#the last time we all went on a trip and took layla mercedes was still alive so she had a friend

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Writing out instructions for my friend for taking care of harley while im on vacation and crying cuz im gonna miss my baby 🥺🥺🥺

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This is gonna be a kinda long post cuz I was looking through the pictures I took with my first digital camera and feeling nostalgic

Most of them are just pictures of layla and mercedes but theres a few of me

This was my friends bunny Radar

The year i got this camera was the year with the most snow ive ever seen. Think we had maybe 2 feet in one night?

One of my few blanket forts. I wouldve liked to make more but I always ended up getting frustrated when I couldn't find things to weigh down the edges of the sheets and they kept falling down. Honestly kinda surprised I managed it with the satin ones here cuz theyre extra slippery (I stopped using them on my bed cuz they slid off too easily and I got annoyed with constantly having to readjust them)

This dude freaked out all the kids in the neighborhood lol. We were convinced he was haunted cuz he would move around sometimes. I dont think he's been over there for several years so im guessing whoever owned him moved.

My friend Jared took this picture of me before English class one day. I wore that jacket a lot. I eventually had to get rid of it cuz I let layla tug on the sleeves when we rough housed and they were getting pretty shredded at the ends

I think this was also the first year I did an Easter egg hunt for layla

And the last time I went to silver dollar city. I'm not sure what I was looking at in that first picture. Not the camera, clearly. That was. Not a trip I enjoyed all that much. I mean it was fun but going on trip was always stressful for me and it was always worse when my dads parents were there cuz despite raising 2 autistic kids they did NOT know how to handle an autistic kid. My parents being with us on this trip made it a little better cuz my mom would set boundaries for me and told them to give me space after a meltdown.

But the small amounts of gender dysphoria I've experienced were a lot worse back then but I didnt know what it was so I also couldn't articulate why them buying me a dress absolutely did NOT cheer me up.

That second picture was the gemstone panning thing that silver dollar city had which is where I got a bunch of my smaller rocks. Mostly sodalite and calcite. Some garnet and different types of quartz. Also had some pyrite which I had in a small jar on a necklace but I have no idea what happened to it. Also not sure what happened to that hat from the last picture. I got it from a souvenir shop in downtown Branson. I still wish id gotten the blue one instead of the pink one.

Mercedes judging my messy ass room. Behind her you can see a bag i made entirely out of magazine clippings

Ok ok so this picture is actually half the reason I decided to look through the pictures from this camera. This was how I liked to decorate my room for Christmas in middle school. I also had 2 mini Christmas trees set up on my night stand. It had 2 levels to it (picture a step) so I had one on each level.

Also in my window sill is the aquarium part of the "self sustaining" aquarium/terrarium we made in 6th grade science out of old coke bottles. I kept that thing for like 2 years. The fish died pretty early on. Got eaten by the snail. Which somehow made MORE snails (I do not know how snail reproduction works) and I ended up with like 30 snails in that bottle. Eventually all the water evaporated out and my mom convinced me to throw the bottle away

THIS is the other picture I was looking for. Layla had a lot of Christmas sweaters cuz she got cold easily. The santa suit was also laylas but I would put it on mercedes sometimes. This is one of the few pictures I have of them dressed up together. I didnt put clothes on mercedes too often cuz she hated it lol

There was a less blurry picture right before this one but mercedes looks mad in this one and I felt it encapsulated her personality better. Also. Man almost forgot about that rocking chair. It was at my grammys for the longest time and then we took it at some point. It was ugly as hell but it was like a giant stim toy for me. Both for rocking but also I liked the rounded parts on the arm rests cuz I could rub my fingers in the divots between them. Mercedes was not happy when we got rid of that chair.

This was about as close as they ever got to cuddling. Mercedes was never a cuddly cat. She tolerated harley cuddling up to her when she was a kitten but I think thats just cuz she was old. She probably wouldn't have tolerated it at all when she was younger.

Is it weird that I can tell I was watching ncis when I took this just by that part of the screen. This was also when my recliner still reclined lol. The handle you had to pull to bring up the foot rest was a plastic thing on the end of a wire and the wire snapped....I think the first day after my sophomore year of highschool?

Aaand heres where I finally figured out I could turn off the flash on my camera in highschool lol

Mercedes after a haircut (while I was cleaning my room)

She looks so soft here 🥺 i miss her