Hi hello my habit of never writing in journals is getting back to bite me in the ass even in this digital space lol. So, it's been a solid two months almost to the day since I last wrote in this thing and here we are. Sitting at my little desk in the corner of the room by my window with everything and nothing to say.
Maybe that's why I've never kept up with journals--I have so much to say and no words to say it.
There've been ups and downs these past two months. The kittens have, for the most part, flown the coop. One went to his forever home, three went to the Animal Refuge League where they're being fostered until they're adopted, and the two we kept are just shy of four months old. And they're HUGE. Juniper is quickly growing into a little clone of his mother. Ponce is well on his way to being bigger than mama. He's going to be a Big Boy. Ponce is also living up to the tuxedo cat standard of being mouthy and mildly stupid.
Work is... work. About once a week I fantasize about quitting and taking a somewhat lower paying but also lower stress job. I've even thought about applying to the haunted Family Dollar in my neighborhood and hanging out with the literal rats. And, on the bad days at my current job, it's really tempting.
The pay cut and loss of insurence are holding me back. But so is the fact that I lost my Covid-19 vaccine card and most places require proof of innoculation before you work there. (Don't worry, I know it's somewhere in my house and wasn't lost somewhere in the world. It's just a matter of figuring out where it went.)
I've been pretty consistently reading these past few months as well. I'm seven-ish books into the Brother Cadfael books and I love them so much. I feel like they're the origin of the cozy mystery genre. (Although I have a feeling that the genre actually originated with my OG fave Grand Dame of Crime Agatha Christie.)
The Cadfael series is so wonderful and... I don't know how to describe it because there's usually multiple murders happening and Ellis Peters doesn't shy away from the reality of violence in medieval times; but they're so gentle. I guess it's Cadfael himself and his dedication to love and justice and his dedication to his faith. He's a man I'd like to meet in real life.
I've also been trying to get back into the habit of doing physical crafts. Over the weekend I reorganized my desk so I'll have room to do things. It's so nice to not have jars of pencils running around everywhere.
The first thing I tried was making a friendship bracelet! I had some cheap embroidery thread kicking around in the bottom of my beading box and I ran over to friendship-bracelets.net to find a pattern and decided on this one.
I did... okay. I lost track of the pattern while I was watching a Mad Catster video on the whole iilluminaughtii debacle that happened earlier this year and my bracelet turned into a keychain. But that's okay, keychains are also cute and you can never have too many of them. I'm gunna grab another pattern soon and see if I can actually complete an entire bracelet this time!
Another focus these past few months has been using the things I have. Like my craft supplies. And my candles. I have a full shelf of candles that I've burned to some degree (and some that I haven't burned at all yet). The candles were a way to start small. The whole point of a candle is to smell good and for the candle to smell good you have to burn it. And, if you burn it, it's gone.
But you burned it. And it smelled good. It fufilled its purpose and it brought you joy.
I guess that's all I've got. I've never known how to end things so. Bye.