The Tea Tree

That makes it sound like this will be a super thoughtful post but nah.

Hope you all had a great holiday season. Being in the US, I don't have much hope for 2025, but will have to survive it somehow.

I find it kind of funny that in 2021 my update was that I had no autoimmune disorder, because as it turns out, I DO. it's just psoriasis. Not fun, but certainly not a Sjogren's or lupus scenario, so if I'm going to have to have an autoimmune, I'll take that one.

Unfortunately family and then work on Monday wiped me the hell out so I don't anticipate any writing happening today -- yesterday I slept until 12:30PM. But I wanted to share SOMETHING creative with you all, so how about a sweater?



Well, the back piece of a sweater. I've never knitted a sweater before and I'm also slightly incompetent, but the pattern is finally making sense toward the top. I have one more set of the pattern and then I think I'm onto making the top and finishing the piece. I'm Extra Long(TM) though so will have to make sure the piece will be long enough before doing that. It should be as I accidentally did the bottom ribbing twice.

Hopefully I'll get more of it done today. My stomach is Deeply Unimpressed(TM) with me the past 12 hours so it might be another lazy day. At least doctors found out why it's an ass though -- my gallbladder has cysts and is just a general jackass so I need to watch my fat intake. Holidays aren't good for that kind of thing but now that I'm back home I should be able to control it better. Once I eat the rest of my homemade "panfried in butter" pierogi. I'm full of poor life decisions.

Oh not speaking of such at all, I ordered some Oops yarn from Big Little Yarn Co, which I'm very excited about as her yarn is GORGEOUS. I got three knitting books for Christmas so I have endless possibilities for whatever I get. Well, not endless since I got fingering weight, but pretty close to endless!

But I'm babbling. Have a good start to the year. Be creative and do petty crime, I guess.

Cheers/Prost/Salud/Na Zdrowie.

Imagine that said like Mark in The Room. And if you haven't seen that movie, watch it with the Rifftrax audio because ho boy you're in for a ride.

I know I disappeared again. My apologies. I'm still stunningly bad at social. Even in real life, my only friends are people who are either okay with my long silence, or are more than willing to nag their way into my life.

In the three years since I last posted, I bought my first house and have gotten REALLY into knitting. I also went to Poland and Lithuania, including seeing Auschwitz. Sadly my writer's block is still a shithead; I was attending a few writer's meet-ups but honestly I'm just so fucking tired after work that I don't have the energy for writing. Poor novels.

At any rate, I figured I would post as I was looking through other journal entries to talk about in therapy. To the shock of absolutely anyone who has known me all of these years, I have a major self-esteem and... Shit, what's the word. Insecurity? Don't know. At any rate, I got problems and we're trying to tackle them.

I might share photos of my knitting. Is that a thing people do here? Whatever. I shall MAKE IT A THING. *powermad laugh*

But I need to go make pierogi first because 'tis the season.

Hope you've all been well. Tschuess.

Magical disappearing act again, I know. It's what I do.

I didn't win NaNoWriMo, but that's no shock at all. My writer's block has been severe and writing every day doesn't help -- eventually I just get to a point where the whole thing grinds to a halt. I think I got halfway though? So a respectable number of words. I'm actually going to try and do some more writing because I planned a writing trip in the Adirondacks next month and I want to be in top shape for that.

Nothing tonight though as I have a migraine that really, REALLY doesn't want to leave. It needs to since I'm driving to CT tomorrow but anyway. Context for this scene: Lilith was attacked by a vampire, and Gareth and Rose May are representing her supposed attacker since he's falsely accused. They are visiting Lilith in the hospital as Rose May is hoping she can sense the actual criminal through the girl.

It goes poorly.

( TW for vibes bordering on child sexual abuse )

Day two of pain from the weather, thanks it going nearly to 60 yesterday, then right back to maybe 40 max today. Leaving me bloody exhausted, so time for the broken brain icon (which cracks me up).

But that's not why you're here. Here's an excerpt from last NaNoWriMo. Part II of AG is supposed to start each chapter with a news article, and they are pure sensationalism. I'd tell you more, but honestly it hurts to type, so I'm just going to post it and go back to SPORE.

( TW for minor racism )

By the way: this man is Meander. I was creating him in Sims 4 and realized that I liked his look when he wasn't another pale man, and I need more diversity in my cast anyway.

Tschuess.

So, um... Hello. Been a while.

I don't have much to say right now. Sure I will someday but for now it's just kind of awkward and nerve-wracking. Social phobia is a beast.

As a sort of summary of my life the past five years:

- I don't have an autoimmune disease. WHAT I have, god knows. Fibromyalgia, hypermobility syndrome, and some sort of unknown musculoskeletal disorder.
- I moved to upstate NY. I have a fireplace. It's pretty sweet.
- I still haven't finished my bloody rewrite of Abandoned Gardens.

I'll probably be trying to get back into using prompts and the like here, in the hopes of getting my creative juices flowing a bit more. There's been a mental block on my creativity for years, and my therapist thinks it's a couple of things: being in survival mode for years, and not a lot of people I feel I can share my writing with. Despite the motherfucking madness that is COVID, I'm not so much in survival mode, and maybe rejoining this site can help with the latter. We shall see.

So yeah. I'll leave you with something I wrote a few weeks ago.

( The Perils of Open Relationships )


See you later, perhaps.

Taking a much-needed week-long vacation and I can feel my muse stirring after what feels like years of writer's block. I think playing the Wekesa family in The Sims 3 helped. And thus I bring you: Bakari and Batuuli having a cameo in Abandoned Gardens:

( 1800s photography and my attempts at traditional Swahili clothing, oh my! )

If anyone out there actually knows about East African traditional clothing and can let me know if what I gave Batuuli and Bakari makes sense, that would be great. Unfortunately yet unsurprisingly, the internet did not yield a lot of information, what with its European-centric views and all.

And as a fun bonus, one of Alden and Bakari's adopted children married a man who then used Joy for a magician trick:



She made exactly the face I'd expect. Also grr, my spreadsheet says Bakari has brown-red hair but in the Sims he still has the blonde-red hair he started with! Which one is it, me?!

Tschuess.

( TW for mentions of war )

Just something I'm working on today.

Sometimes you're just driving home, thinking about your characters while trying NOT to think about the horrible shit you read about last night (seriously, no more reading about the Yugoslav wars. I think the paralyzing panic I got while driving home was a cause). And it makes you realize that one of your characters had a good chance of working as a prostitute for a while.

And thus was born Alden the Prostitute:

( TW for frank mentions of sex, including some very depraved sex )

My search history now looks extremely wrong due to the research I had to do for this. Also I haven't figured out what Layla looks like yet, whoops. I have an "Asian" -- no such thing in Malanee, but two countries in the Welen mountains were based on China and Thailand, respectively -- character I plan to introduce, but she didn't seem to fit as a prostitute (not to mention it felt wrong to do so) so she'll show up later.

And thus hopefully I'll get past the scenes where I have to pretend I know how sex and prostitution works. Oh boy!

Tschuess.

Hello and welcome back to my Sims 3 Legacy! Last time, uh, well mostly a ton of pets died and there were weird glitches. Not too exciting, really. And Charles grew up, bringing us into Gen 5.

So let's hop right in, eh?

( Tons of pictures, with some pixelated nudity. Disturbing pixelated nudity. )

Welcome back, friends, to my Sims 3 Legacy! Last time, Edith gave birth to her second child, Gabriel, while Charles provided serious comedy relief and cemented his role as our heir. We return to their beautiful home...

( Tons of Pictures, Yo! )

And that's that. Next time: will I get the Uni students to go home? How many more cats will die? Will Charles finally get started on those four kids? And will I finally admit to my ghost addiction?

Chance of finding an answer: 33%! But it's 0% if you don't tune in next time.

Tschuess.