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Cats, 🐿️ My Life 🐿️, My Dolls, My Hug, Snails, Weekly Summary

Week 21 Summary: An Emptying Store And A Visit To Mom 🧉🥰

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Wow. I blinked and this week was over and done! It actually started pretty well, but my mood tanked massively by the end, for a variety of reasons.

I visited my mom this week which was really nice. Other than that, our store is slowly being emptied, and customers are getting more and more horrid.

I spent part of the week working on an entirely new system of blocks. I’m concerned about my retail therapy this year, and it’s not even June (well, almost) so I feel that I still have a chance to resume my “no more toy, book, or game purchases” this year. We’ll see how it goes –I’ll go into more depth about this renewed attempt in the summary

Anyhow, let me tell you about this week!

🌈 Monday 🌈

Monday was uneventful. At work, I had a salad for lunch and enjoyed it much more than I expected.

There was another cute dog to take a photo of today:

In the evening I played Diablo with our partner and then cuddled in bed with Kotoko.

It was a calm beginning to a week that would be full of up-and-downs.

🌈 Tuesday 🌈

On Tuesday I was able to draw a little. Here’s the art I completed on this day:

Just seven pieces to go!

Now I’ve got some doll-related stuff to share! Kalinka’s custom-made clothes arrived. I further customized them by adding this E.T. patch! The pink of the letters was a perfect match:

She looks so incredibly cute. I am thrilled!

Here she is with little sister Natasha. Both turned out adorable:

I had the person who made this outfit make bloomers for Camila too, because she had no undies. Incidentally, I hadn’t taken a really good photo of Camila’s outfit, so here it is:

And a bit of impropriety as she holds up her dress to show off her yellow bloomers and polka-dot stockings. 😁 There’s definitely a clownish vibe to her outfit, but I love it!

Finally, little Fiorella has been put back together. She is dry, combed, with a lovely new ribbon, and very happy!

I got to visit my mom this Tuesday! As always she had an amazing snack spread in the evening. Even though we had to have some difficult discussions about stuff in the future (mostly regarding the most sustainable way to go about her retirement and future housing) we still had a wonderful time.

There was a wonderful storm raging outside, and the thunder made Sweeney clingy and afraid. He was a lovebug for the rest of my visit!

Then it was sleepytime with Femur. I was exhausted.

🌈 Wednesday 🌈

I had a lovely day with my mom. She made torta fritas! We had that, and mate. I loved it.

Femur did too!

We watched the movie Missing, which was great. In the late afternoon, I got picked up by our partner and went home.

There, I found that the My Twinn dolly that was going to be named Emily was not in good condition in spite of the great photos, and would have to be returned. The seller sent her with a broken neck, not something I can ignore on a My TWINN doll sold for over $100. Oh well.

I still have a few more toys coming, but I’ve decided to create new blocks on my computer just like I did when I got out of control with Charlie Bears a couple of years back. At the time, this completely solved that specific issue.

So I’m going a little nuts and blocking even Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Target, and Walmart, along with basically every online toy store I could have any interest in. These are “permanent” blocks; they do not “time out” at any point, so if I need to order something for the house I would do it from Christopher’s account, and he would know.

Let me end this day with this wonderful bear graham cookie. He even has a bandana! These cookies come in Lunchables only and are much yummier than Teddy Grahams. I wish I could find them on their own!

🌈 Thursday 🌈

Waking up on Thursday morning was a struggle. I napped for an hour on the couch but it did not help my energy levels at all. Usually, it does. Maybe it didn’t help that a purring blob had melted on top of me.

But off to work it was. The day started out great. Our boss bought us ice cream and I just went through the aisles eating it and trying not to skip too much.

Somehow I got ice cream on my glasses, mouth, and hands. But it was worth it.

A bit later we got the worst kind of family/customers in the store. It happened shortly after I was done with my ice cream treat, and these were the events that took place:

  • I saw the family gather near one of the containers I mentioned in a previous post, which we call “cages” and are huge containers made of solid metal mesh, inside of which I could easily fit around five of myself. Here’s a photo for context (not our location):

The mother of the family was alternating between cooing at the cage, taking photos of it, and saying playful things like “Where did [name] go? Have you seen her?”

Her child had climbed into the “cage” (which was full to the brim of decorated Christmas stockings) and hidden herself among the merchandise. The family eventually walked away, and shortly thereafter I saw the child emerge: not a toddler, but a grown-ass eight or nine-year-old girl. As she climbed out, many stockings fell on the floor. She did not bother picking them up. She carelessly walked on them with her dirty sneakers, just as she had done over many of the ones in the cage. This henceforth will be “Older Child”.

  • Next, the family’s “Younger Child”, a girl maybe four years old, began to climb our tallest rolling ladder. The ladder had a chain that said “Employees Only”, and the parents noticed, but found the activity amusing. This ladder is dangerous, even for us, so I quickly got the manager who swiftly pulled Younger Child down (playfully) and rolled the ladder away.
  • Older Child then began pulling large baskets off tables and shelves onto the floor. The parents walked past, unbothered by this.
  • Father then decided to test some bath maths. He did this by putting them on the dirty floor, taking off his flip-flops, and standing on them with his dirty-ass bare feet. After making his decision, he left his discards on the floor.
  • I would later find an entire large bag of Easter grass destroyed inside a “cage” nearby. While I didn’t witness this firsthand, I will make an educated guess and blame Younger Child, as it happened in the same space of time and the store was mostly empty.
  • At some point, one of the children passed by a display of shell-shaped mini-lights and turned all of them on, leaving the batteries to be drained (I caught it in time).
  • As they moved on to the register, Younger Child decided to climb a glass table and play with its heavy patio umbrella. This time I said something. The potential injury to the child was too great. I asked the mother to please look after the little girl. She called to her but seemed mostly unconcerned.

HORRIBLE. FUCKING. PEOPLE!!! 😡 Zero consideration for others, or for property that isn’t theirs! I hope they step on multiple rakes and LEGO pieces. I hope they get gum in their hair. I hope a car zooms through a puddle next to them when they are walking down the sidewalk and covers them in muddy nasty water!! Ugh.

But I do hope their children don’t get hurt due to the parents’ total neglect of their safety. It’s not the kids’ fault (though I believe an older child should know better than to walk over store merchandise or climb into displays, no excuse).

That aside… the back is getting more and more empty and echoey… it’s sad and eerie all at the same time.

Then it was lunchtime! I put cilantro in my salad which made it AMAZING.

I also had a special panda “emotion” cookie from the Japanese candy box. This one was angy:

Overall this was a good workday. I went home happy.

🌈 Friday 🌈

Early in the morning, I deep-cleaned the snail tank. I think the mite issue might be resolved… again.

Look at this guy. He looks like he dropped his ice cream cone.

I’ve been getting a lot of crap at home for buying too many toys recently, so I decided to make use of this sign I found at work:

When I got to work on this day, I found that the witch had been assembled. Kinda neat.

Lunch was not as exciting as the day before but still good.

The wonderful thing about this evening was dinner: our partner worked for hours and hours to make the most wonderful ramen! Well, it was wonderful at the time.

You know, the thing about eggs –they don’t go bad right past the date. As long as they pass the float test, you can still eat them. But I wouldn’t recommend soft-boiling somewhat old eggs, even if they pass the test. You should hardboil them.

I was the only one to add eggs to my ramen and did not hardboil them. Not even close. This very purposeful decision would not end well for me the next day.

🌈 Saturday 🌈

It seemed that Saturday was going great! I was in a wonderful mood. It was a short workday, and I was happy about that, too.

Then… at 6:20 pm, everything took a DRASTIC turn. I got a horrible stomach ache, the kind that makes you sweat cold and leaves you nauseous. I was sure after a (probably unpleasant and fulminating) trip to the toilet I’d be right as rain, but this excursion failed to be “fruitful” and my pain only got worse. So in spite of only having about 30 minutes left on the clock, I had to leave work early.

The next few hours at home were not great. It took a while for things to go out of my system (it eventually did, spectacularly –thankfully I did not throw up). We had good friends visiting, which was a welcome distraction. I had some rice and Gatorade afterward to recover.

There’s not much else to say about Saturday. It kind of sucked after this happened. 🤷‍♀️

🌈 Sunday 🌈

CW: BAD BRAIN STUFF. I went through a bit of a thing at the end of this week that included some of the worst types of negative thoughts. Please do not read below if that could potentially upset you.

Before I tell you about Sunday, I want you to know that I was okay the next day, physically and emotionally. I ended the day well, and good things happened. My mood had normalized by Monday evening and I am okay again. Normally I finish the weekly summary on Mondays, but postdate them to the prior Sunday, and that is the case for this post as well.

I give this preamble because Sunday was a bad, BAD day for me, most of all emotionally.

I’ve never done well at having a full-time job. Many of my fellow artists can relate to the horrible feeling of spending most of their waking hours doing something that isn’t creating for an extended period of time. It puts me in a deeply toxic headspace and sends me into regular bouts of depression. Even if I’m told “no one likes to work” I think it doesn’t really measure up to how bad these feelings can get for me.

Right now, for a few more weeks, I am on full-time hours. On part-time hours I can more or less deal. But on full-time, I’m unable to properly look after the house and my family. The house is dirty, I can’t clean the litter boxes every day, I haven’t cooked for the guys in a week, and haven’t been able to do the grocery shopping. I am moody in the evenings and I dread waking up in the mornings.

The state of things at work hasn’t helped. I am not the only one dreading going in. But between the frustration of unfinished chores, my growing desire to visit my mom-in-law at her home (something I haven’t done since March because I work weekends), feeling generally unwell, having so many small joys gone by the wayside (I haven’t been able to exercise, game, write, scrapbook, or anything else that is just “for me” in a while) and a maddening desire to draw above all else, a feeling that so many hours and days of not drawing amount to a wasted existence for me, I went into a small bout of intense depression.

And it was really bad. It was “fantasizing about having a seizure so I wouldn’t have to go to work” bad. It was “I am so unhappy that I wish I just wouldn’t wake up the next morning” bad. While I am a person who tends to work in hyperbolics whenever emotions are high, I generally make an exception for anything ridiculous such as wishing for my health to be affected or wishing to not be alive.

But no matter how nonsensical or entitled our feelings can be, no matter how aware we are of the need to put things into perspective, we can’t really help our feelings. We feel what we feel. For me, the awareness of these things only serves to make me feel guilty about my misery, but it certainly doesn’t help it go away.

So all these feelings were swirling in my head on Sunday and I was in some level of turmoil. I’d been unsure as to whether even go in to work, not just because I really REALLY didn’t want to, but because I still felt physically unwell. I still had a remnant of stomach pain and the fear of it becoming fulminating again. But I also felt like I really was able to work, so I should go, and I did. I had never called out and did not want a first time.

Well, I had a bit of an argument with Christopher right as he dropped me off. Then I realized I’d left my phone at home –this after being told that both he and our partner would likely be at a BBQ and I’d have to take an Uber home. This was further exacerbated by my being unable to remember either of their phone numbers while at work (eventually I did remember his). My mild malaise seemed to get so much worse, and I was so emotionally fucked and on the verge of tears, that the neverending day ahead of me (another six hours still) suddenly became absolutely unmanageable.

Any pretense of trying to make it through dissipated when Christopher unexpectedly showed up with my phone and offered to wait for me in the car while I talked to my manager if I wanted to go home. This lifeline was far too tempting when I was still about to completely lose my marbles, so I took it.

My manager reassured me that plenty of employees were on the floor, and they would manage just fine. I should go if I needed to. But when I was leaving and asked another manager to look at my bag (something all employees have to do before they go) I basically got a dressing-down: I shouldn’t have come in at all, I should have called out, other employees actually want the hours. Even though I told him I was leaving because I was feeling too queasy to stay, he kept holding me back, shaming me for leaving, until he finally looked at my bag and I could walk away.

This really upset me, for two reasons: the first is that this guy is one of the managers but he is not my boss. The second is that other than this blip (a half hour early the day before and leaving on this particular day) I’ve been a pretty stellar employee. I’ve been used as a good example for others and repeatedly overheard how fast I am, both with projects on the floor and especially at the register, and about the good way I have with customers.

I don’t complain about any jobs and do them with a smile. I had not called out until this weekend or had any issues whatsoever. I worked weekends without complaint in spite of the unhappiness it caused me. So, especially after another manager had given me the okay to go, and even encouraged me to do so, this was very upsetting –not that I betrayed those feelings at the time.

But I left in a terrible mood, even crying a bit in the car. I kept thinking about my commission “Years of Plenty”, and feeling like I would do anything to go back to that happy time (but I won’t take commissions again: I truly feel like the clientele is no longer there). I felt so hopeless.

And all of the feelings I mentioned at the start of this specific day’s summary intensified by 1000%, even though I went home.

I did some chores but otherwise felt unable to concentrate on anything that could bring me joy, so I did something stupid again: I remade my Tumblr account. Guess how well that went?

I wanted to try Tumblr again for two reasons. One is that, elsewhere, my community is disappearing. The websites I used to interact with my peers are being abandoned or collapsing. I know a few of my friends returned to Tumblr and said it’s not like it used to be. But I refused to believe it, dug in my heels, and said I would never ever return to Tumblr.

Well, over time I began to wonder if I was being unreasonable. A friend of mine who used to get death threats there went back and seems happy there. So I thought maybe I should try again. I created a page and loved how it looked. I began to look up the names of some friends so I could follow them, and that’s when things began to go downhill.

In no time I found call-outs and “bewares” full of fabrications and misinformation about people I love. Some of them were squeaky-clean type friends, the sort you could only “cancel” if you made up total lies. It didn’t matter that I found 2-3 posts debunking those lies because the people who made the call-outs don’t care. They just want to hurt others. These people would like hurting me, too, and I know they would, the moment any of my art got even a little traction.

So I deleted it all, only about three hours of effort, but gone nonetheless.

Then, after work, I felt upset that I let fear of a few potential inconsequential bullies rule over me, and I remade it all over again (faster this time).

And then I saw more, including death threats to my friends, and deleted it… again. And I didn’t remake it a third time.

I think Tumblr is actually worse now than when I was there years ago. The level of bullying there is so scary to me. If I had to be there I would be constantly stressed, I don’t know how anyone does it. Well… I tried.

Though I would end this day feeling depressed and defeated, things would pick up the next day. I guess you’ll see that in the next weekly summary. Sorry to end this one here, it’s just how the day ended, but it would improve and I’ll be sure to tell you about it by next Sunday.

Until then –have a great week, everyone!

Card & Board Games, Cats, Charlie Bears, Date Night, Dungeon Crawlers, 🐿️ My Life 🐿️, LEGO, My Dinos, My Dolls, My Hug, Novels, Other Toys, Selfies, Snails, Trips And Outings, Weekly Summary

Week 14 Summary: Jury Duty And Seeing Mom 🥰

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This was an eventful week! I had jury duty for the first time in my life, and finally got to visit mom again. I started playing a new video game with our partner, a new doll and book came in, got to have lunch with my old boss, finished a few more commissions, and was finally able to play LEGO for date night again. Let’s get to it!

🌈 Monday 🌈

On Monday I was up by 6:00am, because we had to leave by 7:00am so I could be at the courthouse on time for my first jury duty ever. Normally, I would be super excited. As a still kinda fresh citizen (just two years) I’ve long wanted to be called. But now that I have a new job, it really complicated everything.

For this week, I had to call out on Monday to be there, and even though I got enough days off to see my mom without even asking for them, if I was selected for a trial all that might not happen. Plus, if I couldn’t get rides for every day, Uber would add up a lot. So I was concerned.

Anyway, that didn’t completely remove my excitement. The waiting room was very large and comfortable, plus, there was a lounge for jurors. We were shown a video first explaining the process.

It was a “hurry up and wait” situation until you got called for a jury pool. Sometimes you also had to fill out a questionnaire if the judge requested it. I waited a couple of hours before I was called, and in the meantime had cookies, coffee and read a little more.

I was finally called, filled out a questionnaire, waited a little longer, and then we all walked a whoooole lot, took an elevator to the 16th floor, and lined up to wait outside of the courtroom.

I should mention that the building was huge and beautiful. The view from up there was honestly amazing.

It was a civil case, not a criminal case —a lawsuit between a couple of homeowners and Citizens Insurance. As soon as that name was said I knew I would be excused. We are insured by (and feel great antipathy towards) Citizens. So I definitely have heavy bias. It was a good thing too because the trial would have lasted until Thursday.

Everyone had to talk to the judge, and we passed a microphone down the line. That was a little nerve wracking; my heart was pounding out of my chest by the time it was my turn. But the judge was really nice and kept cracking jokes with everyone.

I told him how I’d been excited to be called. He pointed to the door and said there was mental health counseling available if I needed it, which made everyone laugh (people aren’t usually excited to be jurors). But later, privately, he thanked me for my enthusiasm.

Once I began to explain my feelings toward Citizens he had me stop because it would taint the rest of the jury pool. So when everyone went to lunch, the judge had a few people stay behind and called them one by one to the bench, where the lawyers also were.

A few people were excused due to biases; one woman due to poor English language skills. When I explained my own bias, the judge asked me if I would ignore the law because of my bias if it was clear that Citizens wasn’t in the wrong. I said that I wouldn’t, but that I couldn’t say the same if it came down to a grey area, which is very true. That was enough for him and both sets of lawyers and I was excused for that trial.

I thought I might get picked for another pool, but when I got back to the selection room, they sent me home. So now I am done for at least a year. Even though I wasn’t selected it was still an interesting experience.

After that I went for a walk. Christopher let me have some spending money so I went to Dollar Tree and had lunch at Panera. I saw this cool theater on the way:

Here’s another nice photo I took during the walk:

I got quite the haul at Dollar Tree: a Bluey sandwich box, a Grogu cup, a Crayola coloring page and stickers, a few packs of cards for scrapbooking, dinosaur stickers, a tiny parasaurolophus friend, and a blind bag toy. Oh, and a snail greeting card.

The blind bag has this wee white tiger cub:

After I got home and took a shower I played more Diablo II with our partner. I had a drink and some chips and brought Churrasco downstairs because his “gotcha” day would be Tuesday (2021) and I felt like he needed some attention.

For dinner, we had fajitas. I don’t normally like them because of the onions, but Christopher took them all out so it was pretty good.

🌈 Tuesday 🌈

Tuesday was a pretty good day, even though I began to get my monthly irritables (PMS) and felt quite irate at times for literally no reason. One good feeling I had throughout the day though, is excitement to go back to work on Friday. Maybe I do like the job after all.

Anyhow, Tuesday was a day of chores and of working on art, but I still made time to play Diablo II with our partner. Playing this together is our little “thing” and I really do enjoy it a lot. My character is called Squirrelman. I wanted to play a Druid and it’s been pretty fun having ravens and a wolf and this vine thing with us. And some sort of spirit.

Our partner plays a necromancer so we have a bunch of little skeleton men follow us, plus two hired hands. We’ve got quite the band.

It reminds me of similarly setting an hour aside to play visual novels with Christopher, something I miss very much. I’ll have to see if I can convince him to do that with me again.

I’ve been catastrophically failing at not buying any toys or books this year. Honestly, I’m not exactly upset about it. It’s still helped: I’ve skipped out on a lot of video games and scrapbooking supplies. But I do not regret any toys I’ve gotten this year at all.

I think I may adjust my goal for the year, and, when it comes to toys and books, setting up a rule of getting rid of something before I get something new. That may be more manageable, because honestly I love new toys far too much.

After our partner ordered the little alien doll for me, I began to look at baby dolls, something I’ve never really been into. Babies are just not really my thing, not even as dolls. But I did see two that I liked a LOT, enough to add them to my wishlist and perhaps get one next month. One is another little alien, but two are more conventional babies.

I really like Crabby Cakes and her pouty expression. It’s very funny and unique. She’s more of a toddler doll. The other one is Honey Bunny and more of a simple, sweet baby boy doll. Both look very huggable with their soft bodies. I’d like to get them this year, but I definitely need to make some room first. If I can decide on something to donate/sell, I’ll probably get Crabby Cakes in May.

I should mention that not a single penny of my new job earnings are going towards toys. Instead, I reserve my modest Patreon earnings for my frivolous spending, which otherwise would be zero. Thanks to Patreon I’ve been able to get things like an ice-cream at work, lunch when I went to jury duty, the dinosaur book I saw at Barnes & Noble, some canned coffee and snacks for the month, etc. It makes me really happy to know that the art I still draw is for stuff like this. So, I am really grateful to everyone who is supporting me there.

In the evening my guys took me to my mom’s. I brought her birthday presents with me:

As soon as I got to my mom’s I saw a big slug. I was immediately excited of course. It was a big little guy and rather speedy for a slug.

Here’s some video:

I brought this little carnotaurus friend on this visit. He doesn’t have a name yet.

We were set to play Jumanji this evening but in the end we had too much to catch up on.

My mom always has a lovely snack spread set out, usually by the time I get there, and it’s one of the things I look forward to the most when I visit her.

This time she also surprised me with empanadas!

Here’s a pic of grumpy old Sweeney:

I continued to read Raptor Red in bed. I had my little trike with me, he doesn’t have a name yet either. I really have to fix that.

🌈 Wednesday 🌈

I was up by 7:30am, working on art after my coffee. I took a shower and worked on the blog while waiting for my mom to wake up. It was a pleasant and quiet start to the morning.

Oh yeah, I was looking through the Ring camera on this morning and saw this funny black cat who was a bit suspicious of one of my decorations:

After my mom got up, we had mate and cheese bread!

While my mom did some housework, I had lunch (she had a big breakfast). I had a ham and cheese empanada and read Raptor Red some more.

Then I worked on art some more. I worked on a commission for Nero, on a YCH, and on a badge for Willy Joe.

We went to walk around Target and PetSmart and we had a little snack at Starbucks. On the way there, I saw this weird clock on a building:

Target had this super cool Super Mario basket!! 🍄🌈

At Starbucks I had a pink drink and a banana walnut loaf:

There was a super cute little gremlin of a dog at the Starbucks line:

During the car ride home, I found a ladybug on my clothes! It started flying around, so I caught it and held a finger out of the window until it flew away.

I came home with a nice haul. First, I got these super cute decorations for the snail tank:

Then I got these outfits, the two small ones are for my little alien doll, the snail one doesn’t have a designated stuffie or doll yet, but it was on sale AND it had snails! I was not going to pass it up.

Finally, I got a little Aggretsuko blind box because it came with a dangler and I wanted a new one for my work lanyard but… it is a little wonky, especially for the price…

We had pizza for dinner and watched YouTube, and I cuddled Sweeney, but he wasn’t very thrilled about it… 😅

With PMS and all I was extraordinarily irritable in the evening, but was able to get some chores done and ready for the next day.

🌈 Thursday 🌈

It’s date night again! It was also Rudyard’s birthday. Not his “gotcha” day, but the day he was made at the factory, back in 2020. So Rudy is now three years old. His “gotcha” day, when I first got to hold him, was September 27th of the same year.

Also, I got to have lunch with my old boss, Al, today. We had SO much to catch up on! We went to Cracker Barrel. I tend to only eat there with him, so it had been a very long time since I last was there.

In the afternoon I cleaned the snail tank and put in some new decorations…

Later I accompanied our partner on some errands and then we went shopping for groceries for dinner. At the supermarket he bought me my favorite flowers again –these are the biggest sunflowers I’ve ever had!

I still haven’t named my new little dino gang, but here is my stegosaurus with one of the flowers:

We played LEGO for the first time in many weeks. I finally started working on Emma’s Art School:

Dinner was incredible! Our partner made quesadillas. He put so much effort in them, no shortcuts taken.

🌈 Friday 🌈

Friday was a busy day. It went by quickly. Chores all morning, some commission work too, but I did set some time aside to check out my new dinosaur book:

I do not normally record video of books, but I did in this case because I wanted you guys to see just how beautiful it is. I’ve amassed a respectable collection of paleontology, natural history and dinosauria related books now, but this one blows them ALL out of the water. I got the book on sale, but had it been twice the price, I would have still felt it was a bargain for what you get:

Then I was driven to work, and worked until 8:00pm. Work was very busy and enjoyable. I found out that I and a few other workers have only one day next week due to budget cuts from above, but hopefully the week after that will be better for everyone. I intend to use the time well, and work on commissions all week long.

(On that note, you’ve probably noticed that ever since I got the job, a lot if not all of my goals have been temporarily paused. I decided that this was a better course of action than trying to juggle a million things at once. I need to, above all, to finish the final commissions. Once they are done, using my free time from work to work on hobbies and personal art won’t be stressful.)

Anyway, I got picked up around 8:00pm by our partner and got home to Christopher serving a wonderful meal.

We relaxed together for a while after dinner and then they went for a walk while I got ready for bed.

🌈 Saturday 🌈

Friday I only worked four hours in the morning and early afternoon. But, I got up at 6:30am and, after a shower, finished these three commissions!

Then I went to work. It was only four hours, but being a Saturday, it was quite busy! As always I was a little early, so I doodled a snail for one of my coworkers, who did most of my training. I left it on a post-it note on her mouse. When I went back upstairs to clock out, I noticed that she had stuck it in the place where she keeps all her post-its, haha.

The guys picked me up at two, and we had Mod Pizza for lunch!

When we got home, my new little alien was waiting for me at the door. I opened her right away. She turned out to be even more wonderful than I was expecting! I’ve named her Tritium:

Even though I bought a couple of outfits for her in newborn size, they are still too baggy… I’ll have to figure out something else.

After a shower, our partner and I played Diablo II some more while Christopher napped.

For dinner, I had a potato and a rice cracker with cream cheese:

In the evening we went for a walk together. I took my little triceratops just in case I got a good idea for a picture somewhere. Eventually I did take a photo of it with a baby mango.

Our partner convinced me to go out for the evening which I did though I had a lot of housework to do. Gotta live a little. We went to Salt and Straw in Coconut Grove and I had a black olive and goat cheese waffle cone (as in, ice cream) and even though it tasted just like it sounds, it was truly delicious.

Then we stopped by a little cafe/restaurant and had some drinks and fries before heading home.

We got home very late, around 12:30am. Still, I did as many chores as I could. I was in bed by 2:00am.

🌈 Sunday 🌈

Sunday I worked a little on commissions in the morning and then went out for a stroll. I needed someplace to go to encourage me to walk, because I’ve been feeling very unmotivated and tired. So I decided to see if I could find a better outfit for Tritium, but being Easter, everywhere was closed.

I walked into buybuy BABY, a place I never go into. A store full of baby stuff felt kind of bizarre to walk through. I saw some very cute toys, including this floppy puppy, and I finally ran into a Benny Phant in the wild! I came so close to caving and getting one!

Some cute dinosaur puzzle toys…

I liked these bandana bibs for my stuffed animals, but not at that price!

I came home with what I really wanted, which was a better outfit for Tritium. I’ll make her a bandana myself.

Once back home, it was time for lunch and more Diablo II with our partner. We had açaí bowls!

Diablo II has some effed up imagery… 😳 That aside, Squirrelman has acquired a crowd of critters. He now has five wolves, five ravens, a spirit, and one of those thorny plant viney things.

Have an Eastery picture since it’s Easter:

In the evening we ordered Chinese food and watched Legend!

I’d always wanted to watch this movie. Plot-wise, it is as flat as a board and incredibly dull. The acting is overly theatrical, but that aspect has some charm. What really sells this movie is its unbelievably detailed sets, costuming, and makeup. It was wonderfully trippy, and had I watched it as a child, I’m sure that it would have had a tremendous effect in my young psyche.

Anyway… that’s all I’ve got to share for this week. It was long, busy, eventful, for sure! I wonder what next week will bring…

Cats, Dungeon Crawlers, 🐿️ My Life 🐿️, My Dolls, Other Toys, Scrapbooking And Journaling, Selfies, Snails, Weekly Summary

Week 13 Summary: Adjusting 💀

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Before I begin: I’m trying really hard to get used to a completely hectic schedule that changes all the time, while still completing my commission queue and taking care of my pets and most of the housework as before. I know I’ve neglected a lot of DMs from friends. I am SO SO SORRY. I’ll get to it, I promise, right now I’m just trying to succeed at existing.

I’ve been kinda taken aback by the sudden Patreon support now that I closed commissions. Since the tiers are limited, I think I’ll be ok and not overwhelmed though… hopefully.

🌈 Monday 🌈

On Monday I was up at 6:30am getting all my chores done before my new job orientation. I was able to get mostly everything done, and orientation went very well. My first actual day would be Wednesday.

After I got home, I did more chores, worked on my book, and made dinner for the three of us. I was exhausted by the time I crawled into bed with Rosie and my Switch. She was being very affectionate, so I took some pics:

I also got this commission finished and posted right before bed:

🌈 Tuesday 🌈

Tuesday I had my nose down to my iPad all day. I have an average of 30 commissions to finish now that I’ve closed permanently. I’m trying to get one down a day, more or less, and I managed it on this day. I completed this commission:

Afterwards I did all my chores and then made dinner. Then we all went for a walk together. It was raining, and I got to see froggy friends and snail friends. Here’s some snails.

🌈 Wednesday 🌈

Wednesday morning I was up SUPER early –I showered and then spent the entire morning doing chores without stopping. I also worked on commissions and Patreon rewards a little bit. There was really zero time to relax. It was soon time to go to work for the first time! Monday was only orientation, Wednesday I’d actually work.

I took a selfie before heading out:

The first day went really well. The store is not very busy. Everyone is very pleasant, but I am worried about having to deal with answering phones, paging, on top of upselling a rewards program to every customer at the register, which, as I found later in the week, I can get reprimanded for not pushing hard enough (though, that hasn’t happened yet). That stresses me out. I’d much rather to heavy physical labor that doesn’t involve this –or a desk job.

After work, I went to Publix to get stuff for our partner to make dinner Thursday night. I’d be working late the next few nights and wouldn’t be able to make dinner.

At Publix, I saw these two. Just two good little guys. I had to take a photo.

🌈 Thursday 🌈

I started Thursday in a pretty bad frame of mind. I knew it would happen, really, as soon as I started any job, and probably you will say that is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it’s just how it is. It doesn’t matter if I like the job or not. What matters is that I am not drawing while I am there. But this time, because the schedule is always changing, and because I must be available always –all weekends and holidays too, just in case– it was additionally aggravating.

For starters, the fair outing with my mom was cancelled. The usual visit to her was also cancelled (these two kinda go together) and because asking for time off is kind of an involved process at my new job (it seems to be something you need to do like a month in advance) it’s looking like regular visits to my mom (the only interaction she gets outside of work) are slowing down very, very significantly, and I’m not sure what to do about that. Then, we couldn’t do our Zoom call yesterday, either.

Beyond that, the treasured weekend visits to family may also be a thing of the past that needs to be carefully scheduled so it can happen at all.

Our date night this week is cancelled because of my schedule. And now, if I have a day off that we can do that on, I may honestly just fret while trying to do our usual date night activities because I have things to do, whether housework or personal stuff, that I can no longer do during the week. Same goes for the old project nights. My schedule will change constantly, so nothing can really be planned without a full month of foresight as per my job policies.

And look. I know how it sounds. Everyone works –I had really bad and long jobs that left me basically with no time to have a life, and this is only part-time. But after doing commissions for so many years and overall enjoying it so much (until recently) it’s a miserable change. And you have to keep in mind that my first day was great. A wonderful experience. And still, I felt this way in the morning.

I just don’t want my life to change. I want to keep seeing my mom and visiting my family. And I know I would have zero pity if I saw someone else writing this. This feeling of lacking autonomy over my schedule is hard to accept right away. Hopefully with time, I will.

There are upsides. The atmosphere at the job is great, and I can walk to it. These are all good things. The customers are very nice and calm. My coworkers and managers are great. Maybe getting weekends off once in a while won’t be so hard.

Anyway, it’s a bit of a rough period. I’m trying to adjust. Let me break up this particular day’s whining with a photo of Rosie and Tomoyo:

Tomoyo had gotten in Rosie’s space and both were pretty pissy with one another but eventually settled. I took that photo as I was working on this Patreon reward, which I finished before leaving for work but wasn’t able to post until later in the evening, after dinner:

Anyway, Thursday was quite long at work. I left late. Christopher picked me up, and when we got home our partner was making a wonderful dinner. Plus, he (our partner) surprised me with my favorite flowers and a delicious wine. He knew I’d been very grumpy. Later he massaged my legs a little too, which are super sore with all the extra hours of standing. It helped me to end the day on a much better note.

🌈 Friday 🌈

I started Friday by knocking out another commission:

Then I did all my chores, and it was off to work. Unfortunately my new shoes didn’t make it before I left, so I would have to deal with the old shoes one more day. The workday was alright –I was at the register by myself more, and had more responsibilities overall. My managers seem to really like me, but I do worry about taking far too long to learn the minutiae of my duties. There is SO much to learn.

Christopher picked me up, and we got home to the wonderful smell of smoked salmon. I started helping our partner with dinner. There were some hiccups, so we didn’t eat until 10:30pm. Very late. But dinner was incredible:

That’s all salmon that had been smoking for hours and hours (AFTER hours of marinating) as well as quinoa, peas, arugula, avocado, and toasted walnuts. It was pretty great! And to top off the night, our partner got me the little alien doll I wanted. I didn’t expect I’d have another doll so soon, I can’t wait for her to arrive:

Not sure what I’m gonna call her. I actually had a hard time falling asleep because I was so excited thinking about this. 😅

🌈 Saturday 🌈

Today was a calm, overcast day, and the last day before a real chance to rest. My mom in law and Christopher’s Grandma dropped by and we went to breakfast together. Our partner had some severe indigestion unfortunately and couldn’t join us. Breakfast was alright.

After we got back, I completed and posted this Patreon reward:

So far, I’ve been staying pretty on top of my overdue artwork. I chip at it and get something else done every day. After I got this done, it was time to go to work. My family dropped me off and at some point sneaked a picture of me at the register:

🌈 Sunday 🌈

I had a lot planned for today –this kept me going when I felt upset about not being able to do things during the week. No sleeping in late for me…. too much to do! In the end, I wasn’t able to do it all, but I did some chores and scrapbooked, and read, and watched a VHS tape.

I brought Kalamata downstairs because I noticed that Tomoyo bit two of her fingers so, she needed some TLC. I gave her a little book to hold, but eventually I took it back from her to cut it for scraps. 😅

These are the tapes I’m working on watching at the moment:

I started with The Little Polar Bear:

Here’s a cool LeapFrog ad that appeared before the main feature:

I worked on two scrapbook pages that had photos of Dante from the Alaska trip:

Afterward our partner and I went to Starbucks for a snack and then sat down to play some Diablo II together:

Then we went grocery shopping for the week and our partner made AMAZING turkey burgers. Overall it was a good week, but very tiring. Tomorrow I have jury duty for the first time in my life, and hopefully I’ll get to see my mom during the week. Hope you all had a nice weekend!

Charlie Bears, 🐿️ My Life 🐿️, My Hug, Selfies, Trips And Outings, Weekly Summary

Week 12 Summary: Mwako’s Visit And A New Job 🐶

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Mwako’s visit was this week! He spent from Sunday to Wednesday with us. We looked at toys in many stores and even bought some, had some nice meals, and went to the zoo which was amazing. Other than that we just hung out though unfortunately I was really busy a lot of the time.

I also started applying to jobs again, and got one! I should be starting next week. I also took a pretty serious decision: to close commissions permanently. And we went to the Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science, where I got to see an incredible dinosaur exhibit! So, all in all, it was a pretty eventful week. Let me tell you about it.

OH YEAH: CW for lotsa snakies and a spooder. 🐍

🌈 Monday 🌈

On Monday Mwako and I went to the zoo. I’ve been to Zoo Miami lots of times, so, at this point, I tend not to take photos. But it had been a while I’d been in the daytime, a whole five years (last time, in December of last year, was at night). I had no idea how much the zoo had changed, how the enclosures had been made so much nicer. You feel like the animals are closer somehow.

Not only that, but I’d never seen the animals look so energetic and sociable. This has always been a great zoo, but it’s clear that it has improved even more, and for good reason it is called one of the best in the country these days. It was a huge treat –here’s photos and video!

Wombat…

Tree kangaroo!

Southern cassowary… I think?

Warthogs!

Buru babirusa (I think).

A turtle –not sure what kind.

Lots of lovely snakies!

Got a bunch of videos too –they were active!

Patch had his picture taken with one!

Green and black poison dart frogs:

No idea about this guy, sorry! But he was cute.

I’m guessing a tarantula?

Red-eyed tree frogs, sleeping peacefully…

Amusingly (and worryingly) Steve was nowhere to be seen:

This guy was there, though. Possible a Baja blue rock lizard, but not sure.

Northern caiman lizards, just chillin’:

Southern screamer! These things have detachable wing-daggers, it’s nuts! We got to see it, too.

Just a gator. He’s not real, but he’s still a good boy.

Crocodile monitor (I think).

Plumed basilisk!! A cheerful lad.

I really tried to look it up but cannot remember or figure out exactly which type of (bull)frogs these are. They were very cute potatoes though.
This indoor aquarium was amazing! Some redtail catfish…

Ocellate river stingray:

Blue poison dart frog:

The Mold-A-Matic looked like fun!

In this one, you could make a little otter.

I decided to give it a try!

✨ Ta-daa~! ✨

I think this beauty was a harpy eagle:

A blue-billed curassow!

Four-eyed fish:

Four-eyed fish, or Anableps anableps, do not actually have four eyes. They are surface dwellers and have eyes adapted for seeing both above and below the water surface. The eyes are on top of the head, and each is divided into two parts, an upper half for vision in air, and a lower half for vision in water; hence, the common name.

An anole, maybe?

Mission golden-eyed tree frogs: