spindizzy | Entries tagged with hobbies: punching myself with wool

Good morning everyone! How are you all doing? I'm still snowed under with wool projects, which is fun but also terrible because auuuuugh how am I going to get this all done by Christmas? (Better prioritisation, basically. I have a list, and I know when I'm going to be seeing people around Christmas, and I have like a week off beforehand, so... Hopefully this problem is going to solve itself. Somehow.)

Apart from adventures in wool, I haven't really been doing much! I've started my new hours at work – did I mention that on here, or just on twitter? Because that was a Whole Entire Saga, where the hours that I wanted came up for applications after the hours that I would have been okay doing did, so I had an interview and got one set of hours, and then had to be like "Well, I actually want this OTHER set, so..." But the point is still that I applied for TWO WHOLE JOBS and got BOTH OF THEM, because I am mighty! And doing interviews while taking anti-anxiety meds is a really different experience and it was weird. I felt... Not relaxed, but slightly more confident in my answers and my assessment of how well I'd done? And I checked in advance and the interviewers were cool with my bringing a fidget cube through so that I could concentrate, and they actually had all of the interview questions written down in big letters for candidates to read! That is SO USEFUL, why doesn't everywhere do that?!

... None of which is the actual point, which is that I have kind of a new job! It's at the same library, but I have to get up at six in the morning to make it to work on time (Q: Susan, didn't you change jobs in 2015 to avoid getting up at six in the morning? A: I KNOW.), and I get holidays off! Which means that I might actually use my holiday for restful things instead of being an anxious ball of goo! The downside of it is that I don't get annual leave, which means taking off days that I want to is gonna be a pain in the butt. It's only been a week, but so far it's been okay? I am somewhat tired but also trying to go to bed on time (I went to bed at 22:00 one day,

readingtheend would be very proud), and having my afternoons back is SO NICE.

Unfortunately, I'm swinging between "I am too tired for emotional investment" and "Just break my heart baby, I'm ready," and I'm not in the mood for any of the rubbish action movies I have to hand, which means that when I'm awake, I'm watching Yuri On Ice and wailing, and when I'm not awake I'm watching action horror movies and being grouchy that they're not fitting the very specific niche thing that I'm interested in.

("I didn't think you had time to rewatch things you liked because your viewing schedule was booked until 2033?" says

sithe while I'm rewatching YoI. "Or are you planning to write a two-years-later retrospective?" I CAN'T EVEN BE MAD BECAUSE HE'S NOT WRONG, WHAT THE HELL. I'm getting predictable in my old age, this is the worst!)

Apart from that... Apparently I've somehow written a truly obscene amount of words this year, according to 4tw and my GYWO spreadsheet, now that I've finally gotten around to tallying the two together. I didn't know I had that many words IN ME, but I guess that's what I get for writing in an anxiety fuelled frenzy at the start of the year, and then trying to figure out healthy writing habits at the end of it? I guess?????

So yeah, I'm okay, I'm snowed under with stuff like always, but I think I'm dealing with it, which is nice!

Hey guys! I'm back, I say, like I've been anywhere. It turns out that I managed to avoid my productivity crashing and burning in March by the skin of my teeth and April exploded instead. IT'S OKAY, my only goals for spring are "Make it to the summer" so it's not too bad!

I intensely regret not knowing that that it was going to be so beautiful out today, because I would have ABSOLUTELY have worn my cute polka-dot summer dress in this. (I can fit a paperback in the pockets! I need to see if anyone is still selling the polka dot designs anywhere, because I will absolutely wear this design in every colour they've got, but I am INTIMIDATED by the patterns on the Lindy Bop site.) I'm pretty much waiting until my phone is charged, then me and my laptop are going to court sunburn outside.

The people who made Regency Solitaire have a new game out called Shadowhand and it is exactly what I have the brainpower for this last two weeks. It's basically solitaire with funky layouts and sometimes a plot (Regency Solitaire is a very gentle Regency romance with conniving men attempting to ruin the family/marry the protagonist, and Shadowhand is about a Lady who poses as a highwaywoman to gain information and is very cavalier about the amount of murders she commits), and it's gentle enough and predictable enough that I can deal with it. I've just temporarily lost my ability to cope with new media that ISN'T predictable and gentle, which is fine! I am rewatching Pacific Rim Uprising a bunch of times and bunkering down with shoujo manga and cozy mysteries until I can face more complicated things.

(I am up to four I think, which is SURE A NUMBER OF TIMES TO WATCH THIS MOVIE.)

I have been swimming! I dropped down the number of lengths I've been doing and haven't been to as much Aquafit because the times changed for a couple of weeks – I've been doing 26 and 28 lengths, and I come out of it hating myself slightly less? I guess because I am spinning my mental wheels over snarky movie commentary instead of INTENSELY HATING MYSELF for forty-five minutes.

Disaster Sock is coming along! I am just decreasing for the toe now, and then I get to experiment with sewing it all together! I know, I know, I am the slowest knitter in the world, but also DISASTER SOCK DREW BLOOD (CW: photo of a hole in my hand). Knitting is LETHAL, guys.

I was unintentionally the living embodiment of this XKCD strip the other day.

We finished Pandemic Legacy Season 2, and I won't spoil anything here because it can PROBABLY stand to be a post on it's own, but it sure was a thing that I finished. If anyone wants to talk about it, HIT ME UP.

Somehow, I have ended up in three regular games each week, despite being very clear that I was keeping this number low for maximum disaster time. I don't know how this happened? Either way, my character in the D&D 3.5 game managing to CRIT HERSELF TO DEATH and get reincarnated as a gross demon thing that also happens to have absolutely nails combat stats. ... Unfortunately, I've been very vulnerable to mind control thus far in the game, so we have Suspicions about how this is gonna go.

I was baffled enough when I discovered that A Perfect Circle had a new album out, but one of the songs is called So Long and Thanks For All the Fish. SURE APC, SURE.

It turns out that a lot of my mental and emotional processing powers is going to this fucking appointment tomorrow. I have been trying not to go on about it (yes, all of the tweets and random conversations about it are what it looks like when I am trying not to bother people, I'm sorry, this is who I am as a person) but I'm still fretting about it. Lex is trying to convince me that people are putting energy and emotional effort into this thing with me because they are my friends and wouldn't do it if they didn't want to, but also hahaha oh god so many people have done emotional labour for me on this and I am going to be GUTTED if I've wasted their time. (I am mainly trying to convince myself that if there was nothing wrong with me I would not burst into tears at the idea of this just being who I am and it never getting any better, but you can imagine how that's going.) I am telling myself very sternly that by this time tomorrow it'll all be over but the screaming, and it's literally just twenty minutes of my life to get through, but pweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I dunno, that's just... Where I'm at, what I'm up to. Now I'm off to (try) to write what makes my heart do the smiley emote, so I'll see you all later! ♥

Whoever put together the Draconic Domination Magic deck KNOWS WHAT I LIKE. It's full of big stompy dragons and card-draw and those are pretty much my two favourite things. Lex got it for me for Christmas and I loooooove it.

I know glempy jokes that I keep adding more deadlines and projects because I'm convinced that I'm bad and need to be punished, but... I think this might actually be the correct amount of busy for me? Like, right now my anxiety isn't yelling at me that I'm not doing enough like it usually does, and I am actually sleeping, which is weird and novel. I don't want to say for definite that this is okay, because there is every chance that I'm running on false confidence and at some point I'm just going to keel over, but for now... I feel about right?

Trying to plan my swimming schedule when shark week might be imminent (but who the fuck knows because I don't think it's been on a regular cycle ever, not even once) is an absolute pain. Especially because depending on how this all falls, I might end up having to take like three weeks off that AquaFit class I'm doing (this week off for a haircut and next week off for an assessment for that extra ten hours I mentioned I might wanna pick up, and then IDEK.)

Oh, I had a hair cut! The lady was very frustrated by my hair because apparently it's not grown back evenly from the undercut, but I'm okay with that? I don't look quite as dykey as intended, but it's still pretty cute.

I bought new work clothes! I felt horribly underdressed at work, because all of my male colleagues tend to wear jeans+nice shirt+jumper, and all of my female colleagues tend to wear dresses or nice shirts and sensible trousers/skirts, and I was... Me? But I went to Marks & Sparks and managed to find the section that was work clothes that were only overpriced instead of actively offensively gouging, and now I own work shirts! They have a "no peep placket" which is literally a button sewed onto the back of the buttonhole band to hold the bits that would gap closed. I don't know if that's actually smart, or if I've just been deprived for years. (Also: I didn't know tank tops were the same thing as sweater vests, whoops.) Still cute though!

... Yes I was brought up so working class that shopping at M&S is a mark of the bourgeoisie. I have betrayed my people.

I have written up my original ideas book into my traveller's notebook and now I want to mash myself face first into all of my old fandoms. Like, A LOT. Maybe joining drabble communities has helped, because it's reminding me that "Oh yeah, writing fic is a thing that I like! I should do more of this!"

... I am considering buying FFXV on Steam, even though I KNOW that Squeenix games don't usually work well on computers, just so I can have unfettered access. The idea of starting all over again though...
- Plus if I was gonna replay FFXV from the start, I'd want to do it PROPERLY and put all of the media in my face in the correct order. Right now I'm saying that's the prequel side-scroller about King Sean Bean that I never played, the demo, the prologue novella that thebaconfat found, the first chapter of FFXV, Kingsglaive, and then the rest of FFXV but I am open to suggestions!
- I need to get around to asking my housemate if its okay if I uninstall some stuff on the PS4 so that I can actually get the PS4 to acknowledge the disk. Because FFXV takes up so much space that even that causes an error message.
- I am personally offended that hot beardy Noctis is in all of the promo material for the Steam version of FFXV but not the actual game, how dare they.
- ... But if I start it again, then I can really go hard into the sidequests. Never stop doing sidequests. Eat every single weird animal roaming the wilderness.

I NEED TO STOP GETTING INTO FANDOMS WHERE I WANT TO CHAIN TOGETHER LOTS OF MEDIA SO THAT I CAN ENJOY IT MORE THOROUGHLY, I AM A BUSY HUMAN WITH SHIT TO DO OH MY GOD SELF.

Oh yeah, I have an assessment for that ten hours I said I was doing because they had a lot of people expressing interest. I PROBABLY WON'T EVEN GET IT, Y'ALL CAN STOP WORRYING.

Sockdate: I am half an inch away from being done with the heel flap, which is GREAT because apparently k1s1 is too complicated for me. I am intrigued to see where this is going next! I'm not very good at translating patterns into like, actual things? So it's exciting to see how this is taking shape and what it's going to be soon.

Ey up loves!

Today is the first super official day back for the students at work, in that it's the first day of exams, so for three out of the four hours of today's shift I did not stop. It took me fifty-five minutes to fill six printers with paper because there were that many students trying to print off their essays. Also, the sheer amount of shenaniganry students do to get one of the private rooms! My god!
- (Q: Susan, didn't you used to be a student?
  A: Mate I did Ancient History, no one went on our floor so it didn't matter if I left my shit everywhere.)
- But it was also weird! Because my regulars weren't there! One of them came in on his own, instead of in a trio, and I was so surprised that I actually asked him where the others were! (They had exams, bless 'em; I hope they were okay!)
- ... My manager told us newbies "If you couldn't do this job, you wouldn't have this job," and I am trying to cling to that because I feel like I don't know a single bloody thing.

I'm back in the public libraries tomorrow for the first time in like a month, which is probably good because I have a boatload of books to return. I'm also gonna have to grump at HR, maybe, because guess what – they lost my leaving paperwork. My manager filed it in November, but they just... Lost it somewhere...? So I've been paid for the two months where I haven't worked my hours (because, I remind you, they are not my hours anymore), but also I'm now not technically an employee anymore so I can't get paid for the work I've actually done until HR sorts itself out. So... Next month at the earliest! And for bonus points: they're gonna invoice me for the money they overpaid me. FUCKING HELL HR.

Yes I went swimming!
( Cut because it's boring and I can't count. )
I'm telling everyone this story because I love it: so the lifeguards have training on a Monday afternoon, right? And I'm doing my lengths, when all I hear is "RAMMING SPEED!" and a SPLOOSH. I think I saw one of the rescue boards involved somewhere, but I don't even care, I immediately trust everyone involved to keep me safe from like viking invaders or whatever.

I have a whole TWO INCHES OF SOCK, I'm so pleased. It looks TERRIBLE and I don't even care, because the point is for me to remember how to knit (and purl, oh god, no, I don't remember, it's all gone wrong) and try out making a heel on something that doesn't MATTER because I'm going to send it to our Jill for reasons that I don't remember. I know I told her I was going to send her a sock. Just the one sock. I don't remember why. I'm at the bit that's just "knit until you're ready to put a heel on" and oh god, I'm not ready! I'm knitting it on a round needle now, so I suspect I'm going to have to decant some of this onto the DPNs and see how it goes from there.

... Not being able to try this sock on to see if I've got it right is proving to be An Experience In Hope.

I got introduced to the band God Is An Astronaut, that seems to specialise in strange instrumentals? I like this one, but this one sounds like someone got into a boss battle two-thirds of the way in!

Today I learned that it is possible for Betty to betray me! Apparently she has the ability to shut off my wifi as a power-saving tactic, which I didn't know but am retroactively horrified by, especially as wrangling that has been what I was doing for the last... Half hour? Forty-five minutes? I wanted to sleep, Betty, why don't you love me!

I got my first sets of earrings and they are hella fucking cute!

I have been working? I have my posts for this week mostly done (I need to wrangle the images for the one on Thursday but apart from that it's done), I have the skeletons of my other posts this month, I have learned an important lesson about signing up to bit a pinch hitter for a fandom exchange without checking what the minimum word count for pinch hits is, and... I'm doing okay. I'm trying to work through everything one at a time in chronological order of due date, which is fucking me up a bit, because that's not how I work, but... I'm getting there. Slowly. I am trying to keep looking at what I've achieved (LOOK AT WHERE YOU ARE! LOOK AT WHERE YOU STARTED!) but every time I do, I go "Yes, but all of the rest of this" and need to lie down again. orz

Have downloaded Zombies Run, where apparently your reward for walking around (what I am using it for) or running fucking 10ks like an absolute madwoman (what fkth uses it for because she is amazing) is that you get to unlock chunks of story AND build a town. If people had told me this, I would have got on this ride way sooner. What I am learning is that while I LIKE Pokémon Go and games that involve a degree of mindless repetitive gameplay... I need it to be interrupted by tiny chunks of story, just to keep me motivated.

Related: UK people! The people who do Zombies Run want a writing trainee, it might be worth looking into.

I need to crochet Jill some jellyfish.

It's eleven days into the start of the year and my brain is going "YOU HAVE ONLY READ FIVE BOOKS!" Brain, we have a whole year. Find your chill.

I have shiny new doc martens! There was a sale, and our David gave me twenty quid with explicit instructions to buy shoes not frivolous things, so... I bought myself some nice, sturdy nylon docs in the half-price sale? I was tempted to get some of the LUDICROUSLY CHEAP and colourful ones, but let's settle for ones that I can wear to work first, yeah?

My second-oldest sister can't have biological children, so she is starting the adoption process! I am really proud of and happy for her, although wrapping my head around there being niblings in this family that were definitely chosen and 100000% wanted is really weird for me, mainly because I'm not 100% sure ANY of the kids in this family were wanted, self included. ... I nearly tagged this post as "You can't pick your family" and literally the mention of my family is about someone picking their family, fuck's sake.

I got nothing. I just want to write my words and have a sleep and not go to work in the morning but HAHA jokes on me for that one.

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Susan

Buried alive by wool

WHEEL SPINNING INTENSIFIES

Look, I just want to draw six cards a turn WHILE STEPPING ON PEOPLE

I swear I go over the same subjects every post, but also that's ALL I'M DOING WITH MY TIME

lies on floor

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February 2019

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