Sing me a story, laugh me a lullaby

For theatre enjoyers out there who may not be aware, the National Theatre's production of The Importance of Being Earnest starring Ncuti Gatwa is up for free on youtube until March 18th. It's a filmed version of the live performance, and Mum and I watched Act I last night and I can confirm it is very silly and enjoyable. It does not seem to be region locked, but I cannot swear to that, only that I could watch it fine in Canada.

You can watch it HERE. There's a standard version, an audio described one, and BSL interpreted one.

Merry Christmas! I hope you had/are having a joyous one if you celebrate, and if you celebrate another holiday around this time of year, I hope that one was/will be lovely, too, and if you celebrate nothing, I hope you are enjoying some chill vibes.

We did our Christmas last night, as is traditional in the Bard family. Last year, on the 23rd, my mom fell and my brother's cat went into diabetic shock, so we were grateful this year both human and animal were well. Though, it's been a rough go. My dad is still in recovery mode. Mum and I both had horrible reactions to our flu/COVID boosters. Mum fainted getting out of bed and was so weak (fever of nearly 39c/102f) she needed help getting up off the floor. Thankfully, she did not further hurt herself. I had the worst rigors I've had since I was a child. My teeth were chattering so bad, I had to put my mouth guard in because I was afraid of my fillings getting damaged. Both of us were out for five or six days afterwards. Dad was fine, oddly. Usually he's the one who gets the high fever and starts getting weird. No reaction at all for him this time but a sore arm.

Such shenanigans put us beyond on our Christmas readying, so we ended up going to my brother and SIL's place instead of them coming here. It was still lovely and we had a wonderful time. I did some awesome Christmas baking this year. The best I think I've ever achieved. We also went to my SIL's family Christmas gathering earlier this month, which is always a good time. I think it's sweet they include us.

This past year has been one of discovery for me. I don't have any formal diagnosis of neurodivergence, and don't plan to pursue one because I don't think it will be worth what I have to put myself through to get one, but operating under the assumption of AuDHD makes sense to me, and I'm still figuring how to navigate that. I understand why I struggle with certain things, but I'm still working on what to do with that information. It's been a kind of stages of grief thing. It's weird at almost 40 to find out that you've been running on one leg when most people have two. It explains why you're sometimes slower, but at the time, you also understand you'll always be slower. In the long run, I think I'll be happier. I already am, being able to unmask and recognize when I feel overstimulated and need to take a breath. I'm proud of myself for coping all these years before I understood my brain is wired differently, but I'm exhausted now I'm letting myself not cope. There's a period of time of just needing to let myself feel what I feel and not hide from it. I'm hoping to go into 2026 with a better sense of me.

And I've been writing so much! I wrote a whole ten chapter...I don't know if it's a fic if it's your own original characters and world, but story, I guess. It's useless right now, because it's so far into the future of the narrative that if I ever do post things, I need to write so much before it make it make sense, but I'm going back now with all the knowledge of the characters and who they are to help me fill in those spots better. It's been a lot of fun, and even if it's just for me in the end, it's a good time.

Anyway, as always, it's been lovely to have you folks around. I hope I get to keep talking to you in the new year. I'm going to try to do better about reading other people's entries. I got out of the habit when LJ died down.

Have a safe and prosperous New Year and I'll talk to you soon!

Hello, folks! Happy Halloween! Happy very belated Canadian Thanksgiving! Happy very early American Thanksgiving!

Things here are stable. Dad has avoided having to have part of his gouty toe amputated, which was a possibility at one pint. He's doing much better, finally, and we're grateful, because it is hard to look after a patient with ADHD. Mum and I were both kind of at our wit's end. Mum is exhausted from it and is also dealing with a shoulder injury. She's getting physio for it, but it's slow going.

I'm dealing with...something. Maybe hormones? Maybe adjusting to my newfound suspicion of neurodivergence? I feel like I'm just overwhelmed a lot. Not like in a depressed way, more like a 'I am furious right now and I have no good reason for it' kind of way. I think it's a stage of recovery, where I'm better enough to be better and not better enough to be well, so I'm in the 'I want to but can't' phase of things, which is frustrating. I'm at war with my body and brain and coming to terms with the fact that neither of them are going ever be what I want them to be. I have to learn to work with what I've got and that's a journey.

On the bright side, there are things that are good. Pax turned 7 years old on September 24th. He's a senior dog now! My little baby boy is a senior dog. We had a nice Thanksgiving with my brother and SIL. The World Series is happening and no one in my house has ever cared about that before, but we are glued to it, because Go Blue Jays! Kick America's ass! I am crocheting for Christmas and everything is looking gorgeous. I had the rare experience of choosing a pattern, picking out yarn, and liking both once started. Normally, I have to change patterns multiple times because I hate everything I make once I start, but this one is total smooth sailing.

I am also still writing. Being me, I have been working on a multi-chapter epic tale set five years in the future for when I introduce these characters and haven't written anything in between that. But in some ways it's good, because I'm learning a lot about the characters that I can then sprinkle in to earlier stories so it doesn't come out of nowhere. Also, somehow, it turns out the vague sciency explanations I came up with for mechanisms of this world is actually accidentally plausible. I don't know how, but both my biology and quantum physics nonsense are technically possible. So, yay me.

Wish me luck, though, because I have to now deep dive in quantum physics to try to at least bullshit an explanation in universe, and it's...hard. I liked it better when my Google searches were all 'when was x invented' and not 'what is quantum entanglement?' 'what is the definition of time?' 'what is string theory?'. Let me go back to just finding out if my immortal dude from 125 years ago knows what a party hat is. I liked that better.

Hope everyone else is doing well and enjoying what festivities they engage in. Talk to you soon!

Hello! Long time no see. I am sad to say this is not for good reasons, but mostly because things have remained, as always, a bit stressful around here. A short summary:

--My dad's gout turned into osteomyelitis and a broken toe. He's been on antibiotics for nearly two months now, including two weeks of IV antibiotics. His toe is looking almost normal now, and he has an appointment with the rheumatologist in the fall, but he's been in a lot of pain and is exhausted. And is a rather pathetic, uncooperative patient. We've finally gotten the message through that he needs to just rest and recover, but there was a time where it was like herding cats.
--I broke one of my teeth way back in April and had to wait until July to get it extracted due to the waiting list at the oral surgeon. That was with me listed as 'urgent' on the referral. The pain wasn't terrible unless I ate something with A Temperature and I managed it with clove oil during the wait well enough (10/10 recommend clove oil for tooth pain), but it was a heck of long time coming to get it out. The oral surgeon is super nice and got me perfectly numb, but he had to wiggle the tooth out and my teeth are super close together (my old dentist once said I have my dad's teeth in my mum's mouth), and he knocked out the fillings in the tooth behind it. Including one I had had done three days earlier. I was left with about a quarter of a tooth left, the rest broken off near the gum line. Thankfully, it doesn't hurt and my dentist says we don't have to do anything about it unless it starts to act up. I've been having some numbness and twitching on that side of my face I was worried was coming from there, but I went on Thursday and he smoothed out and trimmed up what was left so I wasn't biting on it, and he thinks it's just left over pathology from having the broken, infected tooth in there for so long. It is getting better, and I haven't ruled out it being a neck or shoulder thing. I grind my teeth pretty hardcore (hence the broken teeth, even with a mouthguard), so I have a lot of tension in that area.
--It's been Migraine Season from all the pressure shifts and I'm in a continuous prodome-aura-headache cycle that kind of sucks. Pain is never my problem, I am lucky that I rarely get an actual headache, but I get weird as fuck and it's not fun.
--Mum's shoulder has been acting up again and her physio has been away, so she's struggling a little.

So, that's been what's up, in addition to all the wonderful world problems we are all dealing with to varying degrees.

However, not at all is bleak! Here is a short summary of good things:
--I am still reading like a mad thing. I have made my way through all the romance novels I downloaded to my Kindle, or near about. Some of them I had to abandon because they were...not good, but most I at least enjoyed and a few I loved, and since they were all free, I will not complain. I may do a post about books I've enjoyed lately. I started a goodreads account to track my reading progress this year, and so far I'm clocked in at 30 books, which is not too shabby.
--I am also writing non-stop. I cannot stop. I have made a pair of characters and I like them so much, I am ocean-deep into their stories, and I get to do all sorts of fun research and it's been very cool. I'm so used to writing fan fiction, I keep feeling guilty I'm delving so deep into OCs and then I remember that I am writing original fiction and I am allowed to do that! It's so much fun! I have no idea what I will do with all these stories I have. I might start posting them eventually, but I'm still refining the first story as I write more and learn more about the characters and the timeline (it involves time travel, so the timeline is very whack). The internet is also a far scarier place than when I used to post stories, so I'm a bit nervous about sharing. I know everyone here is lovely, but the outside world can be scary.
--We have been continuing our decluttering and organizing process when health permits and I am pleased with what I've accomplished.
--My drawing has improved a lot, though I do keep hitting those plateaus where I'm better enough to know I need to be better and have to push through to improve, and get frustrated sometimes.
--I've been approved for the government dental insurance. It doesn't cover everything, but it will certainly help a lot.

I hope everyone is managing to find some joy where they can. I'm looking forward to cooler weather. I'm not a hot-weather girl.

Talk to you soon!

Hello there! Oof, it's been awhile since I posted last here. It's been kind of a series of unfortunate events the last couple of months and I've been just trying get through. Migraine season was very long, plus I had a string of small but annoying kidney stones, and Mum and I had colds, and I've broken another tooth which I'm waiting to have pulled, and Dad also had broken, infected teeth, and it turns out when Mum fell at Christmas she broke another vertebra in her back to go along with the three that were already broken which we only found out a couple of weeks ago and she's got a slightly frozen shoulder as well, and my SIL is on stress leave from her job and...there's a lot. It's just a lot.

Thankfully, the election we had up here went the way I personally was hoping for, and, even amongst all the woes, we've been working decluttering and organizing and cleaning the house. We've been watching 'Sort Your Life Out' on CBC Gem, and it's been quite inspiring.

In the midst of my decluttering, I also decided to a journal declutter of sorts. This journal has turned into a personal one since I lost my ability to write, and I decided to make a writing journal to split the two off. awanderingbardtales is a mirror of this journal, but I went through and deleted all the personal entries so there's only writing and writing related posts. To be clear, everything that was posted on this journal is still here, but going forward, should I manage to write again, I'll post the stories there and keep this one for personal stuff. I have been working on original stuff and maybe one day I'll have something I want to share. I got a new writing app for my iPad that functions like Notepad on Windows used to, which is where I did all my writing before the Great Flash Drive Crash of '15, and I feel like I'm better able to organize my thoughts on a simpler interface than Google Docs, where I get distracted all the time by the grammar and spell checks and get into my head about it. Feel free to follow the writing journal if you wish. I'll also post links from here to there if there's anything new. I'm going to probably try to make some master posts of my stories, too. And it's been fun to go through and read stuff over the last almost 20(!) years of my life that this journal as existed (at least on LJ, the DW version is newer).

I'm also continuing my art journey. I'm trying to learn to draw bodies now and practicing gesture drawing, and it's progressing. Not fast, but it's going. I've done some crocheting, and managed to keep up my reading. Still very light-hearted stuff to keep my brain happy. I feel like learning about my neurodivergence has been helpful and I'm finding better ways to cope and get things accomplished. The Loop earplugs have really been a life saver in so many aspects. I feel like I'm even more confident and decisive because I'm less overwhelmed all the time.

I hope everyone else is coping with life and finding some joy in it.

Yesterday was Family Day here in Ontario, and my brother and his wife took my parents and I out for dinner, during which we had a discussion about reading, and now I need to know something:

When you read, do you hear a voice in your head reading the words to you?

My SIL and I do, my mum, dad, and brother don't.

Now, my brother and mum both have varying degrees of aphantasia as well (inability to picture things in their mind). Not sure about my dad, but my SIL can picture things in her mind, so I don't know if that's related.

I did Google this, and found out it's something called 'subvocalization', and for people who do hear the voice, their larynxes actually make micro movements like they're speaking, though not producing any actual sound. If you can turn off the voice, you can also apparently read faster, which I believe, since my mum sails through books. I couldn't find out if it's 'normal' to hear the voice or not, though, or if it's just typical human variation, so I'm curious about other people's experiences.

I'm also curious to know if you don't hear a voice, how does the information get into your head? Like, how are the words getting to your brain if you aren't...putting them here with your head voice? My brother just shrugged when I asked, and my mum's description was essentially she sort of absorbs vibes of emotion from the character situations or something.

Anyway, if you feel like sharing with the class, let me know, because I am very intrigued.

Well, it's almost New Year's Eve, which means it's almost 2025 and time for my December update. I did manage to keep my resolution of posting at least once a month this year, so huzzah!

I hope everyone enjoyed/is enjoying their winter holiday celebrations or chilling if they do not have such celebrations. Ours were slightly delayed by circumstances, but we did get around to it on Boxing Day. We usually celebrate on Christmas Eve, but on the 23rd, my mum fell on the ceramic tile at the front door because her wet shoes made her feet go out from under her. She was fine, nothing broken or anything, but literally a few minutes after that happened, I got a text from my brother that Jack, his elder cat, had gone into diabetic shock on the 22nd and had been having seizures on and off. So we decided to postpone until everything calmed down and I am happy to report Jack is doing okay and Mum is extremely sore, but not severely damaged. We went to my brother's on the 26th and had a lovely time despite our woes, and met my brother and his wife's new cat, Jake, who is a 13-year-old rescue they adopted after they very unexpectedly lost their younger cat over the summer. He's a sweet boy and slept on my mum's lap the whole night, and Jack slept in a box in the living room with his face hidden, which was very social for him. He usually hides upstairs when there's company. He seems to be doing much better now.

I am exhausted, which is not unusual post Christmas. I also recently discovered I am slightly anaemic and have low B12, which may explain why I've been feeling yucky lately. I'm looking forward to resting now that the Christmas bustle is done. We had so many appointments through the autumn, and this year in general has just been a lot of stuff happening. I feel like I've learned a lot about myself as a person, but the existential crisis of it all is kind of tiring. I'm going into 2025 with a mindset of focussing on self-care and avoiding doomscrolling and finding joy in the things and people I love and letting what I can't change go.

I wish you all the best of New Year's and I will talk to you in January!

Hello there, lovely people. I hope if you are the sort who enjoys spooky season, you are enjoying it, and if, like me, you do not enjoy spooky season, you are finding joy in less spooky things.

I've been learning to draw. Not just during spooky season, it's been about four-ish years I've been working on it, I think. When I got a pad that supported the Apple Pencil, I traded in my old Mac computer and used the rebate to buy a Pencil and Procreate, and I've been working on teaching myself. At first, I only coloured other people's (freely donated) art and learned about shading and such, but I've branched out to try to work on actually drawing my own stuff. It was hard to push through that 'former gifted kid' perfectionism. I have a tendency to give up if I'm not good at something right away, and unfortunately, drawing is something you just have to do until it gets better. But I am getting better! I made it a goal in September to draw one face everyday until I could draw faces I didn't hate, and the improvement was actually really startling and encouraging. So I decided to try my hand at a full portrait and it was like, you know how in fictional stories of various kinds there's things the hero learns along the way and all of a sudden at the climax all those things come into use? It was like that. Everything I've learned has come together to make a picture I actually like.

Hello! Here I am for a short August update, just under the wire as always.

It has been a time, I have to say. I do not know what the Bard family has done to piss off the tooth fairy, but my brother's elder cat, my dad, and I have all had tooth infections/extractions in the last six weeks and it has just been one damn thing after another.

The Olympics and Paralympics have provided a lovely distraction from all the stress, and I've been really improving on my drawing/colouring, and tomorrow we're visiting my brother and his wife at the cottage tomorrow.

Hopefully the tooth fairy will chill out soon.

Enjoy your Labour Day if you are in an area where that is a thing, and I hope you are doing well and you have happy teeth.

Allo, mes amies! Sneaking in under the time limit with my monthly post once more. I am now 38 years old, which seems somehow less old than 37 and also, like, a lot older? It's weird. But it's a nice colour, so I'll hope for a good year.

The last couple of weeks have not boded well for that; it's been something of a series of unfortunate events. On the bright side, Pax is now free from all gates! He is no longer confined to the kitchen at night time. He was starting to throw hissy fits and bang on the gate in the middle of the night, so we decided to see if he had just outgrown it and he's been much happier overall and very well-behaved. We've just had some interesting events arise as we're all adjusting to it, along with some adventures in cat-sitting.

CW: sick cats and anxiety attacks, but with happy endings.

( Adventures )

So, it's been a couple of weeks. But today we went up to my sister-in-law's family's cottage to have lunch and had a lovely, sunny day near the lake and a great time chatting with my brother's friends who had also come to visit. And Pax stayed by himself without any gates and was a good boy the whole time. Happy endings!

Hope everyone else is doing well! It's Canada Day tomorrow and I know July 4th is upon on us, so enjoy your celebrations if you are those who celebrate either holiday! I will be resting my tired self.