oh, mama raised me well

i've been petsitting for chris+sam this last week (they're in florida with andrew!) and it's been pretty nice. i am very grateful for the weather being quite decent overall so i can scooty across town (they live in goodyear) and take nice pictures lol



ferret has been VERY photogenic this time around

we did have some storms, and a really nasty storm that went nearby us, which made for some great skies at sunset, as well



i've been taking a lot of photos along the bike trail of grafitti, as well, since a lot has changed since i went this route a year or so ago when i petsat last time lol

i am in LOVE with that glitchy looking DVD one tbh

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other than that, it's been a pretty lowkey week. worked. played some destiny (ran 'the whisper' and then pulled tony in at the end to beat the boss and made it with under one minute to spare x_x also watching a lot of buzzfeed unsolved supernatural lol

went to my appointment about my thyroid last week, too, and nothing new on that front. i have to schedule an ultrasound and got a bunch of bloodwork done (everything looks good aside from some slightly low iron stuff, but i also was very smart and hadn't eaten or anything beforehand lol)

i am looking forward to not having two terrorist cats wake me up at 5:30am for their breakfast lol just one terrorist cat who aims for 7-8am instead and i can sleep through his shenanigans for the most part

last long weekend of december - i got really lucky with how i was scheduled off for the holidays! i only worked thirteen days!! everything else was holiday or PTO, minus two sick days i took (after i wiped out on the scooter and then last week when i woke up in the middle of the night with the shakes and then, later, too hot)

went over friends and played games on saturday evening - both my island and clue escape. they had played my city before, but got andrew the island one for xmas. i really like it! a mish-mash between catan and carcassone kinda. clue escape was fun, as well (i like clue anyhow), but kinda linear! good for a single play and then pass it on to someone else. but i liked the mechanics and the puzzles

sunday was pathfinder - we are still trudging through the gauntlight and things are getting tenser as a lot of our time-based things are ticking down quickly. plus, our ranger's dog just got mummy cursed, so now that's also on our plate!

my brain-time was all screwed up b/c i'm so used to playing pathfinder then doing last minute weekend things before i have to go to bed for work on monday, but since it was new years day we have it off for the holiday so i ended up awake until 5am fgkldhgldfhg but i cleaned my desk up a bit and played some destiny for tony and continued to hyperfocus on flight rising lol

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the latter has been a good distraction from [gestures broadly] and also snickers' cold or whatever she has going on. stressing me tf out. i went out sunday morning and bought a bunch of different wet foods for her and all she cares about are those churu tubes and, like, the bisques! FOUR DOLLAR HUMAN GRADE WET FOODS and she's like 'eh'. but idc as long as she's eating something. she's also been eating some of the nutrical when i offer it to her

it's just frustrating b/c i don't have any money to take her to the vet, so i'm doing what i can to keep her going in hopes that this is just a cold or something she has going on. she's not hiding from us, which is good. she's acting close to normal, for someone who's not feeling well - she sleeps on the bed or in her spots by the window or on my desk. she hangs out with me a little bit at my desk, she goes and naps on the bed. she gets up and drinks or mills around and sometimes shouts at us. so with all that i'm hoping she's just under the weather. she's still interested in food, she's just not eating a ton at once

i've got a really highly rated recoup liquid coming on wednesday for her, so i'm hoping that will help, as well. and, like, she's old, i know. she's gonna be ~14 this year, but i'm just pointedly not thinking about that

especiallyyyyyyyyy after someone posted the linney's death comic and someone else posted tiktok screencaps of someone apologizing to their cat after they tried to commit suicide - the latter of which had me full on ugly crying at the bus stop sunday morning

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which rounds me to spending most of the middle of the night last night making a zine of the little bit of writing i did about drowning in the bathtub



i was feeling really miserable a few weeks ago and laying in the tub wetting my hair and thinking about stopping existing for awhile while beans stared down at me from the toilet seat (he loves to hang out in the bathroom with me). it feels a little contrived - i wrote it in google keep while sitting in the tub afterwards lol. but it's okay that it's contrived and messy, that's kind of how life is sometimes

i really like page 4, tho

but, yeah. something about the juxtaposition between the desire to not exist in the moment and then just continuing on. finishing washing your hair, moving forward

EDIT: i feel i need to stress i am fine. i am not suicidal, but i get these kinds of suicidal ideations from time to time where i just want a break from existing. shit's been garbage life-wise, especially the last three months, so the stress is just bound to pile up eventually and make me go 'wow a trip to the other side for a couple weeks would be nice'

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my mom's coming out tomorrow to hang out. i think we're gonna go out to medina b/c there's a plant nursery that was selling tiger jaws on etsy for awhile and i'm hoping i can snag a new one for tony, since his died at the beginning of last year

there's also an antique mall and some cute shops around their downtown area
Black Cat Books & Oddities
Blackbird Records
Operation Fandom

it's also supposed to be kinda nice temp-wise, so it should be a nice day out doing something

then, on wednesday, i'm back to work! and i gotta work BOTH friday/saturday since i got tuesday off lol

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coming back around to thoughts i forgot about lol

zipcon is next month and, while they haven't sent out vendor acceptances yet, i DID get accepted for the year covid hit. but i wish i had a couple extra bucks to get some new stickers or something. i'll be able to have zines, and i still have most of my acrylic charms and a ton of my personal fursona pin. but i'd like some stickers of recent art from the last couple years

oh-- i've got patches, too. i COULD get some more of them made, i suppose.

i'll also be able to have a bunch of zines, obviously. like, i'll probably be OKAY for a little one day anime con at a university lol

earlier this week friend chris messaged us asking if we'd want to do D&D sometime soon. we just finished up 'the red canals' halloween game that a member of our other ttrpg group (pathfinder) ran, so we figured why not. most everyone in the group is pretty new to D&D (tho not wholly unfamiliar with roleplay in general), so we'll all be kind of stumbling along together lol

we got together yesterday night to put together character stuff and, god, it feels like it could be simpler, but i did not learn anything about D&D until i was an adult and, therefore, the time for it to imprint into my brain had passed. world of darkness got that privilege

but we cobbled together characters - i'm re-using ancyn (from destiny currently), who's a rehash of angel from my first WoD game lol. i'm playing three different d20 characters (pathfinder has kailani, poe, and desma) already, so my usual first choices were already taken and i DO NOT want to play the same char in two games and get shit confused lol

which means i'm now at the following for d20 chars lol

kailani - lizardfolk - fighter (wrestler dedication) [currently dead]
poe - catfolk - wizard (ghost hunter dedication) [pathfinder agent]
desma - fetchling - witch (mosquito witch patron) [pathfinder agent]
ancyn - swiftstride shifter - rogue (criminal background)

i DO finally get to use my arcana note journal, tho!! and i thankfully found the pdf's to print more sheets if i fuck anything up lol

we also played a bunch of jackbox afterwards and made some pretty excellent designs

october was mostly garbage all around (lots of little things piling up and one deeply inconvenient issue still pending), but halloween weekend was nice, at least

trick or treat was last night in akron! friends invited us over for a little halloween party and to help hand out candy because they tend to get a lot of trick or treaters where they're at (and we get zero where we are).

earlier in the day we had ran errands and it was kind of Frustrating (everywhere was super busy, i wanted to get two specific things for the party, i started my period and was Cranky and overstimulated at giant eagle and home goods b/c of so many people just EVERYWHERE and with no awareness of their surroundings. i was also hot and grumpy b/c the weather broke and i was still wearing my jacket in these crowded spaces and dkfjghdfklghdflg). tony almost decided not to go b/c he was also frazzled from errands, but we DID go and it was a great night!!

tony took his fursuit, so we got some pictures before it got dark





we also popped down to the house on the corner, who had a big display set up that tony got some pictures in front of. they also had a big pvc pip from their lifted porch down to the driveway that they'd toss the candy in and the end of it was one of those rubber horse heads. absolutely spectacular

apparently the wife LOVES halloween and the whole family does their own little bit of the display. apparently the kids were responsible for the baby ferris wheel and destroyed all the baby dolls themselves for the aesthetic





chris and sam made some EXCELLENT nomz - turkey and pesto sliders (which i didn't grab a pic of lol), really cute wrapped jalapeno poppers, pumpkin and cream cheese cookies, oreo topped brownies, a delicious charcuterie board, and fireball apple cider 🔥





sadie angel baby was also present - and DID NOT LIKE tony's fursuit (she also doesn't like the giant baphomet either lol). and i managed to score both the good pumpkin cider ANDDDDDD found one (1) single bottle of the eggo sippin' cream and it was DELICIOUS





after trick or treat we played 10 Candles, which is always a good time. we did the cruise ship scenario and it was deeply entertaining the way we were all semi-antagonistic at each other all game. it was tony (and connor's, savannah's bf) first time playing, too

andrew wasn't able to make it out, which was kind of a bummer. apparently there was some chaos with rain/flooding and a bad roof at a relative's house. he called later in the evening before we started 10 Candles and we chatted on speaker for a minute

no family photo this time b/c sam's tripod absolutely refused to cooperate EVEN AFTER she thought she fixed it

now, i am grumbling at the weather, but coming home and falling asleep to the rain was nice. i gotta do some tidying today and also pathfinder this afternoon. the house is still kind of a mess from, well, the rest of the shitshow this month has been x_x

i kept telling myself 'write about last weekend' all last week and never did lol

we (tony included!!!) went over friends place and tried out the game 'alice is missing', which they had bought the previous week when we went to cleveland for swimming (iirc)

it was a pretty interesting concept! sort of ttrpg-slash-card game. it's intended to be one of those 'play once' games, which doesn't REALLY make a lot of sense for a game you're spending $20 on, but it CAN be played multiple times b/c there's multiple endings/options for things that happen. you spend about 45mins making a characters based on some card prompts and then about an hour and a half playing. they DO provide you a cool ambient soundtrack which doubles as your timer, since your cards have timestamps on them to be used at those times.

i DID think playing solely by text was cool - it's a completely silent game. we set up a discord server and changed all our names to our character names haha. because of this, it's able to be played remotely, as well, which i think would be a very cool way to do it.

but yeah! played game, had pizza, played with puppies, it was a good night

THEN ON SUNDAY

PATHFINDER

KAILANI FUCKIN DIED



we were trying to get away from some enemies we got shitkicked by in another session and we were rolling REALLY well and had taken the main one down, but she wasn't DEAD. ended up giving enough time to the other two enemies to advance on our location and just an unfortunate series of events transpired and our first player kill :)

the party is distraught and taking her to the nearest Big City to have a resurrections spell happen. and now we're all playing bonus characters since the party is split (two going with the body to the city, the rest staying behind in the town). i get the lucky option of playing TWO characters for this (one in each party) since i'm, y'know, dead lol

but it's been fun, honestly. i was kinda showing up for the game just b/c i liked hanging out virtually with folks every sunday, but kailani wasn't really involved in anything plot-wise b/c nothing about the plot vibed with me for her. but the dice said: what if she died??? and i'm like: omg what if she CAME BACK WRONG.

so it should be a good time :)

i brought poe back in, she was a pathfinder in the other game we played before this, so i just had to level her up and tweak her a bit. i also rolled up desma as a mosquito witch witch lol - i want the unhinged grossness of the putrefactor witch from PF1, but i'll take what i can get.

so, yeah! it's been interesting! we had our first session with all the new chars in it yesterday and fought a CONSTRUCT which DOESN'T HAVE BONES SO I WASTED MY BONESHAKER SPELL >>>:C

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other than that, i've been working on a zine of my mom's poetry (with input from my mom, obv). it's pieces she wrote back when she was still a junkie/addict



i'd started compiling a bunch of her poems back in, like, 2014 in indesign and then forgot about it? sounds about right with projects and me lol. but i was thinking about doing a text-based zine with either some creative writing stuff for my chars and then i remembered this, so i pulled the file back up, reinstalled indesign, and ported everything over to publisher (so i can work on it at work lol)

the cover was fun to do - my mom had this thick-ass journal (it disappeared when her purse was stolen from the car at work one night) when i was growing up of all kinds of photos she had cut out and collaged of friends and family and stuff and i wanted to replicate that vibe with photos of her as a teenager. a bit of ✨artistic juxtaposition✨ compared to the content inside

and, of course, i did a zine for my fursona recently, too!

did something almost every weeken in august - punk rock flea market, porchrokr, pride. plus had some cool weather and a lot of blimp sightings lol

this is my five day 'weekend' and it's been pretty nice thus far

friday, i took the bus into kent b/c i was off on a weekeday (bus there only runs M-F) and i didn't have much else going on. posted up a bunch of zines, visited folks at the library, walked from the student center to downtown and then took a scooter up to sheetz to get some noms and came back downtown and hung out next to the river and ate

i miss kent a lot. a lot



also, belatedly, there were a LOT of rainbows last week lol (also the blimp)



some very angular looking cats that hang out at the black cat house on the way i take up to highland square frequently. there's also the BIGGEST FUCKING GROUNDHOG i've ever seen that hangs out on the porch there and eats the cat food



i also went to geekfest yesterday at the main library downtown and got some stickers and a little pin! (and the t-shirt they grabbed me from the punk rock flea market last weekend!!) met up with friends chris and sam. we got sweet mary's and then went to grab sadie puppy and tony (featured in the third pic) to go down to porchrokr in highland square!

also scored the d.va nerf gun from a little vintage store (lol) in the area for, like, $5. i don't play overwatch anymore, but when i did i main'd d.va and still try to pick up her stuff secondhand (so blizzard isn't getting my money)

also also bought tony an inflatable blimp



it was A LOT of walking, which wouldn't be a big deal, but it also involved a lot of dense crowds and navigating lots of people. came home and soaked in the tub and absolutely crashed after a bit x_x

also saw some Bugs - hickory tussock moth caterpillar and a cicada!

july wasn't super eventful, but we did have a handful of nice storms!

impromptu game night last night - first time i think we've all gotten together since the holiday party lol

chris and sam got me a bobcat skull and a little chunk of tanned fur (i don't know what animal, i only got a chance to look at it before we left the house lol) from their vacation. they wanted to find me a possum skull, but there's basically none out in the prairie!! so the places they checked out had none lol

we played 'side effects' and 'quelf' (lol queef). side effects was fun b/c you got to inflict things on your opponents. it ended with sam and basil going back and forth inflicting each other for, like, five minutes before one of them finally won out. quelf was funny as shit - at one point chris could not use his arms at all, whenever basil talked he had to have his thumbs in his mouth, we had to call the current leader on the board 'the great and almighty lord of quelf' (this naturally got shortened to 'lord queef'). it was absolute chaos, a good time

had a little bit to drink (aperol blegh, 'mayflower' mixed thing yum, warm-ass rumplemintz uggdgfhsdgfksjdfskd (it's better cold/mixed lol)) and ended up home early b/c other folks had stuff to do in the morning/rest of the evening

this morning, i am awake earlier than i'd like, but i did get mcd's breakfast (and an icey coffee) for tony and i, so the trade off is alright lol. pathfinder this afternoon, i think i'm gonna try to get some art done during it. i'm also keeping an eye on a discord bot to give me notifs of the vex incursions in destiny b/c they drop legend lost sector exotics SO I DON'T HAVE TO FUCKING RUN LEGEND LOST SECTORS ANYMORE B/C I FUCKING HATE THEM

we ran a bunch (incursions) the other evening and i got some cool exotics i don't have so far (boots of the assembler, cadmus ridge lancecap, loreley splendor helm), but not the one i WANT want (secant filaments). but at least waiting out incursions to drop is easier/nicer than getting repeatedly slaughtered and straight up Not Having A Good Time™ in legend lost sectors x_x

so we finished up the campaign missions for lightfall last week and i wanted to ramble a bit about it somewhere that isn't........twitter lol




( spoilers within )