Jaye's Thanksgiving hadn't been that bad. She'd been forced to go off with her family to her cousins' for the holidays, which was made bearable by the fact that there was more than enough wine available while they waited three freaking hours for the food to finish cooking. In her opinion, if you said dinner was at four, dinner should damn well be at four, and then you could leave.

Just before dinner, Jaye excused herself to the bathroom, mostly just because it got her out of an awkward "Why don't you have a boyfriend?" conversation. Happy to be free for at least a couple minutes, Jaye locked the door and looked up-

And every rubber duckie on the shower curtain looked toward her at once.

Jaye opened the door and stepped back outside. "Um. Is there another bathroom in the house?" she asked her uncle, passing by on his way back to the kitchen.

"No, we're remodeling the other one. That's the only one," he told her.

Jaye frowned. This was not going to work for her.


[Establishy.]

Jaye's roommate was creeping her out. There was only so much conversation-starting you could try before you had to decide you weren't the problem, and the fact that Jaye was trying to start a conversation should be enough of a sign that the silence was ridiculous here. So, finally figuring she just had to get out for a while, Jaye ventured out of her room in order to head to the lounge for a bit.

When she got there, she saw that the lounge had been decorated for Halloween. Or rather, someone was using the lounge to store all the Halloween crap they hadn't felt like putting up yet. Oh, god, someone better not be planning a party and intending to make her dress up.

"Psst."

"Oh, come on," Jaye muttered, glad no one was around to see her talking to herself.

"Psst."

When she rolled her eyes and turned to see what was talking to her, she saw that it was a large paper spider that someone had propped up on the back of a chair. "No," Jaye said, "because if you start talking to me, I have to take you around with me, and no, that's creepy, and you're half falling-apart anyway."

That would be when Jaye noticed someone standing at the doorway out of the corner of her eye. She didn't even know the guy, but he was looking at her with wide eyes. Occasionally he'd look over at the spider.

Jaye just looked back at him, wondering if she could explain this- did he have to be cute?- or if he should.

This was taken care of when he backed away slowly and disappeared down the hall.

"Great," Jaye told the spider. "Now look what you did."

[Establishy but can be open for calls if anyone wants.]

Jaye was supposed to be studying. Alexis had moved out over the summer, leaving Jaye with a new and terrifyingly silent roommate whose name she couldn't remember, so she'd privately renamed her Jane Doe. And Jane Doe never seemed to leave the room except for classes. Ever. It was getting creepy. So while Jane Doe was at class, Jaye figured she should do something productive.

Instead, she picked up her phone and left a message.

There. Now she could continue to not work while feeling better about herself.

"Jaye! There's a burger here with your name on it!"

Jaye sighed and tried not to roll her eyes. "Thanks, Dad, but I've already got clogged arteries from the last three named Jaye," she called back.

"Okay, but if you don't claim it, it's going to Aaron," Darrin warned.

"I'd love one, Dad," said Aaron, giving his sister the look of someone who really didn't want his fifth burger of the cookout, but was more concerned with kissing ass.

Jaye'd been here a couple hours now, and by now was pulling out her cell phone to check the time and see if she could make a reasonable escape yet. This much time with her family, there needed to be a limit on it.

"Are you looking at the time again?" asked Sharon, sitting in one of the plastic lawn chairs to light up a cigarette next to her.

"No. I got a text," she lied.

"Because you can't leave yet. Mom got cake," Sharon told her.

Jaye sighed, bowing her head in defeat. There was a bakery her mom went to- or rather, that she made Yvette go to- that had seriously some of the best cake she'd ever had, and there was no way she could pass it up knowing it was there and she only had to hold out until her dad finally got tired of the grill or burned up all the charcoal or something. "Dammit."

[Establishy, cuz I love holidays with the Tylers, though she'd love anyone who called her today.]

It was somewhere around 6 am when Alexis finally wandered in from the night before, making a racket as she half-drunkenly fumbled with the door and bumped into something on the way into the room.

Which did not make Jaye happy. Even as a toddler Jaye didn't appreciate early wakeup times. It went against the natural order, or something. She'd heard Aaron say that once, it sounded good. So she threw the covers off over her head and sat up, attempting to put her hands on her hips even if she missed by a good few inches and put her hands on her ribs instead. "Do you mind?"

Alexis stared at her, squinted through bleary eyes, and responded, "Fuck no, I'm not babysitting," and made her way back towards the door.

"Bad word!" Jaye yelled at the closing door.

People, there was a reason you didn't use curse words around small impressionable children. Because for the rest of the weekend, the students of an Ivy League school were going to have a tiny, unattended child showing them how she knew a new word.


[Mostly establishy, but can be open for calls with the caveat that she still doesn't know how to hang up. Also, if you can handle me gymming it first.]

Despite a few really good dates this week, Ethan had developed some strikes against him.

Like not liking beer. What guy didn't like beer? But she'd glossed over that, because he was cute.

And then when he saw her room, he said that her side of the room looked like a six-year-old's with all the stuffed animals. But it had given her an excuse to say that was her roommate's side and therefore all subsequent events took place on Alexis' side. Mwahaha.

Strike three, though, was the subsequent events. And there was just no forgiving that.

So about the time he was mentioning words like "fantastic", she was saying, "We can't see each other anymore."

(Strike four was actually how long he stood outside her door afterwards whining about needing his pants back.)


[Esbtalishy. La.]

Last night had kind of sucked. Jaye didn't have an issue with Valentine's Day at all, but when Alexis' boyfriend hadn't, in fact, been carted off by America's Most Wanted, it meant that Jaye had gotten sexiled again. And, of course, no one went to a bar on February 14, as it was all either couples, or scary losers looking at the couples and practically screaming "WHY DON'T I HAVE THAT."

Of course, the day after Valentine's Day was another story. People were more normal today, save for those poor saps who'd had the injustice of being kicked to the curb for the holiday and were still sulking, or just found out that they needed to sulk and were trying to make up for it.

Jaye was here mainly to watch the show.

( cut for things a happening )

Jaye had had a rough night. And for once it had nothing to do with the animals. No, it had to do with her roommate. And her roommate's boyfriend. And karmic payback for that time with Alec in Seahorse, she was sure of it. ...Or maybe that other time in Seahorse, look, who was counting?

Alexis had been gone most of the evening, so Jaye at least had time to work on her philosophy paper (the one she actually liked writing as it was mostly just making BS sound deep), but she hadn't yet finished when she could hear that screechy voice from outside the window. Which was closed. Either Alexis had the most annoying voice ever, or Jaye had managed to fine tune hearing those frequencies for prime bitch readiness.

She got up from her desk to look out the window, and saw Alexis heading up towards the dorms. With the boyfriend. Meaning Jaye was likely to get sexiled.

See? Prime bitch readiness. Which was why Jaye was getting out her phone, and finding that yes, she did indeed still have the America's Most Wanted tipster line in her phone book. She was pretty sure nothing would actually happen to the boyfriend, but it'd keep him out of her room. So... win/win.


[Open if you should want to call post-fake tip, but mainly I just had to do this. Remember kids, fake tips are wrong.]

Jaye was supposed to be sleeping. She wasn't. No, she was listening to the dulcet tones of her animal chorus as they massacred something new by Britney Spears. She didn't understand it. She'd even tried forbidding them from listening to the radio for this very reason.

"You can stop at any time," Jaye said aloud to her ceiling. "I can't exactly do anything right now. It has to wait till morning anyway."

From the bed on the other side of the very small dorm room, Alexis groaned, "Jaye. It's 3 am. I'm trying to get to sleep. Will you stop your crazy freak speech now?"

Jaye could have. But in fact, she didn't really like her roommate at all. Her ultimate plan was actually to make her move out so she could have the room to herself, and all she had to do was be herself. It was brilliant, if she didn't say so herself. Except where she was totally thinking so. "No."

Alexis groaned again- she was getting very good at sounding put-upon via vocal gesture, and got out of bed. "I'm spending the night at Brad's. Good luck with the narcolepsy."

"Insomnia," Jaye corrected, frowning at her. "The hell? You go to Brown, you should know better."

Another sigh, which Jaye imagined was accompanied by an eyeroll, and she just tried to leave. And by the "OW" that followed, Alexis probably had a mighty toe stubbing incident in the dark room, before she could get to the door to let some light in.

As soon as she was gone, Jaye just grinned and said, "Sucker," followed by, "No, really, you guys can stop now."

Sometime after the cop car drove away with Pete- catching someone up on fencing charges was hard work- leaving Jaye standing on the curb, waving with her bepuppeted hand, she had a sudden thought.

"Wow am I glad I didn't leave a note on that Mercedes," she said, shaking her head and looking at the puppet. "Ready to go home?"


[Establishy. I dunno, I think she's getting crazier.]

Thanks to that stupid koala puppet (which Jaye had swiped from someone's shopping bag in the mall, shhh don't tell), Jaye's coworker Pete now thought she was crazy. Raise your hand if you're shocked.

She'd followed him all the way to a small shopping center, where she pulled up to the curb illegally and got out of the car. "Wait!" she yelled to his retreating form. "I just need to talk to you!"

"Catch him up," the koala said from her hand, complete with Australian accent. (Being made in China, it was a very fake Australian accent.) Yes, she was wearing the stolen koala puppet. Don't judge. This probably didn't help with the crazy-looking, though, did it?

"Yeah, I know," Jaye snapped at it, and tilted her head as she saw Pete get in another car and start speeding away. "Where does he think he's going?"

"Catch him up, mate!" the puppet insisted.

Jaye rolled her eyes and got back into the car, not even putting on her seat belt before she turned the key in the ignition and shifted into reverse to pull out of the same-

-And heard the crunching sound as she backed right into the Mercedes that had parked behind her.

For a moment she stopped, her jaw dropped, and then she looked in her rearview mirror to make sure the owner wasn't around.

"You didn't see that," she told her koala hand, and drove off without leaving a note.


[Establishy.]

Sometime after her break had ended, Jaye got a phone call. She took another break from work to answer it, and wished she hadn't when she found out it was from her insurance company.

"Yes, apparently you were in an accident last night and didn't report it?" the woman said.

"Well, barely an accident. I tapped his car," Jaye said. "Barely."

"Because his estimate says that it may be upwards of two thousand dollars in damage."

Her jaw dropped. "No way! Seriously, I tapped his car. It was like the car version of a love tap!"

"Which, unfortunately, is going to raise your premiums as you've had... wow, a lot of accidents in the last year." She'd lived in LA, that was her excuse. "And he's saying that his neck and shoulder have been bothering him. He has a doctor's note from the ER."

"He wasn't even in the car!" Jaye protested.

"Can you say this for certain?"

"I mean, I don't have like, photographic proof, but unless he was in the backseat doing dirty things, I didn't see him. In which case he's got more things to worry about like why he's not doing dirty things at home instead of his backseat."

And it went on like this. And on.

So yesterday I had to drop everything to go driving up to the Apple Store because my power cord stopped working. Got a new one, everything was peachy. Except when I came home from work I figured out that hey, guess what, I just dropped $85 for nothing cuz the power cord wasn't the problem.

Not sure when I can take my laptop in to get fixed, but for now I am on my desktop. You know, the one that was so slow and was in such bad shape that I had to get a laptop to replace it. I'm in the process of downloading Firefox and AIM and all that, so hopefully my availability shouldn't be too much of a problem, but I may be very very very slow till everything gets fixed.

Also I have no touchpad. I don't know how to deal with that.

Jaye was not at her parents' Thanksgiving this year. No, she was at her parents' friends' Thanksgiving this year, which for all she could gather had been arranged solely to hook Sharon up with their oldest son. Which 1) NO, and 2) he was spending more time leering at Jaye, which she hadn't signed on for.

( because it's not thanksgiving for me without a jaye post )

Jaye had had a bad morning, what with the being driven off a cliff, and the subsequent reconstructive surgery at an exclusive Swiss clinic, and today, now that she was finally at home, she could take the bandages off.

As the dramatic music swelled, the bandages slowly came off, and Jaye looked at her perfectly made-up brand new face in the mirror.

Okay, she was sort of hot. Still, she might have to go evil, or something, because of this.


[What the hell, open if you want.]

Jaye didn't notice anything at first when she woke up. She'd missed out on most of the Fandom weirdness that everyone else had experienced, which was fine by her, since it meant that she could spend her time laughing and taking pictures instead. It was a really good arrangement for her.

It wasn't until she got up to go drag her sleepy self into the shower and passed her mirror that she noticed that something was a little off. Like oh, her boobs were gone, her hair was suddenly short, and bye bye to all her usual girl features. And- oh god, she had to check. She closed her eyes, pulled the waistband of her sleep pants away from her body, and took a deep breath before looking down.

The screech of "HOW IS THIS EVEN FAIR?" had her mother knocking on her door a moment later. "Jaye, honey? Is everything all right?"

"No-" Oh, hey, that wasn't her voice, either. Jaye cleared her throat, trying to raise her voice a couple octaves, which still sounded a lot like a boy trying to sound like a girl and failing. "I have the plague, go away," she tried, and rushed forward to lock the door suddenly when it occurred to her to do so.

Well, this was just great. Now she was going to have to wait for everyone to go to work and school before she could raid Aaron's closet.


[Open if you want to talk to boy!Jaye. When I wake up, of course.]

Welcome to Jaye Tyler's life post-Fandom. Again.

See, there was an issue with randomly transferring schools on short notice like she'd tried to do: schools didn't work that way. And it didn't really bother her that she couldn't sit in classes all day till next semester. No, that wasn't bothering her at all.

It was the fact that she'd gotten all the way back to Niagara Falls and found that out and thusly had to move back in at home that bothered her. A lot.

( i've been meaning to do this for weeks, people )

[Establishy, unless someone really really really wants to break up family time via phone call.]

Jaye was having a weird day. Which was why she was sitting on the sofa in front of the TV, occasionally licking her hand and seeing if she felt any sort of buzz from the beer flavor. Nothing so far. Maybe this meant that she'd actually ingested so much alcohol at this point that she'd become supersaturated. Which would be kind of awesome.

And from her coffee table, she heard the wax lion say something that sounded a lot like "Go Brown."

"Shut up," Jaye told it. "You're just jealous you don't taste like beer."

Jaye woke up bright and early, way earlier than she usually did. The first thing she noticed was how huge the bed was, and so trying to get out of it pretty much meant she fell out, and then quickly stood up to make sure no one saw that. Still, maybe she could get a band-aid out of it.

The phone started ringing, which meant she had to race to get it before anyone else, not yet realizing she was alone in the apartment. She found the phone on a table and picked it up with an almost polite, "Hello?" This was probably the only age where Jaye could be associated with the word 'polite'.

"Jaye? You're not Jaye. I need to talk to my sister," Sharon said from the other line. "God, please don't tell me anyone let her babysit. It's a miracle you're not in jail already."

She frowned. "You talk too much," she declared, and then with Sharon still protesting, Jaye hid the phone under a couch cushion and decided to go about her day where there were no phones.

[Establishy! YAY WEETINY.]

The last thing Jaye remembered was being eaten by a land shark at the radio station. And then she woke up in her bed. So obviously the beer falling from the sky had been spiked with something, or she totally, actually fell for the land shark thing.

"Karma sucks," she muttered, and a moment later to the animal-filled room at large, added, "No one say a thing!"


[Establishy.]