okay?”

No one hears but Nate, but luckily he’s good at speaking up and throws his arms in the air and says, “I figured it out! Wajas is Navajo for wolf!”

“How’d you figure that out?”

“Mary told me.”

“Well, that makes sense. I’ve always wondered what they were.” Because apparently they aren’t obviously some sort of canine-type creature. :P My family has issues.

Anyway, past that the discussion sort of ended because BiBi had apparently given up on following the conversation and started talking about her dolls. But holy cow, what a pain. I wish my mom would just shut her mouth; if she wasn’t always making such idiotic comments I could just talk and there would have been no problem. But she does that all the time and there’s no stopping her but, again, that’s a different story. I’m going to have to make a blog about ‘different stories’ soon enough.