skidding_in_the_cover | Spectacleable

Where is the joy?
Where are the laughs?
Sweeties are still away.
I can't help but be sad.

I'm doing all I can.
Being all I am,
And yet I still miss them.

Praying, hoping, waiting
Praying, hoping, waiting
Rinse and repeat
Rinse and repeat...

I'm sure they do,
Miss me too.
I feel so very blue...

Want to know where they are.
How close or how far?
Hurts a lot to be apart.

Didn't want to separate
Difficult decision I had to make.
'Til I move to a better place,
I'll have to deal with this pain.

Oh kitties, I love you.
What more can I do?
My big heart be true.
I love you, I love you.

I love you, I love you
I love you, I love you
I love you, I love you

Oh ohhh I miss you.
I miss you!

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We went into central London this afternoon, intending to visit the British Museum, but we made a very late start, and after our late lunch discovered they were sold out of (free) tickets for today.

So we went to the National Gallery, a few bus stops away, and looked at paintings. I wasn't up for a huge amount of walking, but bny the time I was ready to leave, so were Adrian and Cattitude. We spent a few minutes just enjoyong being in Trafalgar Square on a sunny afternoon, then walked to Charing Cross to get the Underground. Annoyingly, while it was (as whichever app Cattitude was using said) only a few minutes walk to Charing Cross, there was a lot more walking underground, and we had to go down several flights of stairs.

ETA: I was emotionally worn out to the point that I was glad it was just t he three of us yesterday, not socializing with anyone else. I hadn't realized that beforehand, only that I was tired enough that committing to anything involving other people seemed imprudent. Being around my brother for most of several consecutive days was a lot of 'there are people here,' even though, or because, much of it wasn't socializing so much as being near each other and sometimes asking whether we needed, or wanted, various items.

I was pleasantly surprised by how little my joints hurt by the time we got back to Mom's flat. I took both naproxen and acetominophen before we left, and wore my better walking shoes and a pair of smartwool socks, and the combination sdeems to have done me a lot of good.

We're flying home tomorrow. I booked a cab, which will pick us up at 2:15, and logged onto the British Airways website and changed the (acceptable) seats it had assigned us to ones we like better (I got us all aisle seats, instead of all next to each other so one person was in a middle seat).

Tags:

london

Reading: Mostly non-fiction last week, oddly. Still slowly reading through An Everlasting Meal, as well as flipping through a couple of new cookbooks in hard copy*. I also started reading Maureen Ryan's Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood.

As for fiction, I started--brace yourself--listening to an audiobook. I don't really do audio formats at all! But

scruloose has never read Murderbot, and the audiobooks seem to be WIDELY beloved, so I thought maybe we could follow Kas and Ginny's example and listen to one or more of those together. So I borrowed All Systems Red from Hoopla (another first for me), and yesterday we listened to the first three chapters or so. (I highly doubt I'm going to take up non-music audio media in any meaningful way, but who knows? Three chapters was definitely not enough to make it stop feeling weird, though.)

*A small order from Book Outlet contained What Goes with What: 100 Recipes, 20 Charts, Endless Possibilities (Julia Turshen); Half the Sugar, All the Love: 100 Easy, Low-Sugar Recipes for Every Meal of the Day (Jennifer Tyler Lee and Anisha Patel), which crossed my radar early on in the "must keep an eye on blood sugar" process and stuck because it doesn't use any artificial sweeteners (since I've never met one I didn't hate); Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End; and the first and third installments of the Murderbot Diaries consolidated editions, which means I now own books 1, 2, 6, and 7 in hard copy.

Not sure if I'll just keep an eye out for the second volume to turn up there too or if I'll cave and just buy it. I'm glad there's a release that combines novellas! But I'm also eyeing the hard copy option for Network Effect and wondering if there's going to be a release of it that matches this set. I like all the original covers, but I also like my physical books to match. (Does anyone know if there's any plan for a matching rerelease?)

(Am I still grumpy that--unless something's changed?--it seems like the first three of Wells' Raksura books got released in mass market paperbacks, which I pounced on because that's my preferred format, but the fourth and fifth didn't? YES.)

Cooking/Baking: Mid-week,

scruloose picked up some strawberries that tasted and looked fine but had a slightly odd texture (kind of...mushy? But nothing was visibly wrong?), so we turned most of them into this Buttermilk ~~Blueberry~~ Strawberry Breakfast Cake. It was tasty enough, but not so tasty that I immediately understood why it's one of the two most popular recipes on the site; that said, in addition to swapping the berries, we didn't have fresh lemon zest on hand and used the granulated peel from Silk Road (and also, my impression is that while blueberry and lemon are an iconic flavor pairing, that's not true of strawberry and lemon) and did the vinegar-in-milk substitution for buttermilk. So who knows.

Yesterday

scruloose had to go downtown to one of the large markets because that's the only place our usual meat guy vends and we'd placed a fairly large order (sadly, to replace one from a few weeks ago that met a tragic end by not getting put into the freezer soon enough). But en route, they stopped at the little corner market and got two containers each of raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries, plus some new potatoes. So now we are SWIMMING in berries, which is a wonderful state of affairs. I imagine there's no way we'll make it through all of them by just eating them straight, so we'll see what we wind up doing.

Current Mood: sleepy

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All the fannish coffee mugs I bought at Thalia this spring needed appropriate coasters, obviously. ;-)

In a macrame book I have there are instructions for making coasters and I vaguely wondered if they might make nice presents, but the design they proposed didn't really call to me and so I postponed the idea. But with the new old fannish obsession there then came quite an obvious choice. ;-) Although with all the white and my tendency to spill my tea I am not that sure they will really go into practical use and not just end up on a wall. In fact, I am now wondering which other fandoms I could thus work into a macrame project, and make some kind of macrame fandom exhibition on said non-existent empty wall...

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We are essentially done at Mom’s flat. I didn’t have a lot to do today, but am still tired. We will decide tomorrow what if anything we want to do.

Leaving for Boston Monday afternoon.

We had Chinese food delivered tonight, and it was basic good Cantonese food. They included a small bag of those weird shrimp chips, which I turned out to be in the mood for.

I cannot decide whether I'm tired enough to actually attempt to nap or whether to do something when I'm feeling too sleepy to decide what I want to do, so I shall babble at you. ;-)

Yesterday at work, we had to attend two hours mandatory explanation of the current data protection laws. It wasn't helped that the lecture had actually been intended for supervisors only who were then supposed to instruct those at the bottom, and our head of department had decided to just have everyone attend at once, much to the bafflement of the person from outside the institution faced with 40 instead of 15 people in the virtual meeting. It was very lucky it was at least online. Not that I did anything but intently listen, of course. Particularly to the stuff totally above my paygrade. So, it was certainly not during those two hours of my life that I googled the number who keeps calling my landline and my cell phone after all. And to my surprise found that it was indeed already known for aggressive advertising. So, not a person who knows me, but someone had apparently sold both my numbers at once. Not that much better, but I can now stop wondering if it is my sister-in-law suddenly remembering my existence after all (possibly because I stubbornly keep sending Christmas and only recently birthday cards into the silence, as I am not going to be the one who cuts the relation for good Period, or poked at by one of the aunts). Good I googled after all, at some point I might have felt obliged to answer in case it is her. Now that number is blocked.

Quite a while ago I had preordered a book on amazon, before I had started to order books in German on Thalia. I was quite baffled last Saturday when I saw someone posting on Tumblr about just having received the book that is only supposed to be published next week, and went to check - amazon still only offered preorders, Thalia already had listed it as available for mail orders. I have noticed that orders from Thalia are actually sometimes fulfilled by wholesale trader Zeitfracht, so I can see how they could be quicker with something newly published. I waited until Monday, hoping my order would be sent with only a few days delay, but no - and as I am impatient fangirl I ordered at Thalia on Tuesday and had my book on Thursday night. I had actually forgotten to cancel the amazon order which I meant to do once I got confirmation of the other copy being mailed, and expected it would now be too late - but no, no problem, not even the thing with the later email rejection or confirmation, order just gone right away. I see that now they say they could deliver on Tuesday, but it would still be a preorder. Interesting. I shall investigate further with other things to come out soon.

The book now gotten quicker is Die Auferstehung by bestselling author Andreas Eschbach, who wrote a crime novel with the Die Drei Fragezeichen/The Three Investigators characters, but at a much later point in their life. As the two and counting graphic novels who also chose that motif he has them be estranged for decades, but thankfully his book is not as dark as the graphic novels and doesn't do the cliffhanger endings they apparently will keep on having (I will in all likelihood faithfully keep buying them, but I'm not sure I would if it weren't about them, because they really are gloomy and I am not a fan of the cliffhanger), but has an actual ending. I started yesterday afternoon and finished this morning and if I hadn't been keen on being early at the pool for minimal swimming crowd (or was still younger ;-) ) I'd probably have read it in one go. So, obviously, I liked it and wanted to know how it ends and was very invested in them finally working together again already instead of trying to solve the same case solo. Very much appreciate that they hadn't just been aged up to be somewhat older, but where actually my current age with the graying hair and all. And yet, Aunt Mathilda is still alive, yay. ;-) I can't say this really is where I see the characters going with their futures (well, acually, I see them living happily ever after bonded in eternal friendship as professional private investigators ;-) ), but interesting take that I thoroughly enjoyed and that I at least intend to read again at one point.

In other news, while I was lying on the balcony with my book yesterday and took a little break to admire my petunia, I noticed they had lice. Two different kinds of them. And ants herding them. Booo.

We expected to finish going through Mom's papers, photos, etc. yesterday, but despite me and \mark both pushing hard, we realized in the late afternoon that we were both badly worn out, so we stopped. He left, and I got Adrian and Cattitude to tale care of me. I was worn out both mentally and physically; Adrian pointed out that \I hade worked steadily for longer that the previous couple of days. Mark will coming back to the flat a bit, but we did not set an alarm, because I needed the rest.

We reached a point yesterday that I could be satisfied just packing everyting the three f us have decided to take--photos, the gorgeous candlesticks Mom left to Adrian (officially tp me, but she had discussed them with Acrian), and a few other s,mall mementoes, but there's a stack of paper that Mark wants to take a second look at: he was lookinmg both for financial paperwork as well as photos and other mementoes. It felt like it might be 45 minutes more work today, but could take tjhree times as long if we had tried to push through last night.

I told Andy and Adrian to go out and play yesterday, so they spent the afternoon at Kew Gardens. It is raining steadily now, and foercast to do so for several hours. I#m thinking I want to do not much today, just finish the tasks here, and maybe go out and do something interesting tomorrow, before leaving for Boston on Monday.

I am very glad we saw

liv on Tuesday, when we were still feeling energetic.

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Firing Stephen Colbert, whose contract guarantees he'll have a show through next May, may be the stupidest thing Paramount has ever done.

On Bluesky, Wenella reports that "Dongjj Rescue, starring Zhu Yilong, Ni Ni, and Leo Wu, will be released in the US on Aug 22, 2025. The film will be released in mainland China on Aug 8." Time to start haunting the Cineplex site in hopes of Canadian showtimes!

I took today off in hopes of getting a bit more sleep (done, although not an impressive amount) and actually starting in on my next manga rewrite. I have just over a couple of hours before I need to venture out, so...we'll see how the latter goes in practice.

I can't remember if I've mentioned here that almost two months ago, I concluded that I'm going to sell my poor basically-unused etrike. ( In case I haven't, here's the gist )

Anyway, this comes to mind because for once I have a little venture that would, in fact, be perfect for taking the trike if I were at all in the habit of/comfortable with using it. Ah, well.

In related news, at least we're not under a heat warning anymore, unlike the last few days. (It's still currently 22°C and humid as hell, resulting in a 30°C humidex, and it's supposed to be a couple degrees warmer later this afternoon. But it's still an improvement.)

Current Mood: melancholy

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We got a lot done yesterday and today, Mark and I sorted through a bunch of stuff on Tuesday, and talked to Ralph (Mom's stepson) and figuring out which things are his/his sister's, and then which withim that what people actually want. Legally, he and Liz own the flat and some of the contents (specified\). In practice, there are things none of us want, partly because of geography: Ralph doesn#t need furniture, and he's the only one of us who lives anywhere nearby. So it's mostly what has sentimental value, like Simon's family china.

To our London friends: If we get enough done today, we might still be able to see people tomorrow or Saturday, but I don't know yet.

I also got into a stupid argument Tuesday afternoon with Ralph's wife Jenny, who was trying to convince me that my brother and I had some koind of obligation to arrange for clearing out everything that nobody wants, so Liz (Ralph's s sister) can sell the flat. This started with me telling her that we hadn't traveled from the US to be unpaid labor clearing out a flat for someone else to sell, and then on the third time she cirled back to telling her that by insulting my recently deceased mother she wasn't helping. |She said she wasn't trying to help, I told her to at least stop hurting then, and walked away from the conversation. My brother is one of the executor's of the will, so maybe has some obligations here, but Ralph and Liz own the flat now--my mother had a life tenancy and then it went too her stepchildren. I emerged a while later to find that Mark, Ralph, and Jenny had made a bit more progress in figuring things out.

They left here at about five, and Cattitude and Adrian went shopping to buy a few groceries.

liv, who is staying part-time in a flat half a mile from here, came over for the evening, and we had a very good, long visit. Adrian cooked dinner in an unfamiliar kitchen; I'd checked with Live a fw hours earlier about dietary restrictions. The original plan was just for her to come over here, where we can sit in the back garden, but one advantage of that is being able to comfortably share meals with people.

Wednesday was productive, sorting through papers and Mom's jewelry and a few oddments. The will leaves a few specific pieces of jewelry to Simon's daughter and two of my cousins, so we need(ed) to locate those. Beyond that we can do whatever seems good, and had agreed to offer things we didn't want to our cousins. We've found one piece Adrian is taking, and there's a bracelet of Grandma's that my cousin Janet asked us to sell her. If we find it, it's Janet's, as a gift.

After Mark and Linza left, the three of us decompressed a bit. After supper, I sorted through a bunch of [photos, pulling out a few that \I want and/or thought \mark would want to least see. My mother's youth hostel card, signed by her and Grandpa, was in an envelope, along with a 1949 student discount subway pass, which got her free or discounted trips home from school. Thirty-odd years later, they were giving us passes good for free trips both ways, but only after the first few weeks of the semester.

In going through papers, and figuring out what we need, including things the executors and Mom's account might need, we have so far found four social security cards. What seems to be the original has a number stamped on it rather than neatly printed. One of the others makes sense in that it has her second married name on it--Eve Rosenzweig Kugler--but four still seems like a lot.

I'm going to post this and have some breakfast

Tags:

london

I already mentioned it in comments, but maybe someone else is interested in the continuation of The Three Investigators books I'm going on about - turns out some have been translated to English for German students lerning English to practice with something fun. ( further info )

We're part of a stew, not a melting pot, in this wildly diverse country.

Started the day with Morning Prayer, more ethereal music. Plenary address from the person I shared Italian ice with last night :D

A workshop with music for which "ethereal" doesn't say enough. At one point the leader taught us a melody, said "now make up parts," and we sang for nearly 10 minutes while circulating around the room, creating little groups of two or three and then moving on.

Lunch and then my presentation. There are so many sectional options each hour that my in-person audience was small, but I understand there were a lot of folk on Zoom. The smaller audience did mean that I really wasn't nervous at all, and it was fun to play a concert grand! I think it was well received; there were some good questions, and one person talked to me extensively afterwards.

Tonight's activity included a banquet for which the dietary options were useless for me, followed by a hymn festival off site. I'm ready for some down time, so I ate in my room and am live streaming the festival and crocheting. It's at a black church, and it's fun to listen to the leaders try to teach all the white folk to sing in their style. They were wise enough to write most of it out rather than try to truly teach improvisational singing in one evening!

I was sort of kitchen-assistanting for both of last week's cooking ventures, with

scruloose doing most of the heavy lifting, but hey.

Last weekend we made this carnitas recipe that E.K. Johnston linked to (and she mentioned mango-lime salsa, which I hadn't had before but sounded good, so I bought some of that too, and liked it a lot), and it was really, really tasty. We got three meals out of it (and between that and a two-meal HelloFresh box, that pretty much covered last week's suppers).

Later in the week we roasted strawberries basically using this method (that recipe is also how I learned you can toast sugar, which I'd like to try sometime), but the only thing we added to the berries was sugar--specifically the summer fruit sugar blend from Silk Road Spices ("a delicious blend of maple and turbinado sugars with mint, ginger and freshly ground green cardamom"). This approach involves roasting the berries in a baking dish, while others do it by spreading them out in a single layer on baking sheets. I'd like to try it that way at some point too.

I also want to try slow roasting them sometime to compare the result.

Current Mood: hungry

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cooking log

This morning, I stared into my closet looking for the pants I had just shortened - and then realized, no, actually I hadn't shortened them. I had folded them to the right length and ironed the crease in preparation for sewing on Friday, but actually sewed and shortened I had not. That was quite some wishful thinking...

Instead of doing that sewing, I started Saturday with the sudden conviction that I needed a blue hydrangea, because obviously, a plant that needs a whole lot of water is totally the thing to get when an extremely hot summer is announced. The garden centre however only opens at ten, so to pass the time I read a story on AO3 that I very much enjoyed, but which mentioned the song Macarena. Instant earworm. Macarena and I finally walked to the garden centre, got the hydrangea and saw a very pretty foxglove plant. Macarena and I decided there was not enough space on the balcony for that, and marched home. On the way back however, Macarena and I came to the conclusion that actually, with moving stuff around a bit, the foxglove could be fit in, so once home we just dropped everything and turned around to also get the foxglove plant. Macarena and I seem to have bought well, the bumblebees of the neighbourhood are very pleased with this new offer and busily visit the foxglove. Then we sat on the balcony and finished listening to Giovanni's Room - I am even more pleased now that I managed to get it, I found it quite excellent. And Macarena went away finally, halleluja. ;-)

Before that I had heard Umberto Ecco's Der Friedhof in Prag/The Prague Cemetery read by Jens Wawrczeck - definitely the only reason why I didn't nope out right away. Should you ever listen to an audio version of this, close the windows, listen with headphones, it starts with the most horrible hate speech you don't want your neighbours to hear. One is actually pleased when it starts lashing out at a group one is part of, one would not want to be a person that protagonist approves of. Apart from promoting antisemitism and false information, the protagonist also tried to figure out if he is having a split personality - I had expected to find the psychological aspect interesting, but it got too much in the background. It possibly would have helped if I had better history knowledge about that time and area and could have tried to fit the story into that. I guess this was supposed to serve for holding a mirror in front of those who promote such thinking, but I doubt that works, either the target feels mocked or even worse, encouraged. I feel kind of educated after having made it through and did find myself wanting to know how it ended (though mostly for the psychological aspect of the story), but was glad to say goodbye to that nasty person, and it was the first audiobook were I really didn't bother to skip back after I had accidentally fallen asleep on it.

The second Drei Fragezeichen movie that I had watched after my last entry hadn't met my taste either (though way more than that Ecco book). I can see why the movie planned to follow hadn't been made and there was quite a break until someone else tried again with the new cast. Way too crazy for my taste, way too much But why...? and the only girl a complete lunatic for no good reason.

Yesterday morning, I met a friend for breakfast and knitting and chatting, which was fun as always and as always went until noon. I also worked on a macrame project over the weekend, and wanted to carry on with that tonight, but for some reason I'm so tired today that I may just go to sleep now. Doubtlessly, to then be awake as soon as I am in bed. ;-) Maybe I should just take the macrame basket with me. Or better, those pants and the sewing basket, so I can finally wear them tomorrow...

Yesterday: two lovely hours of driving back roads in Ohio before I got on the interstate to finish the drive.

A quick stop in the friendliest grocery ever. It was weird.

Basically everything that can go wrong in the college where we are staying and meeting has gone wrong. (Our key cards don't work in either the cafeteria or the parking garage. The beds in the dorms are all set above my waist height, for a group that leans heavily towards 60+. Incorrect instructions on how to do vital functions like unlocking our rooms.)

A lovely ice cream social where a nondairy option (Italian ice) was presented right along side the dairy stuff. No "go ask Betty in the kitchen." And coincidentally being in line behind another person who only wanted one scoop (pre-served two per bowl) so we got an empty bowl and shared.

The wonder of singing with hundreds of other people who can *sing* and do so enthusiasticly. The interesting split between those who stayed very intent on the printed music; those who were ready to put the music down and clap and dance and improvise; and the brave folk bravely trying to do so.

We made it to the little market down the road for the second week running and found the first vendor we visited down to his last several boxes of raspberries, so we bought two and headed back home. First raspberries of the season!

(I think yesterday was the first time I ever actually stopped and noticed why raspberries are called that.)

Reading: In non-fiction, I'm still reading through Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace.

On the fiction front, last week I read Cameron Reed's The Fortunate Fall, relatively recently (and finally!) reissued under her current name after its first life as an award-winning SFF novel under her deadname literal decades ago. (I believe her upcoming novel is her first since this one!) It didn't actually hit my emotional buttons very hard (which isn't indicative of how anyone else might react), but it's beautifully constructed and executed. I see why it's so beloved by so many people. ^_^

I also read We Are All Completely Fine (Daryl Gregory), which I didn't realize was a novella until I started reading, so it went by pretty quickly. Interesting horror worldbuilding, although other than the characters' specific histories it's almost entirely hinted at or nodded to; I, at least, came away with almost no actual idea of what's actually going on on a larger scale.

And I read the new Murderbot story ("Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy") that Martha Wells released for the show finale (note that Murderbot itself isn't actually present in the story).

Watching: No Leverage this week, I don't think.

scruloose and I have agreed to switch this to an "I watch this when I feel like it, and if they're around and feel like it, they'll watch with me" show rather than one we're Watching Together. They enjoy it, but don't feel a burning need to see every episode.

I kind of wonder if I haven't started a show on my own for so long because I'm sort of subconsciously waiting to be able to watch the rest of Justice in the Dark whenever the whole thing is subbed somewhere.

We've seen the Murderbot finale, and I'm awfully glad the show's been renewed.

Beyond that, the two of us have now watched the very first episode of Silo, having had good luck with Apple SFF shows. I haven't read the books, so I know almost nothing about it.

(I have food stuff to talk about, but I think I'll call this a post and hope to write more later.)

Current Mood: okay

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Until this morning I hadn't been to church since getting back from Belgium. I hadn't wanted to go back to St John's for a couple of reasons - firstly the likelihood of taking on responsibilities that I'd rather not have at this stage, and secondly the growing awareness that singing in a choir is an important part of worship for me - but I'd been dithering about where to go instead. My four criteria were catholic, liberal, within 15 minutes bike ride, and has a regular choir, and indecision about which to compromise on combined with a rather erratic sleep cycle meant that each week I'd let inertia take over. This Thursday I had an appointment that was half way to Hornsey Parish Church, which is about 20 minutes away, but meets the other requirements, so I cycled the rest of the way there to make sure I knew the route, which meant this morning required less activation energy.

Regarding the choir the website says "We welcome new members who have a facility with sight reading and a passion for the choral liturgy", but when I spoke to the director of music and said that my sight-singing was shaky but I was happy to note-bash at home if she sent me the dots in advance, and she said that was fine, so I'll be joining them as of next Sunday. They've got a concert on Saturday which I'm going to listen to rather than sing in - if anyone local fancies joining me it'd be good to have company.

Quoted in the Yale alumni magazine: "You know the world is going crazy when Yale alums are making donations to Harvard!"

(This Yale alum donates to the United Negro College Fund, because they need it more than Yale does.)

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political

The short of it all as to what had motivated and inspired me to write my shiny new poem in the previous entry is... Sometime last year and more recently this year, my mom and I have asked individuals for help on moving our belongings from one place to another, in order to move into a different place to live in. They both haven't done what they had said they were going to do to help us. And I have thought to myself over and over that such people are no better than the parasitic people in politics. That they're the lowest of the low...

I just needed to vent out those negative feelings and my thoughts out. I figured that my blog could be used to store more of my poems , to transform them into songs,on the music maker site known as Suno.com. (I have done a lot, a LOT of various songs on there. Look up artist name SilverFox Jams!)

Earlier this year, I used Google docs to do the same when writing lyrics down. But space on there is of course limited, so I have reason(s) to start posting on this here blog of mine again.

I also want to use this for writing out what I will be saying in my planned video series in the near future, on my gaming channel @ YouTube: Ancapikitty and Friends Play Games. There are unfortunately not many places that aren't both affordable and cat friendly. Over the past six months, my mom and I have been spoiling 3 sweet cats with love and care. Two brother and sister orange tabbies (3 years), and a younger tortoiseshell cat that recently turned 1 years old. I've come to love them so very much. We've had to have them stay at a nearby animal shelter temporarily, until we get ourselves an affordable place to live where the cats will be allowed to be back with us.

A little over 2 weeks have passed, and I miss them so much. I've been praying and hoping to be in a better place that has running water and electricity. The current house we are in hasn't had that for months. (A former crazy housemate has caused so much trouble. She not only violated my mom's peace order and pissed me off. She had temporarily stolen our phones. Luckily I found mine, but my mom had to replace hers. And then after that, her unreasonable and just as crazy aunt called the electric company to have them shut the power off.)

Yeah, we have been through a lot. A lot of crazy shit we never deserved. The crazy bitch who stole and caused drama is now long gone, and things were recently settled in court. The judge was lenient to have her on an 18 month long, unsupervised probation. The woman has to also pay my mom $93 for both the phone damages and for the amount of food she stole that didn't come from any of the local food pantries.

My upcoming video series will be called "Cat Talk". This is for not only me and the 3 kitties I miss. This is also going towards any cat owner and cat lover who may be going through similar problems. I will eventually write out what I will want to explain as an intro and foundation for the entire series. It may have several webisodes. I would continue to do this series even when reuniting with the cats. If this helps not only me to cope through the current situation, and also helps to bring positive change to have more pet friendly places available, then that would be great.

I absolutely 1000% do not want to experience anything like this ever again.

Current Mood: contemplative

Ho-Wo !

this doesn't make us stupid.

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National Gallery

Weekly proof of life: books (reading and ordering thereof), inc. an audiobook | A bounty of berries

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Mission accomplished

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not quite done

New Substack post

Z1L movie-release news | An etrike update I may not have mentioned | Weather

London, Thursdauy morning

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New Substack post

Monday

Foodstuffs from last week

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Sunday

Weekly proof of life: mainly media

Church! Choir!

meanwhile...

Just wanted to add some context.

"CAMEO'D"

Our courtyard

Directory of agenda

Ho-Wo !

this *doesn't* make us stupid.

Directory of agenda

this doesn't make us stupid.