I have been doing so many things! D:

This is the post I started writing on Friday and then got horribly distracted from because I have been BUSY AS ALL HELL THIS WEEKEND.

Ey up loves! I continue to exist, I survived the midnight showing of Star Wars, although my thoughts on it are about 2000 words long and show no sign of slowing down OR answering the question of whether I like it or not, and I'm going to visit Jill tomorrow. Weirdly, I'm more tired today after a decent night's sleep than I was after the midnight showing? But sure, fine, I have a busy day today, so of COURSE I'm sleepy. I'm getting the train up to Jill's with her present (that I haven't wrapped yet), a bunch of notebooks and fauxdori stuff that I promised her, and a toy rabbit (that I haven't finished all of the pieces of yet). So. You know. THE USUAL. Lex is off visiting his mum, and then next week we're going to visit mine, which is throwing me off because in my brain there's another three weeks till Christmas. Friends: THERE IS NOT. On the plus side, I've made the body of the rabbit, which is the bit that would've been a pain in the arse to post because it's round, so I've got that out of the way.

Apart from that... Not really done much? I spent most of yesterday dossing about on the sofa reading Finn/Poe fic as a mild middle finger to JJ Abrams, then going through my old diary pages while a woman on youtube talked about productivity and writing. Unfortunately, she mentioned that she believes in the Law of Attraction, so now I need to find a NEW productivity and writing lady to be soothing background noise. (If anyone has recs, let me know? If you have any that are writing and ADHD, that's even better, because the closest I've got is How to ADHD.) I'm sorry to anyone who has me on Letterboxd for adding half of the movies I saw this year in one batch! And I'm sorry to anyone on Goodreads who happened to catch me adding ALL OF 2014 to my shelves, because I think 2014 was part of the two years I just avoided the living hell out of Goodreads because, y'know, Amazon. Plus I booted up Pokémon Shield because I was worried that I was going to miss my window to get a long cat or whatever the special thing about the gift Meowth is, and the game is REALLY CUTE. It can be the subject of a DIFFERENT post, but so far I am full of squee.

So yeah, I've finished no one's presents, I have lost all of my christmas cards, and I am ready for a NAP.

... I want to tell you that I didn't get around to posting that because I did in fact go for a nap, but I'm 90% sure that I was writing that at work and just slowly falling asleep on the desk. WHOOPS.

So current state of the Susan: I went to visit Jill! I spent most of the weekend sitting on her sofa crocheting the rabbit that I promised her and her housemates for their baby! (Somewhere, my mum is trying to insist that he's not a baby, and all of us are like "No, the adorable toddler is a baby.") It's really nice to see the baby and his family, because everyone is so calm and patient with him? And explain things to him so that he doesn't freak out? It's really sweet and a little bit heartbreaking, because I know that I couldn't do that and none of the kids in my family had that growing up. But also: THE RABBIT IS SOMEWHAT FINISHED, in that I still have one arm to finish, but apart from that was at the stage where I could just shower Jill in bunny parts and leave her to frankenstein it together somehow.

And we watched SO MANY THINGS! We went to watch Cats at the pictures, which was 100% not as weird and horny as the internet wanted me to believe. Source: we watched the nineties version of Cats this weekend and it was MORE weird and horny than the movie. And Muppet Christmas Carol, i.e. the best christmas movie! And a couple of comedy specials, including Nanette, which Jill described as more of a TED talk with Sad Gay Energy than a comedy show, and she isn't wrong. You all told me that it was good and a difficult watch, and you were NOT WRONG.

As for Christmas... Still in denial that it's this week, but I have at least got presents for Mum, Jill, and Lex, and let Lex field any of the other ones. I have a pact with a couple of my mates that we'll buy each other Steam games for each gift-giving opportunity, so that's easy enough, it's just... Brain. Effort. What? So I'm quite tired, is what I'm saying here, and SO GRATEFUL that I don't have to go to work until the new year. The extent of my plans are "Go to visit my mum, don't get into a fight with anyone, at some point build a nest out of blankets and game consoles and refuse to leave it until 2020." Yes, I have in fact not looked at my diary in a fortnight, that's why I'm completely unmoored in time. Whoops!

I spend all of my Pokémon time cooing "BABIES!" at the screen

POKÉMON SHIELD HAS ALL OF THE CUTE POKÉMON AND I WANT THEM, wah! I'm not doing any of the weird challenge modes, but Lex is doing his usual "No catching Pokémon, only use Pokémon that other people give you/that you can buy" run. (It's apparently GREAT for money, by the way, because at least in the earlier gens, all of the money that you don't spend on Pokéballs gets converted into that ridiculously expensive Magikarp in Veridian.) I know the internet has been joking about Shield/Sword being set in the UK for a while, but I didn't realise that this was going to take the form of having a telly in your room and the best friend character yelling MATE NO whenever you try to go into the long grass without a Pokémon. Also: sheep. Welcome to the UK, enjoy the sheep.

(It also made me laugh because I've been in living rooms that are the spitting image of the one in your character's house, and it comments about your character's mum buying a fancy red microwave, which my ACTUAL REAL LIFE MUM did for me when Lex and I first moved in together!)

This is weird and interesting for me, because I think we've hit the stage where there are VERY FEW Pokémon I recognise in any of the games! Like, I'm not one of the people going "Ugh, I can't play this game if it doesn't have an Onix" or whatever old people on the internet were yelling at clouds about, I'm genuinely excited about this. I have NO IDEA WHAT ANYTHING IS! That's kind of exciting! Like, if I NEED to figure something out, there's always bulbapedia, but also... I can just go "Nah, mate, I'm picking my party by how cute the Pokémon are and damn the torpedoes."

... I assume at some point I'm going to have to update my gymsona with all the new cuties, because I'm at LEAST three gens behind. Original gymsona: ALL NORMAL TYPES ALL THE TIME! Then they changed half of my favourite Pokémon to Fairy types, so I had to choose between my soft pastel aesthetic and being a beast with a level 100 ratatta.

I don't know much about the setting either, beyond "Possibly based on the UK, probably has an updated Team Rocket stand-in," so I'm not sure what to expect. It all looks very commercialised? Maybe? Not necessarily the having Pokémon bit, but the gym circuit does. See also: Champion Leon has sponsorship logos on his CLOAK. Which checks out, I guess, I too have seen Tiger & Bunny, but also... Wut. And the shorts and leggings combo is throwing me off a bit. Then again, considering that I would genuinely wear the protagonist's outfit, maybe I shouldn't judge anyone else's fashion sense.

ANYWAY, my accidental avoidance of memorising the map and new Pokémon to one side! I took the grass starter this time! It was a genuine dilemma, because Sobble was really cute! But also what if I make the Sobble cry? Then I will cry in real life and that's terrible. So I've taken a Grookey, and at some point in the future I will have a GIANT MONKEY WITH A DRUM. My naming theme for this playthough is plants rather than cities, so I'm going to have to start collecting plant names that are short enough to fit in the text box, whoops. (My Grookey is called Greylia and my Meowth is called Mint, because I'm HILARIOUS.

... But seriously, I want a Wooloo and the lightning corgi, and once I have those I will be SET.