I'd missed your words here. I'm glad to see them again, even if they are not-great brain.
I feel you, on the state of the world stuff. It's hard for me not to just feel like... what's even the point of trying to push back, when so many people /are/ that way? and I hear what you mean about how can even ONE be like that. It's hard. I hate it. And I hate that it's so easy to fall into the "why even bother" especially now.
This is not hopeful or anything. But I'm so glad you exist.
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.how quick bright things come to confusion.
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So due to the whole tight budget thing, I decided last month that christmas presents for the household would be something handmade from materials I already own. I did end up buying more materials with the money dad gave me for christmas, but by then I'd committed, and by the time I really started second-guessing myself it was too late to get anything before christmas day anyway
Giving handmade gifts always makes me nervous -- people say they always appreciate handmade presents and that they're gifts from the heart and that it's the thought that counts, but this does not always in fact bear true, and I have some experience of people being disappointed to get something handmade rather than something store-bought. It sucks! It's an awful experience, do not recommend.
Anyway, I decided that I would make Erik a little chocobo, because I know he Final Fantasies and everyone loves chocobos, and that I would make Lee a little dog in a bulbasaur hoodie, for obvious reasons. And I did start making them with plenty of time to have them ready by christmas day, but ended up doing the classic ADHD working-at-the-last-minute anyway. For health reasons I had a couple days I couldn't work on them, and I decided eve-eve that I was going to scrap what I had of Erik's and start over -- objectively the correct decision, I just could not get the pose I was trying to to work, and the second try ended up looking both better and cuter, though I did harvest the beak from the first go to shove into the face of the second try. Of course there are changes I'd make if I made them again-again, but I'm relatively proud of how they turned out.
But it all did mean that I went to bed at 7:00 AM christmas morning. Luckily 'presents and seasonal movie' had been scheduled for the afternoon, so I was able to get 5-6 hours of pretty interrupted sleep. I do plan on taking a few days now of letting myself just sleep in.
I didn't wrap the sculptures both because I didn't want them to break either in the wrapping or the unwrapping and because I didn't want to raise expectations, so they were the first gifts received that afternoon. Both went over well, so that was nice, I'm glad they liked them. Then we opened other presents, and my haul was (let me see if I can remember everything off the top of my head): a monthly subscription box of art supplies, a candle holder (and tea lights to go in it), an electric blanket, a colouring book (for writers), and a writing prompt card game set. Oh, and some stocking candies
Among Lee's presents was an ultrasonic cleaning station so when we were done with presents we all immediately started playing with that. It cleaned several things, but somehow turned the clasp on my necklace brass-coloured, which is an interesting reaction that is beyond me to explain.
We have a tradition of watching a Hallmark-style christmas movie every year, but branched out a little this year to watch Spirited, a musical pastiche of A Christmas Carol featuring Will Ferrell giving the Scrooge treatment to Ryan Reynolds. Very decent, the kind of humour you can expect from that pairing, very solid songwriting. I had some issues with some story beats but they're fairly pedantic.
Once that was over, we had dinner and Lee and I watched some youtube until bed, because I couldn't find the christmas special I really wanted to watch and didn't feel like putting in the effort to make it happen anyway. Well, to be more accurate, I did find it, but on AMC+, which is one of the dozens of subscription services we don't have, unlike the dozen subscription services we do have, because capitalist hellscape.
Lee wanted to go to bed early-ish, so he did that and I went into my room to internet for a bit, though of course the first thing I did was set up the electric blanket to try it out. It's nice! I need to decide where it goes in the stack of blankets -- on top, so I can easily pull it off to be the one I wrap around my shoulders when I'm sitting up, or on bottom so it doesn't get peed on and ruined. It's unfortunately also getting damaged really easily by Oz just existing on it -- it is very fragile to cat claws, it seems, and the filling is getting pulled out of it all over the thing. So it'll probably live deep down in the pile.
I hadn't had any caffeine all day, so I made myself a coffee, but also ran completely out of energy around 10 and went to sleep. And this means that I was also up every hour or two to pee, and at 3-ish decided to get up again for real to eat some more and write all this out. I'll be back to sleep again in a little bit, but first I'm gonna give the cat her nightly pill and listen to a podcast or two.
Merry Christmas, Io Saturnalia, Happy Holidays!
It's honestly wild, I've never seen this happen before. That's filling pulled through the fibers. Just from her laying on it, she's not kneading it or anything, and it happens pretty much immediately
Yeah, blanket will live under things, as soon as I have the energy to redo my bedding
Damn, sorry! It wasn’t a super fancy blanket but it should hold up better than that!!
Also, I love my bulbasaur puppy. It was a fantastic gift. (The little tail! And ears!)
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.how quick bright things come to confusion.
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eeeeee
People should be able to put themselves in hibernation for a couple days to rest and heal.
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.how quick bright things come to confusion.
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Slept somewhat better last night, instead of waking up every couple hours I woke up at about 8 and decided to just be awake for a while. Of course I was still tired, so by 1 I decided to take a nap. Hopefully pattern persists and tomorrow my sleep is more regulated.
I found out a few days ago that a second edition of The Art of Language Invention was released with a new chapter, and it happens that our library has a copy of it, so I've borrowed that and have been reading through it. And, of course, my Trophy books arrived today
I need to shower but I'm probably going to try to do it during the day tomorrow. I've started getting a caffeine withdrawal headache, so I mostly just want to sit in bed for a while.
I also need to actually bake our christmas cake
Also decided blanket will get hung up over my headboard when I'm not actively using it, that way it can be my 'keep my torso warm' blanket while also not getting destroyed by cat
