So, my blog has been a bit abandoned… 👉👈💧 I’m so sorry about that. I also seem to be becoming more and more of a hermit. I am sorry about that, too.
There’s been a bunch of reasons. I’ve been reading a lot (and I do mean a LOT), been kind of busy deep inside my own head, perhaps having not exactly a mid-life crisis as much as a mid-life reassessment, plus preparing for upcoming trips, and then going on them.
Let’s start with the Alaska cruise: it was amazing. When it comes to the trip’s details, this time, unlike last time, I’m making an effort to blog more about it.
To make it easier, I opted not to decorate my photos with purikura this time around, because I think that wanting to do that and not having time to do it was the main reason I didn’t properly blog about the Alaska trip last year. So, I apologize if things are a little less colorful on this post.
With that said, this will be a very long and extremely image-intensive post. So I’m posting it under a cut.
Another week down! This one went really fast. I’ve continued to write, read, and play video games, as well as make commission progress. Slowly, the small things that make my life worth living are taking more and more of my time.
Podcasts and music instead of YouTube. More gaming and reading instead of mindless doom-scrolling. Getting acquainted with my characters again. My stress levels decrease, and certain parts of my brain, like rusty machinery that’s been freshly oiled, shed more and more gunk and move more smoothly and fast with every passing day.
Every day I do fail in one of my resolutions in some small way. Most often, weight goals and hydration goals. But the failures don’t discourage me at all, because every day I still do what makes me really happy. I wish I hadn’t put simple pleasures off for so long… anyway, I’m trying to make up for it now.
🌈 Monday 🌈
On this day I received the curtain rod I’d ordered, and was able to hang the Grogu curtains I got for Christmas! I love how they complete my studio’s look:
My studio looks a bit like a “hidden picture” puzzle image. 😅 There is a lot going on. But I love it.
Today was a bit of a lazy day, but I did all my chores and worked on art. I took time to game and relax with Kalamata in the afternoon.
🌈 Tuesday 🌈
Tuesday means Project Night! But before that, I had to go to the gynecologist to get my pap. This time, it didn’t hurt at all. I really like this doctor, I was so relieved when it was over, though.
Normally, I would walk back, and get myself a nice treat (stickers, a small toy and maybe a snack) after an appointment I had been dreading so much. But I was determined to stay good to my resolution, so I called an Uber to go home.
My driver was friendly and funny, and gave lots of colorful conversation during the ride. He told me about his dog, and said he’d show her to me. I assumed he had a photo or something, and he’d pull it out when we got to my house –but instead, he picked up the doggy (named Chica) right from the front seat!
She was so quiet, curled up in her little bed, I never even knew she was there! It really surprised me. She was very cute, but seemed rather suspicious of me.
After I got home, I cleaned the snail tank. Here are two of my snabies, soaking happily…
For his project night, Christopher worked on his Asuka puzzle that my mom got him many Christmases ago. It’s a REALLY hard 1,000 piece puzzle!
My project night consisted of a continuation of last week’s coloring. This was my setup! I listened to 90’s Disney music while coloring.
It’s worth noting that this is not an activity I did as a child. Any creative endeavor, and even a lot of my play, had to involve some sort of way of gaining inspiration towards my “serious” projects like my book, which I was working on as early as age 12. Coloring cartoon characters with crayons is something kid me would have seen as a frivolous waste of valuable time. So, allowing myself to enjoy an activity such as this today, is important to me.
This time, I had Scout as a companion! And I had a chocolate soy milk for my snack.
I finished my Christmas coloring of Sister Bear! Here it is underway…
…and finished + laminated! Still needs the last stage of decorating with stickers. But that’s the first page of the year down –one out of twelve to complete my resolution!
…and I’m already working on the next one!
At bedtime, I took a picture of my sleeping pal, Grover, with the book I am currently reading. But for some reason, Grover seems to have a creepy, bedroom-eyes demeanor in the picture… 😅
On that note, this book (Corazón) is way more depressing and guilt-trippy than I remembered. Patriotic to a gagging degree (such as a father telling his son “if you wouldn’t die for our country I couldn’t love you) and, I don’t know, every time the child narrator slightly screws up he has his father/mother/sister leave letters in his diary in which, though they profess their love for him, they basically scold him to the ground. The book feels a big wagging, scolding finger at times.
If you know me, you know I am less liable to put today’s morals upon a long-ago creation. But even so, I was a bit put off by the descriptions of native people (some of my original country of birth in the “From The Apennines To The Andes” short story) and most of all by the high degree of ableism by today’s standards.
But I try to remember that, in fact, this book went a long way to try to bring attention to the suffering of disabled people, to the point that it takes many pages and scenes throughout the book, and points out many kinds of disabilities in detail –something unusual for a children’s book written in the 1800’s. Unfortunately, this is done by encouraging an extreme degree of pity towards differently-abled folk, and to value them based on how they can be still incorporated into society to “contribute in the same way as others” so to speak. 🙄
So yeah, that felt a bit icky to read, but context and time period is of great importance. It is very obvious the writer’s heart was in a good place and he felt a painful degree of sympathy and compassion for disabled people he saw all around him –above all, children. It’s interesting how something written with the best of intentions then, would surely get this man “canceled” now.
This is still a work of literature worth remaining in print and allowing children to read, with proper guidance. But I imagine as our society “progresses”, works like this will be further banned or modified to fit current societal standards. This is part of why I collect antique and vintage children’s books.
🌈 Wednesday 🌈
This was a pretty normal Wednesday! Though, I could already feel PMS doing its usual number on me. Hopefully it won’t be too bad this month.
I cleaned the snail tank early in the day. They got a special treat today:
One more photo –enjoying some cuttlebone:
Partner and I went to Tree Tops Park on this day, and I’ve got pics and video to share! But first, sleepy snail conga line:
The weather was cool and mild, a rare treat in Florida. We got to see a few critters on this outing. First there was this big raccoon VERY high up a large tree, digging fiercely in a clump of one of those parasitic air plants. Every once in a while, it would stare at us intently, but it was clearly very focused on whatever it was doing.
We also saw tortoises. People feed them (something you shouldn’t do) so they readily come when they hear someone.
Seeing the little heads pop out of the water and stare at us, I’m overcome with emotion. It reminded me of the bear staring into my eyes at the zoo, which had me actually crying. There is something about the connection when an animal notices you, stares deep into you –the reason (even as simple as “do you have food or are you food?”) doesn’t matter– that is so primordial, holy even, if I still believed in such things. I can’t explain it very well, but it gives me a rush of intense joy tinged with sadness, and it can easily bring me to tears. I love animals so very much.
Another little burst of joy was coming across a burrowing owl.
It gave me a squint.
“Nyeeh!”
I’d snuck Bangers into my backpack, and our partner, who usually doesn’t have patience for this sort of nonsense, waited while I took some pics. Bangers stood out really nicely among the greenery, and even found some berries!
🌈 Thursday 🌈
I was really excited for today, both to resume working on my current LEGO set, and to have ice cream and pizza for dinner. But date night was sort of canceled. Christopher had been unwell for days (his usual back pain) and working on his puzzle for a few days exacerbated it. So, today, he couldn’t play LEGO, but his puzzle looks amazing. I wish I’d taken a photo, because it’s over halfway done now.
I spent a lot of the day working on art and binging The Book Of Boba Fett, and after the promised pizza and ice cream, our partner went back to some important due work and I hung out with Christopher while leveling my Pokémon Violet team. I reached pretty close to end-game!
🌈 Friday 🌈
Christopher stayed home today. He still didn’t feel great. Our partner worked late, into the early hours of the morning. I spent all day doing housework and packing to leave for my mom-in-law’s in the evening.
Earlier in the day, I had Christopher download an anime from the 70s for me, by the same studio that did Heidi. It is called “3000 Leagues In Search Of Mother”, and is an extended adaptation of the short story “From The Apennines To The Andes” that appears in the old children’s novel I’m currently reading (Corazón: Diario de un Niño). In the original book, this story is one of the monthly stories that Enrique reads in school. It is, however, the longest short story in the book. I’m looking forward to watching the anime as soon as I finish The Book Of Boba Fett.
In the early evening we were off to Sebastian! When we got there, we had nachos for dinner. Then Grandma brought out some chocolate cupcakes she made.
They had Tom Kitten picks! Good ol’ Grandma. She knows what I like.
I slept in an inflatable mattress which is never very comfortable for me. I’d rather sleep with Christopher if he didn’t snore, especially because it was so cold, and it would have been nice to cuddle. The cool thing is that the mattress was put in the same room as our partner’s and it’s just so nice that it is such a non-issue for us to sleep together in the same room, since it was the most convenient. Even with Grandma there, no one bats an eye and is so accepting of the three of us and “our thing”.
Anyway! I still made it colorful and cozy:
I’d brought Beta with me, and “It” to read. Scary books aren’t scary when you’re sleeping with a raptor for comfort!
I even had my Jurassic World jammies so it was very much a mood.
🌈 Saturday 🌈
On Saturday we went on a long car ride, to Okeechobee. My mom-in-law showed me some old haunts where she used to live with my sis-in-law (but, I think, not Christopher). It was very interesting and reminded me of some areas in Belén de Escobar, the area of Argentina I last lived in before coming to the US.
For breakfast, we had really crispy bacon (my favorite) eggs, and spicy sausage gravy on biscuits.
At one point I couldn’t find my phone, then I realized our partner had hidden it from me. He took some funny pictures as I pounced on him to give it back…
Then we were off to Okeechobee!
🌳🐮 Okeechobee 🐮🌳
On the way to Okeechobee, we saw all kinds of animals. Cows, horses, wild hogs, even ostriches in an ostrich farm! We went to a flea market, but there wasn’t much to see. It was also freezing cold!
Finally, we made it to my mom-in-law’s old “homestead” house. They put so much effort into this house and raised dozens of animals. My mom-in-law showed us the very long fence she put up by hand, all by herself, still standing. They dug the pond themselves.
But the house now lays in ruin, abandoned after it was sold. It was honestly a heartbreaking sight.
It looked so spooky, and I really wanted to go into the house to explore. But you never know what you’ll find. I was scared that we even drove past the gate, because in this country, and in particular in this state, you just never know who’s gonna shoot you for trespassing into their property. 🙃
We later went to another house where they’d lived, and my sis-in-law’s name, which she’s written into the country when she was just a little girl, was still there, which was very poignant.
Then, after a Wawa and Dunkin’ Donuts stop, we went back to my mom-in-law’s house in Sebastian. I complained a lot because my legs really hurt and it was such a long ride. But eventually we were in Sebastian again. Overall, I had a lot of fun.
🧩😴 A Relaxing Evening 😴🧩
After we got back, we were exhausted. Christopher and I lay down (me to play Pokémon, him to nap with his bunny, Ribbon) while my mom-in-law cooked hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner.
The meal after Saturday’s activity (if it’s home cooked –usually something on the grill) is often the highlight of a visit for me. Not gonna lie, Christopher and I are pretty lazy, so we are often resting while family cooks dinner around us. It is such a comforting, happy feeling, hearing the kitchen noises and smells, our feet usually intermingled under a blanket, him gently snoring while I draw, read or game. It feels like a moment to treasure, of hard-to-come-by complete peace.
After dinner, we played a game called Spoons, which was really fun and a little hectic. Then, I played Pokémon some more while the rest of the family played Crowns and eventually moved to help Christopher finish his very hard 1,000 Asuka puzzle. And finish it they did, at like 1:00am!
I was in bed before that, with a happy achievement of my own:
I’m still going to do a bit of end-game content, but I was really happy to get the first finished game of 2023 under my belt!
🌈 Sunday 🌈
On Sunday, after breakfast, we went to a pottery studio, then to lunch at Casa Amigos, a Mexican restaurant that served MASSIVE portions. After that, we walked around the dead mall that the restaurant is attached to. But let me tell you about the pottery studio first, which was called “The Painted Frog”. This place is where my mom-in-law painted the cute little snail she gave me for Christmas.
🎨🐸 The Painted Frog 🐸🎨
The first step was to pick our pieces. Christopher picked a turtle, our partner, a shot glass, and I picked a gator, because I love them so much and because our partner and I have had a few gator-related (mis?)adventures.
All the colors you see become much more intense and sometimes much darker than you see here. Even though it looks pastel, the colors I picked should turn out very bright. I used different shades of green for the base, including mottling and spattering here and there, with a sponge and with a toothbrush. To make it more “me”, I dotted it all over with red, blue and yellow dots:
I was afraid to mess up when doing his eyes, but I think it looks okay!
Christopher’s turned out really cute, too:
Our partner seemed a real expert at this in spite of never doing it before:
Here are Christopher’s and mine together:
They had a section of unclaimed, already fired and glazed pieces. You could buy any of them for just one dollar, and I couldn’t resist this little guy:
Here you can see them together –a piece before being glazed and fired, with one that has been. I believe my gator’s color is the same as the one in the finished piece, if not very close. So, as you can see, the end result is very different.
Ours should be ready in about a week. I hope they survive the process… they don’t always. Overall, I really loved this experience, and there’s a few similar places in our area, so I’d like to go to others too.
🍃🏬 Visiting A Dying Mall 🏬🍃
This used to be a lively mall. My sis-in-law’s first job was at its movie theater. Now half of it is taken up by a “chain” church and its many related storefronts/offices, from a coffee shop, to a fitness center, including a Sunday school, a store of religious stuff such as books, clothing and knick-knacks, and even a TV station.
Most areas of the mall though, were eerily empty… very liminal.
The H.A.L.O. No-Kill Rescue is still there. There was a cat at the front desk!
And many, many cute kittens…
Here you can see some video of them playing:
I was fascinated by the many old abandoned rides. Most were in working condition, but you never really see kids riding these anymore. Here’s a little carousel…
And a shiny steam locomotive!
This carousel, though out of service, was the most interesting. It was Jungle Book themed, and featured Bagheera, Kaa, an elephant (Hathi? doubt it… lol).
…and, err… Simba?? Who knows.
It also had Mowgli, but I really didn’t like how he looked so I didn’t take a photo.
They had Jay Jay The Jetplane, too. Boy, this brings back memories!
A cute little bear was riding this truck:
We passed by an eclectic little game store, where Christopher treated me to this Ewoks VHS tape. This reminds me, I need to add a VHS-watching resolution goal to my 2023 list.
After we were home, and all unpacked, I was able to look at Natasha, who arrived over the weekend from Latvia, the country of my grandparents. Her box looked a lot like other Spanish doll boxes:
She is truly lovely! Not too big and not too small. Part of me wishes she was a little bigger, but this way she’s easier to take places with me.
Her face is as sweet as the pictures!
I also loved that her cloth body is skin-toned, rather than white cloth.
Later, in bed, I went through our Ring front door camera. We get many animal visitors so I like to look through all the recorded motion before I fall asleep. I caught a very funny moment when one of the local squirrel decided to engage in some wild acrobatics, much of the annoyance of the birds!
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to share for this week. I think my proudest accomplishment this week is getting almost 4,000 words down on my book. I hope you all had a wonderful one! I’ll see you here again next Sunday with another weekly summary. 🥰
Today Mwako and I stayed home! It was a more relaxing sort of day. After I finished all my chores, we watched cartoons, colored, and made bead necklaces. I also played some Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX while Mwako took a short nap, and then he watched me play for a little while. Below are some photos I took!
🌈 Coloring ‘n Cartoons 🌈
Cartoons and coloring was our first activity! We watched Courage The Cowardly Dog, and Mwako colored giant Bluey coloring pages while I worked on (finally!) finishing my squirrel page:
Totodile helped!!
All done! This page took me forever. Now I have to laminate it.
At this point Mwako laid down for his nap. I played Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX, and when he woke up again, he watched me play for a while. Then I did more chores and brought down all we needed to make stuffie bead necklaces!
🌈 Making New Name Necklaces! 🌈
I was overdue to make necklaces for Totodile, Beta, Ludwig, Soufflé, my pyroraptor Fajita, and my incoming polar bear, Igloo. I didn’t manage to finish them all, but I finished a few.
We had juice boxes and watched Franklin while having our fun with beads. Franklin is one of my all-time favorite “kiddy time” shows. Nothing makes me feel so small as watching this cartoon. It is so very lovingly done, and watching it on out giant CRT is a huge treat.
I know this CRT is on the way out, having occasional issues, and I have to say that now that the game room is looking so nice and neat, I really don’t want that to happen. 😞 I feel like I’d rather invest a little to keep it going longer. It doesn’t have the best picture, but it has that special something, particularly in this room.
Here is Mwako’s puppy, Patch, with his awesome new necklace!
And here he is showing off the page that he helped Mwako color:
For dinner I made panko-crusted chicken breast which turned out really good. I’ve started to add a little milk in my egg mixture for breading and the result is amazing. I went to bed fairly caught up with my chores.
Mwako goes home tomorrow, but tomorrow is date night. So it’ll be a day of chores and then spending time with my partners. By Friday I’ll be back to commission work!
I think today was my most favorite day of Mwako’s visit! It was definitely our most “kiddy” day. We went to the beach and played lots later that day back at my house.
We were up very early and off to Target to get some beach toys since I didn’t have any. Mwako got me a bucket, some scoops and a saxophone playing parasaurolophus!
I wore my Wen swimsuit, which I love to pieces still, and my new Toy Story Land hat that I got during the last Orlando trip. 😁
Mwako took lots of photos of some –some candid, some I posed for. I think these might be the only photos of me at a beach ever.
There was a lot of seaweed, and I didn’t want to go into the water because it required wading past it. So Mwako basically dragged me screaming into the sea, I wish I was joking. 🤦♀️ Then I clung on to him like a barnacle, and didn’t want to go back into the beach because of wading into the seaweed again. There was SO MUCH of it.
While we played in the water, a vehicle came and swept a lot of the seaweed on the beach away (or rather, “tilled” it into the sand). So at that point we went back to play on the nice clean beach.
My large blue bucket was quite unmanageable. I wasn’t able to make a big castle with it, I guess the sand was the problem. Being full of seaweed, it easily fell apart. But I was able to make a few small structures! A tiny city of sorts.
My parasaurolophus simply stood by playing an ominous tune on his sax.
Eventually the village was done! It even had bushes for decoration. A peaceful neighborhood, for the time being.
Mwako doesn’t really like his picture taken, but he approved of me taking this one from far away. He is looking for seashells for me to decorate my houses with.
All of these beautiful beach photos were taken by Mwako.
Of course, I had to “enhance” them with stickers… 😬
Here’s a couple more he took of me:
At this point my sax-playing parasaurolophus decided it was time to give in to his dinosaur instincts and destroy the town.
Just like that the poor entire town is gone. For some reason, after this I felt very satisfied, and just sat staring out at the sea in contemplation.
…before sentencing my parasaurolophus to be drowned when the tide came in as penance for the wanton destruction:
(In the end he got lucky, we had to leave before the tide came in. He lives to destroy again!)
🐣🌈 Playtime 🌈🐣
After the beach, we went to a McDonald’s Drive-Thru and it was the perfect hour: they had Sausage Egg McMuffins AND fresh fries! I had one of the most delicious breakfasts in months. Then we got back to my place, showered, and feeling quite refreshed, began our kiddy time!
At Mwako’s suggestion, we watched The Owl House, a show I am new to. I liked it a lot! Here is Mwako’s play area with the big crayons:
Mwako colored very, very fast. One could hardly keep up with him!
I just colored one drawing, of Cookie Monster with… err… a neighbor? Cousin?
I basically finished, but want to add some more details later:
I also started on a new squirrel page:
Multiple Owl House episodes later, our wrists hurt and we needed a snack, so we headed downstairs.
🍿 Intermission 🍿
For a snack, I had coffee and a chocolate rice krispie treat! Mwako had juice and Lunchables.
🧩 Time For Games 🧩
Next was board games! We played Bluey’s Shadowlands.
The physical execution of this fame is atrocious, lol. I can’t recommend buying it. It’s a cool concept, however it is very poorly done. Materials wise, I mean. Mostly it’s the palm tree mechanism that is a problem. But the game looks nice.
Still –we had fun with it. Mwako won!
🌈 Waffle Block Fun 🌈
I love waffle blocks so much! They are my favorite type of block by far. We had so much fun with them. I made a little house! The house had windows, a path, a fence, a lawn chair, a satellite dish and two bushes.
Mwako made two things. The first was an Evil Lair Of Liony Doom (my name). I took many photos because I thought it was extremely cool.
He also made a cat carrier, with a handle and all:
Of course, we had to have the cats try it…
Elliot had regrets.
Rosie’s opinion was similar:
At this point Christopher was getting home so we put the toys away, and once he arrived, we went to our anticipated ramen dinner.
🍜 Hi-Pot Dinner 🍜
Hi-Pot is one of our favorite restaurants and we were happy to introduce Mwako to it. We hadn’t had it in a long time and it was as good as ever.
Since I don’t often get to go out these days, I changed all over again just to go out to dinner:
I even brought Anise along!
As I was setting the alarm when we left, I noticed the sun on the Ring camera and it looked pretty so I took a capture:
I had… OMG… I had too many eggs. Christopher gave me his egg in exchange for my meat. I also ordered a side order of egg thinking it would be one egg but it was two. It was a massive amount of delicious eggs.
Anise judged me hard.
After we got home I almost went straight to bed, just kinda crashed, I was so happy and so full. Mwako leaves tomorrow… I will miss him lots. And I’ll back to work, work work! 😫
I worked really hard today. Got a massive amount of commission progress underway! I was able to finish all my chores and artwork in time for Isolation Storytime. After having so much fun during my first event I was very excited for today’s.
Already I had my area all prepped in the afternoon! This time I got ready in the library. I think this will be my place for it going forward.
And here’s my little table for coloring with both of my fancy sharpeners and aaaall of my crayon boxes! Though not all are visible here I suppose… 🤔 My big pink case was still in the other room.
Bluey helped me pick my outfit for the evening! I chose one of my own designs that I created for ODU, the Dino Nuggies pattern!
It was very fitting given my dinner…
Tonight was the night I picked to open all of my Bluey toys at once! So I had those in that area as well.
I had fun opening and posing them while listening to stories.
My favorite parts were the afterparty (well, the little bit I stayed for… I was tired) and the reading of Danger Moose and Bunny Boy… and Mavis’ singing “Imagine”. I’m really happy that I have this to look forward to every week. I did some more crayoning too!
I hope to finish it this weekend, so I can start another, but it’s also really important that I get all commissions to the line art stage before Monday. I want all the overdue work to be done before next weekend, and so far, I’m doing well.
I’m not sure if I’ll attend the next Iso Storytime because next Friday is the Evangelion release… but I’ll definitely attend the Friday after that!
Anyway… it’s sooo late… well past my bedtime. Goodnight, everyone…
Was stuck at Christopher’s office for a few hours yesterday so I worked on this! 🐰 🥬 🐤 ☀️ 💕
Almost forgot to post this photo that I took during my latest playdate with my friend of their super cute unicorn, Glitter! We made a bead and charm necklace for her. Didn’t get to go to the pool that night, but we still had a lot of fun.
There’s a lot of work ahead of me leading up to Megaplex, so I’m not sure if there’ll be more playdates until then… 😭 here’s hoping I can get a good bit of my queue completed this week. But at least there’s my birthday. Hoping to celebrate that with a fancy tea on Saturday! 💕🌈✨
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