Day 20 and a little emotional gushage

Lets start with day 20 of the 30 day challenge! Wooo! only 10 more days to go!
Then I'll tell you all about my NaNoWriMo awesomage and then we may or may not delve into the emotional explosion that has been the last couple of days.

Day 20 is: Nicknames that you have and why/how you got them.
Bwuahahahahaha. I like this one.

Pumpkin: Not only was I born on Halloween under a full moon, but I was also a bit jaundiced. So I was literally orange when I was born. My mom was not happy with this declaration from my dad.

Sweet Cheeks: Given to me by my father shortly after birth, I can't remember why.

Ashes: I don't know who gave this to me first. Maybe it was my Aunt, or my Unkle Tom (I really think it was Unkle Tom because nicknames are kind of his thing). But it's what I was called by my family for FOREVER! Oddly enough all the meanings I've found around it resonate so well with my actual persona I thought about legally changing my name to Ashes.

Rinoah: Ah, middle school. So I had a crush for this kid, Justin I think his name was, and I was totally freaking IN LOVE with Final Fantasy 8. So when this fun blue eyed boy comes up and says: "Hey you remind me of Rinoah Heartilly can I call you Rinoah?" I was like: "YES!" I honestly didn't know I had a thing for him till we had a fight and he stopped writing me. It wasn't my fault his hand wrighting was so atrocious one of his letters never made it to me. Punk.

Haiki: Ah, middle school again. I translated my name into Japanese when I was like 12, same for the homeschooled girls down the street from me. We called each other by these terrible names for a while.

Redd: My maiden name. Because by the age of 14 I didn't really respond to my given name unless one of my family members was saying it.

Radish: Jex's fault... I tried to go just by Ash for a while. Before I got so angry with the 'pokemon' references I met Jex. He asked my last name as he was jumping from cement barrier to cement barrier. I answered and he goes: "Ash Redd. Redd Ash." His lightning struck blue eyes widened and he smiled in a way that I would forever remember as a smile to be avoided at all costs and said. "RADISH!" Nooooooooooo! I am not a vegetable! No! Why God, why?! *ahem*

Rem: This is the one that stuck. In highschool easily 25% of the students shared my name and another 15% shared a friend of mine's name, Mel. )And apparently it's not Kosher to ignore the popular girl who announces that since her nick name is 'red' I can't use my actual last name as what I go by.) Our super cool third member of the "Trio of Terror" Kai offered the solution of picking out Japanese names for each other that fit our personalities. Sweet! I was super in love with Jett Li and the movie Hero at the time so I was like "OMG! I'm going to be No Name!" Nanashi, turned out to be the Japanese translation. Yay! Mel ended up being the absolute pickiest person on the planet. "No the Kanji is stupid, too hard, too simple. The name doesn't mean something cool enough, too masculine, too feminine, too whatever." So in the end Kai and I were like: "FINE! You don't get a name! You're Nanashi!" Then I was like: "Wait... now what's my name?" [insert facepalm here]
So, my friends assured me that they'd find a good name for me and rejected every idea I came up with for a few days. I gave up and just let them brew. If I got a name then I got a name if not then I guess I could try to beat the 'pokemon' reference out of Ash. Maybe replace it with an Evil Dead reference.
One day Nana and Kai came careening off the bus and to the corner where we met before classes and announced with blinding white glee that they had found my name. THE PERFECT NAME for me. "Rem" They said together.
I wasn't sure. "Rem? That's not a Japanese name."
But it didn't matter because they said they were my friends and that is what they were going to call me. FOREVER. And they have. Now so do my parents, my husband, my other friends, just about everyone who has met me in person.
It's so much so my name at this point that early on in our marriage when Jex said my given name I got mad at him and nearly demanded who the hell "Ash*****" was. Then realized it was me. *furious blush*
Just in case you're wondering "Rem" is a Japanese name that is usually translated as "Ren" but both spellings are acceptable since the n and m sound are pretty much the same in Japanese. It's a boys name that means "Lotus". It'd be nice if that's the reason why they picked the name, for all the meanings behind the Lotus flower... no... it was a character in a comic series they were reading called TriGun, who apparently is my personality clone. *shrugs*


NANOWRIMO!!!! = Awesomage!!!!
I'm up to 25K words! Go me! And in celebration I think I'll post a little excerpt again. It'll be shorter than the first one.

And I think I'm just going to ignore my emotional instability for now. I'm running out of precious internet time.