Merrin

Monday: Japanese goal, 1 hr Zelda etc, scrubbed the kitchen walls and mopped, baked, hydrated + used face serum. Slept in 2 hours late. Brainzaps kept me up.

Oh if only the outside were covered in stone! There is a large cemetary only half a mile away.

Hi Nerds! I'm Merrin. I haven't done a proper challenge for over a year at least. It may look like I have a lot of goals, but all of these fall in line with my daily schedule. I was going to Culinary school but had to withdraw last April. I need structure to thrive, so putting my goals down along with writing a daily schedule with my partner is really going to be good for me. We just bought a house! We drove 1100 miles across the country to move into a house built in 1900 (yes it's 120 years old) and used to be a funeral parlor! It's old and spooky and sometimes bats get in. It needs a lot of love and attention. (We spent most of October re-plumbing the entire basement.) I love sewing! I taught a Cosplay 101 class at Nerd Camp 2016. I don't have any LARP plans until January of 22, but that doesn't mean I can't sew a pile of things until then. Mercury: There's always something to be studied, and right now, that's language. 1 chapter Duolingo each day. Learning Japanese in the hopes that Duncan and I can go back in 2023. Venus: all hobbies in moderation! 1 hour social media, 1 hour video games per day. No old games. No Animal Crossing. Moon: Usagi's favorite thing is spending time with Mamoru. Ifrit and I were enjoying a more regular date night. 1x a week for games [Firefly, Lovecraft, Villains] Mars: keeping the home clean is an act of duty and an act of love. 2x weekly, including house painting, hanging art, repairing windows/treatments, laundry, floors. Jupiter: Mako-chan loves being in the kitchen. She shows her love for others by feeding them often. Cooking 3+ times a week, opposite chore days. Baking counts. Saturn: Silence is a necessity. 2 hours downtime daily, reading, stitchwork. Finish pumpkin set, gem poster. Castle poster? Uranus: No time for slacking. Ringfit, 1 section daily. Neptune: Deep Submerge! Daily skincare, hydration goals. [Oops it's like they go together on purpose.] Pluto: Cosplay work, 3x week. If I feel like there are other areas to improve, I'll branch out the challenge to the Starlights.

In for this. 2020 goal is 4 books per month. I've got all of Sandman to read, plus almost a dozen novels to start.

2019 Shows! Natura Obscura, The Illusionists, Trans Siberian Orchestra, Camp Christmas. Nice balance of classic vs immersive.

Unlike a pirate who doesn't do anything, I have now officially been to Boston in the fall. The colors through the mountains were incredible. I hiked across a campsite and walked through the woods at midnight.

The three I've got are a moth, a constellation, and a song lyric. The next few will be a tree, a Shakespeare quote, and maybe a fox.

I've never been to the botanical gardens despite living here my entire life. Check off another item for the Backyard. It was lovely.

Went to Dinosaur Monument this past weekend.

~ Like a fire, always burning, I'll be here for you ~ Time to throw this back to the pre-camp challenge from so long ago. I won't lie, I remain disappointed that the idea of Camp never came to greater fruition, that I might never see some of those folx again, that my cosplay class wouldn't get to see a second run. I worried that I wouldn't find such an uplifting, positive community again. And then, on a whim, I went to a LARP this past Yule season. And I had an amazing, magical, absurd, story-filled time. But! I was not prepared for the emotional/physical/mental toll that it took. (Two days of Disneyland? Easy peasy. Been there. Two days of playing pretend with total strangers? That took some reserves.) So, it's time to get the engines running and prepare my magical story machine for next month. Rough draft follows, rewards to be decided if needed Love is to Eat Anything Fluffy: Cook/assemble food 1x per day. Log all food into phone. Don't Be Clawhauser: Limit sweet snacks to 2 per day. Increase water and tea intake. Go for Walkies: loops on the parking garage for work days; loops at the park on off days. Bees? Complete Darebees when possible, attempt extra credit. Include with daily stretches. +Back Up Tigers: dance party. +Venus: heavy bag, house/yard work. Mirror Mirror: daily skin care + masks. Hush: minimum half hour quiet time before bed. Reading, coloring, meditation, chores. DatDA: class work as needed. +Haruka: weekly free/errand ride. Kissing Town/Boo'ya Moon: once weekly fun times with Ifrit.

I'm honestly depressed today. It's that sort of blues/blasé/gloomy feeling. I want to be convinced that everyone here must hate me, based on just a few people being so consistently disrespectful. It honestly feels just a little bit Triggering, and I know exactly why: this sort of joke-y, 'take it easy', faultless type of caustic attitude reminds me a LOT of my ex-in-laws. They would say horrible things to me and then act like I had no sense of humor for responding defensively. Same thing with my OM just now, and the CD the other day. If I stick up for myself, I'm told my boundaries are wrong or un-enforceable; 'Your chair has wheels' if I need to remove myself from my work space, or my labels to my desk get ignored as it suits others. I'd like to go home and cry at a Disney movie, please.

Potentially Good Thing: my OM tells me that he left me something in the drawer marked 'Personal-Do Not Open' so marked that people don't open it looking for office supplies when my bag/lunch are in there. The something was a bag of chocolates with a nice sticky note. Immediately Not Good Thing: within an hour of my thanking him for the chocolates, he then reaches into that same drawer, y'know, 'Personal Do Not Open' because by now, all my sh*t for the day is in there, to then TAKE one of the chocolates he just??? GAVE ME??? I try to joke it off 'You just gave me chocolates and now you're taking them?' and his response was this weak 'Haha yeah'. If this is the same person trying to encourage me to re/establish boundaries at work with my work space/etc...he's sure fucking up in setting a decent example. So??? I guess? I'll just hide all that chocolate INTO my lunch bag now and ??? See What Happens??? The f*ck???

Today's gratitude list. 1. My job that not only let me come in late and leave early yesterday from a migraine, but also allowed for my leaving early today to take Duncan to the doctor. (It's also worth noting that this migraine came from a plant protein product similar to the product that made me sick and gave me a migraine last month. I need to stop taking those items from the pantry. ) 2. When i had used my last spoon to go and heat up some food, and then couldn't stand what it was... (Weird pasta bake from the food pantry with a weird sauce and cheap meat. Their fail rate is less than 10% per month but when they do, they fail hard. ) Duncan got up and made different food for me.

It's important to recognize how easily the migraines affect my overall emotional health. I made it in to work, determined to do the reports that are my main responsibility. I was an hour and a half late and playing catch up. Two instructors began to have a conversation across my desk, with one of them in front of me, and one of them behind me, inside my work space, literally talking over my head. I had written on my white board 'Shh-Very Bad Migraine'. I point to this and politely ask them to not talk so loudly/over me. "Your chair has wheels." This is the response from the CD, who up until today and this moment when the migraine has me feeling like shit, I had been thinking was an okay guy. My chair has wheels?! Your legs have feet! This is MY assigned work area! WHY are you talking OVER MY HEAD LIKE I'M NOT HERE?! I want to cry, from the pain of the migraine, from the disrespect, from the total lack of spoons happening right now. Ugh. Uuuugh ugh ugh. Meanwhile, my OM responded to my initial text of 'I'm massively sick with a migraine, I'll try to make it in before 10' with 'I've got you, take your time, feel better' and he reached out on his own for some support. And now he's letting me work in his office space so I don't have to listen to the phone ring. I'm going to knock out these reports and leave by lunch. And if I get a chance, that CD is getting a piece of my mind. I've been here for six months, but with my new OM, we have a chance to get a fresh start, and define our work spaces as OURS. And that's going to be really nice.

On a day that started with nonsense and stress, it seems like a good time to start a Gratitude list. So, for today: 1. I am grateful for a team that makes me feel appreciated and valued, and constantly says kind and uplifting things to me. I was out sick yesterday, and a staffer said they missed me. I found resources for a teacher, and they told me that I'm 'just the best human'. (Gender Feels for the win right here.) And I was messaging some things to another staff member, who simply told me 'I appreciate you!'. 2. I am grateful that my partner stays at home and is thus able to deal with the maintenance crew that had to come in today. The roof is severely leaking, down into my furnace room, to the point that it's soaked several feet of carpet. Apparently maintenance had to move both my sewing table and our games cabinet, so Dunks is keeping a close eye on them. They even had to cut holes into the wall to get to the leaking ducts. So this is going to be several days worth of bullshit...and I guarantee they wouldn't have called to ask/tell me about moving the furniture, because they sure as hell didn't call before going to my unit, despite my asking them. 3. I am grateful for the church food bank that has kept me in groceries for the past several weeks, and I get to go again tomorrow. 4. I am grateful for my school feeding us delicious catered taco buffet today, thusly stretching my food budget 1 more day and also giving me cookies and soda.