Recent Updates
04/20/2024 | Long time no see webmasters and lurkers!! It was not my intention to be away so long, but life had other plans for me, both good and bad.
The good, my 30th birthday was the end of March! My partner helped my parents to surprise me by flying up the weekend before to visit us, which was so incredibly fun. I got to show them our apartment, and they finally got to meet our cat, and we got to do some fun museum/park/restaurant exploring while they were here. (I don't regret moving so far away from home, but I do miss seeing my parents more often. ;n; ) My partner and I also celebrated my birthday on the day of, and he bought me a spinning wheel!!! We went to a local yarn shop where I was able to try a few of the ones I was interested in. I'd wanted to just get some fiber and look for a used wheel later (because cost hahaha) but he insisted, so now I have a very cute Schacht Ladybug who I have yet to name. My spinning control tool also has a beetle on it, so I'm considering giving her a fancy bug name, but I haven't actually gotten to spin with her a whole lot! Which I guess kinda brings us to the bad.
Work was a nightmare for most of March. My office is very small, and we lost two staff members in two different roles, so that combined with some personal emergencies other people had outside of work made scheduling kind of stressful. Everyone was pretty on edge for most of the month, and a couple were more or less burnt out after everything. Things seem to be settling down now though, so hopefully the rest of the year will be a little more mellow. It did mean that I just didn't have the emotional capacity to engage with much of anything though, including bookbug which was a bummer because The Left Hand of Darkness has been on my reading list for so long!! Alas, another opportunity will come.
[CW for some medical discussion next 2 paragraphs]
AND THEN, right after my birthday, I ended up having to go to urgent care. I'd been having some pain the week before but I thought it was like, cramping because it was almost time for my period, but the day after my birthday, walking and even sitting were painful. And urgent care wanted me to get a CT scan but couldn't me in for three days, so I just managed the pain as best I could with literally the maximum doses of over the counter pain meds that I could and even that wasn't much relief. So I get the CT scan, and the doctor calls me not 20 minutes later and tells me to go directly to the ER because I have an abscess. =') I'd been under the impression that it could just be drained, but uh, it was deep enough and big enough that they actually had to do surgery, and my infection was not horriffic but bad enough that they wanted to keep me overnight. Thankfully, the staff were all very nice and explained things very well, and honestly for an ER experience, from arrival to getting out of surgery, it was only like 7 hours, which I'm beyond grateful for. (Also my mom, bless her, flew up again! Because I called her the morning of my CT scan because I was feeling overwhelmed, and after we got off the phone, she just happened to find a flight arriving right before my CT scan appointment. She called me again as she was driving to the airport to tell me she was coming up just for moral support, and she literally arrived 5 minutes before the doctor told me to go to the ER.)
It was such a relief to be out of that much pain. Since it had been ramping up for about a week at that point, I was so absolutely exhausted that I didn't even care how uncomfortable sleeping on my side in that hospital bed was that I just slept through that pain like it was nothing. They discharged me before noon the next day, and I essentially got home and just existed at home for the next week. My mom stayed for a couple days to help my partner and I, but I mostly just laid on the couch and took baths per the surgeon's instructions. I finally started feeling a little more with it last weekend and being able to sit normally this week, so I went back to work on Thursday. The hospital said everything looks like it's healing up well at my follow up appointment, so other than the frustration of having to take multiple baths a day, I am finally back to my normal routines.
[End medical discussion]
Through this whole last month, I've had this phrase "imperfect thiry" floating around my head. I know a lot of people panic about turning 30 or try to make a big deal of it, but I've basically been waiting to step into my thirties since I was 26. All of my friends who are older than me have said their 30s were great, and I've spent most of my 20s trying to heal and grow and unlearn a lot of behaviors/beliefs that were making my life more difficult to make way for that. I know that work will continue for the rest of my life, but I'm comfortable with where I'm at and with my capacity to handle unexpected difficulties, and I have a good diversity of tools and habits now to manage my mental health. Life moving forward will never be perfect or predictable, somethings will never get better, but I will be okay and find both my happiness and contentment on the way.
03/13/2024 | Happy mid-week, folks! Are you getting the stuff you need to best take care of yourself done? Are you making time for the things that bring you joy and peace? I'm still struggling to balance everything, but I've had a sudden burst of energy despite daylight savings (I won't lie, it feels a bit like an exhausted sort of energy, so I'm expecting a crash soon...) and I've been getting a lot of unpacking and cleaning done! Mostly just, organizational and sorting stuff because all of our things have been very ungraciously boxed over a multitude of years, so I keep finding bits and bobs to move from one box to another to sort later. It feels never ending! But it also feels good to know what we have and to reclaim it.
I've been easing myself back into spinning in the last couple of weeks, and I even managed to finish the first half of the merino I started spinning months and months ago now. I just dized the second half while pondering what all I wanted to write tonight, and even though I wasn't enjoying it at first, I'm actually excited to see how this one turns out when I get to plying! It's so strange how just a couple months away from my spindle has completely changed my mind about things, lol. My parents also very kindly bought me a steamer for Christmas, so once I have these done, I'm going to just have a steaming day to finish all the yarn I've spun to date and hopefully get some pictures for my spinning page (and ravelry, which I have also been neglecting).
The weather is supposed to turn warm this weekend, and I'm hoping that means the weather will be nice for my birthday later this month! We got rained out of going on the short hike I wanted to do last year, but I'd really love to show my partner that trail this year if I can help it. I don't have big plans, my partner took the day off for us to do something, but honestly I might have us go out for lunch and pick up a piece of cake from one of the fancy bakeries. I'm too tired to plan anything this year! But my mom pointed out that us being in our own place is more than exciting enough for a birthday at home. Just a little calm before everything picks up for the summer, lol.
I hope you're doing well this week, and I hope you're being kind to yourself! Do something little for yourself, even if it's just to get up and get a drink of water. Your future self will be grateful. =3
02/24/2024 | Goooooood morning, Neocities! Been a little bit, though definitely not my longest break between entries. I've been making my cozy nest and modifying Ikea furniture, and honestly, I've been keeping myself so busy that I've barely had time to just do fun stuff to recharge! So that's what today is, and the only real work I'm doing is cooking dinner in the crock pot.
I've actually been cooking a lot and have been trying one or two new recipes a week, and we've been eating an absurd amount of pancakes. (None of which is sustainable long term, but I am riding this high!) I've even been able to refine my own recipes a little more since we can take up more space and use more ingredients. I'll probably be adding links to those recipes later today just because I'm enjoying the testing process and some of these are absolutely going into our normal rotation.
Cooking is probably the only reason I haven't gone crazy this month since I've barely had a chance to unpack my hobby stuff (due to waiting on furniture assembly/modification). I just realized my local fiber fair is only three months away! And I haven't even started on any of the fiber that I got there last year, but I know that I'll want more haha. I've actually been really thinking about seriously about finally getting a spinning wheel, so I'm trying to figure out some shops to go to to actually... try them out. It feels like a big jump from literally spinning a stick with some weight to these mechanical objects I can only vagely name the parts of, but now that I know I enjoy spinning as much as I do (and I finally got a steamer to finish my yarns!), this was always kind of the next step.
Regardless, I'm just vibing at home today! Website updates and tweaking, listening to records, watching the Monterey Bay Aquarium livecam, spinning while I ponder coding fixes (I was able to rescue one of my spindles and fiber from the pile of boxes finally this morning). I need to make more time for the things that bring me joy as we move into spring, and I hope you can too. Have a good weekend, folks!
01/26/2024 | Just a short little update because I wanted to journal, lol. I've been very caught up in homemaking (because duh), and I'm having a great time. I missed this! This feeling of nesting and building and using my space, and it feels so good to be able to stretch those muscles! It's mostly been functional stuff like touching up the kitchen organization, unpacking/washing all of our clothes and linens, and strategizing where to put what furniture and what we should add to the to buy list, but even that feels like such a big, happy change. uwu I was able to unpack my jewelry collection tonight (most importantly my earrings which I would love to make a page for someday), and tomorrow I'm hoping to do some cable management and get our record player set up. I desperately want to put some art up too, but my partner and I are going to do that together once things are a little more settled. =3 Little by little it's becoming the home we've been dreaming about for years, and my heart feels so full.
01/12/2024 | Howdy from the new apartment!!! It took longer than I intended, and I definitely overdid it on my poor knee that I injured last spring, but we so very happily in the apartment and we made it the week before the first freeze of the year out here in western Washington! It's wild how quiet it is, and I'm so happy our cat adjusted super quickly. She's still suspicious of the neighbor dogs barking, but she's having a blast exploring everying (including the places she shouldn't) and rolling around in the carpet after only having hardwood floors, which honestly, same.
I haven't gotten to make anything fancy just yet, but it's been so nice to cook in a completely clear kitchen with the pots and pans and utensils that I know! I've been brainstorming different things to make, especially now that I'll have access to my crockpot and my stand mixer again, so hopefully I can test out and refine some additions for my recipes page. I owe my coworkers some cobbler, and I want to cook some pumpkin cookies as a thank you to my partners managers and coworkers, so those will definitely get made in the near future!
Tbh, the kitchen is the only room that's fully unpacked. ^^; I haven't even had a chance to reassemble our bedframe or start stocking the kitchen with more than ingredients for one pot meals. I think a lot of things are going to end up getting trashed/donated as I unpack, some more willingly than others. I've grown in a lot of ways so I'm ready to let go of some things like old projects that fell by the wayside when the pandemic started, but as with my kitchen goods, I am steeling myself to find things I'll have to grieve and toss because they're damaged and unrepairable. It'll be a slow going process, but I know I'll feel better to be free of the weight of it looming over me.
While I haven't had a chance to do more in Furcadia, I have been keeping up with Chicken Smoothie and Neopets and maybe I shouldn't have poked around the CS forums because now I'm finding more games that I kinda want to pick up. I'm debating even figuring out Flight Rising again!! There's something to be said about having a game to sit down and engage with, but I've been enjoying the few-minutes-here-and-there style of play for the pet games. Maybe that's just been because of my limited time and energy this past month, and I know if I'm not careful, I'm going to completely overwhelm myself, but *cough*ifyouhaveanyrecssendthemmyway*cough*.