mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-13 10:16 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-13 10:16 pmTiny Christmas Trees!
Thursday night we finally got our little trees up. I'd hoped to do it earlier in the month, but it kept getting put off, ha.
We have the extremely tiny silver tree, and the slightly less tiny black tree.
This year around Halloween, we got some Halloween-themed ornaments, sort of thinking we might put the black tree up around then... and we didn't. So this Christmas, we have a Halloween tree, and all the non-Halloween ornaments are crammed on the tiny silver tree, haha.
The silver tree is a bit overloaded, but I like it anyway, haha.
And in the dark.
This ornament is serving as the "star" this year. We bought this from one of the artists at the Spirits and Spirits event.
The black Halloween-for-Christmas tree! The purple lights do NOT show up on camera well at all, ha.
One of my favorite of the silly little Halloween ornaments. I love the multi-colored bats.
There are actually two strands of purple lights on the tree. One of them is also bats! (We've had these for a couple years, and keep failing to put them up.)
A slightly more true-to-life picture of the black tree, without the purple lights blinding the camera.
And one happy jack o' lantern.
Festive!
We have the extremely tiny silver tree, and the slightly less tiny black tree.
This year around Halloween, we got some Halloween-themed ornaments, sort of thinking we might put the black tree up around then... and we didn't. So this Christmas, we have a Halloween tree, and all the non-Halloween ornaments are crammed on the tiny silver tree, haha.
The silver tree is a bit overloaded, but I like it anyway, haha.
And in the dark.
This ornament is serving as the "star" this year. We bought this from one of the artists at the Spirits and Spirits event.
The black Halloween-for-Christmas tree! The purple lights do NOT show up on camera well at all, ha.
One of my favorite of the silly little Halloween ornaments. I love the multi-colored bats.
There are actually two strands of purple lights on the tree. One of them is also bats! (We've had these for a couple years, and keep failing to put them up.)
A slightly more true-to-life picture of the black tree, without the purple lights blinding the camera.
And one happy jack o' lantern.
Festive!
mistressofmuses (mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-12 07:25 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-12 07:25 pm
Entry tags:
Holiday cards!
I'm behind where I'd hoped, but I am still planning to send out holiday cards to... at least a handful of people!
If you'd like a holiday card from me, please let me know! I've screened comments on this post, or you can send me a DM with your address if you'd like one. <3
If you'd like a holiday card from me, please let me know! I've screened comments on this post, or you can send me a DM with your address if you'd like one. <3
mistressofmuses (mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-10 05:17 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-10 05:17 pm
Entry tags:
The shame cycle...
Man, I hate underlying psychological issues that just keep coming up.
This keeps creating problems in my life, and I have got to figure out how to get over it. It's like... a pathological avoidance issue, and I *recognize it* and why isn't that enough to make it *stop*?
Basically... if I get behind on something, or leave something undone, or am unable (for whatever reason) to do something for long enough, I get so embarrassed/feel so ashamed for not having dealt with it *already*, that I become increasingly unable to do it... even as the original issue just snowballs into worse.
A big one that's finally mostly been sorted out was my dental stuff. A decade+ stretch of no insurance that meant no professional dental care, overlapping with several years living in my car that meant very little routine personal dental care... and my teeth were fucked. Years later, when I finally did get dental insurance through my job, I felt too guilty about how long it had been, and too scared of how bad it might actually be, so I just... kept not getting care. Years later, I finally went in... and yeah, I needed a lot of fillings. Somehow I had avoided needing anything more drastic than fillings, though if I'd put it off longer, it would only have gotten worse. If I'd taken care of it years before, when insurance was first available to me, it could have been far less bad.
In the past, this is how I had medical bills from an ER visit sent to collections. I was so embarrassed that I couldn't pay, because I wasn't insured, and was living in my car, that... I just kept ignoring it, never even tried to get on a payment plan of any kind, and just let it go to collections and fuck my credit permanently.
A current one is the truck. Vehicle stuff makes me inordinately anxious, typically due to cost. So many times, when something has gone wrong enough to need fixing, it's been so expensive that we can't afford it, or can barely do so. Preventive maintenance then gets trapped in the same anxiety of "what if they find something else wrong?"
I've been smelling a coolant leak for a couple of months, and have just... not done anything about it. I finally asked a coworker and his neighbor (both of them car guys) to take a look at it, and despite really wanting to put it off until after the holidays (because I love having a justification to put the dreaded thing off), we set up a time, and they looked at it on Monday. There is a crack all along the radiator, and it is *hemorrhaging* coolant all over basically everything under the hood. More worryingly, the truck was basically entirely out of oil, which was damn close to being catastrophic, and not even something I'd been even slightly concerned over. (And my coworker was very nice when I told him that I was embarrassed, but also gave me The Look about not taking the care that I should.)
[This does frustrate me mildly, because I doalmost literally no driving, and just sort of leave it to Alex to keep an eye on things like that, but I need to be checking it myself.]
We need to replace the radiator (plus unrelatedly, it needs the pump for the windshield wiper fluid replaced.) They'll order the parts, give us a break on the labor, and get the work done as soon as possible. They also want to ultimately give the transmission a flush, as well as replacing the differential fluid. (Which it should get - we're over 200k miles at this point.) The same work would likely have been needed if I'd gotten it looked at right away, but putting it off only made it worse, and meant that the oil got that much closer to being catastrophic. We'll be able to afford what needs doing, but it was *so close* to being something that would have been disastrous.
The same thing happens about much lower-stakes issues, too:
Last year, I had taken so long to get some editing work done for a friend, that I just... kept not working on it, not talking to her, and stewing in my guilt over it for months.
One I vaguely mentioned a month or so ago: looking at things like... books I want to read. There are a lot of classics that I want to read, like Tolkien and Le Guin, but because *I feel guilty that I haven't read them yet*, I've put off reading them *at all.*
Basically, this is a STUPID pattern, and I wish that knowing it was stupid was enough to make it STOP.
I'm trying to make sure that I push through when I recognize it happening, and so far the most major disasters have been avoided. Eventually taking the plunge to deal with the thing has almost always been significantly less bad than the knots I tie myself in for weeks/months/years beforehand, AND YET.
It sucks and I hate it.
This keeps creating problems in my life, and I have got to figure out how to get over it. It's like... a pathological avoidance issue, and I *recognize it* and why isn't that enough to make it *stop*?
Basically... if I get behind on something, or leave something undone, or am unable (for whatever reason) to do something for long enough, I get so embarrassed/feel so ashamed for not having dealt with it *already*, that I become increasingly unable to do it... even as the original issue just snowballs into worse.
A big one that's finally mostly been sorted out was my dental stuff. A decade+ stretch of no insurance that meant no professional dental care, overlapping with several years living in my car that meant very little routine personal dental care... and my teeth were fucked. Years later, when I finally did get dental insurance through my job, I felt too guilty about how long it had been, and too scared of how bad it might actually be, so I just... kept not getting care. Years later, I finally went in... and yeah, I needed a lot of fillings. Somehow I had avoided needing anything more drastic than fillings, though if I'd put it off longer, it would only have gotten worse. If I'd taken care of it years before, when insurance was first available to me, it could have been far less bad.
In the past, this is how I had medical bills from an ER visit sent to collections. I was so embarrassed that I couldn't pay, because I wasn't insured, and was living in my car, that... I just kept ignoring it, never even tried to get on a payment plan of any kind, and just let it go to collections and fuck my credit permanently.
A current one is the truck. Vehicle stuff makes me inordinately anxious, typically due to cost. So many times, when something has gone wrong enough to need fixing, it's been so expensive that we can't afford it, or can barely do so. Preventive maintenance then gets trapped in the same anxiety of "what if they find something else wrong?"
I've been smelling a coolant leak for a couple of months, and have just... not done anything about it. I finally asked a coworker and his neighbor (both of them car guys) to take a look at it, and despite really wanting to put it off until after the holidays (because I love having a justification to put the dreaded thing off), we set up a time, and they looked at it on Monday. There is a crack all along the radiator, and it is *hemorrhaging* coolant all over basically everything under the hood. More worryingly, the truck was basically entirely out of oil, which was damn close to being catastrophic, and not even something I'd been even slightly concerned over. (And my coworker was very nice when I told him that I was embarrassed, but also gave me The Look about not taking the care that I should.)
[This does frustrate me mildly, because I do
We need to replace the radiator (plus unrelatedly, it needs the pump for the windshield wiper fluid replaced.) They'll order the parts, give us a break on the labor, and get the work done as soon as possible. They also want to ultimately give the transmission a flush, as well as replacing the differential fluid. (Which it should get - we're over 200k miles at this point.) The same work would likely have been needed if I'd gotten it looked at right away, but putting it off only made it worse, and meant that the oil got that much closer to being catastrophic. We'll be able to afford what needs doing, but it was *so close* to being something that would have been disastrous.
The same thing happens about much lower-stakes issues, too:
Last year, I had taken so long to get some editing work done for a friend, that I just... kept not working on it, not talking to her, and stewing in my guilt over it for months.
One I vaguely mentioned a month or so ago: looking at things like... books I want to read. There are a lot of classics that I want to read, like Tolkien and Le Guin, but because *I feel guilty that I haven't read them yet*, I've put off reading them *at all.*
Basically, this is a STUPID pattern, and I wish that knowing it was stupid was enough to make it STOP.
I'm trying to make sure that I push through when I recognize it happening, and so far the most major disasters have been avoided. Eventually taking the plunge to deal with the thing has almost always been significantly less bad than the knots I tie myself in for weeks/months/years beforehand, AND YET.
It sucks and I hate it.
mistressofmuses (mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-09 09:00 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-09 09:00 pmBook rating scale...
I've been feeling more strongly about trying to get reading done than I have been getting writing done lately, while also staring in dismay at how long that TBR list is growing. (The more books I read, the more I end up hearing about, and the more I end up wanting to read. Somehow.)
One of the things I've been considering as I look back at my reading for this year is... I think I need to be a bit meaner on my rating scale, haha.
And I think "mean" is the wrong word: but it feels "mean" when I give anything under a 4 out of 5. As such, I've given way more 4s than any other rating, even when a handful of those were books that I really did end up feeling fairly neutrally toward, which really should be more of a 3. At least a few of the things that I have given 3s to really should be 2s, because in some cases I have remained salty about how much I didn't like it, haha. Even a few of the 5s should probably more properly be 4s, but because they were better than some of the should-have-been-3s, their ratings got nudged up. Basically, the whole scale is out of whack.
Tumblr user "aromanticduck" shared the following chart to explain how they give ratings:
"Spicy" on the chart indicates that the work inspires some strong feelings, where "bland" indicates that it doesn't leave much of a lasting impression. (I quoted this chart a couple months ago, recalling the spicy vs. bland 3s, but have now actually found the original.)
I really like this chart!
As they explain in their reasoning, this makes 5s and 1s both fairly difficult to achieve, because there's only one way to get there. 3s are easiest to get on the chart, and would theoretically be the most common rating.
Now, I don't think that a 3 necessarily has to be the average rating that I'm giving. I am curating my reading list, and minus a handful of wildcards, I am trying to read things that I expect to enjoy. It would make sense for 4s to be pretty common, if the things I think will appeal to me actually do so! Even so, I know that in some cases I've been giving 4s because I really liked something, and sometimes the 4s mean that it was just... fine.
(Of course, blah blah, I always reserve the right to add in my subjective feelings. Like... Maeve Fly was a 2.5 for me, because I don't like the subgenre. For someone who likes that subgenre better, it could be an easy 5! I thought the writing and character work was great; I just didn't like it. It was subjectively wrong for me, which is not objectively saying "there were too many things wrong with this". Vice versa, there are things that could be an objective 3, but I had such a great time, I'm going to give it higher.)
I think I'm going to go back through my reviews from this year and try to reassess some of them, really trying to keep the chart in mind, because I want to be able to look back at things and see a fairly accurate view of what I liked or didn't.
I really do have to get over feeling like giving a 3 is mean, though. Even when I like the author, even when there were good points to the book, even when it's part of a series I enjoy...
(I think I've been poisoned by the way star ratings work for businesses, where basically anything under a perfect 5 gets some employee yelled at, and a 3 can get you shut down...)
One of the things I've been considering as I look back at my reading for this year is... I think I need to be a bit meaner on my rating scale, haha.
And I think "mean" is the wrong word: but it feels "mean" when I give anything under a 4 out of 5. As such, I've given way more 4s than any other rating, even when a handful of those were books that I really did end up feeling fairly neutrally toward, which really should be more of a 3. At least a few of the things that I have given 3s to really should be 2s, because in some cases I have remained salty about how much I didn't like it, haha. Even a few of the 5s should probably more properly be 4s, but because they were better than some of the should-have-been-3s, their ratings got nudged up. Basically, the whole scale is out of whack.
Tumblr user "aromanticduck" shared the following chart to explain how they give ratings:
"Spicy" on the chart indicates that the work inspires some strong feelings, where "bland" indicates that it doesn't leave much of a lasting impression. (I quoted this chart a couple months ago, recalling the spicy vs. bland 3s, but have now actually found the original.)
I really like this chart!
As they explain in their reasoning, this makes 5s and 1s both fairly difficult to achieve, because there's only one way to get there. 3s are easiest to get on the chart, and would theoretically be the most common rating.
Now, I don't think that a 3 necessarily has to be the average rating that I'm giving. I am curating my reading list, and minus a handful of wildcards, I am trying to read things that I expect to enjoy. It would make sense for 4s to be pretty common, if the things I think will appeal to me actually do so! Even so, I know that in some cases I've been giving 4s because I really liked something, and sometimes the 4s mean that it was just... fine.
(Of course, blah blah, I always reserve the right to add in my subjective feelings. Like... Maeve Fly was a 2.5 for me, because I don't like the subgenre. For someone who likes that subgenre better, it could be an easy 5! I thought the writing and character work was great; I just didn't like it. It was subjectively wrong for me, which is not objectively saying "there were too many things wrong with this". Vice versa, there are things that could be an objective 3, but I had such a great time, I'm going to give it higher.)
I think I'm going to go back through my reviews from this year and try to reassess some of them, really trying to keep the chart in mind, because I want to be able to look back at things and see a fairly accurate view of what I liked or didn't.
I really do have to get over feeling like giving a 3 is mean, though. Even when I like the author, even when there were good points to the book, even when it's part of a series I enjoy...
(I think I've been poisoned by the way star ratings work for businesses, where basically anything under a perfect 5 gets some employee yelled at, and a 3 can get you shut down...)
mistressofmuses (mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-08 11:16 am
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-08 11:16 am
Entry tags:
Habit Tracking: Week 49 (November 30 - December 06)
A baba yaga house this week. I like the cool colors. I bought this sticker from an artist's booth at the Spirits and Spirits event, but I forget the artist name. :(
This was a good week! It felt very strange to be to December already, but mid-week we got our first truly "winter" weather. Glad to have gotten a few things done, like starting that project with my mom. Also very relieved that my dental appointment went better than expected. I felt relatively on top of things, despite struggling a bit with the weather. (Cold, grey days make me very tired.) I kept going on reading, but at a slower pace than hoped.
Goals for the week:
- I finished reading The Spite House
- I started reading A Conjuring of Light
- I went to my dentist appointment
- I went to my mom's house to start her declutter project
- I continued my WIP outline
- I worked on my reading page
- I did not work on my pin boards
- I did not make my phone call
- I posted my reviews of the books I read in November
- I posted my writing goals for December
- I did my tracking grids for December
- We did not start on any holiday decorating
- I did my
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
getyourwordsout check-in: 8233 words written in November, bringing year to date to 100981
Tracked habits:
- Work - 4/7 - I took Wednesday off for my dentist appointment
- Household Maintenance - 3/7
- Physical Activity - 2/7
- Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 5/7 - one day of over 1000 words, four days of over 500, with one additional day of under 500
- Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
- Meta Work - 5/7
- Personal Writing - 6/7
- Other Creative Things - 3/7
- Reading - 7/7 - I did finish The Spite House and started A Conjuring of Light, plus read bits of my ebook side-read; Taylor and I finished reading Queen Demon; Alex and I finished Dead Silence and started reading The Sundog.
- Attention to Media - 6/7 - Sunday we watched a livestream and then some of the Broncos game, plus some reviews in the background; Monday had some storm chasing in the background, and book reviews later; Wednesday we watched some storm chasing (in Colorado, even), and a review later; Thursday we half-watched the mediocre Whisper of the Witch, and then I fell asleep during Fostered, and woke up partway through Rounding. The latter were okayish horror/thriller things; Friday I half-watched Troll 2 (the newer, Norwegian one), and Terminator 2; Saturday we watched a paranormal thing, and later reviews.
- Video Games - 0/7
- Social Interaction - 6/7
Total words written: 7112 on outlining, book reviews, and my writing plan
mistressofmuses (mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-07 08:15 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-07 08:15 pmEntry tags:
Bleh
I discovered that I have a *ton* of things that I planned to try and do this "weekend," and I'm kind of dreading it!
The biggest one is needing to get some maintenance on the truck. Our lead instructor's neighbor has volunteered to take a look (I hope he volunteered; I asked my coworker if he thought his neighbor would be willing and he told me yes, ha.) There's a pretty major coolant leak somewhere, and the washer fluid does not work at all. I'm *hoping* the coolant leak is something that's easy to figure out and not wildly expensive to fix. The washer fluid shouldn't be too big a deal - either a fuse is burned out, or the motor in the pump died - but having no washer fluid is pretty crap heading into winter. Buuuut, lead instructor also thinks we should take a bigger look for any other major maintenance things that the truck needs, since it's hit over 200k miles, and I know he's right, but I *just so deeply dread* anything car-related. I'd love for it to not be a big deal, but every time, I'm petrified that what I hope is a tiny thing is actually a MAJOR thing.
I hope that's really the only truly major thing on the list. Some of the rest is fun stuff, or at least not *not* fun stuff, like getting holiday cards sent out, hopefully getting stuff in the kitchen neatened up enough to put up our tiny trees... I want to try and get caught up on some reading, since I'm behind where I'd hoped to be... I have other chore type stuff to do. I am a bit worried that if the car stuff is worse than planned, it'll derail me from being able to do anything else, heh.
The biggest one is needing to get some maintenance on the truck. Our lead instructor's neighbor has volunteered to take a look (I hope he volunteered; I asked my coworker if he thought his neighbor would be willing and he told me yes, ha.) There's a pretty major coolant leak somewhere, and the washer fluid does not work at all. I'm *hoping* the coolant leak is something that's easy to figure out and not wildly expensive to fix. The washer fluid shouldn't be too big a deal - either a fuse is burned out, or the motor in the pump died - but having no washer fluid is pretty crap heading into winter. Buuuut, lead instructor also thinks we should take a bigger look for any other major maintenance things that the truck needs, since it's hit over 200k miles, and I know he's right, but I *just so deeply dread* anything car-related. I'd love for it to not be a big deal, but every time, I'm petrified that what I hope is a tiny thing is actually a MAJOR thing.
I hope that's really the only truly major thing on the list. Some of the rest is fun stuff, or at least not *not* fun stuff, like getting holiday cards sent out, hopefully getting stuff in the kitchen neatened up enough to put up our tiny trees... I want to try and get caught up on some reading, since I'm behind where I'd hoped to be... I have other chore type stuff to do. I am a bit worried that if the car stuff is worse than planned, it'll derail me from being able to do anything else, heh.
mistressofmuses (mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-06 09:08 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-06 09:08 pmThe final FastCAT of the year! (Probably)
Despite it still being pretty cold, Alex took Bella to another FastCAT today! This will probably be the last one of the year; I don't think there are any others scheduled, though it's always possible that something will pop up.
This was a different organization hosting, and Alex didn't share any complaints about the organization today, so I'm guessing it all went more smoothly. He did say that they'd cleared all the snow off the course, though the grass was wet.
And she did so good! :D
Still hasn't quite broken the 10 seconds like I hope she someday will, but that's a great pair of times to close out the year on.
I thought Bella looked quite smug in this picture, but according to Alex, she was actually flailing and whining, because she wanted to go again, haha.
He also said their timing was good, because the wind picked up and it started spitting rain just as they were leaving.
mistressofmuses (mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-04 08:24 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-04 08:24 pmEntry tags:
Writing Goals/Calendar: December 2025
Final month of 2025! Somehow!
As I've said basically every month, 2025 has not been a good year for me in terms of writing. I surpassed my official goal of writing 75000 words, but relatively little of that has been fiction writing. More of it has been on things like book reviews, which I do consider to be writing, but certainly aren't the creative writing that I'd hoped to do. Over the last couple of months I've at least made some progress on some projects (and to be fair, I got at least a bit of one worked on earlier in the year as well), but definitely nothing even sort of moving toward completion. At this point, about the best hope I have is to try and set myself up for better success in 2026.
My goals for November were:
- Continue my outline for my current WIP
- Start outlining a fic project
And well... I did continue the WIP outline, but am in the middle of the process, not even close to done. I definitely didn't get to the fic project at all.
I will say that at least I feel pretty good for the moment about the outlining. It really has helped me sort out a few things, especially in terms of character motivation that I thought I had nailed down, and then I discovered some interesting aspects that hadn't occurred to me until I was working on the outlining steps. I'm side-eying it a little, because while the outlining process said that would happen, I didn't quite believe it, and now it feels like witchcraft, haha.
So my goals for December are... try again to do what I meant to in November.
- Finish outlining the current WIP
- Perhaps start outlining the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity fic
Tentative goals for into 2026:
- Finish outlining the WFM fic
- Outline the second original WIP
- Revise the intro for the first original WIP
- Write the first draft of the first original WIP
- Revise the intro of the WFM fic
- Write the first draft of part one of the WFM fic
I created a sort of "master plan" for how to possibly move between projects, with the hope of having different things at different stages of completion, so that I could also switch between different types of work. I'm right now at step five, and the above takes me to step eleven... of about fifty that I'd outlined, haha. At least I've got enough to keep me going for quite a while.
I'm still considering what my real "goals" will be for next year. It really might just come down to "keep moving along the list of steps," but I haven't yet decided if there's a particular place along that list that I want to reach or not. I'd hoped this year to get something completed and shared (if possible), but didn't get there. Do I want to try and get something completed next year, or just bounce between more projects? Trying to decide, ha.
I do hope that 2026 will be a better year for writing, whatever "better" looks like. To be honest, even if I keep up the extremely slow (but at least not nothing) pace of the last few months I'll be happier.
As I've said basically every month, 2025 has not been a good year for me in terms of writing. I surpassed my official goal of writing 75000 words, but relatively little of that has been fiction writing. More of it has been on things like book reviews, which I do consider to be writing, but certainly aren't the creative writing that I'd hoped to do. Over the last couple of months I've at least made some progress on some projects (and to be fair, I got at least a bit of one worked on earlier in the year as well), but definitely nothing even sort of moving toward completion. At this point, about the best hope I have is to try and set myself up for better success in 2026.
My goals for November were:
- Continue my outline for my current WIP
- Start outlining a fic project
And well... I did continue the WIP outline, but am in the middle of the process, not even close to done. I definitely didn't get to the fic project at all.
I will say that at least I feel pretty good for the moment about the outlining. It really has helped me sort out a few things, especially in terms of character motivation that I thought I had nailed down, and then I discovered some interesting aspects that hadn't occurred to me until I was working on the outlining steps. I'm side-eying it a little, because while the outlining process said that would happen, I didn't quite believe it, and now it feels like witchcraft, haha.
So my goals for December are... try again to do what I meant to in November.
- Finish outlining the current WIP
- Perhaps start outlining the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity fic
Tentative goals for into 2026:
- Finish outlining the WFM fic
- Outline the second original WIP
- Revise the intro for the first original WIP
- Write the first draft of the first original WIP
- Revise the intro of the WFM fic
- Write the first draft of part one of the WFM fic
I created a sort of "master plan" for how to possibly move between projects, with the hope of having different things at different stages of completion, so that I could also switch between different types of work. I'm right now at step five, and the above takes me to step eleven... of about fifty that I'd outlined, haha. At least I've got enough to keep me going for quite a while.
I'm still considering what my real "goals" will be for next year. It really might just come down to "keep moving along the list of steps," but I haven't yet decided if there's a particular place along that list that I want to reach or not. I'd hoped this year to get something completed and shared (if possible), but didn't get there. Do I want to try and get something completed next year, or just bounce between more projects? Trying to decide, ha.
I do hope that 2026 will be a better year for writing, whatever "better" looks like. To be honest, even if I keep up the extremely slow (but at least not nothing) pace of the last few months I'll be happier.
mistressofmuses (mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-03 08:06 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-03 08:06 pmWinter is a season!
It snowed!
This year has been bizarrely light on snow for our area. The weather stayed warm well into November, and our first snow only came last Saturday, as barely a dusting. I'm not complaining - I've joked that I find snow acceptable between Thanksgiving and New Year's only - but as usual ~we need the moisture~. I don't think I ever expected our snow to *actually* hold off until after Thanksgiving, and it's true that I also don't want things to be on fire all next year. (That can and does coexist with the fact that I would be happy to literally never see another snowflake.)
But at least if it is going to snow, this particular storm was very aesthetic!
Yesterday, Alex and I went over to my mom's house for a while to help her sort through some old stuff of hers. A while back, she expressed to me the desire to try and sell off a lot of the "stuff" she has accumulated. I think a combination of her mom passing away, and then trying to help her sister with her hoarded house in preparation for moving, and her own 70th birthday, made her really want to make sure that she doesn't wind up with a lot of junk. A lot of what she has isn't really junk: she has antique tools of her grandfather's, some china, some other genuinely antique things. But she'd rather get rid of it now - and maybe get some money for it - rather than leave it to be dealt with after she's gone.
We did look at a lot of the tools, so many of which are really cool! It's amazing how well some of them were made. Nicely carved hardwood handles, a few with carved decoration, things like that. A few it makes me sad to think of getting rid of, because they are such an example of "they don't make 'em like they used to!" but I also understand my mom's desire to part with things that she doesn't actually use.
Bella and Jaspurr had an accidental face-to-face meeting. I went to the bathroom, and came back to Jaspurr hiding under a chair, and Bella sniffing him. Alex and my mom thought he was upstairs and that Bella was just sniffing around more generally, or they would have intervened. While Jaspurr wasn't loving it, the meeting actually went really well! He didn't hiss or swipe at her, and she was just happily interested. She was easy to call away (though then wanted to go back) and was just mildly excited. He did growl at her the second time she returned, and she left him alone. They later also had a quick meeting in my mom's room, while he was up on a table and Bella was on the floor.
Jaspurr didn't love Bella being there, and ended up spending the whole night in my mom's room after, but it really did go about as well as I could have hoped! We've never gotten to truly test Bella around cats (beyond seeing them at more of a distance), and Jaspurr hasn't gotten to interact with other animals since being with my mom and Taylor. I'm actually quite pleased.
I had a dentist appointment this morning, and since my dentist is only about five minutes from my mom's house, in light of the forecast snow overnight, I spent the night at my mom's.
The birds were happy to have the feeders today in the snow. A towhee and several house finches!
These couple pictures are a little blurry, but of my favorite random bird at my mom's:
This little girl on the right does not have snow on her head - she has a white patch on the top of her head! She's also not a white-crowned sparrow or anything like that, she's just a house finch with a leucistic patch.
You can see more of the patch here, though it blends in a bit with the snow. She's been coming to my mom's feeders for about three years now, she thinks. I'm always happy to see her. :)
My dentist appointment went well! I'd been dreading it a little bit, because I had to have *such* extensive dental work done back around 2020-2021. A decade+ of no dental care, and many years of really precarious living situations, plus probably some general mental health garbage really took their toll.
I missed my last cleaning over the summer because of my grandmother's memorial, and so it'd been closer to a year than six months, and while I hadn't noticed any issues, I was very afraid it'd be worse than expected.
It wasn't! No cavities, which always feels like a big win, haha.
The weird hole in my jaw (where I had an extra baby tooth removed when I was young) has not gotten any worse. It's always exciting when every dentist and hygienist that sees my x-rays has an instinctive, horrified gasp. They assumed this was a crisis that would require bone and tissue grafts... and somehow, it's all very stable. The teeth around the gap aren't unstable or in pain, the jaw itself is not deteriorating. This was my five-year x-ray appointment, and my hygienist was delighted when she said that it looks the same as it did five years ago. "Science would disagree with me, but it really does look like it's just... not causing problems." I love that science can't explain my jaw.
Jaspurr, having returned to the main floor this morning, ha. So regal.
