Category Archives: Cats

Week 10 Summary: Christopher’s Birthday! ๐ŸŽ‚

This was a week with some painful lows but still some happy moments. I went to see my mom, we had family visit, we celebrated Christopher’s birthday, my mom’s immigration process finally had movement, and I completed my first race (well, it was a walk) since restarting my daily strolls. I also took Kotoko to the vet, some tests were done, and the results were not good.

Because of those test results, I want to warn you that this post will discuss pet illness and impending (though not immediate) loss. Because it’ll come right away, under the Monday summary, there is no cut: if you keep reading, it’ll be after the “soot” photo. So please be aware of that. Anyway, let’s get on with the summary.

๐ŸŒˆ Monday ๐ŸŒˆ

Let’s start Monday with something utterly delightful. Remember the soots from last week? The blue soot at this employee’s desk has been graced with a tiny hat!

I love the idea of someone possibly purposely bringing this hat to work for this soot. It’s so cute.

๐Ÿ’ž Pet Illness/Loss CW Starts Here ๐Ÿ’ž

Now, with much regret, I must move on to a more somber topic. You might recall I mentioned on my last post that I planned to take Kotoko to the vet on Monday. Her projectile vomiting is somewhat controlled by occasional Cerenia, but with no specific cause, I wanted to try the vet near our house and see if anything else had developed that our usual, beloved and trusted vet, Dr. Pisano, had not seen at the time. It was also time for a new blood test.

Kotoko was quite noisy as everything was done to her –check-up, x-rays, blood work. She was in discomfort, her tummy tense, and the x-rays would show other motives too. Here she is attentively listening to the vet talk about her:

After the x-rays were done, the vet took me to the back to show them to me. In this first one, if you know what you are looking at, you will catch a few things: the first being the spacing between her last few vertebrae, where an irreversible degeneration is occurring. This is painful for Kotoko, and probably made the x-rays more uncomfortable too.

The more important one is the thickening, or potential mass, in her stomach:

Because of her long-standing other symptoms, there isn’t exactly a multitude of possibilities here. It is almost certainly IBS or lymphoma, or IBS that became lymphoma. Kotoko’s blood tests also came back, and they showed the first stage of kidney failure. So as you can see, she is dealing with a lot.

The prognosis is not good. Kidney situation aside, this is a fast-acting disease, and Kotoko is 15 years old. We could do an ultrasound, and possibly need a biopsy to boot ($1,300 at a minimum if both are needed) but all this would tell us is how little time we have left. The course of action would not change.

We have decided to not subject her to any more diagnostics. Instead, we will use our funds for the best prescription foods, for daily medications that will substantially improve her comfort, and in paying for the service that will allow us to say a comfortable goodbye at home when the time does come (this is very expensive, hundreds of dollars).

And really, it could be fast. It could be two months. We could get unlucky, and it could be less, or we could get lucky, and it could be longer. We are going to do all we can to enjoy whatever time is left with her. We might just get lucky in how much time that is. Why not think positive? But even if we don’t, I know I’ll take a lot of comfort in the fact that, at 15, Kotoko has had such a long and happy life. She could have hardly had more loving or dedicated pet parents, if I do say so myself. She also had kitty friends, and many human friends to boot.

You might have seen me mention something very vague on Mastodon. It was about this. I didn’t want to go into detail, because even someone who understands pet loss may not realize why this loss will be so major to us. We’ve experienced severe heartbreak over pet loss before –this will be of a different magnitude. We will be okay. But because this isn’t a normal pet loss situation (I don’t think I could properly explain why) it will be a while until we are.

But I also want to concentrate in the here and now: with daily Cerenia, Kotoko already is showing a big improvement. No more vomiting, much bigger appetite. She just looks more lively. She’s a sturdy cat, and as long as she is here, we will love her and be grateful for her. Later we will have time to grieve. Before that time comes, I am also doing some things like a cute little cast of her paw, and a stamped imprint of it as well. I might do more things if I can think of them.

Something interesting that you can see in this other x-ray is that Kotoko has an extra rib, like some people or animals have an extra toe:

Let me close this part with a little more positivity. I really liked this vet, which is walking distance from us. They also have some chill office cats, three of them. Here’s a photo of one of them:

๐Ÿ’ž Pet Illness/Loss CW Ends Here ๐Ÿ’ž

Monday evening I completed the Snoopy Run, 13.1 miles! I walked it, though.

My medal should be here by the weekend.

๐ŸŒˆ Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

The most significant event that happened on this day is that my mom’s immigration case entered the last stage on USCIS. She should have her residence soon… I hope!

A funny thing happened too. Tomoyo has a tendency to fling her toys high in the air when she plays. Well, while I was having lunch, this landed on my plate:

It actually landed ON my food (gross) but I moved it off right away. Meanwhile, she was just innocently waiting for me to return it to her:

Here’s a random photo of our sweet old lady:

In the evening I got dropped off at my mom’s. She gave Christopher his birthday present before he and our partner left. Then we had snacks, and wine, played Generala, and talked about a million things.

For dinner we had a baked potato:

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

Wednesday was a calm day. Here’s Sweeney being very cute:

In the afternoon my mom made really delicious egg bites, and we watched TV together.

Later I lay down a while and played more Legends: Arceus.

Not long after, our partner picked me up. Once we got back home, I made the guys dinner, then tea, and just did my best to keep Christopher cheerful. Between the bad news this week and his back hurting so much without a break, it’s been really rough for him.

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday ๐ŸŒˆ

Thursday was Christopher’s birthday. I prepared his presents on his desk before he woke up:

I also hid one in his book bag so he’d have something to open at work. He liked most of them. ๐Ÿ˜Š In the evening, we had dinner at Blue Ginger to celebrate. It was really good!

On this day I finished reading another book. Though it was comics, it was really long, as it was an omnibus of all the Muppet Babies comics, plus the comic in which they first appear (The Muppets Take Manhattan). That marks the seventh book I’ve read this year. With it being March already, this may not sound like much, but “It” was well over 1,100 pages… so that took a while.

The Muppet Babies Omnibus was delightful. Some frames made me do a double take! ๐Ÿ˜ณ

Baby Rowlf was adorable…

There were a lot of funny fourth wall breaking moments. This one was particularly amusing!

Next, I’m going to finish The Last Days of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black.

I decided to move one of the cat stairs to the porch to make it easier for Kotoko to access the chairs, particularly in light of her spine degeneration. She uses it, but right now, mostly sleeps on the bigger step rather than the chair, I guess because it became “new” again. Elliot sleeps on the chair.

It’s been so much fun to feed the birds and squirrels at the front of the house. Here’s a photo I took on this day:

Down the road, I would like to buy a bench and a birdbath, so I can enjoy seeing them up close while I’m outside reading a book.

๐ŸŒˆ Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

Let’s start Friday off with this photo of Tomoyo lounging on my chest. Really, she’s just waiting to be fed.

It was cage cleaning day, so here’s a couple of photos of a cutie:

๐ŸŒˆ Saturday ๐ŸŒˆ

Saturday morning we went to look at garage sales, a favorite activity when family visits. You never know what you’ll find!

For lunch we went to Chili’s. I had Palmito in my backpack so I took photos of him on this day:

You very likely have never seen Palmito, Robito or Rosemary (the skunk, not the cat). These little plushies were the first I ever took places with me back in the heyday of Toyvoyagers.

Though the website is still accessible on the date of me making this post, and the odd Travelog still updates, Toyvoyagers are sadly very much defunct. The idea was that you bought a little metal tag with a unique number for your toy, and left it places, and hoped someone would update its Travelog. It did happen! Alternatively, you could send your toy to one person elsewhere in the world, and then they would come back. Or you could have it join a “round robin” of locations.

All of my Toyvoyagers went places and brought me back souvenirs. It’s nice to be taking them out again.

When we got back from lunch, I found my latest medal in the mailbox. It’s really pretty!

I also have the t-shirt (though I won’t make a habit of ordering those) and the race bib with my number, which I’ll probably use for a scrapbooking page.

Christopher gave me $5 and I got some goodies while out garage saling:

This book is for dungeon masters but really cool and inspiring nonetheless!

And I couldn’t leave this little guy behind:

I’ve washed and disinfected him, so he’s ready for cuddling!

For Christopher’s birthday dinner, we went to Buca Di Beppo. We had chicken parmigiana, stuffed shells, meatballs, and garlic bread. We had a coupon for a free dessert for Christopher that was big enough for the five of us!

It’s really nice to be taking Palmito out for photos again. It’s been many years.

After we got home, we hung out at the house watching Christopher play GTA 5 (always fun) and then our friend Jessie came over, so we watched the two of them and our partner play the Stick Fight game on Steam. It was a really nice and chill evening.

๐ŸŒˆ Sunday ๐ŸŒˆ

I went on my usual five mile walk, and stopped by Target. I hadn’t been to Target all year. They had a new version of their Sesame Street figures that was really cute:

Christopher made a really good pasta with zucchini for dinner. It looked far too healthy to be so delicious, I was pleasantly surprised. Can’t wait to have it again.

I usually only sleep with Grover, but on this night I wanted to cuddle my new triceratops friend too. Grover didn’t mind sharing!

Before we know it, March will be over… the rainy season will come, with it the humid and oppressive heat, and then hurricane season. Time is flying, but I’m trying to make the best of it, and I hope you all are too. Let’s make this coming week a wonderful one!

Week 9 Summary: Soots And Other Fun Things ๐Ÿ‘พ

March is here! It came so fast. March brings Christopher’s 39th birthday, Mwako’s visit, and the usual visit to the Miami-Dade County Fair and Exposition with my mom. Anyway, let’s get on with the summary!

๐ŸŒˆ Monday ๐ŸŒˆ

Let’s begin Monday with a photo of Rosie chilling by my work area:

You might remember the little “soots” that took over our house quite some time ago. The following isn’t something that happened specifically on this day, I’m just picking this part of the summary to share it.

They now appear to be multiplying at Christopher’s workplace, with some help from him (though almost no one knows this for a fact, since he is very sneaky about it).

The colorful little soots have made their way all over the factory –even the CFO’s office! Christopher sends me photos sometimes, so here’s a few:

For the most part no one has removed them, though some HAVE moved a little. They seem to be amusing a lot of people, it’s pretty great! ๐Ÿ˜

You might also remember me mentioning that on Valentine’s Day, our partner got me a pair of headphones, but they turned out to be the wrong ones. So we returned them and I got to pick out a new pair. I picked the Razer Kraken x Doraemon 50th Anniversary Limited Edition gaming headset, which was only ever released in China as an exclusive promotion. They’ve finally arrived!

They are lovely. I adore this color scheme SO MUCH! Very kidcore-y vibes.

I would like to get some of the matching add-ons too, if only the mouse, because it’s actually my favorite mouse model, and it’s been discontinued.

๐ŸŒˆ Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

On this day I was able to snap a pretty cute photo of Rosie and Tomoyo chilling out together:

Before grocery shopping, our partner and I went to get some wines. It was a nice little outing together, and he bought me a raptor wine stopper! It’s so cool.

I’m surprised to still come across brand new Jurassic World versions of these Good 2 Grow bottle caps/toppers/whatever they are. I found a pyroraptor one to add to my collection!

I forgot to post this on the day it happened, but a few days ago, the guys went to the grocery store and brought me flowers (the sunflowers, not the black roses, lol).

Sunflowers are my most favorite flower ever. They fill me with happiness. I wish I could always have some on my table, I’d never get tired of seeing them. It was such a nice surprise.

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

Elliot has been enjoying the outdoor “hammock” a lot since I moved it to the sun, but in an unexpected way:

Oh well… at least it’s getting some use!

In a moment of weakness, after being informed that Dollar General can be a surprise treasure trove for dinosaur toys, I went and took a look. To my delight, I found a large stegosaurus of the same fashion as my large foam dinos (Mojito, Churrasco and Fuit Gummi) so I brought him home:

I also found some totally bizarre and hilarious tiny dinos that are very clearly meant to be Gon ripoffs:

You probably don’t know Gon, unless you’re a big comic and/or dinosaur fan, but it is a true underlooked gem in manga. I only own this one volume, it’s very short, and one of my treasures:

Drawn by Masashi Tanaka, Gon has no dialogue and no onomatopeias. Every frame looks like it would have taken a full day to painstakingly render–I say this as someone who has similarly spent pleasant hours absorbed in crosshatching a scene with pen and ink. This is to say nothing of the absolutely BONKERS full-page spreads:

Gon is some sort of vague Carnosaurs, with a more t. Rex-like head, although I’ve also seen him described as a Giganotosaurus. This is possible, since Gon was first published one year after the discovery of Giganotosaurus.

Somehow, Gon lives in a more modern world. He’s escaped extinction in some way. The manga follows his interactions with these modern species, which are never quite prepared for the force to be reckoned with that is Gon.

While often humorous, scenes of death (very sad scenes, really) can be crushing and sudden, only adding to the emotional intensity that this wordless manga provides.

Below are two examples from this particular volume –in one, a wolf-pup is completely crushed by a tiger’s gigantic paw. This comes immediately after the same tiger killed the pups’ mother:

In this other example, a bird steals a baby penguin and very cheerfully flies away to eat it. The contrast between the bird’s happy face, the terror of the chick, and the shared grief so eloquently depicted by Tanaka in the frame that follows, are impressively drawn and brimming with emotion:

There is an animated, CGI version of Gon. It is, in my opinion, a terrible adaptation in which all of the nuance and charm is lost. I mean… here’s a couple of GIFs from it…

You know what, maybe farts are in the manga too, I haven’t read all of it, it seems out of character for the manga though. I watched some of the anime and it was SO lame. Worst of ALL, the animals talk! Ugh.

I should point out that Gon also made an appearance as a playable character in the game Tekken 3:

He does have a fart attack in Tekken, so who knows, maybe it’s a thing. ๐Ÿ™„ In any case, it was very amusing to find this little toy set that basically shows Gon as a bunch of different species –including a parasaurolophus!

As a funny side note, when looking for Gon gifs I came an account on Tenor that clearly has a “special interest“:

So yeah, that was odd. Aaaanyway… on to Thursday!

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday ๐ŸŒˆ

Thursday evening the three of us went for a walk together. When we passed the local pond/lake/whatever you call it, the bullfrogs were LOUD. Our partner walked closer to the reeds and grasses by the water to find one of them for me. It was enormous.

๐ŸŒˆ Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

Friday was tank cleaning day, so I have a lot of photos to share. I also have some really cute lettuce-rasping action caught in video:

I ended up ordering a tree hide like the one the rats used to have. It looks really nice in the tank, and the snails seem to like hanging out inside it.

๐ŸŒˆ Saturday ๐ŸŒˆ

I continued to walk as much as I could, 4-5 miles every day. The weather is still mild compared to what will soon come. I snapped this pretty photo of a flower.

In the afternoon, I relaxed with more Legends: Arceus and a little snack. Then I had a nap.

๐ŸŒˆ Sunday ๐ŸŒˆ

Sunday evening I went on a walk with our partner and we hadn’t gotten far from the house when we saw this little (fake) LEGO table set out for bulk trash:

I don’t really have space for it indoors, so I put it on the porch with a pillow for the cats. It’s colorful and cute, I didn’t really want to just leave it out to be trashed.

Anyway, that’s it for this week. Next week is Christopher’s birthday, and tomorrow I’ll be taking Kotoko to the vet right by our house to do some more looking-into her vomiting that won’t go away and see if she’s actually lost weight or it’s all in my head. I’ll update you all next Sunday. Until then, I hope you have a happy week!

Week 8 Summary: More New Experiences ๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€๐Ÿณ

This week, like the last, was eventful and busy, but there was time to breathe too. Overall, it was pretty good! The nice thing about writing these posts and looking back on them is realizing how full of fun things my weeks usually are and how different the days can be. Life is always full of surprises and fun experiences!

๐ŸŒˆ Monday ๐ŸŒˆ

On Monday we had our belated Valentine’s Day cooking class! I got a beautiful sunset shot on the way there…

And some funny photos during the class itself:

Even though it wasn’t my favorite type of cuisine, the meal was pretty yummy, and the custard we had for dessert, in particular, was delicious! I also got to have a little drink.

I’m sure we will do this again, it was a lot of fun!

๐ŸŒˆ Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

On Tuesday we went on our (again, belated) Valentine’s Day dinner. We ended up doing everything on different days. This was a promising French restaurant, and the drinks were wonderful:

The guys liked their food a lot, but I found it all very bland, though the presentation was very nice:

In fact I would say this was my least favorite fancy restaurant experience so far. The only place I wouldn’t care to go back other than the drinks. But it’s still fun to try new places!

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

I made a new type of salad for Wednesday’s lunch, a variation of the previous salad. This one had a baby spinach base. I think I liked it even better!

Later, after struggling a lot to decide how to handle this drawing, I printed it out into two different 8.5″ x 11″ pages and now I am tracing it onto a large piece of watercolor paper:

I really wish I had a bigger printed to print out my sketches onto directly in non-photo blue or other light color. Maybe later this year. I’ve been doing research on it, and I have one picked out.

This was tank cleaning day. Here’s some happy snails enjoying fresh foods and a clean cage!

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday ๐ŸŒˆ

I feel like I post too many photos of Tomoyo laying on my bed, but she is so cute…

Recently, during grocery shopping, I came upon a wonderful find. I’d first spotted this guy well over year ago in the same section of our Publix:

I’ll get him later, I told myself. I think I went the day after, or two days later. No dice. I waited for weeks, then months, for a restock. I found out it was scalped all to heck online. Such a bummer! This is a cheap little dino from the cheap toy section at the grocery store. But official JP babies are uncommon (I’ve yet to see that nasutoceratops IRL… ๐Ÿ˜ž).

Anyway, this week, lo and behold there he was again, and somehow he had not suffered from inflation. The price was the same as the first time I saw him. So this little guy came home with me, and now sits between the sturdy legs of mama brachio!

I don’t want to keep finding excuses to fail on my resolution, but it sucks when this was something I missed out on before and it happened to show up, finally. Sigh… ๐Ÿ˜ฉ

๐ŸŒˆ Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

I’ve been drawing a little almost every day. On Friday, I worked on another badge!

Here’s Tomoyo laying on the laundry I’m trying to put away. She can be terribly cute sometimes.

Before bedtime, I got a good amount of writing done. Well over a thousand words. So that was good.

๐ŸŒˆ Saturday & Sunday ๐ŸŒˆ

The weekend was really nice! Our partner bought these red ceramic knobs for our kitchen cabinets that he knew I’d been wanting, and we installed them together. Objectively, I can say (I know) they look bad. ๐Ÿ˜… But also, red is the accent color all over our kitchen. So, subjectively, I love it. Christopher was about as horrified as we expected he would be.

We had pizza for dinner on Saturday, and I also did our taxes on this day. It was nice to get that off my back.

After a few missed Project Nights, I did a little bit of scrapbooking on Sunday afternoon, and completed two new pages, a Jurassic World one (themed after my new Pyroraptor friend) and a Sesame Street one. Here they are in progress…

And all finished!

On Sunday morning I finally finished reading Stephen King’s “It”. This was a big deal to me, because “It” is the longest book I have ever read (that wasn’t a compilation of multiple books). It never, ever bored me for a minute. I’m going to read a comic collection next, before tackling another “real” book.

I’ll end this post with this GIF of Rosie hiding in the Kallax:

She is very sneaky.

Week 7 Summary: Valentine’s Day And More ๐Ÿ’˜

Happy Sunday, friends! Here I am with another weekly summary. So far, I still haven’t been able to recover my determination for all my yearly resolutions. It’s very frustrating when life gets in the way of them, even if it’s fun things that get in the way, but I haven’t completely fallen of the wagon. Anyway, let me tell you about our Valentine’s week!

๐ŸŒˆ Monday & Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

Not much to say about Monday –I spent it getting everything ready for Valentine’s Day, which was Tuesday. Tuesday morning I gave Christopher his present. I wish I’d taken a picture of how I set it all up –the canvas all wrapped up, his bunny next to it, the card and the chocolates. It was there for him to find when he came down to breakfast. But, I can at least show you the drawing I printed on canvas for him:

Our partner ate his Valentine brigadeiros throughout the day. Around noon he took me to Best Buy to pick up some pretty Razer RGB headphones he bought me as a surprise, but they ended up being the wrong ones, so we returned them and ordered different ones later. We got lunch while we were out and it was still a really nice outing, especially since I’d still been feeling pretty low from the week before.

In the evening I went to see my mom, but before leaving, I left his card on his nightstand, and Christopher gave me mine. ๐Ÿฅฐ It was actually one of the nicest cards he ever gave me.

When I got there, my mom had a whole fondue spread prepared!

Then we played the new chutes and ladders game. It was really fun and reminded me of playing it with my grandma when I was little!

I gave my mom a card, some chocolates, and a little potted orchid. She had a card for me too!

This was actually a really fun evening. It cheered me up.

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

On Wednesday morning, we had mate as usual. E.T. had some, too!

And Sweeney enjoyed some cat grinder time:

We found out that E.T. can cross his fingers! Doesn’t this snack spread look nice…

Also, man, it’s so weird but E.T. has always reminded me of my dad. Even when I was a toddler, he was really old and wrinkled. My child brain always thought they looked similar, and I know I even said so… poor dad. ๐Ÿ˜…

Also isn’t this Daniel Tiger juice cap super cute?

With Shampoo gone, Sweeney has gotten more and more affectionate with my mom…

Don’t mind his swishy tail at times, Sweeney is a bit of an oddball. He was really happy, purring intensely.

This was a really enjoyable visit. I was home with enough time to do a bunch of chores which is always good.

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday ๐ŸŒˆ

I was very busy most of this day, but here’s a photo of Christopher’s (slightly) late Valentine’s Day present!

Always thrilled to get Godiva, I’d be surprised if they last me a week, haha. The Santa chocolates were an extra sorta freebie. ๐ŸŽ…

๐ŸŒˆ Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

On this weekend, Christopher’s Grandma and my mom-in-law came to visit. They brought the little ceramics we painted on our last visit. I think they turned out adorable!

Friday night was really special. For no particular reason other than family visiting, we all went to a nice, fancy restaurant, “Jaya at the Setai”. It was a very glamorous place! There was a huge pool in the middle. Not a swimming pool, I mean a decorative pool:

Here’s Christopher and Grandma…

I had a Fig Old Fashioned. It was my first time drinking whiskey. I LOVED this thing! The cinnamon stick had been burned just a little. It smelled so good.

It had an odd menu –some Thai stuff, some Indian, some Japanese. At first glance, I struggled to find something I thought I’d enjoy. But everything I ate was an amazing experience, it didn’t feel like simply “eating dinner”. I think it might be my favorite fancy restaurant that I’ve ever eaten at!

There was a colorful gallery attached to the hotel/restaurant. While a lot of the stuff was cute (and I love anything with Harvey characters) the idea of rich-ass people buying stuff with these moneyed characters and even Bitcoin symbols is SO cringy to me, haha. ๐Ÿ˜… But it made for some fun photos:

When we got home, we saw this pretty beetle hanging on our door:

I’ve gotten to a point with my manuscript where I desperately need guidance of a sort that many, many Google searches have proven unhelpful with. I tried to use my old Nook e-reader to just get free e-book versions with my accumulated credits, but it was sticky and gross (the material that it is made of degraded horrible with age) so I bit the bullet and got some manuals. They are very useful and are being pivotal in preventing a block I can’t get past at a key moment in the book:

๐ŸŒˆ Saturday ๐ŸŒˆ

To start this day, here is a cute photo of Kotoko napping outside in the late morning…

We had Mod Pizza for lunch!

After that, everyone went inside JOANN to find a frame for the Asuka puzzle that was recently put together. I stayed in the car to avoid temptations, and our partner surprised me with a Blue lollipop holder when they came back!

Later, I spent some time drawing for myself and reading about mapmaking. I spent time outside with our partner doing these things. The weather was mild and it was a highlight of my weekend for sure. Kotoko even kept me company after he left:

Later in the day we went out to buy coals for our partner’s hookah, and he treated me to a geode which you could hammer open. I didn’t actually know what it would be like inside, so it was a magical experience for me. And it looks like a perfect little dinosaur egg!

In the evening, after dinner, we watched the work-in-progress version of Beauty And The Beast on Laserdisc.

It was a really fun experience!

๐ŸŒˆ Sunday ๐ŸŒˆ

Grandma and my mom-in-law went home on this day, but first we went to have breakfast together:

It was the first time I really didn’t like my food at The Village Tavern. The potatoes were undercooked, and the crab cakes were really fishy. But the little muffin was delicious.

Now I have to tell you about a definite conscious decision to make an exception to my no-new-toys rule –one I would and will do again if another release like this happens. Outside of the Colossal line, my most favorite Jurassic toy line is their Imaginext toys, and within them, the SUPER cheap, super sturdy, XL dinos.

These are released rarely. It’s been such a long time since the last one. Well, they decided to come out with a rainbow chicken I mean pyroraptor. I was not going to pass it up, especially not under $10! I finally opened the box after family left:

I love the art on these boxes and had to save it for future scrapbooking!

You can see next to my hand what a sizable boy it is, and so colorful and cute. I was over the moon when it came in. A colorful highlight to my week! Absolutely no regrets about this one.

I’m gonna call them Salsa, or maybe Fiesta. ๐Ÿค” I still haven’t decided.

Anyway, that’s all for this week! Also I want to say, if you are reading this on your email, MANY times I edit mistakes immediately after posting, but you’ll always see just the first version in your email, I think… sorry about that. You’re generally better off reading posts directly on the site.

Have a great week, everyone!

Week 6 Summary: Kind Of A “Blah” One ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™€๏ธ

So this week was very blah. Even though all the dates will be correct, I am, in fact, writing this entry almost three weeks late. I’ve been low, keeping my resolutions has been a struggle and I’ve failed often. But hey, it’s only February, every week brings little triumphs and stumbles. All I can do is keep going, right?

๐ŸŒˆ Monday ๐ŸŒˆ

This was an unproductive day. I was tired, in a low mood (as was Christopher) and I wasn’t able to get any writing done. But I got a new board game to play with my mom (a remake of the 70’s version of Chutes & Ladders) which arrived on this day.

I also added three new goals to my 2023 resolutions. I firmly believe all are achievable, in spite of less than ideal weeks like this one. A lot of this may be put on pause or adjusted if and when I find a full or part time job, but for now, I want to add them. They are as follows:

๐ŸŒˆ Watch One VHS Tape Per Month
๐ŸŒˆ Catalog All My Books Into LibraryThing
๐ŸŒˆ Play Every Unplayed Board Game In Our Shelves At Least Twice

After dinner, I baked some cookies to cheer us all up:

๐ŸŒˆ Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

On this day I went to Publix. I got Valentine’s cards and chocolates for everyone, as well as wrapping for Christopher’s Valentine’s Day present, and ingredients for the present I’m making for our partner (brigadeiros). I scanned the scrapbook pages I’ve made so far and added them to the Resolutions page, but you can see them here as well:

I’m going to make a cover page for my scrapbook next.

On this day I also received this lovely Halloween themed surprise from TheWanderingShepherd on FA! Thank you, Shep!

I watched more of 3000 Leagues In Search Of Mother while drawing the February Patreon rewards…

For lunch I had a turkey wrap and some veggie chips…

Later in the day, this guy came. He’s one of my favorite dinosaur plushies ever! Paralophosaurus are one of my favorite dinosaurs.

I’ve yet to think of a name… I got him with a gift card so I am not counting him against my goal for the year.

For dinner, we had handmade salmon burgers, they were great:

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

It being Wednesday, I zoomed with my mom as usual. Christopher didn’t feel well, so he stayed home. I did chores all day, and for dinner, made a chicken salad:

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday ๐ŸŒˆ

On this day I decided to finally make a Mastodon account. So, if you want, you can follow me here. Following a friend’s advice I’ve decided not to limit myself so much on social media, for the sake of my livelihood. So, my art account is back on Instagram too, and I made a Retrospring to connect with my commissioners as well.

I had an egg, radish and cheese sandwich for lunch, on french bread. It was really good!

During date night, I built this little pirate ride:

For dinner, we had pizza!

After I made the bed, I took this photo of Grover because he’d ended up doing a floppy fall on top of the blanket that made him look really playful:

Grover has become my permanent sleep buddy so he always wears his PJs. He’s slept with me for well over a year now, longer than any other plushie.

๐ŸŒˆ Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

This was another very blah day. I can’t remember what happened on this day, I’m sorry. But I did discover that popcorn is a really nice low-calorie snack. ๐Ÿฟ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™€๏ธ

๐ŸŒˆ Saturday & Sunday ๐ŸŒˆ

We didn’t do anything special this weekend but it was a busy one. Saturday morning, while our partner still slept, Christopher and I hung out together and watched Kotoko walk all over his desk, very rare for this old lady to do. He thought it was hilarious when we showed him the pictures.

Throughout the weekend, we worked hard to clean the porch, mow the lawn, and just tidy things up. As a little reward for working hard, our partner took me out to dinner to Five Guys, and then to have frozen yogurt at Menchie’s. Both were such wonderful treats!

I badly wished Christopher had joined us but he was neither hungry nor did he feel up to going out. But I sent him this picture of Asuka that I saw on the doodle board at the restaurant: