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Current Mood: worried
Current Music: Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail - Kaleidoscope

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Well, there's good new and bad news...

We spent most of Shabbat at the hospital with Laila hooked up to an EEG, trying to see if we could find more about the increase of seizures she's been having lately.

The good news: She's...not actually having seizures? Even though

sashagee texted me at 4 a.m. that she had had a seizure, and even though the neurology nurses who came in to check up on her when

sashagee pushed the button also thought that, the review of the EEG showed none of the characteristic brain activity of a seizure.

The bad news: Now we don't know what is going on. Even the attending physician mentioned that the video seemed very similar to a seizure, though it could also be that Laila was just having night terrors (which we know she has). But that led

sashagee to ask how we tell between a seizure and a night terror, and the doctor didn't really have an answer for that.

We'll probably have to go in for a longer EEG where we start drawing down her medication and see if anything triggers an actual seizure. It's possible that none of her recent "seizures" were actually seizures and her increased medication isn't necessary, but it'll take more testing to tell that.

Trying the dreamwidth thing again!

Name: Celestial

Age: 31

I mostly post about:

my personal life, thoughts, day to day stuff. Sometimes mental health/trauma related stuff. Crafts, occasional outfit photos. Cat pics. I also recently did a huge family photo archiving project, so I want to share some cool old photos and what I know about the people in them.

My hobbies are:

I like dabbling in different types of crafts. Primarily into making beaded jewelry, but I've also been learning stained glass this year and that is really cool. Trying to get into reading again. Taking photos, doing home DIYs, watching a lot of movies and TV. I like fashion, but don't dress up much lately (trying to fix that).

My fandoms are:

not a huge fandom head in the traditional sense anymore. I'm a diehard My Chemical Romance fan since I was literally 10 years old. Also a big Nicolas Cage fan, almost finished with a quest to see every single movie of his. Can't think of many others off the top of my head but I fixate on stuff for a while and then forget about it.

I'm looking to meet people who:

are also neurodivergent (audhd here). have a wealth of different experiences and points of view. anyone who is willing to read and occasionally comment.

My posting schedule tends to be:

I'm aiming for once a week this time around, but may be more or less depending on what's going on in my life.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are:

No TERFs, no centrists or republicans, no Zionists. I don't care if you're personally religious but I'm not and don't appreciate that perspective in regards to my own life. No Harry Potter fans, it's lame if you're still into that given... everything. Don't be a shithead in general. And probably no one under 21.

Before adding me, you should know: Hmm. As I said, there may be the occasional post about mental health/trauma stuff. I'm also regrettably a true crime enjoyer, i rarely talk about it but if I do I'll tag. Unsure about anything else that might be relevant

(no subject)

Name: Nora Neurosismancer (they/she)

Age: 41

I mostly post about: Whatever is on my mind, also my daily poetry when I'm happy enough with it to share.

My hobbies are: Poetry, paganism, witchcraft, and so much music. I'm big into all things gothy: darkwave and coldwave, post-punk, synthpop, new wave, industrial, metal, and just outright werid shit. Oh, and I do competitive air guitar.

My fandoms are: Star Trek and Trek-adjacent stuff, also I'm deep in the fandom for various bands, especially DEVO.

I'm looking to meet people who: Post interesting stuff. Bonus points if you're trans or some other flavor of queer.

My posting schedule tends to be: I'm aiming for a couple posts a week.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: No minors, no TERFs, no Nazis, no Evangelical Christians, no Harry Potter.

Before adding me, you should know: I write some pretty emotional, and sometimes sexually oriented poetry. I've precious little filter about adult topics.

back again!

name: squid

age: 21

location: midwestern united states

i post about: i'm into a lot of things but what i end up posting about are monthly periodical-types of the music i discover and listen to (free for anybody to access) and the general musings and feelings of an anxious college guy (behind an access lock). i might someday make a dedicated post about history or politics or literature but i rarely feel like i have any meaningful contribution to what could be said. that's a very broad characterization but check my about me on my profile for a slightly more detailed synopsis

my hobbies are: my whole life revolves around music, more or less :] i listen to music extensively (squid771 on last.fm and rateyourmusic), collect vinyl records, and go to college studying sound engineering (i'm a senior!). i have an off-again, on-again recording project that i'll someday release something under. i play guitar, i'm an untrained singer, and i play various keyboard instruments. i always try to watch movies but usually that means i'll just gather a bunch, watch 2 in one night, and then go 6 months without watching another. i'm trying to read more (5 books read this year; infinitely times more than the past couple of years), i'm big into history (currently researching the george mcgovern 1972 campaign, and concurrently the history of how the word socialism/communism got such a negative connotation in the U.S.), and i like to walk around at night, or in the rain, or both. i try to appreciate the little things. i want to write, and learn esperanto, but i've never found enough consistent motivation to try either

my fandoms are: i haven't really considered myself to be really big enough on anything to be part of a fandom, but some of my favorite bands/artists are fishmans, stereolab, broadcast, nick drake, elliott smith, the radio dept., the field mice (all of sarah records really), brian eno, yo la tengo, ichiko aoba, and many many others! i could talk about music for days and days. as far as like forms of media go i'm big into the trails series (games 1-5, trails and crossbell; cold steel ruined the franchise), deltarune (haven't played undertale but i generally know what happens by osmosis), off, team fortress 2, and disco elysium; and then cowboy bebop, samurai champloo, NGE, general 2000s adult swim-core type stuff for anime

i'm looking to meet people who: i put a post up here about 6 months ago when i first started this account and i did get a lot of responses but nearly all of the people that replied to me aren't active anymore. i'm looking for people to really connect with and are in this site for the long haul (or at least for a while). i'm not too picky about sharing interests but having mutual appreciation for something always helps. the main thing though is that i'm just trying to make more friends :]

my posting schedule tends to be: whenever i feel like there's enough going enough in my life to post about something. this is usually like 2 to 5 times a month. i do tend to get wordy in my posts for what that's worth

when I add people, my dealbreakers are: i'm a very vague socialist so i'm not particularly chill with MAGA types or people who are just unnecessarily rude but i think there's like only 2 people on this site with those beliefs anyways

before adding me, you should know: i don't really comment much but i read everything that's posted. i get in my own head about responding to/posting comments and not feeling like i have enough to say. but i'm always looking to talk to more people and come out of my shell
i'm very depressed and mildly autistic and can be in my head a lot of the time, so the posts behind my access lock can get mopey and despondent. i'm doing the best i can to grapple with my emotions and the world around me so a little bit of empathy goes a long way. we're all going through something

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62 | things i made and bought this week

I'm making merch for the book.

Stuff to use for our future book reception. A fuckton of bookmarks with an epistolary theme to give away with any books we sell and give out to people. Collages to put on display in strategic locations in the room (we're gonna rent the community house that belongs to our apartment complex) and postcards to put on every seat in the room, so people have a souvenir to take with them back out into the real world.

I'm also counting on having time to make blackout poetry of the letters in the book. To print them out and just make poetry of what is prose in the original. I did this for my last book reception five years ago, and people really liked it, so I think it could be a fun idea. Fold them up and see if those who have read the letters in their original recognise anything - and if those who haven't can make the connection when they do.

I'm mostly done making bookmarks. I need to seal all of them up and to add the return address to the back - but for that we need to buy stamps with Jean Louis' and Marie Claude's addresses and we haven't gotten that done yet, too much other stuff. Today for sure. Then I'll have them mid-next week.

That said, let me show you a thing I bought earlier this week when I was downtown myself(!) and went to the DIY store.

It's a book of cut-out things for collages and it is soooooo nifty. I've already used so many little things to add to my collages, it's amazing. It was fairly expensive, but with the collections in it, I can use it for a good while to come, so well worth the money.

I also bought a ton of magazines to cut out from, so I should have that part covered.

So far, I have made two framed collages - one inspired by Marie-Claude and her home, and the other inspired by Jean Louis and his. By comparison, the final collages look like this:

I'll leave it up to you to guess which is which...

Finally, I have gotten started on a series of "postcards" that will come in transparent envelopes. I'm hoping to do them all in a style reminiscent of this one:

I want the letter-theme to be recurring, little envelopes and wax seals and the like. So it's all a whole in the end.

At the book reception, we will do readings from the book, talk about characters, processes, universe, all that fun background stuff. And, of course, there'll be things to drink, coffee, tea, sodas and water - as well as light refreshments, probably cake and fruit.

I'm so excited for this, probably a bit stupidly so, but besides the book release itself, this is what I look forward to the most! Next year can't come soon enough.

Lord knows, it can only get better than how the first half of this year went.

Current Mood: full
Current Music: Some kind of Spanish guitar remix of the Kingdom of Zeal theme

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Fuwafuwa time

I'm pretty sure I've used that subject line before for this exact reason. Or, nearly this exact reason. Last night I prepped for work and went to go make a salad to bring in--as I usually do because I'm not paying $20 every day for a sandwich, or even $10 every day at the work restaurant--and when I picked up the lettuce there was a purplish liquid that had dripped out onto the container below it, so I threw the lettuce away. And then it turned out that we didn't have any more lettuce in our CSA, so I was left without the means to make a salad. Hmm.

Long story short, I went for soufflé pancakes:

I used to go there all the time, but

sashagee doesn't like it. We don't really have a lot of overlap in what foods we like--we used to have more, but the pregnancy changed her food tolerances and in ways mostly away from the foods I want to eat--so my main chance to go to places like this are at work lunches. I got the matcha panckakes.

They tasted exactly the same as I remembered. Emoji La

Current Mood: restless
Current Music: Seven Lions - Nepenthe

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The system is down

Took Laila to Hebrew school yesterday, and afterwards we went to the Ravenswood Artwalk, which had been in the phone calendar for months but which I had totally forgotten about until I saw a poster that it was that weekend.

sashagee drove down and met us nearby, and we walked along and looked at the booths. We didn't go into any of the studios to look at the art, since we thought that Laila wouldn't have a good time just being inside while I held her and we looked at art (or listened to music or whatever), so we just stayed outside, got some food at the food trucks--I got a brisket sando,

sashagee got mac and cheese, and we got Laila some empanadas. We asked her which one she wanted and she said "beef" and when we told her we'd get her a beef one but which other one did she want, she said..."Beef."

We got her a beef and a sweet corn one. She barely ate any, but at Hebrew School she had three mikans, a handful of grapes, half an apple, and some pomegranate seeds already so I'm not surprised she wasn't that hungry. She'll probably eat the rest at dinner anyway.

The reason I'm making this post, though, is because when we got back from all of that the internet was down. Alright, fine, I called in and they said there was an outage, but I can tether things through my phone, so I tethered my iPad to my phone and played games with Laila. And then I called at 3 p.m., and at 5:30 p.m., and then after

sashagee left for a birthday party at 6:30 p.m. the internet was still down. I told Laila that the TV was broken and she accepted it, especially when we were still able to watch Bluey on the tethered iPad, and I put her to bed and went to bed early. At 9:30 p.m. the internet was still out, but at least at that point when I called the support person told me that the problem was a cut fiberoptic line and that's why it was taking so long to fix.

At 11:30 p.m., before I called again, I decided to get on the wifi and found that it worked. I went and checked on Laila and she had fallen out of her bed onto the squishmallow on the floor and was still fast asleep. I picked her up, put her back into bed, kissed her on the forehead, and went to sleep.

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Location: United States

Returning to This Website

Name: Nix/Nyx or other names (they/them or any pronouns).

Age: 28.

I mostly post about: I'll probably post about my life the most consistently. I might also post writings and about my creative projects in general. Overall, I think I'll mainly use this blog/journal to process thoughts or ideas and to help me remember things, as I have a terrible memory. Maybe I'll post song lyrics and/or poetry I come up with, too.

My hobbies are: Making music, listening to music, gaming (I play a variety of games), reading (manga, graphic novels, articles, books, etc.), writing, streaming (I'm currently streaming as a VTuber), content creation, and more. I also recently started drawing again with digital art and go on the occasional hike.

My fandoms are: This is going to be embarrassing, but I'm not sure what counts as a "fandom." Maybe I'm overthinking the definition? Either way, I don't think I am a part of any specific fandoms right now, but that could change. Some things I like that I can think of right now are Okami (for nostalgia reasons) and Baldur's Gate 3.

I'm looking to meet people who: I'm mostly looking for more people around my age. It's a plus if you're also LGBTQIA+, disabled, or neurodivergent, and it's even better if we share interests.

My posting schedule tends to be: This time around (I used this website a while back), I'll probably post pretty sporadically overall. In the past, there were points where I almost posted daily, so that might happen again.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: I'm okay-ish with differing opinions as long as it's nothing too major, but that's probably a thin line I don't even fully understand yet. (I like keeping my mind open to new ideas if others will do the same.) However, I do draw the line at right-winged people and centrists. That's all I'm going to put for now. Oh, and please be at least 20 years old. Thank you.

Before adding me, you should know: I struggle with my mental and physical health and will probably post about that a lot. For similar reasons (mostly related to my energy levels and shyness), I also have a hard time commenting on posts, but I'm trying to overcome that. Responding to DMs can be even worse, even though I do appreciate messages from people.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Fantasy music Mix

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Guilty pleasure foods: More food talk

Here it is again like a week before I start my period and I have all the classic junk food cravings... cookies mainly. If junk food was a drug cookies would be my drug of choice. :-p
I try not to do it much - but sometimes I eat out of boredom or stress related. When I was a teen I actually was overweight due to overeating because of depression. I have a character in my comic Promised memories I plan on writing about with a similar eating disorder. I also had a slight eating disorder when I was a late teen/early 20's where I just didn't eat because I wanted to be super skinny because I thought I looked better super skinny and it was a pretty dark time for me.

I've been trying to stay away from the ingredients of high fructose corn syrup and also corn syrup in general. It's hard - there are some foods I haven't found yet that don't have any - like Maple syrup syrup (once in awhile I like to have pancakes or waffles!). But I think I just need to look harder or just buy some all natural the next time I find it available. There are so many health risks associated to it! I know they make it, it's just a bit more expensive but well worth it.
But also sometimes I just crave some salty foods like chips. I don't eat chips much these days. The price just seems to be a bit high for how little you get in the bag.
And just crunchy is a craving I get, too. Like crackers or just good o' cheese crackers. That was a favorite of mine back from when I was a young child.
Bread is another one that I just find some comforting. Anything bread related - donuts, muffins, rolls, bagels... when I was younger and in my single days I would sometimes joke of wanting to marry a baker just so they could come home smelling like baked goods each day. ^^;
Gosh, what else... this is all making me so hungry and I need to go to bed soon. :-p
Cheese is another one that just is too delicious to pass up! And cheese with crackers and meat! sign me up! I recently made this cheder and potato soup that is super tasty. Once fall comes around I love having soup.
For awhile now I have gotten better about eating at fast food. But once in awhile I do have a fast food craving where I just go and get something little. Some places I just get sick after eating their food - like Taco bell.
At times I do like to have cake but not as much as I used to. My dad makes some of the best cake I've ever had. He usually makes homemade icing!
Brownie's are another guilty pleasure. I tend to enjoy the middle pieces more than the edge pieces. ;-)
And that reminds me of cupcakes. I love making cupcakes and have a nice collection of sprinkles for them. I have some pans for extra small ones (that are adorable) and regular size ones.
Last summer and this past summer I've had some wonderful ice cream from different places. And I've tried some new flavors which was fun. A new favorite of mine is this sea salt caramel flavor.

Okay, Okay - I think that should be it about guilty pleasure foods! I wanted to take a minute and write about something less serious than I have talked about recently. And this felt right. Do you guys have any favorite guilty pleasure foods that I have mentioned - or some completely different ones?

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Tales Under The Oak - Wracked with Eternal Winter

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Splitting the difference (Academic Knowledge (Game Design) + 10 )

So last week I wrote about how I was trying to decide between running a game of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and between running an OSR-derived game called Tales of Argosa. And I have to come to a conclusion, which is of course to do neither of those. To explain, a while back I heard about something called Dolmenwood, an OSR setting based on the fee, though not necessary the exact stories from, old British myths and legends. It's a giant forest, once ruled by an ancient faerie called the Cold Prince, now ruled by humans--or at least, humans claim dominion over the wood. There are still parts of it that have never felt the tramp of mortal feet, and parts of it where faerie lords still claim demesne and do not suffer humans to enter. It has a monotheistic human church that replaced the older religion that worshipped the wood gods, except among those of the peasants that still leave out offerings at the bases of oak trees at Midsummer and Midwinter. It has a corrupted unicorn called the Nag-lord that rules a portion of the wood, and is an obvious reference to the Black Goat of the Woods to the point that the peasants straight-up call it "Ol' Shub." It has playable fae elves (immortal, innately magical, capricious), talking magical fae cats called grimalkin, strange forest natives called mosslings, talking goat-people called breggles (from their own name for themselves, hregl) who are basically equal to humans and hold some noble titles under the Duke of Brackenwold, fae goblins who don't live in squalor and murder travelers, they just lie and cheat and set up markets and can turn invisible, but they can't use their powers on you or cheat you if you invite them into your house and they accept your invitation...I love it.

There's even a dungeon synth album, and I sure love dungeon synth so I've already bought that too.

I don't love using OSR D&D to run it, though. This kind of setting seems tailor-made for me to use WFRP, so my current project is converting over the mechanics to WFRP. Fortunately, since it's standard OSR and based on the Old-School Essentials ruleset, there's really no complicated mechanics at all. It's your standard 3d6 in order, pick your class, gain one power per level kind of deal, so all of that slots pretty well into the WFRP paradigm. Dolmenwood doesn't have dangerous magic but I think it would be better with dangerous magic so that doesn't bother me either.

The one thing I need to change is advancement. WFRP famously has the career system, where you start as a rag-picker or a roadwarden or a bravo or a fisherman or a rat-catcher (with a small but vicious dog) and then advance through into cat burglers, engineers, duelists, scholars, and wizard lords. This is both great for verisimilitude (it grounds all characters in the world) and awful for verisimilitude (a classic complaint was how many wandering vagabonds decided to become assassins purely to pick that sweet +2 Attacks). It's the most recognizable part of the system and I have a bit of a problem in that I have never really liked it, to the point that when I ran it I replaced the system with the more free-form one based on Aptitudes from the Warhammer 40K game Only War, though even there, there was some friction (

aaron.hosek picked Aptitudes that he was later pretty annoyed about picking when he saw the experience costs for the talents he wanted).

When I was younger I really didn't like class/level systems because they were unrealistic and they constrained player choice and all the usual reasons, but now that I'm older I recognize that analysis paralysis is a thing and class systems provide an easy way to distill a series of options down into limited set of choice--it's easier to pick Fighter and have all the stuff that makes you good at combat happen automatically than having to scan a list of 3000 Feats and pick ones that help while avoiding traps like Toughness. That's usually seen as one of the pros of the OSR, the lack of fiddly bits and endless "build options" and "character optimization." But while I'm not a fan of character optimization, I really like build options a lot.

However, the Warhammer 40K game Dark Heresy had a different system that I'm planning on stealing. Dark Heresy had a class/level system, but it was one with a lot of choice involved. You'd pick a class like Assassin or Guardsman or Imperial Psyker and as you gain experience you advance up in levels, but the difference is that what you gain isn't fixed. Each level has a list of possible advancements you can buy, as you gain more levels (and thus more experience with your character), the range of advancements expands but at a rate that increasing system mastery allows you to handle, or at least that's the hope. I'll just need to use the Dark Heresy careers as a guideline when I make fantasy versions like Magician and Warrior and Thief. Some of these are easy--Dark Heresy's Scum converts to Thief nearly 1 to 1--and some are a bit harder, like converting the Imperial Psyker over to the Magician, but I think the general framework splits the difference nicely. And Dark Heresy enemies aren't so mechanically complicated that it would be hard to convert OSR monsters over either.

I think this has potential.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: The family watching Bluey

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If you're Mizraḥi, the way you say Inshallah is "Inshallah"

The wife of the hummus-seller at the market told us that Laila was so cute after Laila said "bye bye" to her yesterday, and as we walked away she said, "May G-d protect her from the evils of the world."

You're right, madame. I pray for that too.

Laila has been a bit of a terror lately. Bringing back behavior that's been totally gone for a while, like putting random things in her mouth, deliberately not listening, that kind of thing. On the one hand, it's a hopeful sign of her normal childhood development that she'll wait until I say "last warning, Laila" before she gets her feet off the dining room table or whatever I'm asking her to do, but on the other hand it's a lot. It's driving

sashagee kind of bananas lately, partially because she's also sick (again). Laila spent a big chunk of time yesterday in her room and got her new dolls taken away, because she would do the little kid thing of "Now that I am released from punishment, I'm going to immediately do the thing you told me not to do, because you're not the boss of me!" Except, of course, we are the boss of her and back to her room she would go. She's been better today but still pushing boundaries. The dolls she just got are put up until she stops putting things in her mouth after she put one of the definitely-small-enough-to-choke-on doll-sized cups in her mouth, and she's not getting them back today.

Laila is enjoying school a lot, at least as far as we can tell. There's only been one day where she hasn't been happy to go to school, and it have just been because she didn't want to leave the house. Once we actually got the schoolbag on and got out and on the road, she wanted to run over the school just like she always does. We did have a brief chat with the teachers during the open-house they held recently, where her teachers said that Laila has a hard time answering the questions that they ask her. Emoji dejected

She's more talkative, but still has some trouble.

A few days ago I suddenly came down with some kind of stomach bug. It's mostly gone away now but I occasionally get stomach pangs out of nowhere, and when I asked

sashagee about it, her opinion was that maybe I shouldn't be eating so many uncooked vegetables. Since we get a CSA box, a lot of my lunches are just cheese, raw vegetables with hummus, and bread with labneh or something like that. I supposed I am getting old enough that my digestive system maybe can't handle literally everything I throw at it anymore. On the other hand, I had more raw vegetables for lunch today, so we'll see if it happens again. I'm not looking forward to the extra time I would need to cook all the vegetables I eat.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Dolmenwood - Beyond the Witching Ring

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The part of the textbook right before the section called "The Years of Blood"

Charlie Kirk shot in Utah, died.

It's easy to look at this and say, oh look, the dude who spent his whole life sowing the wind has reaped the whirlwind. And you're honestly not wrong to say that, but the kind of country where people get shot at during a speaking event at a university campus is not really a good country to live in, it's the kind of country we have historically issued travel advisories about. I think it'll be more useful to look at the reaction to this vs. the reaction to the Michigan state reps who were assassinated in their homes, because I suspect it will be very different.

Also, as the reaction to the Minneapolis school shooter (and basically every shooting back to and including Sandy Hook) shows, literally nothing can happen that will make the right engage in a good-faith argument about gun violence, so this won't either.

America thinks of a civil war as two sides in different uniforms lining up and shooting each other, because that's what our civil war is like, but that's not what most civil wars are. I expect our civil war to be more like the Troubles--constantly low grade violence to the point that you never feel entirely safe. There are no frontlines, the battlefield sudden appears in ordinary neighborhoods and bars and train stations and then vanishes as the ambulance siren gets closer.

Also, on a personal note, Kirk had a three-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. They don't deserve life without a father.

Current Music: back to henri — carte blanche jazz band

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60 | the words don't come easily to me

So, my week took a turn over the weekend.

K. was the one to notice it first, but I had been thinking I felt more scattered, tired, bad sleep, mood swings, all the classic signs that something was Not Well with me, but I couldn't place what was stressing me, mostly because a small selection of things are stressing me at the moment, not limited to working on the book and outdoor training every week.

However, after some discussion with my girlfriend, who is ever the wisest in these things, we settled on it most likely being the pressure from having to attend physio every week, in a group of people I don't know, group activities with weekly check-in the kind of thing I have never been able to attend, not for the past fifteen years I've been in the system. Meaning that we had to make a plan as to how to tackle it, because I need my physical therapy for my foot, but my mental health can't handle the only free offer there is.

Just deciding that I wouldn't have to go Monday lifted my spirits some, though, so it was honestly an easy thing to cut the ties entirely after some discussion with my physios. After some contact back and forth, K. had my old physio (the one I had before outdoor training) send some exercises to me, so I can try and continue my training on my own and with the help of my assisted living person, whom I'm seeing tomorrow, where we'll craft a plan for the entire thing.

Mostly, my physio said, it was important that I kept moving and kept challeging myself, just enough to experience small progressions and victories. We'll see how it goes. If it turns out I can't do that on my own, we'll have to buy private physio therapy which would suck, but of course my foot needs what my foot needs.

Meanwhile, I'm going shopping every day now and the walk with some weight is definitely good for my foot. I have also started actually walking stairs a little bit. Monday I walked all the way to our local library and back + shopping on the way, so I honestly think I'm doing the work. Especially seeing as I'm still rather stressed and slightly depressed, though I can tell it's getting better day by day after making this decision.

We'll see how it goes from here.

For a week now, we haven't heard from our cover artist, who promised to send us our updated files last Tuesday/Wednesday. I don't think it's usual behaviour from her, not reading her reviews, so I had been nervous something was wrong with our collaboration or that she'd lost interest in the project (again, it didn't seem like her at all and she has always been timely with communications otherwise), and tried giving her time to return to us, but nothing really happened.

Yesterday, I shot her a new message, kinda sharp in its tone, because we would definitely understand if she was busy or something has come up privately, but we'd like at least an update about it, saying that we had a deadline by end-October and would we be able to have the finished cover by then? She sent a slightly frantic message back last night, almost half past midnight (she's in my timezone), and apologized profusely for the lack of communications/lack of updated files and swore she'd have them ready for us tomorrow - things have been rough on her end (of course she didn't go into details or anything, but it was nice knowing that my feeling was correct, this wasn't standard behaviour from her).

She also offered us any of her premium features extras, as a thank you for being understanding and patient with her. I'm thinking of maybe getting the social media kit, but it depends on how much extra time that would cost her. Also, I need to make sure we still have an agreement about the ISBN number when we get it, that she adds it to the cover at that time. Either way, I'll write her this morning and tell her we still completely trust her work and we're happy to see the order to its finalization.

Can't wait to have a cover for our book!! Finally.

I signed up for

ladiesbingo, got my card and have actually written the first entry already. It'll be all Marie-Claude/Sasha stuff, mostly, I think maybe one Marie-Claude and her spin doctor, Birgitta, too, depending on how much of the card I end up filling. Working on a vertical line right now. It's an experience, writing Marie-Claude's narrative in English after having written the whole novella in Danish. I think it fits her voice, but I also have to fight in places to get the tone right and still not sure I'm hitting the exact notes, but I'm trying and it should get better the more fics I wrote, I guess.

Still working on some DIY stuff. I have an aim of ten bookmarks before the week is out and then, beginning on 7 postcards with a similar design over the weekend/into next week. The wax seal is the common motif and I really love it. I have four bookmarks made, so six more to go. I'll be working on the backsides of them today. The postcards should be a tiny bit easier, because the envelope motif on those is square, so easier to cut out.

Today is another day off, then tomorrow I have assisted living and Friday I have therapy, which comes at a good time, I suppose. Not much feeling like it, last time was a tough one and the feelings from it are still clinging to me somewhat, but I'm trying to go into this new session with a clear mind. There are definitely things to talk about. Over the weekend, we have a meeting with my local writer's group on Sunday and K. is going too, if she still wants to and wouldn't rather have a day off a home by herself. Either way is okay for me, of course.

Friday is also Marie-Claude's birthday, and I still have to figure out how to celebrate this. Since I use Instagram now, I was thinking of making a character introduction/spotlight kinda post there, maybe a new page in her daily planner (could even be September 12th, if it's free, can't remember right now if I've already filled it). Not sure. I have a couple of days to find out something still, so I won't rush with anything.

I've also dipped my toes back into DWRP, currently voicetesting Marguerite Gautier from The Lady of the Camellias, because I love a tragic historical heroine. And that book is my favourite. I've read it so many times, since I originally bought it more than ten years ago.

Some things never change. Just because others have to.