Monday | 30. September 2024

watching: Psych

Howdy! It's kinda been a while, hasn't it? Oops. I've been trying to take little steps to improve my life and, in my classic overly-reflective fashion, I've come to the conclusion: the best way to do that is to work with myself rather than against myself. I could rant about some recent personal events, but I just don't think that'd be practical. The long and the short of it is: following someone else's thoughts of what it means to be "social" isn't going to help me at all. I am my own person and I need to live my own life.

I'm a dawdler by nature. My ideal form of socializing is playing board games in a small group, or walking and chatting with someone taking the scenic route, or arts & crafts meet ups where you mildly talk to people while working on whatever projects you're doing. My ideal form of excercizing is, again, walking and appreciating nature & / or enjoying the company of people walking with me, or using the treadmill / excerbike at the gym and reading a book or just spacing out to music. Doing these things genuinely makes me feel happy and comfortable, while, believe it or not, being shamed for wanting to stop for a second and look at a butterfly or the beauty of a sunset just makes me feel like shit.

With this in mind... I've started trying to walk at least a mile a day, chatting a bit with neighbors if they happen to be out (mostly about their pets), and I've gotten quite a collection of cool bugs pics that I want to paint, eventually, from that! I've also gone to a few events posted on my local subreddit, like a board game night at the library and a donation drive for a pet shelter. There are a number of other events I've been looking at in the near future, as well, like movie showings and craft fairs. There's more out there than I thought, honestly! Also, apparently, there was a lesbian book club a few years ago, but it ended up closing during COVID, and I'm so upset about that...


Besides that, I finished the furret I mentioned last time:

It's more difficult than you'd think to try and get ribbons to display nicely! I probably would've had better luck if I would've actually felted the wool into shape, but this is actually my favorite mug and I didn't want to waste a bunch of wool for a temporary display, y'know? I think the ribbon and beads were a fun addition, though -- def want to keep playing around with that in the future!

Also, my aunt commissioned me to make some more little Pokemon plushies for one of my little cousins. She just said his favorite was Pikachu and, other than that, I could make whatever I want... I'm still kinda not sure what to do, though. I was thinking Luxio has a cute design, just a little angsty lion boy, but maybe it'd be better to go for the classic Kanto starter trio? Or a mixture of starters from different gens? The jury's still out on that...

Here's the start of the Pikachu, at least:

He hasn't got arms or a face yet, but I think his back turned out well. I should still practice sewing sharper angles...

Thursday | 01. August 2024

feeling: :/

Some of your regularly scheduled venting...

It seems like everything that could possibly go wrong has been going wrong the last couple of weeks. Yes, the usual unemployment angst, but now the air conditioner has started leaking and flooding our living room again (maybe it’s just because we’re in the middle of a heatwave and the poor thing can’t keep up?) and we’ve added an (apparently continuing, but now confirmed) mouse infestation on top of that — whenever I tried to bring it up, she would just get mad at me or try to deny it:

me: “I think we have mice. I’ve heard them scurrying in the walls for a while now. It keeps me up at night.”

her: “Oh, I’m sure that could be anything! Branches scraping against the roof, squirrels playing outside, etc.”

And then we found mouse droppings and shredding papers in a kitchen drawer. And then her official stance was that the cats would take care of it (if there was even a problem to begin with, that is) and to just ignore it until it goes away. Then, we actually saw a mouse running through the living room. She caught it and released it outside: “See, it’s gone, we have no problem anymore!” …That’s not how it works!

I wonder if it is like Cabbage said a while ago, that it's an attempt to calm me down or something, but it's like… we very much do, literally, have a mouse problem. I was talking to the therapist about this and she said, “No, you can’t just live with mice. It’s sad, but you have to kill them. I recommend glue traps.” I told my mom this, and she just got mad at me, then insisted on using poison. And then got mad at me for being hesitant to put it out (…but we have three cats. Won't they die in the walls and cause more problems?? etc), saying I "wasn't taking it seriously." Meanwhile, my dad’s been telling me graphically how he’s killed mice before…

I don’t want to kill them, but I’m terrified to open any drawers or cupboards, or to stand in my kitchen, or honestly to be in the house, in general. I haven’t slept well in months due to their scratching in the walls… but I don’t want to kill them and I don’t want anything bad to happen to them. They’re unsanitary and carry diseases, etc, but they’re awfully cute…

There are other problems as well, that just compound all of this. I think my mom is at the end of her rope, and I don’t know what to do about any of it...


So, ArtFight has been a nice distraction from all of that! I made a page for it here (and also finally edited the sketchbook layout, so it's at least somewhat mobile-friendly). I tried to go out of my comfort zone quite a bit, drawing anthros and other species that I don't normally draw while also leaning heavily into subjects that make me happy, like forests. I think the aesthetic of the subject popping out of the frame is neat -- it's kinda influenced by art nouveau styles, but I didn't really go as hard as that. Overall, again, I think this was a nice distraction, and it was fun to experiment a bit with composition and poses and mediums.

Besides that, I've also been playing a Pokemon ROM Hack, Sovereign of the Skies. It has a fun little anime / rpg sort of plot and the sprite work is really lovely, somewhat like Tales of Phantasia, with Pokemon wandering around in the overworld, dappled light in forests, etc. I'm actually not that far in yet (ArtFighting, life, etc), but the assortment of Pokemon you get is really good, too -- like every area has different mons appear at different times of the day and it seems like they've added up to Alola.

Additionally, I've been working on and off on a couple of other little projects, like making a new journal, needlefelting a shiny furret, and more research for an upcoming essay. (Translation: basically, trying to keep busy and not think about certain problems altogether / avoid the urge to just curl up into a little ball on the floor and die…)


Oh, and this season's theme is based around the Wood mail from Pokemon gen III. I still just really love all the little mail designs!