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Week 25 Summary: Goodbye, CTS ๐Ÿ˜ข

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WARNING: Short little video at the end of the Saturday summary, which shows a tiny, tiny snake that really looks just like an earthworm! But might still give some the heebie-jeebies.

Well, it is finally over. No more Christmas Tree Shop. I will miss it, sincerely… but now I am free to finish the last three commissions, to work on scrapbooking pages, to read, to game! ๐Ÿ˜ƒ To binge Prehistoric Planet and The Mandalorian, and to finish 3,000 Leagues In Search Of Mother. ๐Ÿค“ For a while, free to kinda do anything –I won’t seek another job until after my Alaska and Orlando vacations. ๐Ÿšข๐ŸŽˆ

But for the rest of this week, I worked a lot, determined to give my last week at CTS my all. โœŒ I must have cried like three times, twice on the last day. I wondered why at the time… I’ve only been there three months.

It’s true that I grew very fond of the team, above all, and the work was pleasant. But I think that I may still be reeling from the recent drastic actions to altogether remove myself from my online home and community of almost twelve years. ๐Ÿ˜” CTS closing is a small ending in my life, but that other, far more significant ending is still in the background of my mind and my heart. Perhaps my brain connected the grief of both.

Anyhow, let me tell you all about this week. Hopefully, you’ll find it interesting!

Thank you in advance to anyone who comments on this post! Though it may take me a little while to reply, your comments mean so much to me! ๐Ÿ’˜โœจ๐Ÿ’•

๐ŸŒˆ Monday ๐ŸŒˆ

On Monday I worked on commissions and housework for most of the day. I also played a little WoW. I finished the last official commission for Snow. Just three to go!

I’ve still been going back and forth in my mind regarding Instagram. I know it’s pointless to have it and yet do not feel quite ready to delete it. Maybe once I adjust to being without FA. I found myself trying to browse the site still (FurAffinity, I mean) so I blocked it on Cold Turkey Blocker.

๐ŸŒˆ Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

This day started off badly. I overslept. Barely made it to work on time, and was cranky and tired. When I got to work, the discount was even lower:

This meant people behaved even worse. They always do when the price goes down, for some reason. The store was even more condensed and empty…

There’s not much of a store left at this point, really.

Lunch was the usual salad, but I had a Petit Pot for dessert, which felt special.

On this day I finally finished most of my leftover purchases. Here’s a cute rat card I got for scrapbooking:

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

Last workday before my day off –at least it was a short one! After I got back, I showered, changed into my deer kigurumi, and had Kid Cuisine for lunch. Can’t beat that!

I’d run out of coffee the day prior, so I had a caffeine-withdrawal headache until the late afternoon when Amazon delivered it. ๐Ÿ˜– I coped by napping until it arrived.

We had pizza for dinner and in general, it was a nice relaxing evening. I went to bed excited about my day-off plans.

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday ๐ŸŒˆ

This was a special, and very wonderful day. I recently got paid. While my prior paycheck went entirely to my mom’s fund, I had different plans for this one. Since I do not intend to work again until September, I needed to make sure all of my bills are covered until then. I paid the ones I could pre-pay and set money aside for all the others from now through December.

I also bought a couple of gifts, and set aside spending money for the cruise and for the Orlando trip. Finally, I had a “me” day, just a day in which I allowed myself to dress cute, go out, have breakfast, enjoy my own company, and spend a little money on myself without regrets or guilt. Ok, maybe just a little guilt. ๐Ÿ˜…

I took a selfie before heading out; I hadn’t done this in a while.

My first stop was Target, where I found (and bought) this amazing Smurf and Snail hoodie!

I have been wanting to change my pillowcases for a long time but never saw any I liked enough. But this time I found two!

They are a bit wrinkled, but here are my favorite sides. I threw them in the wash which should smooth the wrinkles out.

I also found Bluey bowls to match my plates, cutlery, placemat and cup!

This is something that I didn’t buy, but seeing it filled me with nostalgia:

When I was very little, this is what TMNT toys used to look like. I never really liked them; they looked angry and… veiny? Lol. I remember being upset because I liked the cartoon and wished they looked friendly like they did in the show.

A little boy in my neighborhood had some of these toys, and seeing it now I very vividly remember holding it in my hand, moving its limbs, and just how it felt against my skin; its weight, all of its sharp edges, the shell, etc. So it was nice seeing it again, and remember.

I took a photo of some bright, weedy grass because it had many different shades of yellow and green, and was so pretty. Wildflowers were popping out of it here and there.

Then I made it to the mall! I passed by the quirky dino rider thingies. This time I took photos of different ones. One looked kinda like an axolotl but also somewhat like Toothless… only pink. My favorite was the parasaurolophus, hands down!

Then I went to “Cutie”, a store that is very fun to browse but I almost never buy anything there. They sell toys that were sold on close-out at other stores in the mall, only super overpriced, and a LOT of Aliexpress junk as well as fake Sanrio stuff sold for the price of the real thing. With that said, it’s a super cool store to just have fun in, and they have this giant raptor statue!

This guy looked so friendly:

I took a photo of this particular toy because it looks so much like the sort of weird, made-in-China hodgepodge I would get at markets when I was a little girl. Just look it over carefully and keep reading; it gets consistently more hilarious.

Finally, it was time to go to Build-A-Bear! This guy was greeting (er… guarding?) the entrance. I get that he’s supposed to be waving, but he also kinda looks like he’s gonna deck you one…

I really scored with my BAB finds this time! Put together three whole outfits:

Freckles was the main reason I went to Build-A-Bear. He needed clothes, and now he has a proper outfit! Although I think he needs a hat, still:

He doesn’t look very happy, but that’s okay. Freckles is hard to please. Hard, get it. Because he has a wooden face.

Moving on…

Cool dress at Hot Topic!

Loungefly backpacks are a work of art. So unaffordable though… I only own one (and a tiny bag). It’s rare I even take photos of them but I love this one:

Here’s a decoration at a Toys “R” Us display:

Looks like a Christmas decoration that got left behind, but it’s still cute.

My dream Cranky keeps taunting me everywhere I go… ๐Ÿ˜ž I want him so badly. There are a bunch of Cranky models, I only want the one that comes in this very specific box. It is the “Brendham Docks” model by Fisher-Price and has a woodgrain band to the right of the box. This one, specifically.

Unfortunately, he’s really expensive and I can never bring myself to blow an entire special day’s budget on him. I’ve had him on my wishlist for so long now, updating it as different versions of him come out. He never goes on sale, at least not this new version. Someday…!

See, the problem with other Crankys is that either they aren’t compatible with regular track, or their faces are wrong. Cranky HAS to look cranky. It’s Cranky after all! And this line has made the best facial expressions by far.

Anyway, here are a couple of cute plushies I saw:

One of my favorite finds of this outing was this Child’s Play shirt and lounge pants. They were sold separately, I just really loved the pants so I looked for a shirt that would be a good set:

I think it’s a pretty perfect match!

In the afternoon, I repotted my Norfolk Island pine. It’s in a massive pot now. Here’s hoping it shoots up nice and strong!

I also managed to make time to install my new lights: purple lights over the bookcases, shamrock lights in the bed, and heart lights by the window:

I was SO delighted with my Chucky loungewear!!

Then it was time for wine and WoW. I kinda wasted my time since I tried a couple of dungeons but it is obvious I cannot solo them yet. Oh well.

An otherwise happy and relaxing evening for all of us took a bit of a downturn as Kotoko, who hadn’t been quite right since the morning, refused to eat and acted more and more unlike herself, clearly uncomfortable and not purring at all the way she usually does. We are hoping it’s a blip… she’s been doing so well. But we also know that she could go at any point, given her condition.

๐ŸŒˆ Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

In the morning, Kotoko came to look out the window which meant climbing from the floor onto my lap and then the table. I also heard her open her food bowl but I’m unsure if she ate very much. She wasn’t interested in fresh wet food, but she did take some treats from me and actually purr while eating them.

Throughout the week, my relief at deleting FA has only increased. I did, however, notice that not every old friend wants to stay in touch with me, even though I haven’t had anyone explicitly come out and say it, in a couple of cases it was pretty obvious. I’m not gonna lie, it does sting a little, but the reasons are precisely the same reasons why I am leaving the community as a whole. There is a certain attitude towards certain things that I personally find toxic and preposterous, and this puts me at odds with a lot of people.

But it is each person’s prerogative to stay in touch or not. They probably feel the same way about me. On the one hand, it reinforces my decision: I read the room accurately when I chose to leave. On the other hand, it feels sucky to be right.

I know this is pretty rambly, so I will quote what someone else said elsewhere: come the day that FA’s grace period regarding their updated AUP ends, a lot of people are in for a painful wake-up call. This includes many people that consider their work to be “totally SFW and non-k!nk”.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t exactly want to see people upset. But I’m not gonna shed tears when they, too, begin getting takedowns and bans. We warned them, after all. ยฏ\_(ใƒ„)_/ยฏ

Here’s a Random Raikes bunny I ordered. Couldn’t resist his “I’m trippin’ balls” face. I’ll name him Romaine.

That’s the eBay photo; I’ll show him off again once I’ve dressed him in a proper outfit and all that.

The workday was good. Kotoko appeared to be feeling a little better when I got home. I gave her more meds, had lunch, and then, a snack:

Then it was time for housework… lots and lots of housework. When I was done, I sat down to work on art until bedtime, with a break for dinner.

I switched my pillowcases with the new clean ones. They’re still a bit wrinkly, but I love them! It’s only two but I do love both sides of the Jurassic World one:

๐ŸŒˆ Saturday ๐ŸŒˆ

For most intents and purposes, this was the last day at CTS. We told all customers today was the last day, and it was the last day on which I would see several coworkers.

This photo is of how the store looked when I came in. If you compare it with a photo taken just about four hours later, the difference is quite stark.

I got this unexpected message when I logged in to my register…

A silly joke by a customer:

For lunch I had an egg salad sandwich and one of the jelly donut holes I found in the break room.

I shared it with Bargain:

Bargain and I partook in some “strong apple juice”. It’s just something that happened throughout the day on the down-low, though “strong apple juice” wasn’t everyone’s comfort drink. We didn’t go nuts of course, but it was a nice little thrill on this last difficult day…

Here’s a pupper photoset. This guy was a bit shy, which you can tell in the photos, but also friendly, and did little jumps at me and licked my hands all over. He wanted to be friends, but was also somewhat reserved. His name was Loki.

I took a few selfies with some of my favorite coworkers (mind you this is not all of them):

In the first photo is Sandra, whom I originally spoke to the day on the day I first applied to work at CTS. She was the first one I ever met. Sandra is no-nonsense but very kind and very hardworking; you can tell she doesn’t suffer fools gladly, yet she still was very patient with me all the time that I was there.

In the second photo is Carolina, or just Caro. She is a very sweet person with a warm and caring demeanor, who has an incredibly contagious and loud laugh, which you could hear from the other end of the store, even over loud music. Invariably it would cause customers I’d be ringing up at the register to raise amused eyebrows and to comment that “it sounds like someone is having fun over there”. Hearing her laugh was always a highlight, and on the first few days after we found out about the store closing, it would make me tear up thinking I’d no longer get to hear it every day.

In the last photo is Lucy. Lucy is kind of the “star manager” of the store, the one customers always ask for, and whom everyone else (other employees as well as other managers) invariably speak highly of. She trained me, and thanks to her, I gained a lot of self-confidence in areas that ended up bettering my life outside of work. I learned a lot from her and I really will miss her terribly.

There are other people I like a lot with whom I didn’t get to take photos (yet)… I either didn’t have a chance or felt too shy to ask. Some I would have a chance later in the week –my boss, Lazaro, being one of them. He is one of the best bosses I ever had, with a very strong but caring, honest and hardworking personality. I always really wanted to please him, but I also annoyed him a lot. ๐Ÿ˜…

Here’s the other photo I was talking about. It’s less than four hours later, yet you can see how much emptier the store appears. You can see Caro and Sandra posing for me in the middle (this photo, like the other one, was taken from the upstairs office):

In the last few days at the store, even this TV gave up…

A photo from my register when it was close to my time to leave, around 6:30 pm. Hardly anything left by this point.

Christopher came into the store a few minutes before 7:00 pm and chit-chatted with my coworkers as I said my goodbyes to those I wouldn’t see again. I was really glad about this, so he could meet the people I’d come to care a lot about, if only for a little while.

I took a photo of this punch-out, because even though I’d punch in and out on Sunday, this day felt really momentous and I didn’t want to risk my Sunday schedule perhaps being changed or canceled and then I didn’t take one last photo. After all, this was still the “last” day (technically) so this punch-out felt more significant.

Christopher took me to The Pub for dinner:

Our partner was with our other friends on this afternoon, discussing arrangements for their wedding, and going out and having some fun with them, so Christopher and I had a rare night out by ourselves. ๐Ÿฅฐ It felt special. We also walked around Target a little just for fun, holding hands, and he showed me that he’d bought me these ugly but adorable Raikes beavers from eBay that I really wanted. He’s been spoiling me a LOT lately.

Actually, both he and our partner have been spoiling me so much. Since March and until now, I have been extremely difficult to be around as I try to adjust to schedule changes that simply do not work for me and my delicate-ass psyche. At times I even inferred extremely hyperbolic stuff like basically not wanting to be alive (and at the time, it felt like I meant it) because I was basically in an extended mental breakdown.

To be honest, I hardly know how they dealt with it. Particularly as it’s reaching the end, I realize that the last few months were, for them, a constant battle to accommodate to my desires, whether by ordering what I wanted to eat, giving me attention/petting me when I demanded it and then leaving me alone when I wanted that instead, taking me out to eat, buying me stuff to cheer me up, giving me rides to and from work, listening to SO much bitching and crying, being on the brunt of random explosive fits of rage, and more.

I know most of all for them, my next job *has* to be something I can handle better, without falling apart. I cannot do this to them again and I am lucky that it didn’t damage two of the most important relationships in my life. Here’s hoping I’ve learned a thing or two and can do better next time.

WARNING REMINDER: Short video below which shows the tiniest snake!

In the evening Christopher and I found a tiny wee earthworm-like snake in the movie room. Well, Rosie did. It turned out to be a Brahminy Blindsnake, also known as a Flowerpot Snake. They are non-native, but very common to Florida, and completely harmless.

Some fun facts I learned:

“During the hot summer months in Florida, we receive numerous reports from people finding small, shiny black, thread-like snakes on the floors inside their houses, especially the bathrooms.”

“Blindsnakes eat termites and the eggs and pupae of ants. Therefore, if you are seeing several of these snakes inside, it is possible that you have ants or termites living in or near your house as well.”

From FloridaMuseum.ufl.edu

Indeed, we have plenty of ants and termites. Our tenting should occur within the month. We placed the little lady safely outside.

Another fun fact about these snakes is that all are female, and a genetic clone of their mothers.

๐ŸŒˆ Sunday ๐ŸŒˆ

The week comes to an end… and so does my time at CTS. I started this day doing all the chores I could. I wanted to come home to relax and draw when the workday was done. After doing all I could, I went to work. I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of what we would be doing, but when I got there at noon, the store was still serving customers:

I said hello and went upstairs to put my lunch away. I noticed no one was hiding the comfort drinks anymore…

We no longer had the official store music going on, everyone was playing whatever they wanted, sitting on the desks at the registers, no one cared much about anything, but we were still unfailingly serviceable to any customer that came in.

Customers were very few. After all, there was very little left at the store…

While we waited for stuff to sell and some of my coworkers did some cleaning here and there, I took another picture and a bit of video of the empty store:

It was super eerie and echoey (though I removed the sound, as it was loud and annoying):

Ultimately, while we had a few customers buy something here and there, a single couple would buy all that was left, to resell it. They came with a cute doggy friend:

And with that, we were done. Closed forever. All the stores across the country that are also closing were supposed to close today. We managed to be the first store to do so. My coworkers then began to take all the signs down. They shut the doors. And well, I finally kind of lost it a little, and did some proper “ugly crying”.

But then, food arrived! For lunch, we all pitched in for pizza (Christopher pitched in for my part). Normally I take my photos of Bargain on the down-low, but today I really didn’t care:

We had a very pleasant meal all of us together. Afterwards, I took some more pics as we disassembled stuff…

That last pic is where the carts used to be stored.

Then we went upstairs to continue the clean-up and I got to take a selfie with another favorite coworker of mine, Letti:

Letti bought a bunch of these cute St. Patrick’s Day decorations and gave one to each of us. She wrote a very sweet note and her contact info on the back of mine. Letti and I both grew on each other while I worked there, even though we both have strong personalities. I’m really happy that I met her.

The calendar from the upstairs office…

Before I left, we all took a picture together. Well, some people left before this could be arranged, but as it turned out, I still managed to get all of my most favorite people in there –at least, the ones that worked today, and that I worked with the most. There are definitely people I still wish had been in the photo, though:

We actually got two really good shots. They are different, so I wanted to share them both –and, appropriately, this is my last CTS-related photo ever:

I am so, so glad I got to work here. In spite of me not dealing well with the closer-to-full-time hours near the end, it’s still a really happy memory that I won’t forget. I hope you enjoyed my sharing of the experience with you on the blog.

Once we were home, Christopher asked me to go check the closet. I did, and he’d hidden a surprise for me there!

He’d bought it secretly after dropping me off! I was really touched, it was such a sweet and unexpected gesture. ๐Ÿฅฐ

I did lots of chores, and then sat down to dinner:

At some point in the evening, I found that Rosie had gotten cozy with Chucky. I’m not sure that’s such a great idea. He doesn’t have the best track record with cats.

At the very end, people called dibs on store stuff that was being thrown away or not being sent back. The Ty display would be trashed, so I removed this plastic heart logo from it, as a memento, and later stuck it to my bed:

And that is it for this week! Next week I hope to finish all the due commissions. Not sure if I’ll make it –they are all complicated pieces. But once I do, then I am actually going to resume my for-fun endeavors and my book progress.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week! As a reminder, if you haven’t yet –you’re welcome to join my Telegram chat. I am quite active there! Just read the rules before participating. See ya there!

Cats, Children's Books, ๐Ÿฟ๏ธ My Life ๐Ÿฟ๏ธ, MMORPG, My Dinos, My Hug, Outfit Of The Day, Selfies, Trips And Outings, Weekly Summary

Week 22 Summary: Everybody Loves A Bargain (But Not A Toothache) ๐Ÿฆท๐Ÿ’ข

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Happy Sunday, everyone. Well… it is not as happy for me. I’ve been pretty depressed on and off, my period is underway, and this week I experienced a serious dental emergency. I am tired and in pain, and as a result, this post may be less coherent than normal, or some captions may be very brief. There are still cute things below –toy photos, doggies, World Of Warcraft stuff. So it’s not all whining. Let’s get to it.

Thank you in advance to anyone who comments on this post! Though it may take me a little while to reply, your comments mean so much to me! ๐Ÿ’˜โœจ๐Ÿ’•

๐ŸŒˆ Monday ๐ŸŒˆ

To begin with, as I said in the last weekly summary, my mood would improve. With that said, on Monday I went in to work in a terrible state of mind, just as negative as Sunday had been.

My boss was there when I went in: he hadn’t been there when I was unwell over the weekend. He was friendly and immediately asked what happened to me, showing concern for me, not the missed hours. I explained what happened, and, having an opportunity to talk privately, I mentioned the unpleasant experience with the other manager, and that I felt this was unfair, as I’ve generally been a solid, reliable employee.

He reminded me that only he is my boss, no one else. He even told me that he would help me recover some of the lost hours, and later updated the schedule to reflect this.

Also, my original instinct of texting him when these things happened would have been correct. I didn’t do it because it was his day off, I was afraid to bother him and indeed was told not to. But he texted the manager chat the moment I left early on Sunday, wondering whatever happened to me. He said next time, I shouldn’t be afraid to text him even if he is off.

All of these things were very reassuring. Knowing that, depending on where he ends up, I might have a job where he goes next (since he’s generally a district and/or store manager at other chains) feels good too.

I don’t know if he spoke to the manager that scolded me when I left, but that manager was SUPER nice to me the rest of that day. So that improved my mood. The other thing that improved it was a bit sad, but it helped anyway.

Another manager, a very nice lady who tends to be a bit spicy (just, you know, strong moods) and has a really good heart, was looking very down on this day and not like herself at all. It was honestly worrisome, so when I saw her alone, I asked what was wrong, and suddenly I was seeing myself in her. She kept saying stuff like “I don’t want to be here, I hate this, I want to leave, I don’t even want to greet the customers anymore.”

This is a manager that worked hard to make this store a wonderful and welcoming place. Like other managers that have been here since the start, she is rightly indignant and heartbroken by the situation. We’ve all been affected by the way the customers are taking to treating our beloved store like absolute trash, their entitlement, and the constant undoing of anything that we worked to make pretty. It’s so discouraging.

This, and the longer hours, are surely why I have been so unhappy. But hearing it from someone else helped me to realize how much the process of the store shutting down is affecting me. I hated to see my manager sad, especially because she often cheers others up with her joking and singing, and high-energy ways. But in a weird way, it helped me so much to understand my recent depression. The rest of that day I did all I could to help her out and keep her cheerful. Others were doing that, too.

The day was very, very busy. Other than the last couple of hours, it really flew by. Two cute dogs visited:

The owner of the wookie-like dog (who was a really funny character) ended up not buying the chair cushion that his dog lay and sat on. Sigh…

When I got back home, Christopher was making manicotti. It was a delicious dinner, he worked very hard. After dinner, I went upstairs and was surprised to find ALL of our elves sitting on my desk!

I guess they were worried about me. I’ll try to be better at holding it together.

Have some random photos of Elliot being deeply uncomfortable:

I was excited to finally open my Amazon package with the Humongous Entertainment Classic Collection for the Switch. Looking forward to playing it.

When I went to bed I forgot my glasses. Christopher later sent me a picture of Ribbon wearing them:

๐ŸŒˆ Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

Because I’m still depressed, I decided to go a route that proved helpful before. I went back to Azeroth. I decided to try Horde again. This time it feels better. Maybe it’s because I feel so out of place everywhere now, like an outcast, and because so many things I used to believe in, along with my childhood definitions of “good and evil” and “right and wrong” have changed so much, Horde actually feels like a better emotional fit for me at this point in my life.

I made a goblin hunter with the name Sepia, a name I used to have in this server, then lost, and now managed to snag again.

Much like communities and places I used to love when I was a young adult, I will always miss my Alliance haunts and the feeling that life, and morals, are simple, black-and-white deals, easily judged and categorized. But as I move forward from simplistic thinking (and judgmental, holier-than-thou spaces) in real life, I’m looking forward to exploring the side of the so-called “monstrous races” in-game.

And hey, Dragonflight has SNAILS. I might be able to coax our partner or my husband into getting me the expansion.

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

Because I’ve been feeling so down, I am making an extra effort to make my lunches cute and happy experiences, even if the food is plain.

In the evening, we went to a restaurant, Unit B Eatery + Spirits in Pembroke Gardens. I hadn’t taken a selfie in a while:

This was Paisley’s first outing!

Unit B had a really nice atmosphere/decor, but being a weekday, it was very empty:

My guys…

I had bao buns and empanadas. Both were great!

Before bed, I completed another commission:

Just six to go!

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday ๐ŸŒˆ

Work was pleasant enough. I decided to buy a little Ty dragon since it was 30% off.

Then I began to get ideas. Firstly, I named him Bargain, since our company’s motto is “everybody loves a bargain”. I asked my manager to make me a little nameplate for him:

More on that later. Here’s today’s pup:

๐ŸŒˆ Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

Before leaving for work, I used one of our reusable patterned bags to make Bargain a little apron that matches ours. Then I gave him the nameplate that my manager printed out for him. He looked pretty spiffy:

Then we had a quick breakfast together and it was off to work.

I wasn’t sure if I ever took a photo of the store from above, so while I was clocking in, I got one:

Time for our existential crisis, Bargain! My coworkers were pretty tickled by him.

Bargain held the marker in between sales. The marker was for highlighting the “all sales final” in the receipts.

Bargain surrounded by everyone’s favorite, go-backs. We have a lot of those these days.

Then it was lunchtime. I was in a really good mood.

I was still in a great mood when I got home. I hugged my guys, had dinner, and afterward poured some wine and got right to playing Diablo II with our partner. It was a very, very enjoyable evening. We even beat Diablo! The boss, not the game, of course. We still have a way to go to beat the game.

But when I went to bed, a dull ache in my upper right teeth began to bother me. It quickly became intense, and as a result, I slept very poorly.

๐ŸŒˆ Saturday ๐ŸŒˆ

After such a bad night, Saturday morning I woke up exhausted and in pain, but feeling like I could still make it to work, so I went. In the morning, before work, I completed another commission:

Just five to go!

It was not a good workday. My pain grew gradually more intense throughout the day. When I got there, I found that three people had called out, so I was glad I went. The first truck came to get all of the merchandise that is being sent to other stores. One of my managers cried when the truck left.

I saw a dog that captured my mood for this day very well:

In the evening, I was absolutely falling apart. Christopher went to the drugstore to get me things that might help, but nothing really did. I didn’t sleep very much this night. In spite of being well-familiarized with astronomical levels of dental torture, this was on a different scale. I repeatedly used Gus Fring’s death as a suitable comparison for how the entire right side of my head felt:

I did not have a fever, but the pain was all over my jaw, my eye, my ear. It was all-encompassing and totally absorbing.

๐ŸŒˆ Sunday ๐ŸŒˆ

When I woke up on Sunday morning, it was immediately evident that work was not going to happen that day. I immediately called out for the next two days, and left a voicemail with my dentist, begging them to move my Tuesday appointment to Monday. I had to call twice because, during my first voicemail, the pain was bad enough that I literally forgot my own phone number, and couldn’t finish my message.

After the food poisoning incident, I really felt awful about calling out… but there was nothing I could do.

Christopher went to the store again, and got me fresh Orajel and cooling patches for my face:

I spent the entire day distracting myself with Warcraft. Playing Warcraft alone ( I am not a big fan of questing with others) saved my sanity, as it did in other bad periods of my life. I don’t know how I would have gotten through the day otherwise. Sometimes I had to just stop and stare at nothing because the pain didn’t even let me play, but most of the time it helped a lot.

I fiddled a bit more with my goblin hunter:

And was absolutely tickled by this Logo reference:

I also thoroughly enjoyed the dinosaurs in this area, which, being an Alliance player for most of my life, is new to me. Major Dinotopia vibes.

I had a Starbucks treat (and dinner) while gaming, courtesy of Christopher. It cheered me up a lot.

As the evening progressed, something odd happened. My pain began to subside. While I was still sore, the throbbing went from “worst of my life” to “nonexistent” in the space of about an hour. From what I could gather, this meant a worsening of the emergency, as the infection has now likely killed my nerve. I likely need treatment ASAP to prevent further damage to my jaw and other teeth.

I will be posting updates regarding this dental misadventure on my Telegram channel throughout the week. You’re welcome to drop by! There’s an attached chat as well. Beyond that, the next update will be next Sunday as usual. See you then!

Cats, ๐Ÿฟ๏ธ My Life ๐Ÿฟ๏ธ, My Dolls, My Hug, Snails, Weekly Summary

Week 21 Summary: An Emptying Store And A Visit To Mom ๐Ÿง‰๐Ÿฅฐ

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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!

Thank you in advance to anyone who comments on this post! Though it may take me a little while to reply, your comments mean so much to me! ๐Ÿ’˜โœจ๐Ÿ’•

๐ŸŒˆ Monday ๐ŸŒˆ

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.

๐ŸŒˆ Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

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. ๐Ÿ˜ 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.

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

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 Iโ€™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!

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday ๐ŸŒˆ

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 โ€œcagesโ€ 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!!! ๐Ÿ˜ก 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.

๐ŸŒˆ Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

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.

๐ŸŒˆ Saturday ๐ŸŒˆ

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. ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™€๏ธ

๐ŸŒˆ Sunday ๐ŸŒˆ

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, ๐Ÿฟ๏ธ My Life ๐Ÿฟ๏ธ, 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 ๐Ÿฅฐ

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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. Letโ€™s get to it!

๐ŸŒˆ Monday ๐ŸŒˆ

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) Iโ€™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 couldnโ€™t get rides for every day, Uber would add up a lot. So I was concerned.

Anyway, that didnโ€™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 โ€œhurry up and waitโ€ 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 โ€”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 Iโ€™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 arenโ€™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 wasnโ€™t in the wrong. I said that I wouldnโ€™t, but that I couldnโ€™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 wasnโ€™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:

Hereโ€™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 โ€œgotchaโ€ day would be Tuesday (2021) and I felt like he needed some attention.

For dinner, we had fajitas. I donโ€™t normally like them because of the onions, but Christopher took them all out so it was pretty good.

๐ŸŒˆ Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

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 โ€œthingโ€ and I really do enjoy it a lot. My character is called Squirrelman. I wanted to play a Druid and itโ€™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. Weโ€™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. Iโ€™ll have to see if I can convince him to do that with me again.

Iโ€™ve been catastrophically failing at not buying any toys or books this year. Honestly, Iโ€™m not exactly upset about it. Itโ€™s still helped: Iโ€™ve skipped out on a lot of video games and scrapbooking supplies. But I do not regret any toys Iโ€™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 Iโ€™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. Itโ€™s very funny and unique. Sheโ€™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. Iโ€™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, Iโ€™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 Iโ€™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 momโ€™s. I brought her birthday presents with me:

As soon as I got to my momโ€™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 doesnโ€™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 itโ€™s one of the things I look forward to the most when I visit her.

This time she also surprised me with empanadas!

Hereโ€™s a pic of grumpy old Sweeney:

I continued to read Raptor Red in bed. I had my little trike with me, he doesnโ€™t have a name yet either. I really have to fix that.

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

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!! ๐Ÿ„๐ŸŒˆ

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 doesnโ€™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 butโ€ฆ it is a little wonky, especially for the priceโ€ฆ

We had pizza for dinner and watched YouTube, and I cuddled Sweeney, but he wasnโ€™t very thrilled about it… ๐Ÿ˜…

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.

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday ๐ŸŒˆ

Itโ€™s date night again! It was also Rudyardโ€™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.

๐ŸŒˆ Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

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.

๐ŸŒˆ Saturday ๐ŸŒˆ

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.

๐ŸŒˆ Sunday ๐ŸŒˆ

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 Iโ€™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 aรงaรญ bowls!

Diablo II has some effed up imagery… ๐Ÿ˜ณ 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, ๐Ÿฟ๏ธ My Life ๐Ÿฟ๏ธ, My Dolls, Other Toys, Scrapbooking And Journaling, Selfies, Snails, Weekly Summary

Week 13 Summary: Adjusting ๐Ÿ’€

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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.

๐ŸŒˆ Monday ๐ŸŒˆ

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:

๐ŸŒˆ Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

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.

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

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.

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday ๐ŸŒˆ

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.

๐ŸŒˆ Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

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. ๐Ÿ˜…

๐ŸŒˆ Saturday ๐ŸŒˆ

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:

๐ŸŒˆ Sunday ๐ŸŒˆ

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. ๐Ÿ˜…

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, ๐Ÿฟ๏ธ My Life ๐Ÿฟ๏ธ, My Hug, Selfies, Trips And Outings, Weekly Summary

Week 12 Summary: Mwako’s Visit And A New Job ๐Ÿถ

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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. ๐Ÿ

๐ŸŒˆ Monday ๐ŸŒˆ

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!

โœจ Ta-daa~! โœจ

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:

I’m not sure if we caught them chilling, or in an amorous moment, but it was very cute.

Black spider monkey:

African bush elephant:

Gulf fritillary butterfly:

This is part of the wildlife that just roams the zoo, and, I’m pretty sure, even my neighborhood. It certainly liked to pose.

Addaxes:

Adorable dholes!

And some Bactrian camels:

Playful and alert African wild dogs!

Watch the whole thing to see one of them jump in the water:

These spectacled bear were having a blast being cuddly with each other:

๐ŸŒˆ๐Ÿ˜ That was it for the zoo! ๐Ÿ˜๐ŸŒˆ

We were EXHAUSTED by the time we were done. From there we had a really nice lunch at Five Guys and then headed home.

After Christopher got home, we three played LEGO together! Unfortunately our partner was out working. I built LEGO Ray the Castaway 40566:

…and LEGO Creator Panda Bear 30641:

Christopher built yet another train and Mwako built a few different things but unfortunately I didn’t take pics of those before they were put away.

๐ŸŒˆ Tuesday ๐ŸŒˆ

On Tuesday Mwako and I went out again. At the craft store they had this โœจ BIG โœจ boy for just $10! He was so well made and so massive. I originally left him behind, but on the way home I just had to stop by again and grab him. He is the cuddliest thing.

Look how big! I still can’t believe it was so cheap.

We went to Buenos Aires Bakery for lunch, it was a big treat. I also got my yearly Argentinean Easter egg. Will have to start decorating that basket soon.

We went to Nami Sushi for dinner and I brought Robito, one of my oldest toys, along. I wasn’t very hungry and Christopher was feeling down, which made me fret a lot. But we went for a walk and still had a pretty pleasant evening on Mwako’s last day with us.

๐ŸŒˆ Wednesday ๐ŸŒˆ

On Wednesday, we still had a bit of time before Mwako left, so we went out one more time. We went to Barnes and Noble, Petsmart, and Five Below. I took an outfit selfie for the first time in a LONG time, and took Sugar Lump with me:

I actually felt cute for the first time in a while. I haven’t been taking that many photos of myself compared to before.

But first we got our pals safely strapped in:

At Barnes and Noble I came across this book. I’ll be buying it on Amazon down the road. It is absolutely massive (over 700 pages) and a beauty to hold –just look at this amazing cover! The inside pages did this cover justice, I’ll tell you that much.

At one point I went to the restroom and someone had left this little positive message in the stall:

Mwako treated me to lunch at The Pub. I had bangers and mash and we shared a scotch egg. Everything was incredibly delicious and we wound down talking about all sorts of things.

Then we went home and soon it was time to say goodbye, until we meet again. When we parted, Mwako entrusted me with Tiny Tina, AKA Tina the Tiny T. rex. I’ll take very good care of my new palm-sized Tyrannosaurid!

Christopher was a little down in the evening again (both times it was a side effect of medication) so while he slept it off, I proposed to our partner that we go pick up Pollo Tropical, since I know Christopher’s usual, and it would be nice to wake him up with something he likes. While we were in the drive-thru doing just that, we saw this car’s helpful little skeleton man!!

He just looked so happy. You couldn’t help but smile back!

๐ŸŒˆ Thursday – Friday ๐ŸŒˆ

Thursday was a very busy day catching up on all the housework. I also had a phone interview with the place I sent my resume to, and they scheduled me for an in-person interview on Friday. It went well –I was hired, and start on Monday! I haven’t worked retail in a few years, so I hope I can get back into that groove without too much trouble.

It’s also near the house and it is part-time, so it shouldn’t get too overwhelming.

After the interview I went grocery shopping for dinner. I made salmon! It was really good.

I happened to notice my roman snails mating for the first time in many months! So I immediately put the dish they picked for their date in the little tank (AKA “The Love Shack” AKA, later on, “The Nursery”). I hope they’ll lay eggs in it!