Last weekend my mom and sis in law came to visit. We played games, and Christopher cooked lots of amazing food, so we didn’t have to go out for the most part. So that was really nice, and I’m missing them already. There’s some things in regards to which only my sis in law seems to understand me… and I’ve been feeling so isolated recently. The visit somehow makes the isolation harder.

My green card came in the mail, it’s really amazing to have it and no longer have to carry my passport, work permit, and the letter that made my expired temporary green card “valid” (it expires because there’s such a backlog that your card expires before they can process the new one, which is why they send the letter and then you have to carry both things. God forbid you lose it!) Citizenship is gonna be next, so now we are looking into that.

Months keep going by, years even, I’m going to be 37 this month. In the back of my mind I still measure time by how long it has been since the “bad stuff” of a couple years ago, when I had the fallout with my friend, and everything got complicated in our friend group. Things were very lonely already since then, and with the pandemic even more so. We take so much for granted… I would give a lot to be able to go back for just one day to happy times with friends I miss, walking around the swap shop, drinking together, going to nice places to eat together, having parties… at our parties I often sit and draw and ignore everyone (at least at the LANs) but in my own quiet way I enjoy everyone’s noise and company so much. Who knows when we will have another LAN.

I’ve been trying to go out, to get out of my own head. Last Monday I went to Tree Tops Park. I got some nice pictures.

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I was hunting for snails in the park, but I saw none. I did see and hear cicadas which I love, I saw many lizards and a huge iguana up a tree. I saw many spiders, and a few beetles, and flowers, and berries.

This was my favorite photo of the day, two beetles having an, err, intimate moment:

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Here are some of the really beautiful flowers I saw:

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I also found an interesting shell:

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I believe it might have possibly belonged to a common heath snail, AKA helicella italia, but I am not certain.

Anyway, generally, I suppose my mood is a bit low… but not in a “I’m seriously depressed” way, more in a “things are really blah right now with no change in the horizon” sorta way. I haven’t seen my mom in like five months. That just boggles my mind. It’s unbelievable to me. Somehow we are managing, but for how long? How long can I go without seeing my mother? How long will we all have to manage for?

Anyway I don’t want to get too grim, so as a final, silly thing to add to this rambly post, here is a very odd decoration I saw at Petsmart:

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I hope you all enjoy the rest of your week!