
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!

