MaeradCase

It's good that you tried it, though. Both because it was a fun theme and because you learned a bit more about what kind of challenge tracking you need. I can't tell if you're the cat trying to keep all the calories invented from the dawn of time to yourself, or if you're the raccoon trying to access said infinite calories, but either way I love this GIF response. 😆

Yay for possible success! Also LOTR misquotes sounds hilarious. 😆

yuhmmmmm Agreed. 😆 I was telling Cid they seemed ridiculously big when rolling the dough into balls, and he pointed out that Lord Eshteross (the fictional character from the third campaign of Critical Role for whom the recipe is named) is an orc, so maybe it's a normal size for him because he has bigger hands to roll the dough with. 😅 I love it. I missed Taurus meteor showers, but today I got the Gemini furniture crafted from the big star fall Monday night and the decent star fall last night (since I only got one zodiac shard from Monday's 😥). Also I got so many new entries of bugs, fish, and art for my museum over the last few days! 😃 Still need to make sure I don't overdo it. 😅 Paint night tonight. I'm bringing along Cidran's primed Cats & Catacombs minis to see if anyone is inclined to paint them with me.

Good morning! Did the Hinge at lunch. Gonna ask Cid if he wants to bike! 😲 Cid had answered no, but I didn't drop the subject. Since he'd mentioned that he felt partially responsible for my not biking, I asked if he thought I should go biking without him since he didn't feel like going. He told me he'd help me get his bike out of the way of my bike if I wanted to go on my own. ❤ Then he grabbed his helmet despite feeling too tired (insert bike joke) and was going to join me. 😲 Unfortunately, he wanted to get his tire pressures up, and my cheap emergency air pump isn't very great... So he worked on that and I biked two miles. When I got back to our neighborhood, he was coming my way, so we did a couple laps in an empty parking lot, and biked home. ❤ It really does. Fortunately, it was a holiday, so we had time to spare. We also had left over banana-nut muffins that I had made Saturday morning, so neither of us went hungry by accident. 😃 I stored up mental energy to be active this morning, but decided to do Hinge rather than BBW. I have an errand to run for IDs and tags this morning before I go to work. Hopefully that goes smoothly. Have a great day!

❤❤❤ Yeah! Cid and I both had a good time this weekend. It was good spending time with friends and with each other with minimal digital distraction. 😃 Did the Hinge at lunch. Gonna ask Cid if he wants to bike! 😲

Hey guys! Did you miss me? I apparently have lost momentum on all fronts of my tournament of athleticism. 😅 Cid noted this morning that we haven't been biking since the exciting lap around the block. I assured him it wasn't his fault, and that while there were a couple weekends of perfect weather, most of the week days have been wet and rainy. As for my BBW, I tapered out, and couldn't care yesterday morning, which on top of missing twice last week (although with the gardening on Friday evening kind of making up for it) will make three misses in a row. 😥 Oof. I will put forth mental energy today to face that task tomorrow morning with gusto to get it done. My "I don't want to" brain is also pushing away the rule to do Hinge when I turn my phone on. This wouldn't be too bad thanks to being able to do them on my lunch break, except for the attempt to restrict phone use at home making lunch break prime time and not wanting to do Hinge stretches. In a positive note, I have been doing the movements outside the app to stretch out my neck and shoulders in movement snacks, so it's not entirely ignored, but it's not been properly tracked. My legs complained a lot from the gardening, but it's been a solid weekend. Cid and I got to have lunch with his friends after I got off work on Saturday. We shopped around a bit (Cid got an electric guitar to practice in addition to the bass) and then went home for the evening (where we found out chords are hard 😅). Sunday after our second week at the Baptist church we went to get brunch, and drove off to spend the day with our friends for their anniversary. We attended a renaissance festival, and it was so much fun. My friend was made a lady of the court for completing her quest around the park, and we got to interact with a lot of cool people in the meantime. ❤ Yesterday Cid and I started the day off with games (I played 3 hours of ACNH... oops), went to have lunch together at an excellent burger shop I've been wanting to take him to, played bass guitar and electric guitar in turns, and I made dinner and Lord Eshteross' ginger snap cookies (my second attempt). This time the cookie dough was generously portioned into nearly 2" balls. I may have over-corrected from my first attempt, and I'll try to find the middle ground, but they were tasty and the gooey nature of the fresh cookies seemed appropriate. 😅 I'm gonna wrap this up to get the Hinge stretches done. I hope you had an excellent weekend. ❤

😍😍😍 Awesome!!! 😂😂😂 (I think you're doing a great job!)

Congrats on the progress!

Good to know. There will likely be some clover growing back where it's been torn away, but I will continue my efforts to expand the native wild flowers across the yard because they're pretty exciting to me. 😉 Goat head thistles are awful (see flat tires on bicycles a couple weeks ago 😅). I did thorough stretching this morning to prevent last night's surprise exercise from coming back at me with revenge. I may yet be achy, but I'll be trying to keep limber. Played a bit of ACNH for the first time in a month or two. (Thanks, @Sovalis, for the plushie. It is on display in one of my rooms because it's such a cute unicorn plushie. 😍) We've got plans to see friends today and tomorrow. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Unexpected evening update! Cid and I had dinner with my mom, and I happened to mention how happy I was to have a verdant yard of clover. "Ah!" my mom responded, "White or purple?" "Yellow!" I answered in delight. Then she informed me the cute yellow blossoms I've been smiling at will be converting into stickers as the plants attempt to further propagate from the dense thicket I've allowed them to become. I may not have done my BBW or Hinge exercises today (due to cramps this morning and a fun conversation at lunch), but I went out there while mom and Cid played some Rocksmith (she already plays bass, but she didn't play much of the game because she's not familiar with that game format) and worked up a sweat yanking the clover out. Lots of squats, lunges, rows, and such in practical athleticism. I didn't have much energy left at the end to stretch properly, but I showered, and I'll try stretching again before we go to sleep (unless I accidentally fall asleep while Cid is on the computer (he's actively playing a game, not binging Twitch, so I'm not complaining)). Hope you're able to do something unexpected but exciting/fun/important this weekend!

I want to see that picture as a Kitsune character now because of the privacy sticker... Such cute dungarees, and I like the rainbow laces. ❤ Do you have the happy "I made this" feeling? It's a good feeling, and I hope you are experiencing it in your dungarees. ☺

I'm hoping to see that improvement as I overcome my struggle to stay off my phone in the evenings. Fortunately, it's only wonky if someone knows the expected result of the pattern is a rectangle, not a rhombus. 😅 + I recall, having had two different violin instructors, and never any prodigious success. Turns out my musical proficiency was to be had playing the Chinese Zither instead. 😆 21 string pentatonic scale with charts of numbered music note work (instead of the usual sheet music grid of circles I can follow for singing, but not playing). 😍 I still wasn't amazing, but I got to 7th level out of 10, and that's pretty cool to me. My shoulders are killing me and I don't know if it's because I slept poorly or haven't done Hinge since Tuesday. I could do them today and find out I guess. 😅

Last night's session actually went really well! We fought off monsters near the edge of a portal, and then went through the portal into THE VOID where we fought shadows of our heroes. The Void Heart we had to destroy took out two of us in the last round before we could attack, but there was a climactic finish as the two still standing fought through the shadow clones to destroy it. ❤ We might take a break, or we'll do the first of two more episodes that interested us from the remaining three. One had dinos, and the other had Egyptian gods. Both sound cool. 😃 I did remember my paints. 😃 Didn't really do much else yesterday. Woke up this morning at 3:30 with a wild dream involving a giant Venus fly trap trying to break out of a glass cabinet and lure my friends and family to its slimy maw. I journaled about it to calm down, but the similarity to John Carpenter's "The Thing" shows my imagination didn't want me to sleep well this morning. 😅 Hope we all have a restful non-taxing day ahead of us.

It's really sweet that you visit your granddad. Glad everyone involved benefits from the visit. ☺ Also cute seals. 😍

😂 Oh man, I hope you don't have to spend that long in a plank. There are harder versions you could level up to instead. 😅 You could tell us random D&D memories, when you don't have good recall of the other day! 😃 I love that you started dancing. I only get that way when certain songs turn on (I hand-picked the lot of them for my wedding playlist, too, so that they'd all keep me going. 😆) Sounds cool! 😃 😂 At least you're owning up to it. I don't think I've ever tried that delicacy, myself. 😅

It'd be good if we could find a way to admit we're being frustrated by the repetition of the other's behavior. I tend to sulk with my phone when he's on the computer forever, and he goes brain dead watching Twitch streams at the computer when I'm absorbed in my phone. But he's home first and on the computer before I get home, so the only solution I can come up with is to visually demonstrate that I'm not sulking on my phone. I'm probably going to get more arts and crafts done, and hopefully cleaning. I'm still avoiding my Switch games since they send the same message as my phone. 😒 At least I managed to get all the fossils in my ACNH museum, even if not all the other things, before I put it down for April. ("asymmetric nature" probably) It's making me grit my teeth a bit more than the choice to ditch the phone is, and knowing me, I will probably want to sulk when he's still on the computer, but like I said - arts and crafts, books and games, cleaning up, etc... If I keep busy, the loss won't be so hard, I hope. I certainly won't be ghosting. 😉 Cid played guitar last night. I crocheted more of the two tone scarf that is crooked because I'm doing it wrong, but because I am maintaining my mistake, it's intentionally crooked, right? Even if the reason why is because a dozen rows is too many to pull out after pulling out several? Zemi loves the red yarn. I'm making the scarf until both colors are depleted. I might look for tassels to put on the two odd corners. 😅 Oh! Fun thing that happened before all the awfulness of Sunday: Cid helped me set up a profile to try playing his bass. I played a couple songs and a couple lessons. I didn't expect to do very well, but the game makes the bass surprisingly easier to play than my violin ever was when I had lessons as a child. It helps that I don't have to interpret sheet music into proper hand positioning. I still messed up notes here and there, but it's a fun game that makes good guitar lessons out of Guitar Hero style game aesthetics. I won't play as often as he is because I figure he should be able to practice uninterrupted on week nights (especially since it means he's doing something different than sitting at the computer), and hopefully he'll continue improving his technical skills. But it's a cool thing I can do on weekends. 😉 Anyway, game night tonight to play the Sentinels RPG a second time. Cid isn't optimistic that we'll play the final session since the first one was a struggle both to start and to finish. I'm grabbing my paints while I'm there so I can bring them when I visit mom sometime next month to work on our paintings together. Hope your day is going well. Sincerely, Maerad

That sounds like it was a lot of fun! 😃

😥 😭 Glad the concert went well! Sorry your sleep got thrown off by traitorous beans.

This and the second picture are looking really good! All that routing work is adding up to a big finale! Sounds like that level in bard got you a proficiency bonus. ❤ Doing great, and making Douglas Adams proud. 😉

I'll try anyway since it's a supportive group and a safe outlet. ☺ Daww, thank you ☺ I'd love to see it. 😂 My sister's is pretty potent, too. I seem to have improved, so I'm far more ready to discuss the scene. 😌 Sunday afternoon Cid and I got in a rather enormous fight triggered by (but about more than) a computer game that had kept me up Saturday evening until midnight, and that was giving me trouble Sunday after we'd got home. He blew up, and nearly stormed out, but I stopped him from leaving, so we ended up going through a very stormy few hours of him being angry at me and himself, and me being defensive and offensive (wait... 🤔). I never really stopped crying Sunday, though we were able to settle things down enough to turn on a movie, watch it together, make dinner, eat, and talk to each other while we sifted through the aftermath. The sour mood affected me through yesterday, though I was able to step away from its effects at the end of the day when he met me for dinner and went to play games with my friend and me (instead of staying at home like last week). We played Photosynthesis (took way more timing and placement strategy than I could manage) and Quirkle. When we got home I told him I'm going to make efforts to ditch my phone since my use of it carries to him the same message as his non-stop computer use. I wish he'd offer the same in return. 😒 But it does mean I'll be limited to posting by phone on my lunch breaks or by computer when I get home to try to sidestep the temptation to kill time on my phone. While I focus on that, I may not be able to read other threads quite as often because limiting my phone time to my lunch break sounds like a smarter cut than browsing throughout my workday, which could bleed into my evening. 🤔 I know it's going to be a bigger challenge than it feels like it is, but as I've told Cid, I want to make it clear that he is more important to me than my phone. So... Yeah... 😗 That's it for now. I'll still be here, but probably not find time to pipe up quite as often as I have been, but I'll stop by and continue supporting you guys when I can because I think this is a good place for facing our challenges together, and being cheered on for our successes and encouraged through our failures. Thanks for being here for me. ❤ Sincerely, Maerad

It went alright. 😅 The rest of the day didn't. 😥 I haven't quite recovered from the emotional damage of Sunday afternoon, but at least I managed a set of the BBW exercises this morning. I don't think I can elaborate further at this time about what went wrong, but thanks for stopping by today.

That's quite a lot of ducks! Good job not only on getting so many things done, but having what sounds like a great time with Vivian!

Thank you for this melodic contemplation of a task. It was lovely to experience life through your senses.

She said what I figured she'd say: "I painted it, too, you know." But we laughed, and I pointed out that I knew she especially liked how my flowers looked. There is a possibility that I will bring my paints and brushes over on a weekend so she can try modifying her tulips and I can try improving the background until it pleases me. The allergy symptoms are still strong in sneezing, dripping, and even pressure making my ears feel wonky. But I'm glad I exercised this morning. I also jauntily walked across a large parking lot (I parked on the far side intentionally close to the restaurant but far from the store) on my lunch break before my mom could meet up (Good thing my lunch break coincided with a break in the rain). I did my Hinge exercises, too, when I got home. My shoulders and lower back are so mad at me right now, it's not even funny. I guess I'll do stretches before bed to remind them I'm boss. 😅 Have a good weekend! 😃

Me, every time I try to organize my things. 😆 But I'm glad you had a good time! ❤ That is a lot to put on your plate. Glad you're able to take a step back and reconsider your course of action. 😃