Recently our partner and I went for a walk in Aventura. It was overcast, with some thunder and lighting, tree covered all the way, and so pleasant. We saw many doggies and also these ducks!
They were very friendly. The moment I crouched down for photos they surrounded me!
This is surely due to people feeding, not a great thing. But they were very cute.
This morning, like yesterday, I had breakfast outside, read, and sketched my little parasaurolophus gal, Fern, for the first time. Since I used no references, thereโs loads of mistakes so this is really just to get an idea of what โfeelโ I want her to have.
Wonky and mistake-ridden as it is though, itโs officially Fernโs โbirthโ drawing so itโs special to me. Iโve been working on her story, Fern’s Path, for a few months now.
I do have a lot of parasaurolophus references accumulated, which I’ll be going through soon to adjust her design.
Here’s some photos of today’s noisy visitors making a big ‘ol mess:
I won’t take bird photos every day though, as they are pretty samey. No squirrels while I’m out there yet… I think they wake up a little later.
Today I enjoyed my new outdoor drawing and reading spot for the first time in spite of the heat. The critters do know that I am the one who puts out the food, and have come to somewhat trust me, but I never sat outside like this before. So they were a little wary of me.
The blue jays came often, but this little dove watched me so carefully! It cocked its head this and that way, to study me.
After maybe twenty minutes of this, it decided it was safe to come down and eat. Then other doves did as well. ๐ฅฐ
Here’s a couple of in-progress sketches I made as I continue in my attempts to remove the proverbial rust from my gears. All throughout, I kept wondering, “Do my hands still remember how to do this…?”
It’s been such a very long time since I did much in the way of traditional art, but it looks like they do!
It was something very simple, a happy Gideon. Just getting a feel for my tools again.
I also had my coffee out here, and read more Bamboo Kingdom. I’m so happy with my new spot.
Today I discarded my idea of a glider bench and instead opted for using what I had to create an outdoor reading spot for myself. I’m really happy with the results!
Tomorrow I should have a little footrest to go with it, and by Wednesday a decorative pillow will arrive as well. ๐งธ
I got to have lunch at Nine Five Phแป today! It’s not every day I get to have one of my favorite places for lunch and then another favorite place for dinner.
I got to see some bunnies in an empty lot today!
I took some photos, too:
Apparently they are someone’s pets. I’m not sure letting *white* buns roam at night is so great… but it’s not like there was anything I could do. They did look very happy.
There are many burrowing owl nests (well, burrows) in Pembroke Pines. The one on Pines Boulevard is the one you might remember me sharing photos and video of the most.
After some construction happened nearby, the protected burrow remained, signs and all, but the little owls fled. They did not come back for months. I was thrilled to see one again during my walk today, and recorded this little clip!
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:
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.
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
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.
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:
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
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…
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
This week I went back to my job at Christmas Tree Shops, which, as I’ve mentioned, is closing down (my location is, anyway) meaning that in a few weeks, we will all be out of a job. But I came back here because the job at the market/bakery was awful.
CTS was/is the first true corporate job that I actually stayed at. I don’t count Citel since they didn’t need me after all, and it was an office job that lasted barely a week or two. In addition to that, CTS is my first experience working at a big box store that is being liquidated and closing. As the title of this post mentions, this experience can at times wear you down and demoralize you. Other times, it’s really funny. And it is very bittersweet.
I am glad that I am in such a privileged position to get to do it without panicking about what my next job will be. I can just take it all in, and have fun with it, which gives me a lot of material to blog about. ๐
This post also has more doll stuff and more art. Let’s get to it!
Thank you in advance to anyone who comments on this post! Though it may take me a little while to reply, your comments mean so much to me! ๐โจ๐
On this day I went back to CTS. The vibe was certainly… weird. At times, people joke and laugh. At times, it feels very sad. Overall, everyone is stressed out of their minds. The sales are bad right now (for customers): mostly 10% off, with our 20% off coupons gone. This means that the prices are technically more expensive than before we were closing. But perception is everything, and people come in droves, spending hundreds at a time, and in one case, over a thousand dollars. It’s very tiring right now.
Seeing all the signs from my spot at the register really gave me a sinking feeling.
Literally every transaction involves the customer saying a form of these things:
“I’m so upset that you’re closing! I’m so disappointed! How long have you known? How long will the sale last? Why can’t I use coupons? When will the discounts get better? Which day are you closing? You guys didn’t do enough advertising/your name is confusing/I didn’t know you were here. How many stores are closing? Why are they closing? If you’re closing, why am I still getting coupons/emails?”
So with every customer, I repeat the same song and dance:
“I am disappointed too. I also love the store. I am sad about losing my job and my coworker companions. We found out the same day as everyone else, including customers. You can’t use coupons or return items because everything in here no longer belongs to CTS but to the liquidator. We don’t know exactly how many more weeks we will be open, just an approximate. You’re right, corporate didn’t advertise enough. We, the employees, did everything we could. Yes, the name is confusing. It’s not like we could change it. The fact that you didn’t know you were here is part of the reason why we are closing. Only ten stores are closing. We are the only Florida store that is closing. We are the only Florida employees not close enough to get reassigned elsewhere. They are closing stores because they filed for bankruptcy protection and we are a low-performing store.”
Repeat ad nauseaum.
If all the above, in a paragraph with no breaks, reads as tiresome, exhausting, drone-like… imagine saying this to every customer for hours and hours. There isn’t a SINGLE transaction or phone call to the store that doesn’t involve some form of the above. No one stops to think that we have heard it all a million times that day.
One lady who called to inquire about the closing decided to have a 15-minute chat with me, an aimless conversation about all of the above. I couldn’t get rid of her. I heard about five iterations of “When God closes a door, He opens a window” on Monday, and by the last, I wanted to tear my hair out. Two people decided to let me know that they were not, as they put it, “happy campers”.
It is not cute. It is not helpful.
Still, one thought was in my mind all day long: “This is so much better than that other job.” One’s team is everything, and our team is fantastic. My coworkers are already talking of following our manager elsewhere if possible… while that probably won’t happen, it’s a testament to how good of a vibe we had.
I often heard some of the assistant managers complain about this or that decision taken by our store manager. People would often gripe; sometimes I heard about little tiffs with raised voices between the assistant managers and him, but I think he is well-loved by most. In spite of saying these things, many of the assistant managers would happily follow him to the next store and so would I. He’s a great boss, and the assistant managers are SO good, positive, the kind of people that just make you want to do your best. So I’m going to do my best until the bitter end.
Christopher let me grab a $20 rug from the store to cover my very stained carpet that simply cannot be cleaned properly anymore. It looks pretty good!
Tuesday was a very exhausting day. My coworkers and managers had warned me: it is going to get SO much worse. On Monday, I was unsure of what they meant. By late Tuesday I had a better idea.
As the same questions and comments from customers repeat in a never-ending cycle, our partner had some ideas of how I should respond to the “You’re closing the store? Why??” questions:
“We’re closing because Christmas is canceled.”
“We’re closing because an atheist family bought the company and they hate Christmas.”
“What do you mean we’re closing?! No one told me this! Oh my God, am I losing my job?”
“How did you find out that we’re closing? *looks around in a conspiratory manner* It’s supposed to be a secret. Who told you?”
Unfortunately, I don’t have the balls to give any of these responses. ๐
I saw a cute doggy on this day:
I wasn’t sure I would ever get the chance to see Christmas trees for sale at Christmas Tree Shops, but lo and behold!
Since Tuesday, our partner has been very, very sick. It’s just a head cold (he has no fever and did two COVID tests) but, it’s quite bad. So I’m trying my best to take care of him, even though there really isn’t much I can do.
On this day I completed a gift for Seven, in gratitude for a great kindness recently shown to me by her when I closed commissions. Of course, it also includes Snow and Ember. I finished it in an old-fashioned style:
For dinner, I made salmon and rice:
Another day of the same. On Thursday, I had a customer turn around as she was leaving and ask me, “Do you have another job lined up?” When I responded that I didn’t, she laughed in my face and left. I didn’t even know how to react! Wow. ๐
Then later in the day, we found these bowls filled to the brim with water. These were in a “cage”, also called a “dump bin” in retail. It’s a massive container that can fit four or five of me, and a LOT of merchandise. Anyway, apparently there was a leak in the roof and these filled with rainwater, which a customer noticed. It was pretty funny.
Day off! I took care of the snails and the house, worked on art, relaxed, made the guys a nice dinner, and played with my dolls a bit. Yesterday I listed a bunch of old items hoping to make money to buy the other My Twinn doll that I’d missed out on. But then I realized that eBay holds the money for a while now, after a sale. There was no way I would have it in time. So Christopher let me borrow some funds to get her. She is very beautiful. I’m going to call her Emily.
Much like with my upcoming Zanini Zambelli Italian doll, this is a case in which I have no desire to change the doll’s outfit. It is truly gorgeous as-is.
On this day I finally took Samantha out of her box and dressed her up. She looks so beautiful in her new clothes!
In the afternoon I noticed that Buddy moved again, this time to a high shelf. I wonder how long his unseasonal visit will last?
In the evening, we played LEGO. I had wine and a little snack and felt very happy.
I also finished building this Creator 3-In-1 Medieval Castle. It was a pretty neat build!
For dinner, I made fajitas over rice with cilantro and avocado. It was delicious!
Saturday morning was dark and stormy. Elliot didn’t want to be outside because of the thunder, so he stayed near me.
Our partner indulged me in getting another toy, a bizarre and adorable Monchhichi clone –a bear. I think I’ll call him Calisson. These are the Etsy photos, he’ll take a while to arrive yet:
I’ve been getting a lot of toys this year, which, if you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ll know to coincide with me being Not Okay โข. And I have NOT been okay. The job stuff is stressful, sure. But it’s the community stuff that has me on a downward spiral and has for months.
Just as I did in my childhood, when I feel isolated and lonely, I seek refuge in toys –their cuddliness, their cute faces. They’re friends that will never go away, or suddenly have terrible hidden pasts, or decide to replace me or not like me anymore. Toys are safe and always have been. They never mock me, I can’t accidentally hurt their feelings and lose their friendship.
So, as self-indulgent and unwise as I know my purchases appear (and they are, make no mistake) I can tell you they’re my current coping mechanism because I don’t really know what else to do with my feelings. Please try not to judge me too harshly. ๐
I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but my snails got mites again. ๐ You might remember how expensive, difficult, and upsetting an experience that was the first time around. I’ve been very aggressive in treating it, so hopefully they’ll be okay. Here’s a photo of some snails kissing.
Muah.
Though this was a workday, in the morning I found some time to de-stuff Fiorella and throw her body and clothes in the wash.
I also washed her hair twice and conditioned it…
Then set it all out to dry. Her thigh has a little tear, but it’s easily fixed.
I will stuff her with brand-new stuffing, fix the tear, and comb her hair. I made her a necklace, and I got her a brand new big ribbon to match the one on her clothes. She’ll look so cute when I’m done with her!
While Fiorella dried in the warm sun, I moved some stuff around in my studio. I missed seeing my Monchhichis, so I put them where I can see them better. These three are Melon-Pan, Minoru, and Ponzu:
This was my first time getting a really nice photo of Ponzu:
Before work, I had leftover roasted cauliflower and black olive pizza for lunch, topped with cilantro:
Work went fast. It was busy. People continue to be a bit obnoxious about the store closing. But, I saw another pupper!
What a happy guy. Speaking of happy guys, here are some littler ones I saw in the parking lot while waiting for Christopher to pick me up after work:
Mama wasn’t happy about me getting too close and herded them all away. Sorry, Mama Duck.
The evening was wonderful! We met our friends for dinner at Shooters Waterfront. I got some nice photos…
I had a couple of coffee drinks that unexpectedly knocked me on my ass, and a wonderful plate of risotto, shrimp, and scallops. We shared a couple of cheese plates. It was SO good.
Here’s a photo of two of our best friends. They are getting married really soon! ๐ฅฐ
After dinner, my drunk, stumbling ass bullied everyone into a short walk at the beach at 11:00 pm. So off we went, and I asked to go back and be carried after taking like, ten steps. No one carried me.
Anyway, I got some beautiful photos!
We also came across this. Just stuck there in the sand, facing the sea. There was some dribbling around it as if a dog peed on it. Maybe someone had dribbled something over it on purpose as part of a ritual. This was in pitch-black darkness, I wonder what it meant?
On the drive back, I saw the Hard Rock guitar showing off an unusually pretty light display, so I got some video:
Anyway, that’s it for this week! Next week I’ll be visiting my mom, and getting more doll clothes in the mail. It’ll be quite busy at work… Hopefully, I’ll continue to find time to blog and keep you all posted. Have a great week, everyone!
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!
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:
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:
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.
We played a little more LEGO in the evening. Progress on my castle continues!
I had my little trike, Bubblegum, for company.
On Thursday, the first thing I did after my morning chores was putting dinner in the Crock-Pot. It made the house smell wonderful all day.
I went out to lunch with our partner and ran some errands. It was really hard to get gasoline, we had to visit four gas stations before we got some… it’s due to the flooding that took place last week, and is affecting a lot of areas.
Once back home, I worked more on the Patreon rewards that are due while he had to go to work outside of the house for a while. Later, out of the blue, there was a flower delivery to our house, a surprise from our partner for no reason. I was so happy, they are really beautiful! ๐ฅฐ๐
Dinner turned out wonderful and worth all the hard work in the morning. In the evening, after dinner, we three went for a walk together, and saw this big spider. Our partner thought it was a brown recluse:
A doll that Christopher bought for me arrived today! When I bought Nellie, I was very torn between her and this doll. So, I am really happy to have them both after all. She has a very dopey but adorable smile:
I’ve named her Sunny! Interestingly, she is hand-signed by the artist, Johannes Zook. It’s a legit hand signature with a personalized message, on the doll’s neck.
I wish dolls weren’t so creepy to most people (sometimes, even to me). Dolls like these fill me with joy. Holding them, I feel the same as when I hold my bears.
When I try to rationalize my intense desire for these things, I always go back to my friendless childhood. While it’s true that I never could have had toys like these then, what I lacked most were friends. As I mentioned before, my toys were my friends. So even to this day, I heavily anthropomorphize toys, and humanize them. I could try to get therapy so I don’t want/need dolls or bears, or just… hold them, brush them, comb their hair, and enjoy them.
It’s pretty cringe I guess, but it doesn’t hurt anyone. I’m really glad sometimes that no one can see me quietly hugging a doll or combing its hair while having a play-pretend conversation with it in my head when I’m pushing 40. And god is it weird to write that. I don’t feel very different from when I was in my 20s, and when it comes to toys, my feelings towards them are exactly the same as when I was 11 or 12. When I think about this image of myself, doing these things even in private, it’s kind of pathetic. Maybe very pathetic. But, well… it’s one of my joys.
I think I went on this weird tangent because I’ve been browsing r/reborndollcringe, which I found at first hilarious, but more and more makes me really sad.
I wish it wasn’t cringe for adults to play with toys in the same manner as children would. I wish it wasn’t seen as unhealthy or strange. We live in such a crappy world sometimes, whatever refuge we can find for our hearts, we should treasure.
On Friday I completed four Patreon rewards. I’m pretty proud of them:
That means there’s just one to go for the month.
The snailios were happy and active in the evening, having been cleaned and freshly fed:
Finally a workday. I’m getting very few hours… but as long as I’m working on the commission queue still, I don’t mind too much. I’m just too busy. Overall, for the last three weeks I’ve been working from early morning until night, with some breaks here and there to spend time with the guys.
Christopher and our partner went to Sebastian to pick up Christopher’s new toy (the robotic arm) and see his mom. Sadly I missed out on this visit.
I walked to work, and before going in, cooled off in Best Buy. They happened to have this on display. Seeing it made me smile.
Work was okay. I got praised by the big boss, but I also made more mistakes than usual, and felt very tired as the day wore on. After Christopher picked me up, I got to see the robotic arm in action at home. Though I didn’t say it, I thought it was way cooler than I originally expected it would turn out to be.
Our partner was sleeping and Christopher didn’t want dinner, but he let me order my favorites from Wahbi-Sabi and took me to pick them up (and went inside to get it too).
I found an adorable sponge at work. Itโs a Cleanosaurus! It stands up perfectly by itself so Iโll put it somewhere around the studio.
Even after eating, though, I felt very worn out, even a little sad for no reason, I think it was just the desire to do things combined with the complete lack of energy. So I decided to call it an early night.
This started as a bit of a bad brain day. Iโd written a lot on this post that I later removed; it was a lot of whining so I decided that I would make it a good day even if the day didnโt want to be one.
Thankfully my husband and our partner humored me with a lot of whims today, and I got a lot of chores done in the morning, which also helped my mood. Once I was done, we went to brunch:
After that, we walked together around T.Y. park, then dropped Christopher off and our partner and I went grocery shopping. It was very pleasant, and while I got stuff for the week, he bought stuff to make chili for dinner. His chili is amazing so I was immediately excited!
Then we got home. I put everything away, and made them both coffee and grabbed a snack for myself. We played LEGO for about an hour. My little castle is well underway:
After LEGO, we showered while the chili cooked in the Crock-Pot. Then we had dinner and watched The Good Doctor. Dinner was AMAZING. The Good Doctor is starting to get a little silly, but it still made me cry at the end.
Christopher was wonderful and did the dishes while our partner and I played our Diablo II session for the day.
Then it was bedtime. I quickly fed the cats and we watched anime and YouTube. We’ve reached the middle of Hikaru No Go which I think the guys are somewhat relieved about. They don’t find this anime as enthralling as I did. ๐
It’s unfortunate that this anime isn’t gripping them like I hoped (though they do love making fun of it). It’s one of my top five of all time as far as personal favorites. I’ve always been baffled by how many cliffhangers between episodes left me desperate to continue binging it.
Sure… it has cringy moments. It has a LOT of cringy moments –I can’t even call that a product of its time. It just does. I do believe some of those cringy moments are NOT cringy in the manga –it’s like it just didn’t translate well to animation when it comes to some shots and scenes. But overall I think it holds up so well.
As a side note, I am feeling more and more isolated. This isn’t something individual friends can help with: it is the grief of coming to terms with having lost a community. I tell myself that this was by choice, but whenever I poke my head into my old haunts, it is very obvious that what they used to be, is no longer. So, it’s not like my old community is still there for me to go back to.
I guess these days I feel a lot like I did circa 2011: aimless and adrift. Not as lonely, though. I do have friends, and most importantly, I have my husband and our partner. But having known a tightly-knit community, its loss is palpable. I’ve been coping by buying new dolls and playing with my toys.
I’m never been someone to want to see the future. Never have and never will be. But I wonder, in maybe ten years, or even less, what will it all look like? My finding of a community, seeing it grow, seeing it eat itself and collapse along with most of the sites that were once our havens, and losing it and being where I am now, took maybe six years. Things could still change dramatically, maybe for the better.
I’ve been on FA just a little under twelve years, and began to feel things change starting around 2019, maybe a little before, 2018? 2016? Maybe at the start I just had rose-tinted glasses on.
But anyway, even before I had “community”, I was happy. I concentrated a lot on my personal work. Soon I will be doing that again.
With those closing thoughts, that is it for this week. I’m visiting my mom next week and we will go to a fancy restaurant to celebrate her green card. I’ll see you all throughout the week with new art, and on Sunday with the next weekly summary! Have a great week, guys.
It rained a LOT this week. It rained so much, in fact, that Broward County closed its schools for two days, and Ft. Lauderdale closed down its airport. Some areas experienced unprecedented levels of flooding: a historic volume of rain exceeding 2 feet. I read it described as “an event so intense the chance of it happening in any given year is just 0.1%”.
It felt like the rain would never stop, and while it did stop by the weekend, it’s the rainy season now. We may or may not get flooded areas again, and thankfully I saw no significant flooding where I live, but rain on an almost daily basis will become the norm for quite a while. Then it will be hurricane season. That’s Florida for ya!
The rain, which I normally enjoy, really brought me down this time around. My period wreaked havoc on my mood this month: I would call it, too, a rare event. My crankiness does not usually last this long nor is it this intense, and overall, it made the week unbearable for me and those around me.
There were good, bad, and boring sides to this week. Let’s get on with it!
It began to rain in earnest, but still we had sunny moments throughout the day and the humidity wasn’t too bad yet. It rained more and more as the day got long in the tooth. Anyhow, Monday was a busy day. I did loads of chores, went grocery shopping, played Diablo II with our partner, and completed this commission:
Our partner made a ham quiche for dinner. It was delicious!
Rain, rain and more rain. It seemed to drag everything down with it. I felt useless, sleepy and sluggish, with no energy whatsoever. Eventually, I forced myself to move, and slowly started doing things around the house, such as organizing the studio, and setting some stuff aside to put into storage or give away. I wanted to make more room for new toys, mostly dolls.
Something really odd happened on this day. Sarah mysteriously appeared among the bears!
She didn’t have her hat. I am not sure why she is here. Frankly it’s a little unsettling. I hope all is well between her and Buddy.
Something important happened on Tuesday:
At the time, I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but this was an important step in my mom’s paperwork being finalized once and for all. More developments would come later in the week.
Rosie was being a cutie and trying to get my attention while I had lunch:
So I played with her a bit:
On Wednesday I completed a commission and a new banner, which you already saw at the top of this entry, and a commission for Pilou that I’m really proud of:
I also had the usual Zoom call with my mom. You’ll notice I make no mention of work so far. That is because this week, I would only work on Saturday. Last week, I only had three days. Next week, I only have five hours again. I’m not the only person dealing with that, but I am not happy about it. From what I read online, it’s a common issue with this company: most people leave due to very limited hours. I hope I won’t have to do the same.
To say that Thursday was momentous would be an understatement. As mentioned, on Tuesday, I’d received confirmation that my Form I-130, Petition For Alien Relative (for my mom) had been approved by USCIS. We have been waiting for years, just for this specific step. But, my mom still hadn’t been told that her Form I-485, Application To Register Permanent Residency, was approved. Though unlikely, it could still have been denied.
On Thursday, my mom’s application was also approved:
It’s hard to overstate the significance of this moment. I know my mom spent the day crying on and off. I still haven’t been able to process it, myself –though I did tear up a bit when the paralegal CC’d me on an email congratulating her. It felt more real then.
Some of you know how long and arduous the road to legalization has been, both for me and for my mom. I still lived with fear that the response would be a denial and my mom would be deported. Even though I myself have been sorted out for many years (and a citizen for two) nothing really felt done until I could truly stop fearing for my mom’s welfare.
I wasn’t even ten years old when I decided that someday, somehow, I would live in the USA. My mom worked for my dream and made it hers. We would eventually abandon all we had for a huge gamble and an unsure future in the United States, knowing the gamble could cost us everything.
We have been in the USA since 2001: this is the first time I truly breathe in complete relief for both of us. So many years later, it feels complete. I’m numb and not really having an emotional reaction yet because there were so many times I thought this would happen and it didn’t. It’s hard to believe it’s finally over. I am a citizen and my mom is a legal resident, forever. Hopefully someday she’ll be a citizen, too.
And for those who have heard many times my little story regarding An American Tail (which I’ll retell at some point soon) yeah, my mom and I are getting together to watch it. Finally after 15 years I will allow myself to watch it again.
Christopher had the Apple IIe out and functioning on Thursday night. It looked so cool.
Here’s a little lady I have coming to me. She’s a Pat Secrist doll. I’ve been learning about these dolls recently, their high quality and (if you’re patient on eBay) incredible affordability. She’s a big one, too. I don’t have many blonde dolls, I’m looking forward to playing with her. Her dress is so lovely, too! I’m going to call her Nellie. She reminds me of a schoolmate I had in elementary school, who had that name.
For date night we played LEGO. I finished Emma’s Art School!
The sun came out again!! Finally! โจ๐โจ But, now it’s very, very, VERY hot. That aside –Friday was extremely productive! I finished three Patreon rewards:
Then I did a few chores, before setting everything up for some fun!
I’ve been putting off making new toy necklaces. This is pretty bad because I don’t really enjoy a new toy until, at a minimum, it has been christened and given its necklace, but ideally until they have an outfit that I’ve put together myself rather than the original one (this mostly applies to dolls), or a bandana, or just something to make it look like it’s my own, and loved.
Between Friday and Sunday I decided to dedicate time to the toy name backlog. I started by setting everything out, surrounding myself with toy friends, and putting one of my kiddy playlists on!
Sometime in between making necklaces, I played some more Diablo II with our partner.
In the morning, I played with Reddit’s avatar maker thingy today, that was fun and also dumb. This day was finally a workday! I worked from 4:00pm to 9:00pm after getting all my chores done.
Things were tense at work. Because of the rain, sales were very low the entire week so everyone’s hours were cut. As a result, there were less people available to finish a project that has been stressing all the managers out for weeks now. I was put to work on the floor, pricing and placing merch, and even though it was only five hours, it left me completely exhausted.
An upside (or downside??) of the day is that I kinda got called out in front of everyone else for doing better than anyone else in my first week (second only to my training manager) in getting new emails from customers. They really, REALLY care about employees doing this. I’m pretty shy, so it takes a lot out of me, but I do ask and engage with everyone, and most people do sign up.
Apparently, other employees don’t really try, so when they released the numbers of my first week, the manager wrote a note underneath calling me out by name as an example and saying how I’m not doing anything unusual, only what I am supposed to do, and how others are failing to do so. ๐ฌ๐ง
There was an undertone of “It’s unacceptable that this brand new employee is doing better than everyone else, so, get it together” to the other employees, and another manager said to the first that I did that “because I’m an overachiever” which kinda sounded like “you can’t expect everyone else to do that”. Haha… I don’t know. It was nice but also very awkward for me.
Back when I used to hold jobs like this one, I struggled a lot, and was definitely the sort of person to get reprimanded for mistakes, shyness or sluggishness. I’ve changed a bit, I can do things better and push through better. So I won’t lie, all the praise I’ve received since I started feels really good, but at the same time, isn’t a call-out like that the sort of thing that makes coworkers resent you? ๐
Anyway, I only got to help two people at the register on this day, which bummed me out because I don’t want to forget everything I learned, but working on the floor I learned many new things, so there’s that.
At some point today I noted that Sarah’s hat had somehow materialized upon Toklo’s head, while Sarah herself had disappeared. ๐ณโโโ
I keep worrying that this is Sarah trying to send S.O.S. messages that I’m failing to interpret correctly. I hope she’s okay…!
Normally, after getting up at 7:00am, a day full of chores and then going to work, getting comfy and having dinner, I would just want to stay in. But I want to start making a habit of going out with our partner more on Friday or Saturday nights. For one, Christopher really treasures time truly to himself, and doesn’t get much of it. And I want to make sure our partner is having fun since he’s much more outgoing.
Lately, I’m trying to think of different things I can do with him and with Christopher (as well as for them) to make them feel loved and appreciated –as in, individual things, one-on-one. Soon I’ll be able to play visual novels with Christopher again, and with our partner, I’ve been playing Diablo II. I want to start going out for the odd lunch or dinner date with Christopher, and watch at least a couple of movies a month with him, maybe cuddled in the game room couch.
Anyway, my plan was to repeat the outing of last week with our partner, but somehow he convinced Christopher to come! This is a rarity given that it was late at night, and we were really happy about that. We took Christopher to Salt & Straw. I had the same black olive brittle and goat cheese ice cream as last time:
We also went for drinks at the exact same place…
…and had a mediterranean plate for a snack:
On the walk back, I took this photo of a neighborhood’s gate. It looked spooky:
Sunday was a very nice and sunny day, even if the humid Florida heat is back in full, unbearable swing. My laurel fig continues to grow beautifully. It’s hard to believe it was once a little tiny branch that found refuge in a crevice of our roof!
Later in the day I went for a walk to get more beads. I saw a cute lizard on the way to the stores.
Though I really went out for beds I ended up coming home with this. What a find! Last one left, too.
After a pizza dinner, our partner and I played Diablo II some more. I really liked the Arcane Sanctuary area.
After that, I finished a few more necklaces and actually put them on toys. I’ve made a total of twenty one necklaces. I still have to make a few more, but those are for toys that I have yet to name.
Rosie decided to relax in the area normally occupied by my bead boxes:
She was being so loud, too!
My new doll, Nellie, should be coming by Wednesday, which has me really excited! Hopefully she has no funny smells, since she is a used doll after all. I have her necklace all ready to put on her. ๐ฅฐ
