Sing me a story, laugh me a lullaby

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.

Anybody in the path of totality for the solar eclipse yesterday? We were lucky enough to be able to see it from our back porch. Our neighbour across the street, who is an avid amateur astronomer, was so sweet and dropped off eclipse viewers in our mailbox last week, along with a note on how to use them and times for everything happening. We were super touched she thought to do that for us, especially since apparently it was impossible to get any viewers around here otherwise. I didn't think I was going to be that interested in it, but once it came time, I was actually really excited, so I'm glad we had them. Totality was very cool and very pretty with the corona around it. I think we had about three minutes worth of totality, which is near the maximum. I remember there being an annular eclipse when I was about ten that was exciting at the time and we got together in the school 'pit' (a weird little odeum-esque area in the middle of the school) to watch what I assume was a livestream/broadcast of it on one of those rolling TVs schools use. This is my first, and likely only, total eclipse. I think it's not until 2180 we'll have another in this area and I'm grateful I got to experience it.

I also think it's cool how joyful an occasion it was for everyone. After all the varying levels of bad the world has gone through and is going through in the last few years, it's nice to have a thing where we all just sort of stood together and said 'isn't this fucking cool?!'

I'm making it my goal this year to post at least once a month on here, so here I am for February.

January ended up being rather stressful. It's a complicated story, but the short version of it is my mum got a call back in December about an ultrasound she'd had as a part of a regular monitoring of her liver (she has Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in relation to diabetes) saying there was a 6mm high density area on it. Through a series of preventable but inevitable events given the state the healthcare system is in, we basically had to wait nearly two months to find out that it was...nothing. Literally nothing, as in, there was an error on the ultrasound image itself. Which, we found out from our GP when we finally got the results from a CT my mum had at the liver doctor's orders, the radiologist basically said when he read the ultrasound images and recommended just repeating the ultrasound in three months to see, but the liver clinic a) didn't bother to tell us that, and b) decided to do a CT instead. Also, despite the fact that Mum had the CT on Jan 17th, the liver clinic has never bothered to call to tell her the results. We had to call the GP two weeks after the CT to ask if she had the report. Mum was very chill through all of it, she was sure it was nothing from the off, but Dad and I are worriers, so it was hanging over us a bit. And waiting for the results was taxing. Two weeks is a long time. I'm glad that's all over with.

I've been in my post-Christmas slump, very tired from all the activity (and probably from the worry from the above). Also the weather has been very variable and I've had a migraine for about a week, a low level one where I'm functional but I have to squint to think and it's hard to read.

We got my bed fixed up now, though. I ended up putting the cover sheet on the floor and the slats from the broken bed on top of that, then my mattress on top of that. It's still basically on the floor, but the slats means it gets some air flow, and it's still very comfy and I'm sleeping well on it. We're going to try to decorate the rest of the room to make it look more natural and not like I'm a starving artist sacrificing furniture for my craft or something. And I made Mum a gorgeous hat, mitts, scarf set for a new coat she has. It's using this wool (the ocean jasper colorway), which I have been dying for an excuse to use for ages, fondling it every time I'm at Michaels, and the green looked perfect with the coat. I'm so pleased with it! The wool was tricky to work with--it felted to itself very easily--but the results are worth the fighting. And I'm working on singing again and that's going well. I've gone from a soprano as a teenager to a mezzalto as an adult and now my mixed voice is very weak because my break is sitting in a different spot than it was. I feel like I'm trying to wrestle a bucking bronco when I'm in that range, like I can't 'catch' the notes, but I'm improving.

So overall, things are looking up, though I wish I could shake this migraine. Hope all is well in your necks of the woods!

Gracious me! I keep meaning to post and keep putting it off. But I wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to the Yanks, so I figured I'd take the time to do a proper post while I'm here. Happy Thanksgiving, Yanks!

I feel like both a lot of stuff has been going on and yet nothing's really happened, which is weird. It's more, there's a lot of activity but not a lot of progress, I guess. I have my new mattress and a new fan, and we got my old bed out of my room. Unfortunately, my new bed did not work out. Flat pack furniture is always hit and miss and the central support of this one was flimsy and poorly made. I had two nights before it gave out, thankfully not while I was in it. Much drama was had, but we think we can salvage parts of it to make a new set up. We got it on very good sale, so if we can get anything out of it, the money won't be wasted. Right now my mattress is on the floor, but I'm having my best sleep in months, possibly years down there, so we're thinking we might see if we can rig something lower for me. I feel like my room is a doomed venture; every time I try to work on it, something goes awry. But I am always grateful that I at least have a place to sleep and that we have the means to experiment.

We also had a family friend pass away. My sister-in-law's aunt, Barb, died a few weeks ago. My SIL's family has always been kind enough to include us in their gatherings, so we spend quite a bit of time with her, despite the distant connection. She was developmentally delayed and lived in a care home, and was such a bright, happy spirit, always very fun to be around. She was seventy-two and lived a good, adventurous life. She even went to the Special Olympics as a swimmer, which we didn't know until the memorial service. She will be missed.

Mum's health has improved; she went to the doctor and got some extra meds and is feeling a lot better on them. My stones have been pretty good, but the weather has made me migrainey. Any fellow migraineurs get deja vu or presque vu with their auras? I've had some weird bouts of that lately that I think are related.

Also, Paxie had graduated from the kitchen at last! We still put him in there at night and when none of us are home, but otherwise, he's allowed to wander as he pleases during the day, except in the bedrooms. Mostly because they're messy and full of temptation, which is our fault not his.

I've been watching a show on CBC Gem called "Miss S". It's a Chinese version of "Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries", which Mum and I watched all of and loved. "Miss S" is set in 1930s Shanghai instead of Australia, but otherwise the characters and stories are mostly the same, just localized. It's been just long enough since I watched Miss Fisher for me to forget who the culprit is, so I don't mind the stories repeating, and I find the changes they make to suit the culture really interesting. The actors are really great and the leads are adorable and have great chemistry. There's a bit of a cultural gap on my part, not so much within the show, but the differences between Chinese and western media. Like, whenever a character comes on screen for the first time, their name pops up next to them to tell you who they are, and one scene had the lyrics of the song being played on the screen. I had to figure that out by screenshotting and running the picture through Google Translate, because the subtitles were not giving me the names or the lyrics and I didn't know what was happening at first. The subtitles are a little hit or miss, mostly just in that they are awkward sometimes. 'That's very sorry' instead of 'that's very unfortunate' and inadvertently making me laugh when a character describes his brother being murdered in a somewhat brutal fashion and follows it up with 'it really gets me down', to which Miss S agrees 'yes, it gets me down, too'. I feel like there was probably a more appropriate way to translate that sentiment than something akin to 'what a bummer, dude'. There also seems to be a trope that if anything romantic is happening it turns to slo-mo and soap opera-like music plays. They only made one season, apparently, but there are 30 episodes (15 stories of two episodes each), so lots to watch, and I've enjoyed what I've seen so far. CBC Gem is region locked, but it looks like it's on Prime, Apple, and Max, so if you have any of those, you can check it out. It's a lot of fun, not too too violent, and the recurring actors are all adorable and have great chemistry together.

Anyway, hope all are doing well in these continually crazy times. Enjoy your festivities if you are festiviting and take care of yourselves!

Eeek! I get worse and worse in updating my journal. Here I am, though, alive.

It's been a rough time since we last spoke. Mum's chronic back thing is acting up mightily and I've been passing stones like a mad thing, and both of us had the worst migraines of our lives at different points, and even poor Pax had a couple of days of being unwell. We're not sure what happened, but he started vomiting at around 3AM one night and proceeded to vomit every half hour until 6:30, then stopped. Then he did the exact same thing the next night. Then he was fine and has been fine since. I can only assume he ate something outside and then ate it again the next night. It was very unpleasant and very concerning, but he's totally fine now.

Otherwise, things have been just...happening. Like normal. I've read a lot of books now that my brain is able to focus on that again. I've been writing a lot, just original stuff I don't know will ever see the light of day, but it's fun and I get to do lots of research for it. I do more research than writing, honestly. My brain is still a bit foggy for coherent narrative. We've also been very slowly working on getting my room redone, a project I've been trying to do for literally close to sixteen years now that just kept getting pushed aside with all the health stuff that's gone on. But I have a bed now! It's not assembled, but I have it! And a new mattress. And I'm working away at cleaning the room up and out to make space to get the old bed out and the new one in. Our whole house is kind of a mess, which happens when you're all chronically ill. I feel like we're starting to make progress, though, despite the health flares.

Dad has hyper-fixated on Mad Men, which is on Amazon Prime here. He started about a week ago, if that, and I think he's on season six now. He literally lies down in the afternoon and puts it on and watches it until the news at 11. Every hour, you can hear the tango opening theme play once again as the next episode rolls out. We got him a Roku for his room at Christmas time, and he's made very good use of it. It's cute, because he's not a guy who does fiction normally. Everything he reads is non-fiction except for John Grisham novels and everything he watches is a documentary or reality, with a few exceptions that are usually 'this is based on a real person'. He had a The Tudors phase earlier this year, and a Versailles phase. But this is the most I've seen him hyperfixate yet, and it's funny to hear him talk about it, because it's like he's never encountered fiction before. He likes it because 'they all have different personalities' and 'there are lots of situations and scenarios'. So, he likes that there are characters and a plot, I guess. It's very cute. Even if I have the tango stuck in head.

Anyway, I hope all y'all are hanging in there. Stay safe and cool!