AG Spotlight: Lindsey Bergman

I'm the Moon Girl's first Girl of the Year, and also THE first Girl of the Year, the one and only Lindsey Bergman.

FULL NAME:  Lindsey Bergman 

NICKNAME:  I have a Hebrew name like Denise does.  I chose the name "Esther," because of Queen Esther.  Without her there might be no Jews.  Queen Esther was brave, faithful, and obedient, like I try hard to be.  Sometimes the "obedient" part is tough!

BIRTHDAY:  December 2nd (Moon made one up)

HOMETOWN:  Chicago, Illinois

HEAD MOLD:  Classic

HAIR COLOR:  Dark auburn

EYE COLOR:  Light blue

OTHER DISTINGUISHING FEATURES:  Freckles

FAVORITE COLOR:  Green, blue, red, I'm not picky!

THINGS I LIKE:  Cheering people up, helping people out, dogs (wiener dogs are my favorite), riding my scooter, baseball (the Cubs are my favorite team), teasing Denise about baseball, studying the Torah, sunshine, playing the trumpet

THINGS I DISLIKE:  Bullies, sadness, animal cruelty, getting into trouble, road rash

MY CHOICE OF MUSIC:  Millennial-era boy bands (N'SYNC is my favorite) and the Electric Light Orchestra.  "Mr. Blue Sky" is my favorite song.

PET:  Mr. Tiny, a dachshund.

BEST FRIENDS:  Molly, because she's a talker, and Denise, because we're both Jewish.  I also like to tease Denise about baseball because she's...dare I say it, a CARDINALS FAN.  I also like wheelin' it up with Z and Joss, but riding a skateboard is hard!  Also, I don't have my scooter yet.

SOMEONE I'D RATHER AVOID:  I actually like Samantha a lot, but she's so hard to cheer up!  Joss is also sometimes hard to talk to, but that's usually my fault.  I apparently talk too fast for her to read my lips!  I'm working on that.

HOW I CAME HERE:  Another eBay find!  The Moon Girl says she was shocked that she got me for as reasonable a price as she did.

ABOUT ME:  Moon admits that she initially had a tricky time bonding with me since I'm so loose!  Not loose as in slutty, mind you, but...you get the idea!  If I'm posed at all I usually have to sit.

Good thing I love that avocado chair!  I have to share it with Joss since she loves avocados, but that's no big deal.  The Moon Girl did try restringing me last fall, but she couldn't get it done because she didn't have the right tools.  Rearranging my stuffing did help me stand a little better, though.

It didn't hurt a bit, being unstuffed!  As soon as the Moon Girl took my head off I was out like a light, and even that just tickled when she fumbled with my strings.  Whatever, I won't let temporary mobility issues dampen my outlook on life.  I love to talk, joke, and laugh, and I love making my friends laugh when they're sad.  I've learned to control my impulses for the most part, though I do still like to do goofy stuff like set people up on dates.  Justin probably wouldn't have had the courage to talk to Samantha if I hadn't talked him into it!  Of course it helped that Justin already had a thing for Samantha, and that both were single; I didn't make the mistake of setting a single person with an engaged one again!  Oh brother, that last time was a complete fiasco!  Anyway, I didn't try to force Justin and Samantha together.  I just encouraged them to talk to each other and be honest about their feelings, and it worked!  As for me, myself, I'm not looking for a boyfriend, which is just as well since my only option would be Kyle.  He and I are not each other's type.

Boy crazy, am I?  Well...not really.  Right now I'm currently studying for my bat mitzvah ceremony, so I don't have time for boys...or anything, really.  Denise is more traditional and isn't bothering with a bat mitzvah, but she's more than willing to help me practice, and I'm grateful to her for that.  Moon is trying to help too, but she says finding a Torah in our size is hard.  So far all she's found for us are Passover seder books...oh, and the cool little plates.

Oh well, at least we've got SOMETHING, and I love Passover!  We've got some odds and ends for Hanukkah too, so it's all good.  The Moon Girl is a Gentile and doesn't know everything she needs to know (she TOLD me to write that, I promise I'm not hatin'), but I think she does just fine.  She doesn't push us to celebrate Christmas like some Gentiles have done in the past.  I will admit that I think Christmas trees are beautiful, though.

In other news, it's hot as all get-out in the Moon House, as the air conditioner went out AGAIN.  The Moon Girl says she's gonna get a new one during the off-season, but she said that LAST YEAR and didn't do it.  One of Moon's tornado authors describes the summers in Chicago as opposed to downstate Illinois summers:

"Summers in Chicago are hot, but summers in Murphysboro are infernal."

I'm further south now than Murphysboro, even, and we're having a heat wave to boot.  It was over a hundred degrees all week last week, and Moon's AC is on the blink.  But this week we've thankfully got some relief, in the form of glorious rain!  Samantha is the rain fan of us all, but in this case we're all pretty stoked.

Love,
Lindsey Bergman

AG Spotlight: Denise Goldberg

I was the Moon Girl's first custom job, but not the last!

FULL NAME:  Denise Samantha Goldberg

NICKNAME:  My Hebrew name is "Hannah."  I chose that name because Hannah was patient and faithful, just like I want to be.

WHERE I GOT MY NAME:  One of Moon Girl's second cousins, and Samantha, and a common Jewish surname.

BIRTHDAY:  September 23rd

CUSTOMIZED FROM:  A Pleasant Company-era Samantha.  I don't remember who cut my hair or why, but it came out pretty darn good!

HOMETOWN:  Greensburg, Kansas

HEAD MOLD:  Classic

HAIR COLOR:  Dark brown

EYE COLOR:  Dark brown

FAVORITE COLOR:  Green

THINGS I LIKE:  Classic rock, dancing ballet (sometimes to old rock tunes, LOL), peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pineapple anything, fruit in general, frogs, ladybugs, baseball (the Cardinals and the Royals are my favorite teams), hockey (the Blues are my favorite team), springtime...except for the tornadoes that come with it!  Unlike Kyle and Silver Bird, I was actually there when Greensburg got hit, and it was terrifying.  

THINGS I DISLIKE:  Grabby, overenthusiastic kids, getting up early on weekends, injuring myself in ballet class (thankfully that doesn't happen often), jerks, tornadoes and thunderstorms in general, being impatient

MY CHOICE OF MUSIC:  The Who, KISS, and Deep Purple are my big three.  Roger Daltrey is a hottie!  Luciana and I like to tease each other about our respective blondes (she likes Robert Plant), though we both see eye-to-eye on David Lee Roth.

BEST FRIENDS:  Sadie and Xenia.  Sadie and I were on the welcoming committee when Xenia arrived, and we just sort of clicked.  I also like Samantha since I was a Samantha herself once (I don't remember much about that), and since I'm around Samantha a lot I subsequently know and like her boyfriend Justin pretty well.  I worship with Lindsey and I count her as another close friend, though we do sometimes tease each other about baseball (Lindsey is a Cubs fan, blah).

SOMEONE I'D RATHER AVOID:  Molly can be a little clumsy when she dances.  I like her, but I don't always like to dance with her.  Doremi is a jerk to her brother a lot, so I do prefer to keep my distance from her.  I don't know what poor Justin ever did to her. 

HOW I CAME HERE:  Moon Girl's mother found me abandoned at the elementary school where she works and brought me home.

ABOUT ME:  I'm originally from Kansas and loved it there, but I love living in Missouri too!  This area of Missouri is almost as flat as the countryside around Greensburg, but not quite.  As Courtney and Julie (and probably Moon herself) have established, it's impossible for a seismic area to be completely flat.  It's certainly not flat enough to see a tornado for miles around, like it is in Kansas...not that that mattered much when Greensburg got hit.  Shudder...I don't want to talk about it, nor do I want to think about "the Big One," the huge earthquake that the Moon Girl predicts will eventually happen here.

*Side note from the Moon Girl:  Hey, it happened once.  It can happen again.

Yeah, but I hope not while we're all alive!  Oh right, dolls can outlive humans by a good margin if our luck is right.  Sucks to be me, I guess.  Oh well, we could be wiped out by a meteor strike any minute too and you don't think about it until it happens.  Aaaanyway, I'm like Silver Bird in that I'm pretty fancy-free, though like her I do like to wear dresses sometimes.  This is my new dress; it's got...flowered fruits on it.

Moon says she saw that in the grab bag she got and knew it would be for me.  I do love my fruit!  My dearest wish is to try durian.  LOL, I hear it stinks, but I also hear it's delicious if eaten at the right time.  If they're unripe I hear they taste like rancid scrambled eggs, and Coyote Peterson apparently agrees.  Moon says that durian gets an unfair reputation among westerners as disgusting because people eat the unripe stuff.

Lemme see...earthquakes, Kansas, durians...I used to be an Oriental clothing enthusiast, but I had to stop that since SOMEONE griped about appropriation.  It wasn't anyone in Casa Del Luna, y'all; Ana Ming says she'd happily share if our measurements were the same, and Z says I fill out her hanbok better than she does.  Poor Z, she has the slimmer permapanties body...but then again I have the chubby Pleasant Company body!  But anyway, appropriation be danged, I'm not giving up my sombrero!  I only wear this during parties anyway, y'know, like how some folks end up with a lampshade on their head at the end of a party.  Or I wear it when I'm in a celebratory mood, like I was a few years ago when the Blues won the Stanley Cup.

Win or lose, the Blues are my team!  But oh, was I happy when they won that Stanley Cup.  They'd never won one.

So...hockey and fruit...I'm pretty boring, actually!  I don't chase tornadoes or walk on fence rails like Silver Bird.  I'm often most content with going to the playground to play.  Yesterday I even got Rita Cheryl to play with me.  

Rita Cheryl is pretty serious, and getting her to loosen up isn't easy, but I got the job done. 

Rita Cheryl told me that next time we should bring our own dolls and show them the playground.  She just got Gabriela, and I have Luciana. 

I live with a full-sized Luciana, and I never stopped to ask her if it's okay that I have a doll like her.  We belong to different friend groups, but I respect her intellect and her interest in space and the Earth sciences.  I guess I need to talk to her...LATER!!!

Hmmm...maybe I'm more like Silver Bird than I realized.  Oh well, nothing wrong with that!

Love,
Denise Goldberg

AG Spotlight: Amanda Faraday

The Moon Girl's not had me a year yet!  But then that's true of several of us.

FULL NAME:  Amanda Nicole Faraday

NICKNAME:  Sometimes folks call me "'Mandy."  I'm not a huge fan of that, but it's not a mean nickname so I tolerate it.

WHERE I GOT MY NAME:  Moon Girl's high school best friend, and Michael Faraday.

JUST LIKE YOU NUMBER:  #16 with a hair cut

HOMETOWN:  Windsor, California

HEAD MOLD:  Classic

HAIR COLOR:  Medium brown

EYE COLOR:  Dark brown; my right eye has both silver eye and bubble eye and hence has blinded me in that eye.  Moon knows she could have that repaired, but she and I both kind of like my short hair.  Getting my head replaced would mean long hair again.

FAVORITE COLORS:  Orange, purple, red, yellow, and earth tones

THINGS I LIKE:  Books, peace and quiet to read books, cuddling on winter nights (doesn't matter who with), cats, being a child at heart, clothes that are loose and comfortable, The Wizard of Oz (both the books and the movie), fireworks, gawking at flowers and wildlife 

THINGS I DISLIKE:  Nonsensical, nonstop blather, having scoliosis, being blind in one eye, being mistaken for Molly (sometimes that does happen), and I hate-hate-HATE heights!!!

MY CHOICE OF MUSIC:  Anything that Yo-Yo Ma plays.  

PET:  Jeeves, a tuxedo cat.

BEST FRIENDS:  Courtney and Samantha, because they're good listeners, and Julie and Joss, because they know sign language.  I'm not deaf, but it's nice to know sign language anyway.  You never know when you'll need it.  I'm also a member of the Four-Eyed Freaks.

SOMEONE I'D RATHER AVOID:  I don't dislike Lindsey and Molly, but they're both too chatty for me at times.  I'd also prefer to avoid Chatty Cathy for this reason.  

HOW I CAME HERE:  Another eBay find!  I'm a fixer-upper, so I was easy to get.

ABOUT ME:  I'm the quietest one of the bunch, except maybe for Samantha.  Unlike Samantha, my silence comes from thoughtfulness rather than depression.  I love to read, and I love to daydream about what she's read.  My favorite books are mostly juvenile fantasy, stuff like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.  I also like House of the Scorpion and the Oz books, and The Chronicles of Narnia.  Sometimes Samantha and I discuss the Oz books since the first two were fairly popular in her day.  Samantha tells me she's surprised that the series came as far as it did over the years

*Side note from Silver Bird:  Y'all do know that Dorothy Gale was a real little girl, right?  Only she didn't survive the tornado that hit her home.

*Side note from the Moon Girl:  True story.  Or I think it's true...people did make things up for news stories back then, but it's possible that Dorothy Gale was real.  Irving, Kansas WAS real, but the folks there couldn't catch a break, before or after the 1879 tornado.

No, neither Samantha nor I have heard that story before.  Poor Dorothy, so she didn't make it?  That's sad!  No wonder L. Frank Baum wanted her to have a happy ending!  Anyway, I like the movie The Wizard of Oz as well, though not quite as much as I liked the books.  Dorothy is so darn whiny in the movie, though in her defense I'd probably be whiny too if I were in a strange land, being pursued by a witch, and in the company of a talking scarecrow, a sheet metal man with an axe, and an anthropomorphic lion.  Better to travel with a puddy tat than a bunch of sideshow escapees.  Like all cats, Jeeves is a big cat, almost as big as Kailey's dog Sandy.  That surprised both Kailey and me, but it's good for Jeeves since he loves to wrassle with dogs, and the size of the dog be danged.

If he had long hair I'd chalk his size up to him being a Maine coon (a breed known for being large), but he's got short hair so that's that.

*Side note from the Moon Girl:  LOL, I've known housecats that were big, but none of them were as big as the golden retriever Sandy is supposed to be!  My beloved Sampson (coincidentally also a tuxedo cat) weighed twenty-five pounds, and he was nowhere near as big as a goldie!

As established above, I have silver eye like Molly and Silver Bird, but I also have bubble eye, which is when the pupil of the eye separates from the plastic over it.  The end result looks like a soap bubble.

Silver eye is only an aesthetic problem for American Girls, but bubble eye blinds.  Neither the Moon Girl nor I are sure about sending me to the hospital, but maybe in the future it'll be for the best.  Having my eye repaired would certainly improve my ability to read.

Of course I do other things besides read, but since my mobility isn't great (even for an AG doll) I'm usually restricted to observing, like I did last Monday at the local fireworks show.

Yeah, the Moon Girl took a doll to the fireworks show.  Everyone knows she's a little nuts, LOL.  It was a very nice show, though the mosquitoes were something fierce...for Moon, not me, LOL again.  When twilight comes I like looking at fireflies and bats (just like Moon does), and I would like stargazing if lying on my back were more comfortable.  Wearing a back brace isn't the most fun in the world, kiddies.  Oh well, it is what it is, and I know I'm not the only one.

Good luck catching fireflies!  If that's your thing, that is.  If not...well, find some other way to make summer work for you.  Jeez, this heat is INSANE!!!

Love,
Amanda Faraday

Of dolls and bottle rockets

Behold!  Two species of bottle rocket have landed in my yard.

Kirsten is holding the smaller variety that my family always bought...I think the side of it said Moon Blasters or something like that.  Amanda has a larger variety called a Wild Goose, which I know nothing about.  I loathe bottle rockets, by the way; they're all noise and no show, and if something goes wrong then they're pretty dangerous...but then again, aren't all fireworks dangerous in the wrong hands?  Anyway, when I was sixteen Daddy loaded a bottle jam-packed with these damn things...and the bottle tipped over.  Pointing at us.  The resulting conversation went something like this:

<bottle falls over>
ME (casually):  Uh-oh...
SISTER (loudly):  RUN!!!!!!

And run we all did!  I ended up dodging behind a tree, but not before one of the rockets almost took my ear off.  No one was hurt, and no serious damage was done, but that killed any affection my family had for bottle rockets.  My mom didn't like any fireworks that flew anyway, because in her words, "They always come after me!!!"  Of course they didn't ALWAYS come after her, but we all know how unpredictable fireworks can be.  

I could fill a whole post full of Fourth of July memories, but then we'd be here all day and part of the night.  I'll just say that it was a special time of year for my family, and I really miss those days.  To the rest of y'all, be safe and have fun!  Drink beer, eat watermelon, shoot off bottle rockets, and keep your pets safe.

Happy Independence Day every day,
RagingMoon1987 

Rita Cheryl makes a friend

For the last few months Rita Cheryl has been waiting, carefully tucked away at my work station, waiting for Nellie O'Malley to come visit her (one of my patrons owns a Nellie doll).  Nellie didn't come today, nor was I really expecting her to, but someone else did.

This little My Life doll doesn't have a name.  Her sole purpose for existing is to model the clothes that her owner makes (one of the little dresses is seen above).  Rather a pity, that she's just a model and has no name.  I'd probably name her something like Vera or Fern or Jade, due largely to her lovely eyes.

Most of the My Life dolls I've seen lately have either electric blue eyes (like Airy and Jemma do) or brown eyes.  Perhaps "Vera's" eyes aren't the most realistic shade, but they're certainly very EYE-catching, LOL!

Rita Cheryl enjoyed meeting "Vera," but she's still patiently waiting for Nellie.

Much love,
RagingMoon1987

Don't you forget about me...

Here's Courtney in her new clothes.  Argos, formerly Marie-Grace's dog, has joined her.  With the dead leaves around one could be forgiven for thinking that it's fall.  Ha!  I wish!

Courtney's shirt contains a familiar message.

Obviously inspired by The Breakfast Club, which I've never seen.  First Uncle says it's good, and he usually has pretty good taste so I'll take his word for it.  As for the song, recorded by Simple Minds, it's one of my favorites.  Given my current state of mind, I've been listening to it a lot.

Don't forget,
RagingMoon1987