So, my blog has been a bit abandoned… 👉👈💧 I’m so sorry about that. I also seem to be becoming more and more of a hermit. I am sorry about that, too.
There’s been a bunch of reasons. I’ve been reading a lot (and I do mean a LOT), been kind of busy deep inside my own head, perhaps having not exactly a mid-life crisis as much as a mid-life reassessment, plus preparing for upcoming trips, and then going on them.
Let’s start with the Alaska cruise: it was amazing. When it comes to the trip’s details, this time, unlike last time, I’m making an effort to blog more about it.
To make it easier, I opted not to decorate my photos with purikura this time around, because I think that wanting to do that and not having time to do it was the main reason I didn’t properly blog about the Alaska trip last year. So, I apologize if things are a little less colorful on this post.
With that said, this will be a very long and extremely image-intensive post. So I’m posting it under a cut.
Hi hi, everyone! This is another wrap-up of the last few days. Life is busy and happy and I don’t have time to blog every day right now. 😅
Last Sunday I went to the Asian market to get some special goodies. One of the things I got were these panda chocolate balls. The decor in each little package made the white balls look like pandas. It was so cute!
The white shell was very hard. You couldn’t bite into it right off the bat. But the inside was soft, delicious chocolate. You could bite into the shell after having it in your mouth for a little while. 🐼
Here’s some kitty photos I took on Monday. Rosie and Kotoko:
Kotoko was dealing with a bit of an UTI earlier this week, and Tomoyo’s asthma has been acting up terribly due to the dryer air that comes with colder weather. I’m trying my best to make them well.
💕 Visiting Mom 💕
The view behind my mom’s condo in the morning.
Monday night I went to my mom’s for a longer visit. I was very tired on Monday and didn’t do anything really, I crashed on her couch as soon as I arrived. It’s very unusual for me. But the next day I had plenty of energy, got up early and went on my 10 km walk. I walked all the way to the beach!
I came to this beach recently with a good friend, but it was late, on a moonless night. You couldn’t really see the sea and it was a bit spooky. You could hear it though. But this time I was able to get lots of beautiful pictures. It was so pleasant.
I even got some video:
On the way there, I met a neighborhood kitty with a sad-looking face:
And on the way back I came across a man walking his dog and his cat at the same time. I didn’t get a picture of that, but it was interesting to see. Only the dog had a leash.
When I got back, I had a little snack and completed another event in Legend Of Mana:
Sweeney was so happy to see me. Tuesday is a workday for my mom, and I left the house before her, so he wasn’t expecting anyone to be back before the evening. He was over the moon!
Shampoo, too, was a little ball of affection. I took a nap, and she stayed with me the whole time.
I spent all of Tuesday working on family gift art for Christmas, watching YouTube, and playing Legend of Mana alternatively. I brought my own lunch since my mom wasn’t expecting me here two days as it was a bit of a last minute decision:
I did some events in LoM that I hadn’t done in my original play through, so that was kinda fun!
Here’s a few screenshots. The art of this game is such a treat. Sometimes I have to stop playing and just stare at the backgrounds. They are gorgeous.
I’ve passed the halfway mark with the events now. I’m enjoying this trip down memory lane very much, but I do also just want to finish, because I have so many other games to play.
For dinner on Tuesday night, my mom made chorizo. It was really good!
Wednesday morning I went on the same walk. I don’t usually do 10 km walks unless I know I won’t be able to do my evening walk. That was the reason yesterday too. I walked to the beach and back again.
After I got back, my mom and I had mate:
I think I may bring Bowser Jr. on the trip. I was going to bring one of my teddies but Bowser Jr. stands up so nicely for photos…I’m not sure.
The entire day was spent much in the same way as Tuesday, except it was my mom’s day off so she was also here. I worked on the very last piece of Christmas gift art and played Legend Of Mana until my Switch battery died.
In the afternoon, we had this for a snack (more like an early dinner for me):
It’s called a “coxinha”. It was really good. It was filled with something like cream cheese and shredded chicken.
Today was Día Del Dibujante in Argentina. My mom always has a little surprise for me on this day (it basically means, a day to celebrate people who draw). This was the present she got me:
It’s a pair of earrings shaped like pencil shavings! I love them so much!
Christopher picked me up in the evening. I missed him so much, I was so happy to see him again. Once home, I got to see some things that came in the mail, namely, this new Daisy shirt:
…and a game that Christopher got for us since it was finally on sale, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe:
And that brings us to now —Wednesday night. Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day for me; I have to do all of my pre-trip prep! I’ll be gone from Friday until Sunday and won’t be answering any DMs of any kind.
I’m besides myself with excitement for so many reasons. 🙈 I just want time to go faster! 😩 That was actually part of the reason I stayed longer at my mom’s. I really need distractions and to make time fly. But I think it almost just made time feel slower because I missed Christopher a lot.
I think today was my most favorite day of Mwako’s visit! It was definitely our most “kiddy” day. We went to the beach and played lots later that day back at my house.
We were up very early and off to Target to get some beach toys since I didn’t have any. Mwako got me a bucket, some scoops and a saxophone playing parasaurolophus!
I wore my Wen swimsuit, which I love to pieces still, and my new Toy Story Land hat that I got during the last Orlando trip. 😁
Mwako took lots of photos of some –some candid, some I posed for. I think these might be the only photos of me at a beach ever.
There was a lot of seaweed, and I didn’t want to go into the water because it required wading past it. So Mwako basically dragged me screaming into the sea, I wish I was joking. 🤦♀️ Then I clung on to him like a barnacle, and didn’t want to go back into the beach because of wading into the seaweed again. There was SO MUCH of it.
While we played in the water, a vehicle came and swept a lot of the seaweed on the beach away (or rather, “tilled” it into the sand). So at that point we went back to play on the nice clean beach.
My large blue bucket was quite unmanageable. I wasn’t able to make a big castle with it, I guess the sand was the problem. Being full of seaweed, it easily fell apart. But I was able to make a few small structures! A tiny city of sorts.
My parasaurolophus simply stood by playing an ominous tune on his sax.
Eventually the village was done! It even had bushes for decoration. A peaceful neighborhood, for the time being.
Mwako doesn’t really like his picture taken, but he approved of me taking this one from far away. He is looking for seashells for me to decorate my houses with.
All of these beautiful beach photos were taken by Mwako.
Of course, I had to “enhance” them with stickers… 😬
Here’s a couple more he took of me:
At this point my sax-playing parasaurolophus decided it was time to give in to his dinosaur instincts and destroy the town.
Just like that the poor entire town is gone. For some reason, after this I felt very satisfied, and just sat staring out at the sea in contemplation.
…before sentencing my parasaurolophus to be drowned when the tide came in as penance for the wanton destruction:
(In the end he got lucky, we had to leave before the tide came in. He lives to destroy again!)
🐣🌈 Playtime 🌈🐣
After the beach, we went to a McDonald’s Drive-Thru and it was the perfect hour: they had Sausage Egg McMuffins AND fresh fries! I had one of the most delicious breakfasts in months. Then we got back to my place, showered, and feeling quite refreshed, began our kiddy time!
At Mwako’s suggestion, we watched The Owl House, a show I am new to. I liked it a lot! Here is Mwako’s play area with the big crayons:
Mwako colored very, very fast. One could hardly keep up with him!
I just colored one drawing, of Cookie Monster with… err… a neighbor? Cousin?
I basically finished, but want to add some more details later:
I also started on a new squirrel page:
Multiple Owl House episodes later, our wrists hurt and we needed a snack, so we headed downstairs.
🍿 Intermission 🍿
For a snack, I had coffee and a chocolate rice krispie treat! Mwako had juice and Lunchables.
🧩 Time For Games 🧩
Next was board games! We played Bluey’s Shadowlands.
The physical execution of this fame is atrocious, lol. I can’t recommend buying it. It’s a cool concept, however it is very poorly done. Materials wise, I mean. Mostly it’s the palm tree mechanism that is a problem. But the game looks nice.
Still –we had fun with it. Mwako won!
🌈 Waffle Block Fun 🌈
I love waffle blocks so much! They are my favorite type of block by far. We had so much fun with them. I made a little house! The house had windows, a path, a fence, a lawn chair, a satellite dish and two bushes.
Mwako made two things. The first was an Evil Lair Of Liony Doom (my name). I took many photos because I thought it was extremely cool.
He also made a cat carrier, with a handle and all:
Of course, we had to have the cats try it…
Elliot had regrets.
Rosie’s opinion was similar:
At this point Christopher was getting home so we put the toys away, and once he arrived, we went to our anticipated ramen dinner.
🍜 Hi-Pot Dinner 🍜
Hi-Pot is one of our favorite restaurants and we were happy to introduce Mwako to it. We hadn’t had it in a long time and it was as good as ever.
Since I don’t often get to go out these days, I changed all over again just to go out to dinner:
I even brought Anise along!
As I was setting the alarm when we left, I noticed the sun on the Ring camera and it looked pretty so I took a capture:
I had… OMG… I had too many eggs. Christopher gave me his egg in exchange for my meat. I also ordered a side order of egg thinking it would be one egg but it was two. It was a massive amount of delicious eggs.
Anise judged me hard.
After we got home I almost went straight to bed, just kinda crashed, I was so happy and so full. Mwako leaves tomorrow… I will miss him lots. And I’ll back to work, work work! 😫
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