Today I finally got around to watching Season 3 of The Mandalorian. I’m only about three episodes in. While I watched from the couch, where I was working on art for The Tale Of Horus and Master Sequin’s Assistants, I was pretty amused by Rosie who was having a tremendously good time watching the critters on the birdfeeder. I gave her an old laptop desk to lay on, which is the perfect height for this purpose:
She really loves kickin’ that towel, too. ๐
Just Kotoko. She hadn’t used this bed in a while. Our little old lady is still living happily.
On this evening I slept on my own bed (it doesn’t happen too often). I took a photo of this corner of the bed because it makes me smile. My bedding, decorative pillow, and curtains are all Mandalorian themed, and of course I keep Grogu there with me. I might take him with my when I visit my mom this week.
Once I got in bed, Kotoko and Rosie came to lay with me. You can easily see how happy Rosie is to be with me at night. I’ve never felt so loved by a cat before Rosie, though she is pretty independent.
Of course, I adore her too. She’s my favorite cat that I’ve ever had.
This will be the last Weekly Summary! Going forward, I am going back to a more or less daily format. So, let’s get right to it… what happened this week? Christopher was gone on a work-related trip, the studio revamp was completed, and I spent a lot of its aftermath in a perpetual “I’m drawing personal art any minute now. Oh boy! It’s gonna happen! It’s gonna… uuuh…”
Let’s just say it’s been a struggle.
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! ๐โจ๐
๐ Monday ๐
On Monday, Christopher left for Natia. Whenever he travels I tend to go a bit nuts and blow my bedtime. We went to Kimchi Mart and got a huge amount of snacks as well as wine at ABC. While I spent the day doing things around the house, in the late afternoon and evening I got drunk, stuffed my face and played WoW. It was fantastic. ๐
Then, in the evening, I slept with Kotoko and Rosie. But I wasn’t a good substitute for Christopher… Kotoko was not pleased.
๐ Tuesday ๐
On Tuesday I finally put all the bins into storage and then took care of Mothball. I dusted him, surface-washed him with gentle soap, rinsed him off, disinfected him with Clorox mist, and dried him in the hot Florida sun for hours. Then I cut off the loose threads that he had and the leftover bit of glue in his paw, and fixed the scratches on his face and feet with furniture markers. Finally, he got brushed and dressed up!
I think he looks a lot happier now, wouldn’t you agree?
I moved most of the stuff that was displayed on the corkboard above my computer to the one in the bunk-bed. This is where my traditional badges used to be, but I decided to put all my badges away.
With the writing desk against the bed, the entire area is darker and the lights look even prettier. I don’t often sleep in this bed, but when I do, I love reading or gaming in it before I sleep, with all the pretty lights on.
A little more WoW before bed on this day. It’s been bringing me a lot of joy.
I slept on my own bed for a couple of nights this week. Rosie was so happy about it.
๐ Wednesday ๐
On Wednesday I zoomed with my mom and did a bit of digital art. I was still doing odds and ends around the house and sort of mentally resetting. But I got this cute video of some birds interacting. A woodpecker even happened to come to the feeder as I was recording!
๐ Thursday ๐
This print of Horus came in the mail on Thursday! The drawing was made by Cody, AKA Pukopop. Cody is an amazing artist. I set to choose one drawing to make into a print and display after the studio change, and it was this one. It came out so good!
This is where I put it. It’s a 12 x 12 print:
As of Thursday I was still been bits of housework as I waited for my stool to arrive. Cleaned one bathroom, organized stuff in the kitchen, played a little WoW. I finally fixed my Furby, Sour Cream, whose ears needed to be sewn back into place, and went through old sketchbooks and did more book formatting.
I came to realize that I need to set new solid goals. It can’t merely be “I’m going to work on my stuff now” or even “I’m going to work on finish these chapters of Meganeea soon”. It has to be as strict as my commissions were, such as “I’m going to finish, illustrate and post two chapters per month”. Without goals, there is no progress.
Anyway, on this night Christopher finally came home! I missed him very, very much.
๐ Friday ๐
โจ The Studio Is Finished!! โจ
When I woke up on Friday I knew it was time to set new goals or I would just keep doing housework, drinking wine and playing WoW and that…. well, isn’t ideal. I set myself a few book and art related goals as well as goals for chores of that day, and, after breakfast and a shower, set right to work as soon as the stool was delivered, which happened in the morning.
So here’s the new look of the studio, viewed from my digital art work area! You can see that a bookcase was removed, and this entire wall is dedicated to my personal art. Already, a brand new piece is on the corkboard, and my side table is there from the inking I’d been doing a while prior.
My dinosaur books have been moved to a shelf in this room for easy access while I work on my parasaurolophus novel, Fern’s Path:
Here’s my drawing board with the first two pieces I am set on finishing:
Here’s the left corner (behind the writing desk) and the right corner (with art supplies)…
…and the door, which serves as yet another display for art:
The top of the writing desk has all of these decorations as well as all my writing-related reference books, and you can see how my writing computer is set up also, with Scrivener on the screen:
A close-up of one of my favorite canvas prints. I hope I can do colored pencil work like this again.
I added this little ceramic pencil to my digital art area:
And that’s it! I think it’s pretty perfect now. I can actually “think” here.
๐ Saturday ๐
On Saturday I played WoW for a while. Tomoyo was feeling very cuddly.
She’s so cute and empty-brained. I love her.
๐ Sunday ๐
I made chicken curry for Saturday night dinner. I hadn’t made curry in a while, it turned out pretty good. Because the AC is still broken downstairs, we didn’t watch TV, and instead ate at our respective comfy spots.
That’s kind of it… I put off writing this post, which means I forgot a bunch of what happened. ๐คทโโ๏ธ Oops. I hope you all had a wonderful week, and going forward, I’ll see you all regularly in this space throughout the next!
Well, it’s at least “so long… for now”. You never know what the future may bring in a few years. Communities evolve, devolve, and change. I may decide to return. I hope I do, someday, feel comfortable enough to do so. But for now… it’s accounts deleted, commissions finished: I’m free!
Free from the discourse, free to write, free to draw, and it’s for me: no one else has to like or approve of it. Free from the queue, free from drawing topics that do nothing for me. Free from a page of disclaimers regarding community issues that I have to consistently tweak to please people who aren’t my friends and whose thoughts I do not even care about. Free from DNI lists that pop up in every social media space. Free from losing sleep regarding who I’m supposed to block or who blocked me. Free from any concern about the AUPs of other sites.
Now, around me, there is… silence… other than the chatter of my friendly little Telegram chat, and it is precious, at least for now.
It’s true that a lot less eyes are on me and my work… a LOT less. That is both good, and bad, but at least for a while, I think it’s very good.
With all the above said, I would like to clarify a couple of things. The first is that to me, fandom โ friends. Me leaving the fandom behind, and closing commissions, isn’t a rejection of my friends. I have said this over and over, but there are still people who took it this way.
I don’t entirely blame them for this, but to all my furry fandom friends, I say, we will only stop being friends if my belonging to the fandom is a requirement for said friendship, or if my drawing certain types of art is a requirement for friendship.
Another thing I want to be clear about is that the littlefur art I drew for twelve years brought me a lot of joy. I am so grateful for those many hours, months, days, years of great happiness. So, when I refer to being “free from drawing topics that do nothing for me” you have to take that joy into consideration. Drawing for the community made me very happy 95% of the time. However, you can’t deny that there is a certain… emptiness to always drawing the same cutesy scenes ad nauseaum for over ten years.
I like to draw cute characters, but it is far more rewarding to draw them as part of nuanced, engaging stories. I like dramatic scenes, scenes full of feeling; feelings which sometimes include fear, anger, and grief. These were rarely present in my commission work. I was (mostly) restricted to drawing the following feelings and expressions in my commission art:
Happiness
Embarrassment
Pouting / Grumpiness
Mischievousness
Sleepiness
Sadness (very rare)
Anger (very rare)
Unless a character was sleeping, closed eyes tended not to be an option. Ideally, I would be forced into giving a commissioner a full, 3/4 view body, even when I would love to try a different composition or angle, lest it be taken as me not giving their money’s worth.
For these reasons, no matter how happy I was with my commission work, I really do feel “freed”. But even so, I know I’ll do small commission work for close friends from time to time later this year. These friends know that I will reach out to them. It will never be a situation where I *need* to constantly do commissions again (I hope). So, those pieces will be a joy, since most of my time will be dedicated to art I am passionate about.
Free, But Also Lonely
Long ago, well before FA, before I even had a deviantART account, I had less “noise” and toxicity around me, it’s true. But I was also very lonely.
It’s easy to romanticize the way things used to be. As we say in my country of birth, “Todo tiempo pasado fue mejor”, or “Every time that has passed was better”. Nostalgia will do that to you. It’s easy to forget my desperate attempts at seeking connection –any kind of connection, with anyone who might remotely have something in common with me. Before things went so wrong, the Internet did give this to me. And now, in my attempt to get away from stuff that upsets me greatly, I am losing a lot of connections.
It’s been painful, but not entirely surprising, to see how tied some relationships I valued were to some websites. This was the truest of Twitter, but now, also of FA. People that expressed great affection for me basically forgot me when I left one or two sites. This is not a guilt-trip attempt; I could absolutely see myself doing the same, it is the nature of the game, but it still sucks.
And now I feel lost and lonely, and it isn’t something any one person can help me fix. I need to adjust and begin nurturing my closer friendships. Sometimes closer physically, and sometimes those that, while long-distance, were always very close emotionally but I didn’t give them as much time and attention as they deserved. I’m hoping I can do so, going forward.
Anyway –beyond this great rambling preamble and some minimally captioned photos, this will not be a very detailed entry. I was very busy for a lot of this week, as you will see below!
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! ๐โจ๐
๐ Monday ๐
I had an afternoon snack with Mothball. He still needs to be cleaned up, but I’ve grown quite fond of him.
For dinner, I made toasted rice balls with edamame and some avocado from our neighbors’ tree which they gave to us. Sadly, the avocado was no good. I liked the rest, but the guys didn’t like the edamame so much.
๐ Tuesday ๐
Christopher needed to buy some stuff, so we went on a little IKEA outing! I brought Romaine along, and we had a nice lunch.
We also went to Goodwill and I found a few neat used books.
In the late afternoon, I finished my very last commission, for Cosu. It took an entire week to complete, but I am proud of the results!
In the evening, our friends Ana and Jessie came over and we had a Fourth of July BBQ! I asked Christopher to really burn my hot dog ’cause that’s how I like it best. ๐ญ๐ฅ I used all of my Bluey stuff for dinner.
Then we sat outside waiting for our across-the-street neighbors’ fireworks to start. They hadn’t done fireworks in a few years. These are the same neighbors who gave us the avocados. A very nice family. I am glad that they are our neighbors. They even gave us some headbands and glowsticks! ๐
Here’s some video I took of the fireworks around the neighborhood:
One more:
๐ Wednesday ๐
On Wednesday I did a little scrapbooking! It has been a while since I was last able to find the time to do so. Super Mario was the theme!
I wasn’t able to get as good a scan, so I want to share both a scan and a photo. Here’s the photo, first:
And the scan:
This is the ninth scrapbooking page so far this year. I’ll do one more Mario page before moving on to another topic.
On Wednesday evening I decided to make a Threads account, but I’m unsure if anything will come from it. ๐คทโโ๏ธ
๐ Thursday ๐
Went for a walk with our partner in the evening. A little snail was sliming about!
An ant was walking over him, but I don’t think he was bothered by it.
Rosie cuddled with me at bedtime…
๐ Friday ๐
I don’t have anything to share on this day because I began my studio revamp, which I talked about extensively in this post published on Thursday. It was an extremely busy day. The new drawing board arrived, too.
๐ Saturday ๐
By Saturday afternoon, a great deal of progress had been made. The drawing board was put together by our partner, though I am still missing a stool:
I also decided just what I wanted to do with the wall. Ultimately, that entire side of the room is being dedicated to traditional art going forward. Everything touching that wall (furniture or not) is either supplies to create traditional art, or places to display it (though perhaps I’ll display any OC pieces on the wall, digital or traditional, especially since I mix the two a lot anyway).
We tried to go for a walk in the afternoon but it began to rain, quite hard too. The umbrella our partner brought wasn’t cooperating at all.
In the end, Christopher picked us up.
๐ Sunday ๐
As of today I am about 90% done with the studio revamp, and very, very, very exhausted. Many bins worth of stuff still need to go into storage. But it looks right –very inviting. I can’t wait to create in this new space!
I also mowed the lawn. It was a very tiring day/week. I expect to continue to be busy with final odds and ends until late next week.
I’m sorry I don’t have anything else very interesting to say. I’m so tired! But also very excited.
I don’t have a big preamble this time around. The rainy and stormy season goes on and on… and on. All of this week I worked on commissions. I also visited my mom, and later in the week, we went to see my mom-in-law! It was a VERY busy one, but I also found time to game and spend time with my toys. Let’s get on with the summary!
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! ๐โจ๐
๐ Monday ๐
You might recall that last weekend, Kotoko wasn’t doing so well, though she got better later on Sunday. By Monday morning, she was all better, with a strong appetite and bright eyes!
Here’s a little snack I had in the afternoon. I didn’t eat the whole bunny, just a piece.
I saw Bluey yogurt at Publix! I didn’t want it but I took a picture:
In the late afternoon, I made time for WoW and some wine! ๐ท๐ฎ
I took a few snaps of Stromboli because I love him so much.
Slimy man. Best man.
At some point, I noticed that one of the soots decided to perch upon Ribbon’s head. It was so cute.
After Monday night dinner, Kotoko lounged on our partner’s leg. That was unusual; she usually picks Christopher. But it was adorable.
๐ Tuesday ๐
My pair of Raikes beavers that Christopher so sweetly bought for me arrived on Tuesday! Christopher can usually tell when I am legitimately losing my mind over a certain toy, even if I just came across it. This was one of those cases, and when they arrived, I loved them even more than I thought I would! I’ve named the girl Russet and the boy Yukon because they are just two huge potatoes (and these are actual names; Russet is unisex, while Yukon is a boy’s name):
Their outfits are a little stained from storage and old age, but that’s okay. While I love the look of their outfits, I have to re-dress them anyway as that is a big part of my putting my own touch as I create their personalities.
Here’s Rosie already getting cozy with them:
Speaking of Rosie, here is a perfectly cut scream.
By Tuesday afternoon I’d finished two more commissions:
With this, there was just ONE left! Then I left to visit with mom.
๐ Wednesday ๐
As always, mom had surprises for me. The nicest one was this Mafalda mate gourd! I love it so much. I placed it with my other Mafalda collectibles. I really do want to use it, but I’m so afraid of breaking it.
She also gave me this cute little Ivysaur which I placed in the game room:
๐ Thursday ๐
On Thursday I got around to brushing and dressing Romaine. He looks a lot happier!
I felt pretty exhausted all day since my period was about to hit (and would, the next day). So I napped in the afternoon. Rosie came to lay with me. She was purring and looking into my eyes and seemed so happy.
After I got up, I did more chores and made dinner, and after that, tried to play LEGO with the guys, but couldn’t get very far with my set… I was just so tired. I got ready for bed and after anime, played WoW for a little while, mindlessly hunting for more dragon glyphs.
At one point, as I flew through some dark areas, I turned around and was surprised by a very beautiful spot, glowing and snowing, with a massive dragon flying about. Many of my favorite WoW memories are moments of sudden beauty such as these, at night, with no one else around in-game.
My server is a highly populated one, but few people can be found in some areas at such an hour. So I experience eerie, special moments like this one.
A good while into playing, the message I’d seen a couple of weeks ago popped up again!
It was a very random hour, like 1:15 am? I am not sure why it pops up. I must have turned on some setting at some point on my account, perhaps many years ago, but I can’t find anything about this. In particular, the all-caps and exclamation mark makes me think that it’s something that I myself wrote. Well, in any case, both times it popped up I went “Hmm, it IS late” and decided to stop for the night.
I found a cozy spot to land my dragon and fell asleep with Stromboli, Pippi and Snailio Iglesias keeping watch. Pippi is off camera though.
Right before bed, I took some photos of the freshly-cleaned snail tank. I hung some clover/shamrock lights on top, and it looked very pretty in the dark:
My little guys were just having a nice time, eating, drinking, and going for evening strolls:
๐ Friday ๐
Friday evening we left for Sebastian. I was so excited! I’d seen my mom-in-law when she visited us, but I hadn’t been able to visit her place for a good three months. I brought Raisin for company:
The sun began to set just as we arrived. It was very pretty.
Once we got there, we had chicken nachos while watching my mom-in-law and her friends play cards. I also cuddled and said hi to the cats, whom I hadn’t seen in ages:
We enjoyed each other’s company for the evening and played Blokus.
As usual, Pan got some cuddles from our partner.
We had many plans for Saturday, so we didn’t stay up too late.
๐ Saturday ๐
On Saturday we went to a bunch of really fun antique shops. Actually, the first one was really just a thrift store. I found a few cool books. One, in particular, was a super bizarre addition to my “material to indoctrinate children” collection:
I’ll just give you a few sample pages. It’s… interesting, to say the least. On the surface, it seems pretty harmless, and certainly is compared to other material I have on my shelves, but it’s pretty out there regardless.
With that said: I mean no disrespect if this sort of thing forms part of your spiritual comfort. I’ve generally made it known, however, that having been a Christian most of my life (now somewhere between Agnostic and Atheist) and indoctrinated into Catholicism from a very early age, I have strong feelings regarding indoctrinating children into any sort of religious belief. I think it’s confusing at best, and with some subsets of religion, actual child abuse at worst (Sky Daddy loves you very much, but if you don’t love him more than your own mom and dad, he’ll burn you in a fire forever! Wait, WHAT?)
This isn’t one of those cases, it’s just a little weird, but then again I haven’t read the whole book yet. Some things seem harmless on the surface (the placebo effect of believing you can heal yourself isn’t necessarily bad and can even help) but its wording appears to be setting the ground for believing in actual spiritual healers, which regularly scam people and sometimes keep them from seeking actual medical help. So… .๐คทโโ๏ธ
Anyway! I also got these two:
I’m super excited to read this one!
The second store had lots of interesting things, but it was the sort of place where the owner was very attached to his collection. So, his prices were somewhat unreasonable, in some cases he didn’t know the value of the items offhand, or I, being fairly knowledgeable about some toys, knew that they were massively overpriced. But it was still delightful to browse!
I happened to run into a porcelain doll I liked for the first time ever. Porcelain usually really turns me off as a material. Had she been more reasonably priced, I would have probably bought her. She looked so sweet and it would have been nice to make her pretty again.
The next store was mostly furniture, but the building used to be a bank! You could look inside the old vaults, which was really interesting. I also saw a couple of interesting animal figures. The little mouse perched upon a piece of Roquefort was my favorite.
The final stop was actually a bunch of vendors under one massive roof. It was the Wildwood Antique Mall. After we all went in, our partner was nowhere to be seen. It was because he’d found this massive moth outside and stayed back to take a picture:
Moths are so pretty. I really love them.
It was really interesting to come across a little pride booth. This isn’t really an area where I would feel safe setting up such a booth. This person, I felt, was brave.
Anyway, this place had so many cute things, I had to restrain myself all the while. I knew I could probably get one treat so I had to choose carefully. I took photos of many lovely or interesting things:
It was so cool to see a Maple Town lunch box! The dinosaur was a Universal Parks item, and very well made. I am eager to see what I may find when we go in September. The Thomas pillow was the one thing I truly hated to leave behind… but as I said, I felt it was best to choose just one item.
Eventually, I would find it in the form of the most scratched-up, dirtiest Raikes bear I ever came across. His clothes were filthy, and his face was in bad shape. Who knows how long he’d been there! So of course, my “need to rescue” gland immediately went into overdrive.
He was in a booth with the most haunted-looking dolls ever. You know I love dolls, even creepy dolls, but boy, these were something else!
As we were heading to pay my new Raikes bear’s “adoption fee”, we came across this cute doggy:
I named my new bear Mothball. He’ll need lots of TLC, but I am looking forward to freshening him up! ๐
We went to Heavenly Wings for lunch.
I’ve now made peace with the fact that I don’t like so-called “good” boneless wings. I like Buffalo Wild Wings, as terrible as everyone says they are. I guess I’ve also made peace with the fact that no one ever wants to eat there with me, ever. Sigh. ๐
Then we went to paint ceramics. I’d looked forward to this so much! I picked a penguin this time.
Our partner painted a zombie squirrel for me. Once he was finished, he was bored, so he also colored me a frog. I asked him to sign it and he pretended to, but in the end, he just wrote “frog”. ๐
In the photos above and below, my penguin is finished. He looks pale, but I used the closest colors I could find to the pan flag colors. We will see how bright he turns out after firing! Below you can see the back:
Here are all the figures together: zombie squirrel (our partner) toucan (mom-in-law) mouse with mushroom (Christopher) and my penguin:
In this photo, the figures are less visible but Christopher looks so cute:
Christopher has turned out to be really good at this, particularly at simple but expressive, well-painted eyes. It’s really easy to screw up the eyes.
Here’s a final photo of us holding our figures:
After this, we went home, had burgers, and watched the new Mario movie, which I very much feel was extremely stupid. It’s a bummer. I am exactly the audience for it, being a huge Mario franchise fan. But it was so bad. Oh well. At least it was visually beautiful, and I have the RPG to look forward to!
๐ Sunday ๐
On the long drive back after Sunday lunch, I took off all of Mothball’s dirty old clothes. He enjoyed the hot sun on his fur as he watched the cars go by:
We got home in the early afternoon. I unpacked and did all the chores before relaxing with some WoW.
Before bed, I undressed Russet and Yukon, cut off their tags and loose strings, brushed them, cleaned their faces, and dressed them in their brand-new outfits. I am immensely pleased with how they look!
Name necklaces are next, and possibly a tail ribbon for Russet. ๐ฅฐ
And that was it for this week. Next week, my last commission should be finished, and I will try to do a “reset” of my goals. I hope you all have a lovely week, and I’ll see you next time! ๐โโ๏ธ
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! ๐ To binge Prehistoric Planet and The Mandalorian, and to finish 3,000 Leagues In Search Of Mother. ๐ค For a while, free to kinda do anything –I won’t seek another job until after my Alaska and Orlando vacations. ๐ข๐
But for the rest of this week, I worked a lot, determined to give my last week at CTS my all. โ 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. ๐ 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! ๐โจ๐
๐ Monday ๐
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.
๐ Tuesday ๐
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:
๐ Wednesday ๐
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. ๐ 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.
๐ Thursday ๐
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. ๐
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… ๐ 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.
๐ Friday ๐
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\_(ใ)_/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:
๐ Saturday ๐
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. ๐
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. ๐ฅฐ 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.”
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.
๐ Sunday ๐
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. ๐ฅฐ
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!
Hectic, bittersweet days continue at work. Next week will be our last week left together. A few cute puppers visited the store, and as usual, I took photos of them to share with you. ๐ถ
In some BIG news… I deleted my FurAffinity account this week. I would say that was the most momentous event. Also, this week I didn’t draw. I may or may not draw next week… right now I’m just going through the motions to complete the last week at CTS. But I will definitely resume drawing when the store closes!
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! ๐โจ๐
๐ Monday ๐
Someone had drawn a little sad face by the board countdown…
I really enjoyed my lunch on this day. I had an egg salad sandwich.
A customer with a lovely golden retriever came to the store! He was so friendly and happy.
When my husband and our partner came to pick me up after this long and busy day, I was surprised to see that Kotoko had joined them for the ride!
She seemed very interested in everything there was to see:
I took a little video, as well:
Our partner was in charge of dinner this night. He made an amazing sous vide steak with some newfangled equipment he bought. For some reason, Christopher decided to drink and got pretty hammered, which made the evening… interesting.
I ended my night playing World of Warcraft as I have been doing recently.
๐ Tuesday ๐
I had salad again for lunch.
The store empties further, not just with passing days but with passing hours. So, I continue to take photos…
It’s eerie and can be very disorienting. For some employees, coming back to this after having one or two days off, and seeing the store look alien and unrecognizable, can be rough to say the least, and makes them understandably depressed. ๐
๐ Wednesday ๐
Wednesday was my day off. I went for a walk for the first time in a very long time. I saw some interesting mushrooms:
And a tiny lizard!
In the afternoon, the little outfits I commissioned for my new pair of Duendys by Nines D’ Onil came in. They fit pretty well! I also made them two necklaces each (one with a snail and one with a primary-colored pacifier) and keychains with toy toys. They still need name necklaces, but their names are Trapper and Keeper. I meant for Trapper to be a boy, but then realized these are anatomically correct dolls, and both are little girls! ๐
In the evening I played World of Warcraft while Rosemary kept me company nearby.
๐ Thursday ๐
As I came back to work on Thursday, I noticed that there was now a countdown sign by the entrance:
My boss, Lazaro, had written a message to the team on the board. It made me tear up…
Had salad for lunch:
We played a little LEGO in the evening. I have two wonderful HUGE sets to do, but just don’t feel emotionally ready to tackle them. So I grabbed my last two tiny sets. I’m hoping Christopher will get me some smaller sets to add to my backlog. Sometimes, I just need a few sets like these (well, a little more complex than these) in between builds to clear my head.
๐ Friday ๐
Friday morning, some stuff had been added to the board:
Later, before my boss left for the day, I wanted to tell him some stuff that I didn’t want to lose the chance to share with him before this is all over. One of the things I wanted him to know is how much the team appreciates him.
A manager doesn’t usually get to hear what employees say behind his back, only to his face. He has a really strong personality. He actually gets on people’s nerves a lot. But even when employees vent to one another about him, they have kind things to say. Even someone complaining about him will end the sentence with “but he’s a good guy/boss/I like working for him.” I saw this consistently in the few months I’ve been there, but even more so, recently.
The weird thing is, I haven’t been emotional at work, but after I spoke to him, as I walked back to the register, I suddenly became really overcome with sadness. It took a huge effort not to start crying as I rang up the next person. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been there just three months. I love the store and my coworkers. I am so sad that this is ending.
On this day, the store had a special visitor. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but Corgis are my absolute dream dog. Having one is a big item on my bucket list, an “I must do this before I die” thing. Right now we have too many cats and preoccupations. When I get a Corgi, I want to have the economical and time-availability resources to give it my all.
I was able to pet this sweet little lady and take many photos. Looking at them now just reinforces my desire! Someday, someday…
When I got home, my new Imaginext Parasaurolophus had arrived! It’s such a surprise to see them make this Cretaceous hadrosaurid –a favorite of mine, right when I am working on a book about one, too! Its mouth opens and closes:
It makes gentle bellows and stompy noises too!
Something important that happened on this day was that I finalized my decision regarding FurAffinity, and by extension, most of my leftover social media. I deleted cohost, Gumroad, Carrd, Mastodon, Retrospring, and Toyhou.se (haven’t decided about Instagram yet). I sent deletion requests for my two FA side accounts and would be sending the one for my main account on Sunday night.
๐ Saturday ๐
Saturday was a slow day at work. We tried to keep busy as much as we could, but the hours dragged on so slowly. It rained and stormed heavily all day. I had my usual salad for lunch:
We had two doggy visitors on Saturday! As always, I got pictures:
The second dog belongs to one of my coworkers. Her stepfather had come in with the dog and was walking around the store holding the dog up in the air to embarrass her. It was honestly adorable, she literally went to hide among the merchandise, she was so mortified, haha.
After a nice shower, a good dinner, and making the beds, I settled in for some wine and WoW:
It was sooo nice! ๐ท๐ฉ๐
I finally went to sleep around 2:00 am. Grover makes the bed look so inviting!
I have been going to bed very late recently. Work is very exhausting, which makes me want to relax for longer in the evenings, but then obviously in the mornings, I am dragging ass… ๐ฌ Very soon life will go back to normal though, so at least there is that.
๐ Sunday ๐
Lunch was similar to other days, but I keep taking photos of my lunches because there are only a handful left of them at work. Also, the fruit and veggie Good2Grow juice was my favorite so far!
On Sunday evening, I sent in the deletion request for my FurAffinity account. I originally created the account on January 1st, 2012. That is a long time. I have not been on any other website as long as I have been on FurAffinity.
I am not sure what my daily Internet life will turn into now… For the last 12 or so years, I checked FurAffinity multiple times per day. Now, this will be gone, along with most other online social spaces I had left. I am unsure regarding Instagram… but it’s so full of bots anyway. So maybe I will also leave.
I see pretty monumental changes happening all around me when it comes to the Internet. A lot of younger people are anxious to be untethered from smartphones. Twitter and Reddit are imploding. FurAffinity became a wasteland. DeviantART destroyed itself, and Tumblr is full of “antis”. Cohost is running out of money and a recent, very poorly handled AUP debacle saw many people leaving. And who’s still on Facebook? ๐คทโโ๏ธ
Most people I know have left most social media or are thinking of doing so, or wish they could do so. I think everyone has wanted to for a long time, but it’s a hard habit to break. It took this implosion, and the virtual self-immolation of these websites, for people to begin to jump ships en masse.
I’ve wanted to leave the fandom communities of which I have been part for years now –they have long become deeply toxic for my psyche– but the monumental level of loss that it entailed made this a step I could not bear to take until my community practically ate itself and its online hangouts became barren.
Now that the time has come, the sense of loss is very much secondary to intense relief. I have no regrets.
On that note, I’d kept every “shout” since I joined FA in 2012, so I used an extension that screenshots an entire webpage and screenshotted all the shouts I had ever received. A shout is a 200-or-so-character message on a person’s profile. I’d screenshot, delete all shouts in the current webpage, and when the new ones loaded, and then screenshot again. It was 40 pages, so a good bit of work, but I feel that it’s worth it to have those memories. ๐
And so an exhausting week came to an end. I’m off Monday (tomorrow) and then it’s back to work to finish my last week at one of my favorite jobs that I’ve ever had. After next week, I’ll be finishing the last few art pieces, and then… it’s back to drawing and writing for me! ๐
Have a happy week, everyone! Thank you to all who are sticking with me and remaining friends. It means so much to me!
First week at the new job! ๐ Also, last week at the new job. ๐ We celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary, and Mother’s Day. Our family came to visit and we ate out a LOT. Our partner’s computer suddenly died which meant not much Diablo this week.
I finally opened my anniversary doll, but it turned out to: a) be FUGLY and b) have a manufacturing defect, so we contacted the seller and after some back and forth got a full refund and got to keep the doll regardless. But, I’ll sell her, I don’t see myself enjoying her ever. I got a different doll as a replacement already on the way.
I also did lots of art this week. I’ll tell you about that, and about other things too. Let’s go!
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! ๐โจ๐
๐ Monday ๐
Monday was the first day at my new job. I was up at 7:00 am to take care of the dayโs housework. Then I worked until 3:30 pm.
Now that I’m not there anymore (as you will learn more about later into this summary) I feel more comfortable sharing more about this place. It was (well, is) a local Italian Bakery and Market.
They have some interesting products, and, generally, is what I would consider a higher-end store as far as prices, which you wouldn’t know judging by the unbelievable crassness of some of the clientele. It was the sort of rudeness I encountered in my gas station days.
Granted, most people were okay, but some definitely consider you (the cashier) of a lower class because you are there to serve them. I encountered some of the worst of this on my first day. But the day went by quickly enough, even though, unlike my experiences at CTS, I found myself unhappy very fast.
On the way home, our partner treated me to lunch. Then I took a short nap, showered, and made dinner, which would cook for a few hours in the slow cooker. I was pretty proud of how the meal turned out.
I spent the rest of the evening alternating between chores and drawing. I got another commission and a Patreon reward nearly done.
Dinner was enjoyable, and after that, I did a few more chores and played Diablo with our partner. We beat Mephisto!
Before bed, I ran Kalamataโs brand-new dress through the wash and put it on her. It looks perfect! A brand new hair bow would arrive for her on Wednesday, and at some point in the next week, some โshoesโ I got her on AliExpress should show up too. Theyโre technically mittens, but she has stuffed feet, so I think they will work best. I’ll post a photo once everything is here.
๐ Tuesday ๐
Another workday. I was up early again and finished all the chores before heading to work.
I would begin to grow frustrated at work very quickly. By this day, I knew that if you were even cents short on the register, it would come out of your own pocket. This is illegal here without prior written arrangement and notice. In addition, counting the cash drawer had to be done off the clock, on your own time.
At CTS, my register was always okay (except for one day when I think I was a dollar or so over?) I didn’t have to count off the clock, and I didn’t have such stress over my head about being slightly short or over, which meant I wasn’t anywhere near as likely to make mistakes because I was relaxed.
Moreover, the unhappiness of all the other employees was becoming more and more evident to me. Everyone looked tired and upset, the cashiers were always complaining about their lives and their job to each other. There was zero positivity. This, coupled with the managers’ conflicting rules and their “when I’m here we do things my way, when he’s here you do things his way” ethos, made for an anxiety-ridden workplace.
By this day, I told myself “I’ll stay here just until the cruise”, though ultimately I wouldn’t even be able to last the week.
In spite of being so tired, I completed a commission and a Patreon reward on this day:
๐ Wednesday ๐
Wednesday I got to stay home. My period hit pretty hard so it was a relief that I was given the day off because it had been made repeatedly clear to me that being sick is NOT okay at my new job. Even upon hiring I was asked, “You don’t have no medical issues, do ya?” I said no, of course… ๐
But I do have endometriosis, and while my uterus has been kinder to me in my 30s than in my terrible, terrible 20s, it’s still scary to live with a condition that can completely incapacitate me more or less at random, while working at a place that will have zero tolerance for this.
I wasn’t able to get much done on this day, but I worked all day long on Christopher’s anniversary present and did the most pressing chores. Then we went to Mezes Greek Taverna for dinner:
๐ Thursday ๐
Thursday was our seventh wedding anniversary! I left Christopher’s gift and card on his desk for him to find in the morning when he sat down to breakfast. As usual, I drew our little Subrosians, this time being visited by friendly little alien soots:
Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a foul mood most of the day, between the remnants of my period and the fact that I absolutely HATED being at work and dreaded going back the next day. Even though today I was allowed to open my anniversary doll, I didn’t. I felt that low.
Also, our partner’s computer died on Thursday (or rather, Wednesday night) so no more Diablo this week.
One highlight of today is that my mom sent us a $75 gift card to a really fancy local restaurant that I’m dying to try!
๐ Friday ๐
On Friday I quit my job. My husband and our partner both told me that the job sounded crappy and toxic and I should leave. Then my mom also said that. Up until then, I’d still been trying to work it out. I really enjoyed working at a grocery store in the past, and I enjoy working at a register and exchanging pleasantries with customers.
There was no major event on this day that “did it”. I knew it was my chance to leave while being able to get full-time hours at CTS for 6-8 more weeks until they close (they really need people right now). If I waited any longer, I’d be removed from CTS’s system. But if anything did throw me over the edge at the new job, it was the combination of these things:
1. Having my scheduled hours changed 3 times for this day alone. On Monday I was told I’d work until 3:30 pm on Friday, so I made plans with my family. On Thursday I was told it might be 4:00 pm, or 5:30 pm. On Friday I was told it could be 5:30 pm, or 6:30 pm, or maybe until closing? Who the heck knows, it’s not like I have a life, right?
2. I got there early to count my register. It was slightly off (about $0.23 over). So I counted it again. When I told the manager that it was off, and by how much, the manager stood over me watching me count for the second time, which almost made me want to scream. I actually turned around to ask if I could help him. Bitch, if you want to double-check, count it yourself. Don’t breathe down my neck. Anyway I counted correctly, it was still off.
3. The realization by a comment from the manager that he wanted me to be totally alone at the register within two weeks –with no other cashiers in the store. ๐ณ At a place where I have to memorize a ton of breads and produce by sight, that is NOT happening! I am also expected to answer the phone, redirect calls, and now, I found out, make cappuccinos and shit. And don’t forget, my register better not be off by a penny while I try to handle all of this at once! Going to the bathroom is also supposed to happen only during my 15-minute break so I better make sure my body adjusts.
4. Oh but it’s okay: “You can page me any time, and I’ll come help,” said the manager. This is the nice manager everyone (sort of) likes, by the way. Well, there were a lot of fires to be put out on this day, things that needed a manager. The other cashier and I both paged him multiple times –he wouldn’t come out or reply, and would lock himself in his office, which resulted in very frustrated customers. Meanwhile, the manager everyone considers to be a hard-ass, actually comes out when needed, but I digress.
These were just the highlights, really. When I went out on my break, I spoke to my old boss at CTS. He still needed me until the store’s closing. So, after asking Christopher for advice, I came back from the break early so I wouldn’t be discussing this with the manager on the clock, and told him it wasn’t working out for me, but that I would be glad to work the rest of that day until 5:00 pm.
The manager asked me what could be done to keep me, what made me unhappy, etc. I didn’t get much into it. In the end, he said I could just go, and come back on Thursday for my check. I’ll have to see the hard-ass manager for that, so I hope Christopher or our partner come with me. It was the atmosphere of the place that was the worst for me, so I am very stressed about returning for my check.
Still, I walked home practically floating on air from sheer relief. ๐ After a few texts back and forth with my CTS boss, I saw a lot of hours pop up on my schedule for next week. Hooray! ๐ฅณ I got busy with housework until our family got there, and also finished this Patreon reward:
At some point in the late afternoon, I opened my anniversary doll and had a real “thanksIhateit.jpg” moment. I chose this doll after seeing it in many non-stock photos and videos. She has a very peculiar face mold, and I knew there was a chance I wouldn’t like her IRL, but was crossing my fingers for her. Either way, it would be a “love it or hate it” sort of thing. Unfortunately, it was the latter. I was very relieved to find she had a defect: a poorly-glued eyelash. So, I contacted the manufacturer and would hear back the next day. More on that later…
By the time my mom-in-law and Christopher’s grandma got there, I had a little surprise ready for them on the table:
Gifts for each of them and cards too! Speaking of cards, here are the anniversary cards that I (we) got –from mom-in-law to us, from Christopher to me, and from Grandma to us:
Grandma also got this custom Christmas ornament for us:
And socks for me!
For dinner, we went to Blue Ginger as the Mother’s Day meal. It was Grandma’s first time, I’m really glad she enjoyed it. This is what I had, it was very filling:
After we got home, we all got comfy, some of us in our jammies, and we played Uno and had good wine! Kotoko joined us. Christopher often sets out a chair for her because she likes to observe:
She’s helping with his next play:
Even Rosie came to hang out!
So did Tomoyo, photogenic as, er, per usual…
*UuuuUuuuuh*
๐ Saturday ๐
While I still hadn’t heard back from the doll manufacturer, Christopher graciously allowed me to choose a replacement for my anniversary gift. I decided to peruse eBay this time, looking for a doll from a specific line that I wanted to add to my collection: a “My Twinn”.
My Twinn dolls are… well… they’re something. You’re either going to love or hate this concept. Basically, back when they were a thing, this Denver, CO company could make a 23″ tall doll to look just like your child, or perhaps the child’s parent or grandparent as a child. I think it’s both creepy and adorable, uncanny yet charming. In addition to the photos below, you can find more information at Logan’s Ladies, an excellent My Twinn resource.
I have found a lot of the My Twinn dolls to give me “haunted doll” vibes, in that “Good Guy” doll sort of way. To add to their creepy feel, some of the dolls’ eyes do this after years in storage:
They turn red!! Haha… And if you frequent haunted doll YouTube and TikTok, you’ll find My Twinn dolls just tend to give people that feeling. So, I thought I never wanted one. But the more I looked at some, the more they grew on me. Eventually, I came across a My Twinn doll that, to me, looked just like AG’s Samantha Parkington should:
You see, I love Samantha as a character, both in her books and movies. I always felt that the American Girl doll, pretty as it is, doesn’t do Samantha justice. To me, this doll looks more like I imagine a Samantha doll to look, so I’m going to call her that!
She comes with the box and everything! And since she was cheaper than my original anniversary doll, I also got an outfit on the way for her:
My heart was really set on this My Twinn, but the seller declined my offer. It was a pity, she is so beautiful and I completely fell in love. But the lowest the seller would go was $109 and I couldn’t afford her. ๐๐๐๐ข I’m still a bit salty about that. I really adore her, even if I love my second choice. Wish it was closer to my birthday! ๐ญ Oh well. I am glad to have held on strongly to not trading more art for toys, though. I am proud of that.
Something else that is on the way is dresses and shoes for Penny and Molly (of course Molly has to have a patriotic dress):
Finally (this is definitely my “doll phase” year… geez… what happened to my resolution?! ๐ฉ) a dear friend gifted me this little girl from eBay. I’m learning a lot more about doll brands, materials, and eras this year. This is a Zanini Zambelli Italian doll, a brand I was unfamiliar with. She looks to be in pretty good shape, though her hair needs some TLC:
Her face is very sweet and thoughtful…
All I bought for this little lady is this ribbon (I love her outfit so much, that I don’t plan to change it):
On Saturday morning we went to the Swap Shop. I did most of my walking with Christopher, while our partner walked with Grandma and my mom-in-law. It was nice to spend time alone with my hubby. It’s a wonderful thing to spend most of our time the three of us together, but I also always treasure one-on-one time with either of them. It’s special. ๐ฅฐ
I found a few wonderful vintage books at the Swap Shop, and also some Franklin ones! All hardcover, even an annual of British girl’s magazine, Judy!
My favorite find is the 3 Minute Bedtime Stories book, because in addition to being beautifully illustrated, I don’t actually know any of the stories.
After the Swap Shop, we went to have dim sum for lunch at a very popular, local Chinese restaurant. The place is huge, and was absolutely packed due to Mother’s Day. Grandma took this photo while the three of them waited outside (Christopher and I waited inside for our number to be called):
Photos at the table…
It was my first time having dim sum. I liked it; it was alright. But the atmosphere of the restaurant was too busy and overwhelming for me.
Back at the house, naps were had and we all relaxed for a while before dinner time.
In the evening, we had our anniversary dinner courtesy of my mom-in-law. We went to The Pub. Christopher and I both really like this place, and we got a very nice table. Here’s a photo that the very kind waiter took of our group:
Christopher and I! We were happy. ๐ฅฐ
I had my favorite, bangers and mash, and an alcoholic coffee drink. We also ordered a great spinach dip:
I had bread pudding for dessert but it wasn’t what I hoped. Nothing beats the one I had in Tampa!
๐ Sunday ๐
On Sunday I worked all day long, both on housework and art. I finished two Patreon rewards and a little gift for Bogie. Now there are just eight pieces left to go –and the Patreon rewards are all completed!
I have a busy week ahead, with many hours at CTS. I wonder what I will find when I go in tomorrow. Will it be a mess? Busy? Quiet? I guess I’ll find out.
I’m estimating finishing four more pieces this week, so please look forward to that. I hope everyone has a lovely week!
Another week down. Rain is still plentiful! Most of my goals continue to be on pause. I’ve reduced my queue workload to just 15 items, having completed 21 since the new job began. I estimate about a month’s worth of work left. It’s tiring: I want to be done, so I can draw my own things. But the progress is encouraging.
Other than LOTS of due artwork being completed, some interesting things that happened this week were: another doll arrived (yes… yes, really) Christopher bought a robotic arm (???) I received a surprise of ๐ป flowers ๐ป and a box of Japanese candy. Let’s get on with the summary!
CW: There will be a spider photo in this post! It will appear shortly below the Thursday header.
๐ Monday ๐
Worked on some more necklaces on Monday. Rosie has been so affectionate… she kept me company:
I’ve been reading this biography of the lives of Stan & Jan Berenstain, creators of The Berenstain Bears. It’s very charming and interesting, particularly their lives prior to creating the bears.
(I’ve also been eating a lot of potatoes).
Here’s a Patreon reward I finished on Monday:
After I was done drawing for the day, our partner and I played Diablo II some more!
Then, when Christopher got home, we all played LEGO together. All I have left now are my Castle/Medieval sets, so I started with this one:
I cleaned the tank on this day. Here’s some happy and energetic snails:
And a little video, because why not:
๐ Tuesday ๐
Tuesday morning I took this very adorable photo of Christopher and Kotoko snuggling. I know Christopher probably won’t be super thrilled to see this photo on my blog but I can’t resist. He’s even smiling in his sleep! And Kotoko looks so happy to be snuggled.
Necklace-making continued throughout this day. This is just a fraction of what I’ve made! When all is said and done, from beginning to end, I made about 30.
More Diablo II in the afternoon! We started a new act.
Recently, our partner surprised me with the news that he’d gotten a big box of Japanese candy for me. It finally arrived. It’s really pretty!
Laffy Taffy, my little Dilophosaurus, investigated…
All the candy is very cute and interesting to look at…
Finished a couple of Patreon icons on this day:
๐ Wednesday ๐
By Wednesday, I was done reading the Berenstain’s autobiography, so I started with some of their actual bear books:
For whatever reason, Rosie continues to be all over me, or near me. She’s full of affection and purrs and seems very happy lately.
