#that pride blanket was crocheted by my mum

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

I'm so sorry you've been experiencing difficulties recently. I'm sending all my love and light your way and hope you start to feel a little less shitty soon.

P.s - Do you mind sharing your tiktok so we can follow you there too? Or is it a private acc?

Lots of love to you <3

It's not private! It's just not updated very often. Overall I'm more active on Instagram. But neither are private. The Tiktok is very art-focused so it might not be what you're looking for. But it's also pretty harmless overall.

And thank you anon <3

The last few days I had to stop writing and like...quickly redo my schedule for December and cut it back a little, which always makes me sad, but I'm trying to conserve my mental health as well as my physical. I realised I met all the criteria for a pretty serious depressive episode late last week (I have, alongside severe PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder, which is the one that will kill me if I don't keep an eye on it -> though I'm happy to report I'm not like in a very like 'I don't want to live' space right now, I can just tell I'm feeling / experiencing a lot of the red flags that go in that direction), and if I don't act now, that tends to lead to pretty bad places.

So I've redone the schedule for December and that will come out likely on Friday or Saturday. And then I'll only be posting during January for half of the month, and not the whole month, and taking off two weeks re: posting. Hopefully these are the sorts of things which will head off me needing to go into hiatus because I desperately don't want to do that <3

I can already tell I'm doing a little better after being a lot firmer with some boundaries, and also just...with myself re: taking more time off. I wish I didn't feel so guilty about it? But that's not anyone's fault here, that's shit to work on with my therapist/s, lol.

Today I spent around 3 hours researching a response to an ask (whoops), and then realised - not through any one person's actions but a bunch at once - that I need to kind of stop engaging with facecast stuff (nothing wrong with facecasting, the problem is wholly on me there and I wish I'd seen that sooner and saved people some pain and saved me from some rudeness).

I put away the shopping (we have a really good grocery delivery system here which is great for my disabilities etc.), and had some raspberries, and put on the Christmas tree lights.

I was so tired at lunch that I could only manage a bowl of cereal (and couldn't eat breakfast. I think my therapist would be like 'why are you putting three hours of research into responding to something instead of focusing on eating food' but well, whoops? Lol. To be fair I thought it would be way easier to answer, but Tumblr's search function is SO broken).

I fed my wonderful cat, Maybe, and got some sleep in the afternoon and then did some writing (1,200 words) on Palmarosa. It's like 7.00pm right now, and I'm going to put up some chapter commentaries on Patreon and Ream.

Tonight I might do some watercolour art, and I'm hoping to finish Palmarosa tomorrow.

December is actually a hard time of year for me anyway. It's the month that has the most chronological / time-based triggers, and my therapists know this and I'm hearing a lot of 'how are you in the lead up to December' which is about to become 'how are you coping with December.'

I'm grateful for small pleasures. Like my dahlias are looking pretty awesome right now. Here's some photos of this week (some art I'm working on, Maybe being cute, or screm, dahlia, Christmas set up, T-Rex ornament, Santa Platypus ornament):

[willow-salix]

Isolation on Tracy Island Update!

Hey guys, I thought it was about time that I caught you up on what has been going on with us since we last spoke. How you all doing? Still staying safe and being kind? You had better be or John will know, and he’ll tell me, and then I’ll send Scott, so yeah, consider yourself warned.

I’ve had a few questions sent to me since last update. One of them was who won the beard growing contest and is it still ongoing? I’m happy to say that it is not. They are all shaved and looking dashingly handsome again. They kept them up until their second call out when Gordon realised his breathing apparatus wouldnt seal properly with his chin all fuzzy like a coconut and he had to resort to the electric razor he keeps in Four. Yes, you heard that right, he keeps one in Four, he can spend days in that little tub and needs to stay smart.

As soon as he explained the situation and had to call it quits the rest of them did too, all wanting to get rid of the itchy nightmare that was their faces. All of them, that is, except Virgil. He kept his for another two days until someone forced his hand. I promised I wouldn't tell you what happened but you know what, we’re all friends here and he’s not around to see it, just don't tell him I told you.

He was waiting for Grandma and I outside the hypermarket while we did our weekly top up shop. We came out and he’d gone. We found him inside in the male grooming aisle loading up on shaving foam, razor blades and shave balm.

“What are you doing?” I gasped, he’d been loving the beard life.

“It’s gotta go,” he muttered, heading to the checkout.

“Why?” Grandma asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he grumbled.

We weren’t prepared to be brushed off in such a manner and bugged him the entire way home until he finally broke down and told us, but not before swearing us to secrecy...ooops. Sorry , V.

Apparently he’d be waiting outside for us, sitting on a bench in the sun, drinking his coffee when something dropped into his cup. On closer inspection it turned out to be some loose change. Someone had walked past, taken a look at the scruff on the bench, his hair a long, shaggy mess, his lumberjack beard and filthy plaid shirt and given him some money for a hot meal. That was too much for his pride and he’d caved.

In answer to the question of who grew the most beard (I won't say the best because John caved and trimmed his into something reasonably smart and Scott’s had stopped growing once it covered everything and refused to get any longer), the winner was Gordon. We’re all very glad that he shaved it off though, because he was looking dogier by the day. He looked how you’d expect that kid that humps the fence in Torchy to look when he grew up, lets just say you wouldn’t want him hanging around outside your house.

They still have their luscious long man locks, Alan has a stolen stash of my hairbands because his man-bun is now bigger than ever and he’s getting quite good at tying it up so it looks semi neat, couple that with the small pile of stolen bands that Scott has by his bed and you’ll know why I’m generally running around looking like Cousin It’s sister. A band, a band, our Island for a band.

Things are still pretty quiet around here, the emergency calls are still few and far between with little pockets of infections springing up all over the world again, so we’re still being required to obtain permission before entering certain countries and airspaces, so we’re once again playing the waiting game.

Jeff, now that his friendship with Colonel White and Commander Shore is public knowledge, has been keeping us up to date with how their integration back into society has been going.

Apparently the Spectrum organisation received a sudden and disturbingly large number of calls reporting suspicious Mysteron activity on my side of the pond. Fearing that earth's enemy was once again mobilising they sent officers to as many calls as possible. It turned out that none of them were Mysterons, it was just that it was Saturday and the pubs had opened again in England and everyone was drunk and stumbling by ten in the morning.

In the week or so since I last updated we’ve had quite a few boring days to fill and we did this by watching more movies than we could count, Gordon and John finally talked me into trying scuba diving and Grandma and I have been trying to teach the boys to crochet.

Virgil made some abstract thing that he is insisting is a pot holder, Gordon tried to make a tea cosy for Penelope's tea pot, Scott tried for five minutes before getting annoyed with it and giving up, Alan I had to teach to finger knit just so he felt like he was doing something and John was actually surprisingly good at it. We're going to end up with blankets draped over every surface even though we live on a tropical Island. Guess I'll just take the home with me at some point, it gets chilly in England.

I dragged John to my mum's for food, literally dragged, I had one arm and Virgil had the other, though Vrig refused to park Two anywhere near her house fearing that he'd come back to find his big green baby had acquired rude artwork like One did. He was just going so he could see Mum's dog again anyway. Yes, the food was awful, this time she made some vague attempt at a casserole but she wasn't tipsy this time so we're calling it a win.

That's all for now, we'll see you soon. Stay safe and behave.

[naomibaldini]

Things that made me glad this month

Learning how to crochet, settling down in bed to read the first nightly poem of the year, being inspired by poetry, weightlifting again, coming out of the gym seeing Stephen in his tracksuit bottoms that don’t fit properly and thinking “I love him so much” while smiling (like an idiot) to myself, finding some bargains at the local charity shop, receiving a surprise parcel from Mum with a knitted whale inside, first meal at the dining table in our new house, knitting in bed with a cup of tea before my nap, proper snow that made me feel like a kid again, bowling in an almost vacant building, knitted poncho, drinking drams with Stephen in a lovely little whisky bar that made me feel like I was in the 1900s, learning new things about Stephen (and how I fancy him even more now because he can play the drums) snowball fight at midnight, making snowmen, celebrating Burns Night: Dancing, toasting haggis while bagpipes were playing, trying (and failing) to do the traditional Ceilidh dance, feeling like a princess in my dress, asking strangers to take our photo, smiling and loving the Scottish way of life. Weekly visits to the best pizza place in town followed by proper belly laughs at the local comedy club, the routine of moisturising my feet, using all natural soap that smelt like Turkish Delight, cooking too much lasagne, blowing bubbles for Eva, cuddling under blankets with Stephen nearly every night to watch a film, knitting a little something every day, my friend asking me to knit a donut for her daughter’s birthday present, starting my Tiny Letter for Alphabet Brains and feeling overwhelmed with pride, starting to read again and having the ‘I need to finish this book so I can read the next one!’ feeling, Stephen saying “You’re my Yorkshire lass, I’d do anything for you!”, Stephen saying “Olives are just grapes from the sea aren’t they?”, enjoying a breakfast of solider eggs and a pot of tea with Stephen on the last day of the month.