I'm Rita Cheryl.
FULL NAME: Rita Cheryl Lassiter
WHERE I GOT MY NAME: I'm somewhat morbidly named after a little girl who died in a bus accident in 1958. I look nothing like my namesake, who had reddish hair and blue-green eyes, but it's a nice name. Rest in peace, Rita Cheryl Matney. My last name came from a book by Zane Grey.
JUST LIKE YOU NUMBER: #49
BIRTHDAY: November 23rd
HOMETOWN: Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, New York City, New York
HEAD MOLD: Classic
HAIR COLOR: Black, with some caramel-colored highlights mixed in
EYE COLOR: Light blue
FAVORITE COLORS: Red, royal blue, and purple
THINGS I LIKE: Volleyball and cheerleading, the New York Yankees, kids' cartoons like Doc McStuffins and Paw Patrol, Hello Kitty and her various Sanrio cronies, early summer days (the kind when it's neither too hot nor too cool), Star Wars in moderation (kill Jar-Jar with fire), sunglasses, lounging in pajamas, storm spotting (I sometimes join the Moon Girl in gawking at thunderstorms, like I did last December), being held, pandas (both red and the regular kind), and my beanbag chair. It's got butterflies on it! See?
HOW I CAME HERE: I came from eBay, in a sparkly blue tracksuit, no less!
ABOUT ME: I'm kinda hard to get to know. I hide a deeply insecure heart behind a wall of bossy confidence, and sometimes that grates on people. I don't mean for it to, but it is what it is. My family was highly dysfunctional; my mother is full-blood Iroquois and my father is white, and my egg donor's family never let me forget it. As that broad Cher sang, I'm white by law. And yet those same people are the ones that collectively had a stroke when I renounced them all. My dad's side of the family wasn't much better, as his elitist sister and her family were much wealthier than I was. Rilla Louise is that witch's daughter, and she's just like her mother: an elitist snob. She tells me now that she's sorry, she's sorry, and she may very well be, but I can't bring myself to forgive her.
But then why should I? Doremi won't forgive me. I know I was wrong for wanting to be Doremi's only friend. I know I was wrong to be jealous of her friendship with Justine-Marie. I know I was wrong for being mean to Justine-Marie and trying to drive them apart. I want to apologize, but...I'm so afraid now. What if they won't accept me? I know I don't deserve it. I should probably sit down with Rilla Louise and ask her if that's how she feels; that might be a good way to break the ice with her. Oh well, I have my circle of friends and that's enough for now.
Alrighty, enough negativity. I like to play volleyball, though I'm the only one who likes it (Luciana got smacked with the ball the last time she tried to play). As a result I have to use the wall for practice.
Oh well, I make it work. Like Kailey I collect stuff, but unlike Kailey I do the Sanrio thing. Kuromi, Badtz-Maru, and Aggretsuko are my favorite characters (Aggretsuko gets double points because she's a red panda), but any of 'em will do. See my necklace? Told you guys I like Kuromi!
I apologize for not having anything else to show you guys, like Kailey did. Moon says she's going to make up for that, but in the meantime she got me a miniature of my favorite American Girl doll. Good ol' Gabby.
I wonder how Gabby would feel if she knew I had her as a mini-doll? Doremi and Silver Bird have their pen pals as dolls too (Addy and Maryellen, respectively), while Courtney and Denise own miniature versions of two dolls here in the Moon House (Molly and Luciana, respectively). Molly just accepts her mini-me, but I've never asked Luciana what she thinks about Denise owning a Mini Luci, as we all call her. Come to think of it, Denise never asked Luciana either. If I know Luciana like I do she'll probably blame her miniature's existence on aliens and laugh it off. Now that she's got that crazy Tribble Luci laughs everything off. Like Doremi, Luciana has changed since I've known her...but she's changed for the better. Maybe Doremi needs a Tribble. I'd suggest that Doremi pet Luci's Tribble, but Luci doesn't like Doremi much, and the feeling is mutual. Not many of the dolls in Casa del Luna do like Doremi, mainly because of the way she treats Justin.
More about me, now...hmmm, what to say, what to say? Sheesh, I'll say that I am MELTING!!!
*Side note from Luciana: YOU'RE MELTING, MELTING!!!
Yeah, what a world, what a world, LOL! Who'd have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? But seriously, it got hot in New York City, but not quite like this! The Moon Girl says I'm getting my Moana vibe on with this outfit, but in truth I'm just trying to stay cool. That's a panda dangling from my necklace, by the way; he's since migrated to my wrist. My top is a cloth face mask that was too tight for the Moon Girl.
School will be starting soon, so these playground pictures will have to stop. The Moon Girl says she doesn't want to go poking around school when it's in session (or soon after it lets out), lest she look like a creeper. Anyway, I told Luci that she needs a long, loose skirt like I've got. Seriously, girl, it'll feel some better.
*Side note from Luciana: I've got THIS skirt, for crying out loud!
But it's denim, and denim's heavy! Mine's made of linen.
*Side note from Luciana: I'm fine! Besides, isn't that equipment hot on your feet???
Nope, can't say that it bothers me! I guess I'm more cut out for hot weather than I thought, even though it still isn't much fun. Now to you folks still reading, we did get a lot of rain this week (and we may get some more), so it hasn't been as miserably hot. In fact, the evenings have a slightly autumnal feel and smell to them.
Autumn can't get here fast enough! It was September when I arrived (last year, LOL), so I've got plenty of cute outfits to wear. The Moon Girl says that Luciana needs some fall garb. Can't wait to see what she gets!
Love,
Rita Cheryl Lassiter
The Moon Girl once said she'd never own me, but here I am!
FULL NAME: Kailey Sabrina Hopkins
HOMETOWN: Small-town southern California. I'm the fourth California girl, after Julie, Courtney, and Amanda.
HEAD MOLD: Classic
HAIR COLOR: Sun-streaked blonde
EYE COLOR: Dark brown
FAVORITE COLOR: Blue, green, and gray, the colors of the sea according to Sarah Wheaton in Sarah, Plain and Tall, and the colors of beach glass too, for that matter. I also like tan, the color of sand, and orange, the color of the sunset.
THINGS I LIKE: Surfing, boogie boarding, and water sports in general, beachcombing, summertime, Monster High and Ever After High (Lagoona Blue is my favorite character, for reasons listed below), bowling, irises, snow, watching dragonflies (and fireflies too, for that matter), cicadas and the noise they make, insects in general (except red wasps, shudder).
THINGS I DISLIKE: People using the ocean as their own trash dump, a sentiment first made by the one and only Lagoona Blue, plus people who won't take the time to learn the difference between me and Julie. There are ways to tell us apart if people will just LOOK!!!
MY CHOICE OF MUSIC: The Beach Boys are my favorite band, mainly for the song "California Girls." I like Van Halen too, learned to like them after I heard "Unchained" and their cover of "California Girls." I'm not a big fan of Van Hagar, though I do love "Humans Being."
PET: Sandy, a golden retriever.
BEST FRIENDS: Julie, because she cares about the environment, and Marina and Joss, because they like to beachcomb and swim. I also appreciate Silver Bird setting me up with a pen pal (I write to Kira Bailey a lot). I had no idea that people even bothered to write to each other anymore!
SOMEONE I'D RATHER AVOID: Sometimes Julie, because she and and I look a lot alike. This hasn't stopped us from being good friends, but it still irks me. I wouldn't like living with Kira for the same reason, but she WON'T be coming to live with us so I can rest easy.
HOW I CAME HERE: Another eBay find!
ABOUT ME: I haven't changed much since 2003. I love nature and animals and I do what I can to help out. Since I live in the middle of the country now I've started volunteering at a safari ranch, one that has a wide array of critters, like Slow Moe the sloth...
Snow rarely fell where I used to live, so I had a lot of fun with the last snow we had. Justine-Marie is a proficient skier, and she's offered to teach me to ski in exchange for boogie boarding lessons.
The heat isn't as bad as it was since last week we got a lot of rain (and we may get some more today), but it's still warm enough for boogie boarding. Too bad American Girls can't boogie board for real! One of the cardinal rules for owning one of us is DON'T GET US WET. But we can always pretend; in fact, for us dolls fake water is better than real water! And just between you and me and the cocoanut tree, my posing is even worse than Lindsey's. I have a very hard time standing up and thus a very hard time moving. The Moon Girl says that Lindsey and I are both a 3 on the scale she made up. Oh well, all the easier to sit and listen to the cicadas. I like cicadas, just like the Moon Girl does. See the big shell?
The Moon says he hatched out right on her doorframe. She says she even got pictures.
*Side note from the Moon Girl: Indeed I did. It isn't every day that one gets to see a cicada shedding its nymph skin, so I took advantage of the opportunity to pop a few images. Here he was still in his skin, but not moving much. I could see his new skin underneath the old. When they stop moving like this they need to be left alone so they can do their thing, so that's exactly what I did. For reference, I'm 5'8" and the insect was about shoulder-high to me (I had to hold Kailey in the frame above, LOL).
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.
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.
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
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.
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
