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! 💘✨💕

🌈 Monday 🌈

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! 🍷🎮

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.

🌈 Tuesday 🌈

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.

🌈 Wednesday 🌈

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:

🌈 Thursday 🌈

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:

🌈 Friday 🌈

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.

🌈 Saturday 🌈

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… .🤷‍♀️

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! 😊

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. 😞

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”. 😒

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!

🌈 Sunday 🌈

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. 🥰

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! 🙋‍♀️