Name Calling

Allin. Her name is Allin. Her brain chemistry is, at best, wonky, but she does have a name.

Allin.

She has a mother and a father who are both Bipolar. She has an uncle who thinks he is a psychiatry expert because he took one Psychology class in college back in the 70's. Her uncle has a partner who does a very good job at cutting hair so he is at work a good deal of the time. She also has a grandmother who is dotty but happy. She calls each of them by their familial title: Mother, Father, Uncle, Grandma. She calls her Uncle's partner by his first name: Heathrow, or Heath for short. This is all on her Father's side of the family.

Her mother has a sister, giving Allin an Aunt. Her Aunt had three overweight children, Gerald, Alder, and Vincent, from eldest to youngest. Alder was the only one who made himself "someone". He got into shape, joined the United States Marine Corps, got married, and had a child. He was away fighting in Afghanistan when Gerald died suddenly of an aneurysm in his heart. Alder broke his hand from punching a wall the moment he found out. He had told Allin months earlier that he knew someone was going to die in the family and he feared it would be their grandmother, but it was not. 

Alder went on, finished his tour of duty, and re-enlisted into the United States Army. Allin told him not to take that last tour. She said she knew something awful would happen while he was gone. 

Alder was blown to pieces by a landmine shortly thereafter. He was rushed to a military hospital in Germany where he was put back together. He then came State-side for almost nine months when he took a turn for the worse and suffered a massive brain hemorrage. He died the next day when the plug was pulled on his life support system but Allin always counted him dead the moment that the blood vessels burst in his brain. 

Vincent was all that his mother had left. He went through moments of quiet contemplation to moments of anger, hatred, and rage. Vincent was not much to look at, had no plans for the future, and continues even to this day, to leech off of the kindness of his mother, chain smoke pot, and grow fatter with each passing week. It does not take the opinion of a trained physician to understand that if he does not get mental help quickly, Vincent is not long for this world. Allin is pretty sure that is the way he wants it.

Allin, Gerald, Alder, and Vincent also had a grandmother who they called Nana. She helped to take care of the three boys when their father walked out on them. She rarely had time for Allin so they did not grow close until her later years. Nana passed away from Alzheimer's Disease but not after suffering the deaths of two of her three grandsons. Sometimes, Nana would ask how Alder was doing. Allin would answer that he was fine and had a lovely family when in reality the family he had started was rarely heard from; sometimes Alder's own mother was not invited to his daughter's birthday parties. 

That is Allin's family, although she has a family all her own now as well. She has a partner named James. All of James' family is in Tennessee but he has a mother, a father, a sister, and far too many relatives removed. Allin also has far too many pets. She keeps and breeds hedgehogs. Currently she has Sonic, who is going to become her newest stud, and Scout who has three children: Atticus, Eve, and Lilith, all by another father who is owned by another hedgehog lover. She will sell Scout's offspring and start over until Scout is too old and one of her daughter's takes over.
Allin also has a fish tank. It has housed many things and still does but the main attraction is her glum-faced Rockfish, Monstro. Monstro hides inside an old tree stump that is carved to look like the face of an old man and picks off fish if they swim too close and debris from fish food that floats down to him. She used to keep eels but they kept escaping and two eel funerals were enough for Allin.

One of her old fish tanks was lying around, unused, when Mother offered to fill it with a new fish. Instead of a new fish, they bought a small toad-like amphibian called a Pixie Frog. Allin named him Dr. Heywood Floyd. She liked to name her animals after famous people in both life and literature. Floyd has gotten so fat now that she has to feed him small mice but she feeds him a diet of mostly earthworms--- mice are a treat.

If that were not enough, she has a hamster named Hammer Time and a baby tortoise called Turtle. She was quite elated when she found a classifieds advertisement for Turtle: "4 week old desert tortoise-- $100". She gathered all of her cash and borrowed a bit and drove about forty-five minute out of the city and into the mountains to find the man who was selling the little thing. She dropped the cash in his hands, he handed her the tortoise (but not without first showing her around his expansive little zoo full of farm animals and exotics). She drove straight to her favourite store: Pet Kingdom. The guys in the reptile department hooked her up with a beautiful set up at a discount price. She brought Turtle home and her poor James was beside himself with frustration. He did not like having so many animals. 

The first pet that Allin ever brought home was a pitiful little Shih Tzu that she rescued from a home of entirely too many dogs. Her name was China, she was ten years old, and she was in perfect health for about four months. Twelve-thousand dollars of damages and several years later and she is a fourteen year old blind and deaf Shih Tzu who waddles around in a diaper and generally smells kind of bad. But, when nobody is looking, Allin picks her up, cuddles and coos over her, and gives her a big wet kiss on the top of her little head. Oh, and she changed "China" to "Chai" because she could not fathom calling the poor dog "China" for the rest of her natural little life. 

Chai was due for a surgery on April second so, on April first, Allin took her father to a farm-style pet sanctuary where they both fell in love with a little skinny Terrier/Chihuahua mix called Ribbon. They brought her home and James was pretty upset. They already had so many pets... Ribbon grew on him quickly though. Allin decided that, since he originally did not want her, James was to name the new pup, who was only six months old at the time. He named her Marceline, after a popular character on a popular children's cartoon. They called her Marci for short. She was destined to later train to become Allin's service and comfort animal. Marci learned how to join her mum in sleeping through long films like The Hobbit, how to sit in a grocery cart without falling through the bars, and how to fly without freaking out too terribly much more than Allin did. 

She also owned an assortment of not terribly noteworthy Beta fish, which will probably be the trend for the next several years of her life. 

Having pets has brought Allin and her Father together. He likes to go with her to Pet Kingdom to buy more mice for Floyd, fish for Monstro, and general supplies for the other pets like aspen bedding for Hammer Time, Scout, and Sonic (Scout and Sonic live separately). He also aids in cleaning the cages by helping her to catch the animal in question-- by far, Hammer Time is the most difficult to catch-- and by holding a trash bag close to the cage so that she can shovel waste into it. 

She and her mother have also bonded over the animals. Her mother hates to see an animal suffer (none of them do) and insists on bathing Chai twice weekly. She also took over changing Chai's diaper when Allin and James had to move back into her parent's home for a six month time period while their own home was being demolished and then rebuilt. 

Most of Allin's treasured family is within arms reach: James, her pets, and her parents. The rest of her family is not as important because of the stigma of her mental health and the way that they treated her while she was still impressionable. The rest is because she doesn't like him-- Vincent, that is.