Thank you very much for the well wishes; I really really appreciate them - especially now in this time frame that I am (stuck) in.

It's been both at once encouraging and heartbreaking to watch my mother endure through all of this.

It is encouraging because her prognosis so far is very good but at the same time, it is heartbreaking because the stroke did happen and it is painful to watch her struggle and feel disappointed/frustrated with herself when she realizes she is unable to do some of the things she used to be able to do alone.

I have a younger sibling, actually, who's away finishing up university (graduating at the end of this quarter) and so isn't able to come home to watch over our mother and they're feeling the same sort of guilt, too, of being unable to be there because other happenings in life take priority.

Despite the fact that our mother has told them to keep school their priority and to finish up and graduate no matter what, it doesn't stop the guilt from bubbling up now and again.

It really freaking stinks to be forced to choose between priorities in life and make one priority higher than another when in reality, there really is no real/true way to gauge the values and weight in the priorities...

But life goes on and life isn't always fair, right?

Thanks again for commenting; your words reached me at a time when I need them the most.

I'm glad you like the stories.

Yeah I do, but I also know that they're extremely expensive to own. Definitely potentially useful and a potentially good idea, but...

What if the electronic and computerized mechanics on the wallet fail or break or goof? What if you can't get into your own wallet because the fingerprint reader or other mechanism doesn't want to recognize you?

Additionally, I would be concerned that having a wallet like that would also draw more attention to me.

It makes me happy to know that I'm not the only one who feels that way and I'm glad you shared a similar experience when choosing your starter, too.

Since I'm new to the Pokemon game series (never seriously played a game until HGSS despite keeping up with Pokemon since forever), there's so much to do in the game besides just battling and I can totally see that if I didn't really enjoy the 'company' of my Pokemom crew, I'd be getting bored and yeah... like you said, it would all just be a matter of mechanics and strategy.

I especially love how you can 'talk' to your Pokemon and I love even more how they seem to have incorporated the Pokemon's Nature and 'attitude' (for example, I have a Quirky Bayleef who is Very Persistent) into it.

Right now, I have a bunch of cuddly Pokemon of all sorts and yeah... I really do feel some sort of bonding with them and it helps to take a lot of that humdrum out of necessary level grinding.

Who can say no to a Pokemon who keeps looking at you adoringly and cuddling up to you?

Not me, apparently.

Chi~koriii~iii! :D

And then it's Ba~ayleef!

I wish the HGSS games used actual voices for the Pokemon; that would be really awesome. The synthesized voices for Chikorita and Bayleef are still cute anyways, though!

D'awww! Thanks so much!

If you enjoyed the style of this blog post, there will be more in the future but featuring other members of my Pokemon crew.

LOL! I ran into this problem when I encountered my rival though Chikorita didn't faint. The one that gave me the most trouble was Bugsy's Scyther and his U-Turn.