spindizzy | Entries tagged with rl: penny in the old man's hat

Hey sweetpeas! I have actually slept, hurray! (And then got up, stayed awake for like an hour, and dozed off on Lex's shoulder while he was playing Stellaris. Adulting!) We survived Christmas Without The Family, and it was pretty nice????

MVP goes to sithe, who cooked this amazing beercan chicken with oyster sauce? And this brownie recipe that had to be started five days before you wanted to eat it, because it needed to spend best of a week in the fridge/freezer until it was done? It was all so good! Like, I don't know what he did to the carrots beyond "oyster sauce" but they were fantastic.

We watched so much Disney stuff as background noise. Seems appropriate! And sithe got new Red Dragon Inn characters, so we cracked that out for the first time in... Quarantime...? (Wrench the Kobold Inventor and Wizgille the Gnomish Tinkerer are BFFs and I refuse to be convinced otherwise.)

I made things for people! LexGarrett's mum got a squirrel, Favourite Nibling got some fabric letters because I'm pretty sure they're up to spelling now, and jilliferium got a constellation shark! The patterns for the stuffed animals came from FunkyFriendsFactory, although I don't know if I recommend them because some of the instructions were mystifying.

I only made one

(Yes I still have half-finished projects that I need to do, shush, it's the apocalypse.)

My present haul was SO GOOD. I got so many books! ... And just realised that I accidentally crossed my christmas twitter thread with my crafting twitter thread, oh no. ANYWAY, book haul! Mum got me The Dark Fantastic (Exploring race through fandom and blockbuster specfic canons), Georgian London: Into the Streets (Georgian history, useful for my romance reading ways???), Gentleman Jack (Because historical lesbians), and The Ghost Map (Uhhhhhhh it's about the 1850s cholera epidemic in London, clearly I thought this present through.)

Frustratingly, Kobo don't let you buy ebooks for other people (why???????), but does let you give giftcards, so I got to inform Lex that he succesfully gave me eight books! A Hope Divided (Black spies vs the confederacy), A Tropical Fish Yearns For Snow Vol 1 (Awkward schoolgirl lesbians), First Test (KELADRY!), Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-san Vol 1 (Selling books is WILD), The Girl From the Well (HORROR GIRL), Wotakoi Vol 4 (nerds in love), and a couple of volumes of BL manga to take me back to my roots. :D :D :D
... Also got an ungodly amount of chocolate, because it's christmas and that's what you do!

LexGarrett got 40k rulebooks because that's what he wanted! Pretty sure they're the ones that he wanted, yay! And him and sithe got so much booze and non-chocolate snacks, because our friends love them. CONVENIENTLY(???) The People Who Had The House Before Us didn't install any insulattion or heating in the extension they built onto the house, so at this time of year it works pretty well an expanded fridge space, so we have don't have to worry about fitting it in the fridge.

I was expecting to feel weirder about not going to my mum's for christmas, because this is the first one I've been away from home for, but... I was fine? Like, possibly I got all of my overthinking it out of the way at the start of the month, but it was just... Nice? Got to cuddle Lex and open presents and have delicious food and read and play boardgames and not have to do any emotional work regarding my siblings, and... It was restful! It was very different, but in a good way! Apparently not seeing anyone is more peaceful than I thought. ALTHOUGH I've not called my mum yet, because I don't want her to tell me how many of my siblings broke lockdown restrictions to go and see her, so there is still time for sibling-induced headaches!

Oh no, Yuletide happened, didn't it? Do I dare go rooting around to see which of my fandoms actually got nominated AND had fic?

So... Yeah, it's been good! Quiet, but in a good way. And now I'm tentatively roughing out plans for next year, so I'll see you when I'm done! ♥

Hello my lovelies! I hope that any festivities you had have been good, and I hope that you're all okay! I think xmas went well for us, but I am going to save rambling about it properly for tomorrow! Good food was had, good books were read, just wanted to leave you with some music, and also the knowledge that it doesn't matter where you start on a christmas playlist on youtube, at some point it will switch you over to dad rock and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

The Muppets Opening for the Disney Singalong II — "Why did we have to call here? Now we're all on video!" is very 2020.

American Capitalist by Five Finger Death Punch — Did you know that this and Teenage Anarchist are not the same song in any way? Because my brain straight-up erased that knowledge for me!

Natural by Imagine Dragons — Left youtube on autoplay and it reminded that I actually like Imagine Dragons???? Like, now that it's not the soundtrack to my having a mental breakdown anyway.

I'll Make a Man Out Of You by Jackie Chan — I always forget that Jackie Chan can really sing and I don't know how I can possibly forget this.

Fire and Water by Shu Lin Zuo — I've started watching The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty and the opening is unexpectedly rock.

Hello my lovelies! I'm not dead, I've just been EXHAUSTED this month for no reason I can understand. Like, we broke up from work last Friday and to celebrate I took TWO naps. While wearing an underwired bra. It's fine! I'm on holiday now, and it turns out that if I can just sleep for as long as I need, it helps, and then I can get up at a reasonable hour and do things! And if I get up and sink like three hours into a sewing project, I magically make progress on it.

(Real talk, I think half of that time was spent muttering "Bollocks," and rethreading the needle, because EVERY GODDAMN TIME, but still.)

I've got TWO WEEKS OFF WORK, this is magical and weird! My plans are sleep, play phone games and/or Animal Crossing, tidy the living room enough that I can make a neat little stack of all our presents in a corner, finish sewing the gifts I need to sew, and maybe think about words at some point????

I'm in a weird limbo with xmas presents, because I've made some of the gifts I wanted to give people, lost some of the gifts I bought for other people, and haven't started some of the rest! I tried to do a run down to the parcel postbox with what I had ready... Only to discover that the parcel I thought was the right size for it was actually a centimetre too big and was stuck in the rotation compartment. And when Lex gave me a lift to a different parcel postbox, the person in front of me did the exact same thing I did! orz She very kindly offered to drop my parcel off at the post office while she went, which I'm guessing she did because jilliferium sent me a picture of the present bag I made!

We have done the obligatory Big Shop that will hopefully take us through to the new year, and we have... Possibly run out of space to store things? Slightly?, Like sithe had to find somewhere to stash a 10kg bag of rice for the apocalypse and I've still no idea how he did it.

lexgarrett cooked a roast dinner for solstice and no word of a lie it might be the best thing I've eaten all year. *______*

4thewords have rolled out houses now! Or at least rooms where characters can live! I am very excited about this, because I just... Like the idea of my characters having somewhere to go when I'm not playing them? Like FFXIV was a lot more relaxing once I found out that you could rent rooms at inns and your character wasn't just sacking out in the street! ... Animal Crossing continues to be exactly the game I didn't know I needed, because your character does go home at night. Who am I. Why am I like this.

I got my new diary (at laaaaaaaaaaaaaaast!) and now I'm tentatively roughing out plans for the next couple of weeks and considering things for 2021. It's really weird to think about all of the goals I made at the start of 2020, because... Well, the apocalypse happened. Slightly derailed my plans. Slightly made it harder to consider plans for the future, between the pandemic and Brexit.

... On the plus side, I found a bunch of my sticker sheets, and now I'm figuring out which ones I still have a use for! This year I've been seeing what bits of my stationery collection/diary habits are helpful and which are make-work because my dayjob is boring, and I think I've got it back to a level I'm okay with? Colour coding is good for me, using stickers as category markers for dividing up my to-do list is good for me, using a tiny smidge of washi tape as flash is good for me, pretty much everything else I'm leaving behind for now. Maybe I'll add some of it back in later! But not right now!

Apparently "Watch a cdrama while working on a completely overdue xmas present" is just what I do, good to know. I want to say that the progression was Nirvana in Fire, Guardian, and now Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, but maybe don't trust me on this considering last week is as distant to me as the fall of Rome. Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty seems to be one of those shows where I need a Persona-stat style matrix to accurately score its silliness, plot, and politics ratings. Dong'er and Sui Zhou are the greatest, that one martial artist stoically having a very bad month is the greatest, everyone else is probably going to grow on me.

RIGHT. Going to MAKE PLANS and BUY A BOOK FOR LEX, because I'm stealing jilliferium's xmas eve tradition of stealing the (icelandic?) tradition where you give your humans a book and spend the evening reading. *cracks knuckles* I LOVE YOU ALL. BE SAFE. IF YOU ARE DOING CHRISTMAS TOMORROW, HAVE A GOOD CHRISTMAS; IF YOU'RE NOT, HAVE A GOOD MOVIES AND CHINESE FOOD DAY. xxxxx

Listen, I finally realised that I probably wouldn't be doing much xmas stuff at all this year because lockdown, my family's chronic inability to stay out of each other's pockets, and living with two people who... Don't xmas, at all, really? And then I went "Wait, no, fuck, if I'm not seeing people then I won't have that week of running up and down the country to finish everyone's xmas presents!" and thus bought... Probably way too much crafting stuff! And then spent this evening tracing patterns and flinging everything out of my fabric box because I need to start making people's presents now if I want time to post them! ... So yeah, tomorrow I'm going to have lots of fun practicing with my rotary cutter and trying to do my sewing before the housemate's skype game starts!

Merry winter festivities everyone! I hope that if you were doing a family holiday it went well, and if you were avoiding any family or christmas stuff that your evasion was successful! Mine was... Mixed bag?

Lex and I went to my mum's on Christmas Eve! I remembered my mum's presents but forgot the present that I bought for my oldest sister in 2016 and found while I was tidying. Whoops.

As a christmas eve gift, the RWA set itself on fire, dug to rock bottom, and then cracked out the pickaxe so it could keep going. I've been following it in real time because I literally can't stop myself, and this summary doesn't have sources but is accurate to all of the sources and reports that I'VE seen. I can't look away, this is bananas. This has been going on for FIVE DAYS at this point, and it just keeps getting worse!

My christmas haul was SO GOOD!
- I got nail varnish that changes colour depending on the temperature, which I've been after for multiple years, and a bunch of temporary tattoos to see if I like them as a concept before captainraz and I pay probably extortionate postage for Geometric Beasts.
- My book haul was SO GOOD! Lex got me Yotsuba&! volume 14 (and a Jund MtG Brawl deck, because my dreams of a Devour commander deck have never died, and a Pokéball with a Rowlett in it!), and Mum got me Because Internet, Not For Use In Navigation, Women With ADD, The Luminous Dead, and A BOX SET OF THE RERELEASED ALANNA BOOKS OMG! Yotsuba is as heart-warming as ever, and Not For Use in Navigation manages to be occasionally gutting and incredibly warm and hopeful with it. The rest I've not read yet!
- I've not watched the BOX SET OF CARDCAPTORS THAT MY MUM GOT ME LIKE AN ABSOLUTE LEGEND, but hi I have a box set of the original run of Cardcaptors and the movies, and I'm terrified to find out whether the subtitles are going to be horribly unreadable or not.

Saw Second Oldest Sister On Mum's Side and her family, and we were all remarkably polite! She didn't try to make me put jilliferium in contact with her, I didn't start a fight, youngest niece on that side got to show off her glittery slime-making prowess and oldest niece on that side got to show off how amazing she is at choosing presents. ... Real talk, that girl is GOOD AT PRESENTS, I am so jealous of her skills. Middle niece on that side is off doing a law degree, and apparently as part of that she's doing consulting days in a prison? Which is excellent.

I HAVE MET MY NEICE'S HUSBAND NOW. Two factual inaccuraces on my part: he's 36 and they got married on an island just off the coast of Georgia, not mid-forties and married in Florida. But that said... He does come across as exactly the sort of guy who would marry a twenty-one year old he'd know for less than six months!
- Like. Maybe I don't understand how setting up a business works, but what he was describing sounded like money-laundering to me and visa fraud to Lex? And Hayley would mention things like "Oh, we were reading the bible together last night..." and that's... Not very her? Or at least she was saying stuff about it that was very obviously not HER WORDS and it was weird to see. The nice things I will say about him is that Hayley has apparently been doing the same "Hey, this funny story about my family is actually FUCKED UP" realisations that I was doing, and she feels supported in that because of him? And him and Lex got to bond over what I described as "Wow, our wives are way more fucked up than advertised" and Lex described as "Our wives are amazing despite their families."
- Yeah, as the only person in the room who hadn't been drinking, I was NOT prepared for the unexpected therapy session Hayley dropped on us after Christmas dinner.
- On the plus side, Hayley was not prepared for how much I was like "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T FUCKING VOTE?!" at her. I want full points for quickness though! She was talking about how she'd visited Germany a lot, but "People died so I didn't have to learn German!" and my immediate response was "People died so you could vote as well!"
- Best part of this conversation:
  Hayley: I can't believe my mum got married at sixteen to someone who was FIFTEEN YEARS OLDER THAN HER.
  Me: *GESTURES AT HAYLEY'S FIFTEEN-YEARS-OLDER-THAN-HER HUSBAND LIKE I'M WILL SMITH*
- Second best part of this conversation:
  Me: Your nan told me! And then let me tell your Auntie Jill.
  Hayley: What did she say?
  Me: Same thing as me: "But she's like TWELVE."
- Other low-lights included her and her husband talking about how harmful and awful it is that her nephew (my great-nephew) has been LABELLED with autism and ADHD while I'm there like "Motherfucker if someone had caught my ADHD when I was five my life would have been IMMEASURABLY EASIER." Also how being pregnant for two (2) days really taught her how to look at the world as a parent would and gave her a really different perspective on life, while I'm there like "Bitch PLEASE."

Current gossip: my Tory-voting brother (did I tell y'all that I blocked him on FB?) has broken up with his girlfriend! It was inevitable because she was way cooler than he deserved, but she was so cool and now I don't have an excuse to see her! And my oldest niece still doesn't have custody of her two oldest children, but is still with the father of her youngest, despite (from what I understand) her custody of that one hinging on her telling social services that she WASN'T with him anymore. YEAH. THIS TRIP WAS KIND OF A LOT.

I want full points for not going "Brown-haired niece. You continue to exist," at any point.

I liked seeing my mum! (Except for the point where she was being really catty about everything, so I just turned round to Oldest Sister like "I don't know where you two went while you were out, but you can take her back.") I fixed Steam on her computer and put some more books on her kindle for her, good work us. And I liked seeing the cat, despite her STILL a vicious little shit who hunts humans for sport. And I liked raiding the manga collection that me and Jill left at mum's, by which I mean Jill banned me from running away with any of the manga she bought, but said nothing about me reading it while I was there. So I've binged the first six volumes of Red River, which has given me a craving for nineties shoujo manga despite it being super full of attempted rape. But it's cool, because it feels like I can draw a straight line between it and some shoujo manga that are currently running, like The Water Dragon's Bride or Yona of the Dawn. Also it gives me decent grounds for anyone who starts trying to tell me that isekai is a New! Radical! Never-Before-Seen! thing, because a) portal fantasies have existed FOREVER, and b) everything I hear about Super Dark And Edgy Isekai sounds boring as fuck and less dark than the shoujo manga that was doing this shit twenty-odd years ago. Yes I am bored of harem anime and yes I can disect them on a critical level, do not test me.

APPARENTLY we did well by presents for Jill! Her housemates did a whip round to collect money for a Switch for her with Pokémon Shield! (Usually Jill and I manage to co-ordinate not getting the same Pokémon game, but eh, fuck it.) Please admire the fact that we talked about how nice it would be if she had a Switch and could play the Horrible Goose game, and my poker face was flawless. But the one I keep getting excited messages from her about is that I bought her this Archer & Olive dot-grid notebook that captainraz recommended, because I knew that Jill liked to use watercolours in her bullet journal and I wanted to buy her something that could keep up with that. Turns out that 160gsm dot grid paper is pretty good? Maybe? Apparently?

I mostly finished the rabbit that I was making for the kid Jill looks after (I gave Jill the pieces, she assembled it), and apparently he instantly recognised what character it was supposed to be AND liked it! PHEW.

We hung out with Lex's dad on Boxing Day and it was genuinely nice? Usually I have to field most of the small talk, which stresses me out because I AM NOT MIDDLE-CLASS ENOUGH FOR THIS, but Lex took on a bunch and it was so kind because he doesn't have the class shenaniganry that I do but DOES hate talking to people with the fire of a thousand suns. ... And bless their hearts, talking to his dad and his dad's girlfriend always makes me feel like I'm not doing enough, because they're very nice but so BUSY. Like, their holiday this year was walking a two-week long trail across Portugal? And the fact that I don't actually want to go walking across Portugal doesn't make me feel less bad for not having the time, money, or inclination to do something as adventerous and class-marking as that.

But yeah, overall this christmas was A Lot but generally positive? I feel a little bad that I'm now a person that my mum has to schedule around for Christmas, because she doesn't want me and Tory-voting brother in the same room, but I'm glad I got to see her.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Susan

I cannot stress enough how good the food and my book haul were

Don't worry, there's no xmas music on the list

I've done NOTHING and it's been GREAT.

I was getting in my my feelings about xmas so I spent money instead!

Christmas visits: survived!

Profile

About

May 2025

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Syndicate