Happy (belated) Holidays, everybody~! I hope all of you had a beautiful evening, no matter what holiday you celebrate~


This entry's song is easily the whiniest Christmas song ever--I love Fall Out Boy, but as an adult I find this song awful, lmao. That being said...it's been stuck in my head this season. I can't stop humming it. I guess it's kind of a reflection of my mood this Christmas...My heart wasn't really "in it".


Ummm...Before I get too far into this entry, I gotta start by saying my family and I have officially had our first, ~real~ covid scare. I had started typing this entry out this morning, when I got the news that one of my cousins tested positive yesterday. They were just here for the holidays. We hosted 15 people for Christmas dinner...it was our first real family gathering with everybody invited since the start of the pandemic. There was a tiny gut feeling in the pit of my stomach telling me that this was probably a bad idea... But I hadn't seen my cousin T all year, so I kept quiet about it. The real sad part is, I don't think anyone actually wanted to be there?! Half the party ended up wine drunk and miserable by the end of the night.


So...now we're here. It's kind of too late because I've already been out-and-about running errands, but I've decided to quarantine since getting the news. Had to cancel the appointment for my booster shot. I feel stuck, like I'm not sure what to do with myself. Other than just neet out in my room...which I was already doing anyways, lol.


I hope this complaining doesn't make me sound ungrateful, though. I got some really gracious gifts from my parents and relatives. I finally got my microphone!!!! And like, almost $80 worth of Steam gift cards...!!! It was all so kind...I hope I can put this toward my streaming activities in a useful way.


My exercise class with M starts right after New Years...I looked at the calendar and counted the days I'd be in quarantine before then--the date falls exactly on 10 day mark, so I think it's okay...? I'll definitely be wearing a mask just in case, though. This whole new variant business is so scary...


I was going to share some poetic rambles about the New Year, but I think I'll save it for the next entry. I've been super sentimental lately--this year may have been a bit boring, but I think I made a lot of progress on a personal level. To anyone out there reading this, I hope you have a great start to your new year~!

It snowed! Barely an inch or two, but enough to stick to the ground. Our youngest chickens saw snow for the first time.


Life has been keeping me extra busy. I've noticed that my...ahem, ovaries are going to be acting up right around Christmas, according to my tracking app, so I've been trying to get a headstart on wrapping presents. The holidays have me stressed tf out!! It's super overwhelming trying to map out how to go about things, with no money and health issues on top of everything. Last month was just so awful, that I'm nervous about how my body is going to behave when folks are expecting things of me.


E's holiday party was this past weekend. Getting together the gifts for everyone was tough, but I think I managed, despite being on such a tight budget~ Everyone seemed really happy! We decorated ornaments, ate dinner, and then played Jackbox games. (My favorite Jackbox game is JobJob!!)


I don't want to admit it, but a lot of my time has been consumed with grinding away in Dead By Daylight...lol. The holiday event is so funny! Also I'm determined to earn some new cosmetics and charms after I lost all of my old ones when I created my new account for my PC.


I've started a journal for (potential) livestreaming/Youtube activities. Been trying to do research on Streamlabs and video editing. I'm afraid I may have bit off more than I can chew with all this... There's a lot of new skills I need to learn in order to pull this off, like...properly. I guess you could say "Oh, but Teddie, no one's going to be watching, anyways! You shouldn't think about things so hard!" but the perfectionist in me doesn't like that answer. LOL. I have a pages long to-do list in my journal... but my microphone isn't even here yet anyways, so I have some time to hash out details.


2022 is already shaping up to be an interesting year. My boss reached out to me to tell me she thinks we'll be able to return to business soon. I'm officially setting up a website and social media for my grand-dad's music career. M and I signed up for what used to be our favorite exercise class before the pandemic hit. Someone on Hacker News enjoyed my writing! Hopefully I'll get the chance to do some more writing/coding in the next year~

Happy December~ I'm...never sure how I feel about this time of year. I feel like the holidays are only fun when you're a little kid. As an adult, it's just filled with a lot of stress and failed expectations, ya know? But I can't help to still try to feel a little nostalgic for it. Especially this time in the early winter, before the snow comes--when I was a teenager, this was a time of dreaming up new projects while enjoying time off from school. So many afternoons spent staring up at a silver sky, dreaming about the future. . .


My family and I survived Thanksgiving. Really, the day itself went pretty well overall. It was so lonely without my cousins to talk to, though. I ended up chugging two glasses of wine and sitting outside with the chickens... .___. But the days leading up to it were a nightmare. I'm not even sure I want to go into much detail about it, but mom was a terror...I know she was stressed, but I reaaally didn't want to humor her drunken tantrums. My PSTD was really triggered by her antics. It's wild how some people respond when you just don't put up with being an emotional punching bag anymore.


Even after the holiday, we had some relatives pass through the area. One of my distant cousins from my dad's side decided to have their honeymoon around here. (...which is baffling to me, but maybe the East coast is scenic compared to the middle of the country, so I shouldn't judge, lol...) I hadn't seen my cousin J since I was a little girl. I barely remembered what he even looked like, tbh. My only memory of him was when he introduced me to Kingdom Hearts when I was really little. He seemed nice enough, though. Idk. I'm never sure how to treat anyone on my dad's side of the family, and even moreso with the divorce hanging over our heads. My dad's always friendly to somebody's face, but when no one's nagging him for something, he can't be bothered with anyone at all. I honestly thought he hated all of his siblings, with how little they were around growing up.


But...this is just me making stuff up in my head, maybe. To explain my family's neurotic behaviors. I don't think I'll ever truly understand them--and I ought to just drop it at that. I'm just really glad that all of these social obligations have slowed down, finally, because I am very tired.


It's not all gloom and doom, though! The new chapter dropped in Dead By Daylight and I've been playing a lot with friends. Been really enjoying listening to the Yesterweb Radio. I bought a couple of games during the Black Friday sale on steam. Mostly really old things that I know won't run on my new PC anymore... (really grateful that the old Nancy Drew games have been remastered for more modern computers, lol) But I also finally got my hands on Psychonauts~!!! Absolutely stoked to finally play that one, omg~ I'm just trying to decide if I should wait for my mic to arrive so I can record myself playing or not.


E's holiday party is around the corner. The gang decided to hold it sooner, rather than later, but that really only leaves me a week to put everyones' presents together... I'm lucky that I did my shopping early this year! Now I just have to make cards.