Players:
Summary: Robin prepares a lovely picnic in the quad and Sage and Tara join her.
Date: June 17, 2011
Log Title: Picnic In The Quad
Rating: PG
Xavier Mansion - Quad
There is a square side walk of pavement with a nice grassy area in the middle with a few stone benches and trees along the corners. The pavement leads to the paths to the grounds of the school, the Dining Hall in Xavier's and the Ramsey Dormitories. It's not particularly large but it's a nice place for students and teachers to relax and enjoy the outdoors.
Robin has prepared another one of her solo picnics in the quad, always with extra food should anyone else decide to drop by. She has a reusable water bottle on the patterned blanket and sits across from her puppet reading a book, Pride and Prejudice, for her English class. Her basket is opened, and the packaged sandwiches and (relatively) fresh baked cookies can be seen from one looking at it from above.
The smell of (relatively) fresh baked cookies attracts any number of pests. Ants, wasps, flies, and Taras. Being blind, she has to rely on her other senses to tell her what's around her in her environment, and right now her other senses are telling her: COOKIES! It takes her a bit to pick out where the smell is coming from, since she's not able to pick out where Robin is until she's a good thirty to forty feet away from her. but she still manages to find her way there. "Hey, Robin," she says waving a hand in greeting. "Is that cookies I smell?"
Walking from the stables, Sage is about to head to the kitchen for some early dinner. There's a bit of hay stuck in his dread locks that he's unaware of and he's got his ukulele and an empty basket with with him. Dressed in his usually hippy style Sage makes his way over to the picnic. "Hallo Robyn and Tara, how are you two this afternoon?" He asks in his British accent.
"Umm, yeah, I baked some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies," says Robin, pulling out the container and placing it on the blanket. "Feel free to help yourself, or to one of the chicken sandwiches I prepared…" She glances up and waves at Sage, "Oh, hello. I'm doing pretty okay, just having a picnic with myself."
"YUM!" exclaims the blind girl and sits herself down to help herself to some cookies. "I'm doing okay," Tara says between mouthful of cookie. "I think I'm pretty much done with treatments in the medbay, which is a good thing. It's so boring there."
Sage moves to sit down but doesn't take any food. "That's good to hear Tara. It's never fun to be injured or sick." He says as he moves the ukulele to his lap and starts strumming lightly. "It's an odd place that medbay. I was there when I twisted my wrist after falling off the communications tower." He then looks to Robin and smiles. "You baked them? Can I have one?"
Robin nods at Tara and says, "Yeah, I've been there a few times, and it's pretty dull. You just lie around and… wait." She shrugs and then nods at Sage, "Of course! Help yourself. I made plenty, and I'll never be able to eat them all myself. I'm not exactly a heavy eater. I also have sandwiches, if you want."
Tara snags a sandwich after she's done with a cookie. "I've never been good at waiting," she says. "I mean, duh. That's a shocker, there." She sighs deeply, "Still, I'm not allowed to practice my gymnastics, and I've got to go easy in the danger room."
Sage stops playing and takes a cookie, beginning to nibble on it. "I've seen so many bags of cookies here and it's nice to see another person here who enjoys cooking." He says before looking at the cookie. "They're delicious Robin." He than makes a face about the Danger Room but keeps his dislike inside. "You said you also grew up in a farm?" He asks Robin.
"Thanks, Sage! Yeah, I grew up on a farm, it was okay, but I wasn't a big fan of the town we lived by. But I still picked up a few skills, and I was my mom's helper around the kitchen," says Robin, smiling at that and pushing up her glasses and reaching to grab a sandwich for herself. "I prefer the homemade cookies to the packaged ones, though."
Tara nods her head quickly in agreement with Sage. "Yeah. These are awesome. The sandwiches too." She wrinkles her nose at the mention of a farm. "I'm not big on farms, too. I mean horses are cool, but cows are stupid and I have to concentrate on where I'm going or else I might step in… you know."
"Our town kind of was the farm. I guess. We were the only ones there, just the farm and six houses." Sage says. "We were all helpers around the kitchen with my Mum and Dad. I like doing some cooking. As for cows, they aren't that bad. We had a lot of them back home but then I like most animals. And there are worse things to step in than…you know." Sage says with a smile and chuckle.
Robin nods and says, "I don't really mind most animals. I did lots've chores around the farm and around the house, and it was nice being with the animals sometimes. Though cows are a little scary sometimes. Like, they make these really angry sounding moos." Robin shakes her head and takes a bite of her sandwich.
"Like what?" asks a disbelieving Tara to Sage. "Name one," she challenges.
"The afterbirth of a pig." Sage says with all honesty. "One time when I was helping one of the sows give birth, afterwards I accidentally stepped in it and was quite unpleasant." He then nods to Robin. "I love animals sometimes I feel it's more relaxing to be around them. But that maybe because I'm still adjusting here. And I found the bulls scarier than the cows."
"I found bulls scarier too," admits Robin, nodding at Sage, "It's 'cause they're objectively scarier, I think." She nods once after a moment's thought and then says, "Oh! And thanks Tara. The veggies from the sandwiches are from the upstairs garden, so they're fresh, too."
Sage's example is enough to stop Tara from taking another bite of the sandwich. "Eeeeewww," she says. "Yeah, that'd be… icky. But pigs don't just randomly give birth out in the middle of pastures, though. So there is that." And now she's got an image of a field of sows and every once in a while you'd hear a *splurch* and the sound newborn piglet… "Guh. Okay," she says putting the sandwich down.
"I love the garden upstairs." Sage says as he goes for one of the sandwiches. "I find a lot of the food here doesn't agree with me unless it's from upstairs or labeled organic." He says taking a bite. "It's all part of life Tara and no they don't. It's usually in the stable. I always loved when there were the new born piglets."
"I'm okay with the non-organic foods sometimes, I guess, but I prefer to eat healthy and environmentally friendly. I mean, I need to eat /more/ food, but at least the food I eat is healthy for me," says Robin, patting her belly lightly. "I'm trying to gain weight. I've gained a couple pounds, but nothing much."
Tara shrugs. "I guess I'm the pizza and hotdog girl around here. I mean I can shove just about anything in my mouth and I'm good with it." She gives a bit of a chuckles and says, "My mom always hated me because I could out eat my brothers and not gain a pound, and she always had to watch her diet."
"I never had to watch what I ate before I came here." Sage says not fully understanding the concept of people needing to gain or lose weight. "Why are you trying to gain weight? You look fine the way you are to me." He says honestly. "And I haven't had hotdogs before though Tyler keeps talking about them."
Robin looks at herself and says, "Well, umm, I'm actually pretty severely underweight. Or at least I used to severely underweight, now I'm juuust regular underweight!" says Robin, smiling at her accomplishment. "And if you feel sick with anything that doesn't have an organic sticker on it, I'd… recommend keeping clear of hot dogs for awhile."
"But hotdogs are so goooooood," says Tara. "I'm sure we could find some organic ones." She then debates in her mind what else is good. "And chili. He needs to have a chili cheese dog."
"I was a wee bit afraid of that." Sage says to Robin "So there are set weights we're supposed to be? I think I'm fine with what weight I am." He says shrugging. "Maybe you should eat more bacon. That usually has a lot of fat on it." He then looks at Tara cautiously. "You almost sound like my roommate."
"Well, uhhh, if you're too light, sometimes you'll have some negative health effects… I get that, which is how I know that I'm too thin," says Robin, shrugging slightly, "And the doctors said so. And it's not just fat I'm trying to gain, I'm trying to put on healthy weight." She glances towards Tara and says, "Let's… wait on the chili cheese dog. Even /I/ get a little sick at that."
"Who's your roommate, Sage?" asks Tara, before giving Robin a little pout. "Aww." After a bit of silence she picks up her sandwich up again. "Yeah. There were some girls in my Gymnastics class who started becoming anorexic after hitting puberty. They started putting on some weight and totally freaked out about it and thought the coaches would kick them off the team because of it."
Having never taken a Health class in his life a bit of this conversation is going over his head. "Oh, I didn't know that. I guess eating right and a good hard day at work is enough to keep me from not being too thin I gather. Just here it is a bit strange without any chores to do." He looks over at Tara as one of the words she said confused him. "Anorexic?"
"Anorexia is when people just stop eating in order to lose weight…" replies Robin, for Sage's benefit, "Some people do it here in order to fit some ideals of beauty. I used to be homeless, and I just can't eat much before I get sick, so when I was on the streets I lost lots of weight, and I'm still trying to get up to a healthy level. I have to develop more good habits."
Tara nods at Robin. "Yeah. And in gymnastics there's a lot of pressure to be small. And young. I mean, your career is pretty much over by the time you get out of high school." She shrugs. "Then again, I guess it's like any other competitive sport. There's a lot of pressure to succeed no matter what."
Sage shakes his head at the explanation and stands up. "It just seems like complete rubbish why someone would do that. And I'm sorry to hear you were on the streets. That sounds dreadful. But if you would like to get up to a healthy level with eating, my family and I used to cook every Sunday. Maybe we can cook up a good home cooked meal on Sunday's and see if that helps?" He really has no clue how this works. "That sounds way to challenging for me. Well it was nice running into you both but I must be off. Cheers."
Robin waves at Sage and says, "Yeah, it's silly that people will do that to their bodies, but there can be a lot of pressure for it…" She looks over to Tara and nods, "I'd never really want to participate in a sport like that. Pour myself into it only to find out that at a certain age, I can't really do it so much anymore."
Tara nods at Robin. "Yeah. I didn't really think about what I'd do after I was doing gymnastics when I was doing it." She sighs, as she finishes off the sandwich. "I took it on as a challenge. People told me that blind girls couldn't do it, so I set out to prove them wrong. I got good enough that I was in the running for the Olympics but.." she shrugs. "This happened. I like it better here anyway."
"That's pretty impressive, though, that must've taken some serious determination!" says Robin, quite approvingly, and she nods a couple of times, "I wasn't much of an athlete when I was younger… I was more of an outsider. Which was okay, but it's nice being here. If you don't fit in when you live in a small town, it can be lonely."
"Yeah, I bet," says Tara. "I mean the town I lived in wasn't particularly small. But being blind… you never really fit in with the sighted world, you know?"
"I guess… I mean, I'm sighted, and I at least have -one- eye, but I think it makes sense," says Robin, nodding at that, "Lots of the stuff in the world seems very sight oriented…"
"Almost everything," answers Tara. "You have no idea how much it is. I mean, I have an advantage in that I can feel where everything else, so I've got a good idea of the shape of things, but even then, that won't let me do something simple, like, tell the difference between a Dr. Pepper in the fridge and an Orange Crush." She stands up and brushes some stray leaves off her pants, before bending over and snagging another cookie. "It's why me and Sophie have our own little corner of the fridge. We put things there in a very specific order so we can tell what's what." She takes a bite out of the cookie and continues, "Anyway. I need to get some milk to wash these down. I'll catch you later!"
Robin nods at Tara and says, "Yeah, I guess… that's just something I can't completely understand, but can at least be aware of… Well, it was nice seeing you again, Tara, enjoy the rest of your evening!"
