Winter Blah

As much as I hate summer for trying to kill me, winter tries to kill me in different ways. This year it's planning on shoving ice at us. Puke.

The ice is going to start on Wednesday night. Looks like our best bet is to do our usual Friday shopping on Wednesday before all that mess starts. Normally we go out and run errands on the 3rd, but as that is Thursday, we'll be waiting on that as well. No bills are due that day or near that day, so it can wait until the ice/snow/hell melts. 

I see no reason to be unsafe about this. No one needs to end up in the hospital with a broken bone and wait forever for a bed to be freed up. It's not worth the risk. 

Uninspired

I have this story idea in my head but when I try to write it, it's just a mess. I'm considering writing it as a non-linear narrative but I'm not sure yet. We'll see.

Meanwhile, my new blanket progresses, if slowly. The dark of the year isn't making me sad but it's certainly eating away my creative spirit. 

Good Saturday

I spent the day knitting and reading. What can be better than that? I talked to my friends, worked on stuff, and nuzzled cats. Bliss!

Beautiful day.

Pleasantly Surprised

I finally saw Joker. It was a difficult movie to watch, but riveting. I loved it. I felt like he really achieved transformation into the kind of crazy that would be needed to become Joker.

It wasn't canon and wasn't meant to be. I think people get too hung up on canon anyway. Art should evolve. Art should be examined in different ways to reveal new depths to it. It's one of our strengths as a people and to deny that is to deny our creativity. It won't always be to everyone's taste, but it keeps it from stagnating. 

Joker once said to become what he is, it only takes one bad day. The beautiful thing about this movie is how it examines the opposite of that. It looks at how one can also become Joker over a lifetime of hurt and frustration. I think both are valid. 

The Outside

I had therapy today instead of tomorrow. It will be that way next week as well. 

Covid is horrible and has caused a lot of problems, but sometimes the circumstances around it work out in people's favor. For instance, it is a lot easier for me to negotiate where I will have therapy. Right now, we're either doing it on the phone or at the park. 

The park was my chosen location. I love the park. It has a massive pond and lots of waterfowl. The geese are evil (and they have some evil duck friends who hang with them), but everything else is lovely and serene. 

It's honestly an ideal location for therapy. 

It Could Happen

People are freaking out that the Amazon show possibly maybe has one of Galadriel's brothers alive and leading the orcs. People keep screaming that this isn't canon...the thing is, it COULD be.  This is how it works.

No one sees Aegnor's body after Dagor Bragolloch. There are reports that he's dead, but no one can confirm.

Aegnor said he was going to wait for his mortal love and never leave Mandos to be re-embodied. No one in Mandos may have known about this and all of his family is just going to assume he stays there. Again, no real confirmation of where he is. He could have been captured.

Sauron has a nasty habit of using people's loved ones against them. He could have figured out that this elf lord was in love with a mortal woman and captured Andreth's soul before it could leave for wherever mortals go.

Aegnor loved her completely. If Sauron had him captured and showed him that he could torture Andreth's soul if he didn't obey, I bet Aegnor would have done what Sauron wanted.

So he wouldn't be EVIL exactly, but certainly on the villain side and capable of causing a lot of problems.

End of the World

I keep seeing these posts on Facebook about people losing loved ones to Covid. I keep seeing posts about people taking loved ones to the hospital and not knowing where things will end up. I keep seeing more worry, more fear, more heartbreak. 

This isn't stopping. I'm not sure it's ever stopping. 

I don't want to die of Covid. Or, at least, if I DO die of Covid, I want it to be the kind where it finally mutates to killing you instantly. I don't want to be in the hospital for months. I don't want to be sick for months. Just....infected and then death. I hate that I feel like that's a good option now.

Destroy Everything you Touch Part II

So. Celebrimbor.

First of all, I am a major Silvergifting (fictional relationship pairing of Celebrimbor and Sauron/Annatar) and you really can't convince me otherwise about it. You neither allow someone to ruin you that way OR bother with ruining someone that way unless there is something more happening than just friendship/general conquest.

And understand, I am a Sauron fan no matter how he's portrayed. Make him a victim of circumstance with conflicting emotions and morals about what he's doing? Fine. Make him repentant during the 4th Age, awesome. Make him an unapologetic villain who revels in his ability to talk people out of their power? Even better.

I am a little pickier about how they portray Celebrimbor. I don't like it when he's seen as just ambitious and blind to what's happening. I don't like it when they make him naive. He'd lived through the First Age with killers and assholes. He was smart enough to walk away from them. I don't buy that he doesn't SEE the potential danger Sauron poses to him.

Here's my theory. Celebrimbor is very broken after the First Age. Basically, everything good in his life was stripped away. He lost basically every person he'd grown up with except one. He watched people he loved and respected become murderers. He lost home after home after home. 

I think he really internalized the idea that his family ruined everything. I think he was horrified by the idea of harming someone else and when he saw Annatar (Sauron) and realized he was a Maiar, for the first time, he realized this was someone he could NOT destroy. 

See, I don't think it was just the prospect of Annatar's power that drew Celebrimbor in. It was the protection that power offered their relationship. Celebrimbor knew he could never break Annatar into pieces. 

The fact that Annatar could do that to him didn't really hit him until later. But even then, I think he felt that was still better, still emotionally easier, than him destroying Annatar. I mean, yeah, it probably disturbed him what the Rings could do, but on a basic relationship level, the one thing he feared could never come to pass.

Finished

The blanket is finished. It was the first one I started back when I first learned to do ten stitch blankets. I stopped working on it at the end of Spring the year I started it and didn't pick it back up until last winter. In the meantime, I made a completely different blanket. 

The blanket has a lot of flaws. The earlier parts of it look really sloppy compared to the end. Also, the cat puked on it before I finished it, and washing it without all the ends woven in kind of made it weird. 

But that's fine. My therapist wants keeps reminding me that progress is more important than perfection. And I do realize that, of course. Honestly, it's how I finished this blanket at all. I knew it served my life better as a completed project. 

So right now my roommate has the first blanket I ever crocheted and I have the first one I ever knitted. Pretty neat, really.

Bitter Thursday

I did therapy today as telemedicine. It was just way too cold to meet in the park and I certainly wasn't walking into some building. Not with all the Covid out there. 

Overall, just getting to sit here in my warm chair under my warm blankets was a very nice way to do therapy. I'm happy that's an option. It may need to be used during the summer months.

It never really got warm today. It was a two blanket day and a four blanket kind of night. That's probably how it will go tonight as well.

Satisfaction

I used to write a lot about happiness and at some point, I stopped. Was it cancer? Maybe. It's been a long time. I still think a lot about happiness as an aspect of our existence and probably should write about it more often. 

I think one of the biggest barriers to happiness is how we're so socially trained (or maybe it's hardwiring, I'm not sure) to always want more of something. Once you achieve the THING YOU WANTED, suddenly you realize you need more things. And this isn't just about THINGS either. It can be about anything or anyone.

It's difficult for a lot of us to accept or believe that what we have (or who we are) is enough. We feel like there needs to be more, needs to be better, needs to be cleaner/brighter/more organized/more beautiful.....it becomes a nightmare of just trying to get things JUST RIGHT and in the midst of that struggle, we don't take the time to relish what we do have.

Today I made the decision that the row I'm working on now will be enough blanket for me. Some of the yarn I used on this was heavier or grouped together, causing the blanket to have a pretty good weight to it. Pretty good now, but more rows are going to make it rather difficult to manage. I'm going to be content with what this is and not nitpick it or keep trying to add to it. I have a tendency to overwork things when they really don't need it. Usually, that just ruins the integrity of what I'd made in the first place. 

A Good Day

Today I created a storage solution for something, knitted, and read. I'm really something very grand at the moment and it's just made me so very happy.

It's supposed to get stupid cold on Thursday. I hope this doesn't disrupt my therapy plans. As much as I disliked the idea of going inside a building for therapy before, the insane number of Covid cases will certainly keep me from it now. 

So Melt

The snow didn't completely melt but we got a good start on it. I'm hoping there will be a good amount of it gone by tomorrow. 

It was novel to have the snow, but I think that's all we need for this year. Things are too screwed up in too many different ways for this to add to it. With the plague and the supply issues and just people's general annoying existence, we really don't need bad weather in the mix. 

So Snow

It snowed today. Not a lot. I don't think it stuck to the roads or anything. Hopefully, it will be mostly melted by the time we go shopping on Monday. 

I've realized that it isn't that I hate snow. I don't. I am just really terrified of it. I can fall with nothing slick on the ground. Add something slick and things could get really ugly really fast. I try to be careful, but that first step out of the house (and the last step into the house, which is, of course, the same step, but in reverse) have been known to really ruin things for me. It scares me so much. I really don't want to break something and end up in the hospital. 

So yes, thank you snow for coming to kill the bugs. Now please leave. Kthnx.

The Things I Can

As per Serenity Prayer, I changed something that I actually COULD change. My yarn stash trunk has been in need of organizing for a while. This morning I realized there was a very easy and logical way to do it. Later in the day, I made that happen. I even let go of some of the dregs of yarn (and wool that my body will not tolerate touching) I'd been holding onto as they made an ever-increasingly worse mass of chaos. 

This isn't a thing that is out in the open. It wasn't causing me any kind of annoyance when I looked at it. Still, it needed sorting. And now, thankfully, it has been sorted.

And just like that, I feel better about things.

Cold Incoming

It's supposed to get stupid cold this weekend. I am not looking forward to that. 

Therapy went well today. I'm glad I moved it to 2:30 because that actually works better for my brain. No idea why. 

Sims added some new interactions a while back. One of them involves other sims asking you for career advice. I kind of like that. I don't like the fact that Father Winter called my sim and told her he had a crush on her. Back off, Santa.

Perspectives

I made an arm cuff this week. It isn't perfect and there is no way it could have been. I have decided I'm going to be okay with that.

The arm cuff had to have a section put into it where I adjusted for the varying size of my arm. It makes the cuff, off of my arm (and probably on it), look odd. I'm okay with that too. 

Something you make is what it is. If it is functional, that is enough. I'm tired of feeling weird about the awkward stuff I've made. My first blanket is almost 30 years old and it still gets used every year. It's a mess, but it is functional and comforting. 

It's enough.

Lovely Day

Today was really good. For one thing, it was bright and sunny. This was glorious after so many days of drear. The shopping went smoothly as well. Our meals were lovely. 

Best of all, my birthday present finally arrived. I now have new artwork on two walls and move some other artwork to a different area and all of it looks SO good. 

Much thanks to my roommate and his tallness for hanging everything.

Tears Unnumbered

At some point, some very good production company needs to do Tolkien's First Age. I think it needs to be a series of movies, probably animated ones (because everyone is too hot and tall and ageless). It NEEDS to happen. 

And it needs to be a series of movies too because you really can't try to tell ALL of this at once. There is just too much happening. This stuff needs to be drawn out to give it justice. 

I've been reading a lot of stuff about The Battle of Unnumbered Tears and so much of it is just so....sad and beautifully heartbreaking and epic. The whole Union of Maedhros and then this battle needs to be its own movie. It really does. 

Constant Companion

Now that it's cold again, Tink has decided to sleep with me. This means she's in my room when I sleep (or during naps) and on my arm while I'm awake. If it's sunny, I might get some hours where she's by the window. Otherwise, she's on me. 

This means she had to tolerate all chair dancing, knitting misadventures, and my kisses. So far, she's stubborn enough to stay through all of it.

The Evening Blahs

I'm writing this at around 10:30 and I feel fine. I feel like myself and things are nice. But four to five hours ago, I felt horrible. I was tired and depressed and anxious and just really blah. 

This has been happening to my roommate as well. It's an ongoing thing during the earlier hours of the evening. We feel awful. The light in the room doesn't seem like it's enough. Everything is just bad.  As the evening continues, the light levels out, things feel better, we feel more like ourselves. 

Freaky winter.

Compliments

I got complimented on something I made today. I felt really good about that. 

One of my goals for this year is to use the craft/art items I have in the house to make things around here more interesting. I'm not gonna say beautiful but....certainly more interesting.

Feet in the Water

The fanfic I did topped out at about 8 kudos and 40 hits. One person bookmarked it. I'm okay with this. It's more hits than the blog ever receives! 

I decided I would finish the current blanket before I try any other projects. I know quite a lot of the newer yarn will go into the blanket as I really can't see myself using it for anything else. 

The holiday decorations are down and the house is back to normal. We vacuumed and washed some clothes. I have two baskets I need to fold and no room to put them away as of yet. I'll try to tackle that as the week winds down. I have a project for tomorrow and then therapy. 

Overall, this was a pretty good day. The cat opted to sleep with me during a nap and that is always sweet of her.

Jan Fourth

The internet was out for hours and hours and hours today. It was stressful. I'm exhausted. That's all for now.

Jan Third

A YouTuber that I follow recently talked about being trolled and bullied online. She talked about how she knew a lot of people didn't discuss these things because it put them in a position of being vulnerable. Sometimes it would even invite more of the same problems. 

However, she wanted to address the situation because she knows it's something a lot of people face. Sometimes people can feel very alone in situations like this. 

Her video was very good and she made some excellent points. One point, however, really stood out to me.

She talked about how people who hate you NEVER wish you well. They may say things that SOUND like advice while they are bullying you, but don't take what they say seriously. They aren't saying anything that is in your best interest. All they are saying is that they hate you/what you are doing/what you represent/what you are changing and they want it to end. And once they hate you, there isn't anything you can really do to make them stop hating you. It's best to just ignore them and keep doing what you feel is best. 

This reminds me of something once said on Pretty Little Liars. I don't remember the quote exactly, but basically, it was "They don't want you to change. They just want you to go away."

It's an important thing for me to remember when it comes to any changes I try to make in my physical health. The world wants me to NOT be fat, but it isn't like I would be any more accepted if I wasn't. Getting healthy will always have to be on my terms because even once I have my health in order, there are still a million ways in which I'm at odds with the Typicals. 

It does sadden and annoy me that this woman is getting hate for her channel. It's honestly the sweetest and most peaceful channel out there. Then again, that's the kind of thing people usually want to destroy. 

Jan Second

It was insanely cold today. I made a scarf with my fingers. I adore it. It only took like an hour. 

The cat has been in a bad mood all day. She's on my shoulder right now, growling every time that I move. It's so lovely to know I'm such a constant disappointment to her.

Even though I'm not in school anymore, I still feel the same tension I did as a kid when Christmas Break ends. I think that's understandable, given how many winters my roommate and I have ended up in the hospital. 

I have a project I need to do this week and I need to fold towels at some point. I also need to find one of the many pocket folders we have and use it for therapy. Aside from that, I mostly want to knit and play Sims.

Jan First

I was having a good year but at about 12:30 AM the cat puked on me.

Happy New Year!

I ate my black-eyed peas. I did some folding. I knitted some stuff. I posted some fic. I read more fic. I played games, talked to people, and did stretches. Not a bad first day.

This is also Millie's Gotcha Day. So glad we have her weird little self in our lives.