Plant your hope with good seeds

The strawberry plants are doing so well! Several have blooms! I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to pluck these early blooms for greater production later in the year? But gosh that seems mean to do to the little guys. ;3; I know that's not quite the mindset I should have as someone trying to produce food, but it's definitely the one I have. Mustn't discourage the little guys by doing the thing that while definitely encourage them, lmao.



There are eight bush beans doing super well and several more babies coming up. I have a bunch of tomatoes and peppers but they're so bitty, and I didn't label each little cup, so I'll have to wait until they have their true leaves to identify them. Whoops!

There are also...so many happy melons. ;o; I was too enthused and planted too early, so now I'm going to have to pot them up in big pots because it's likely to be too cool any time soon to put them in the ground! Although soil temperatures are holding steady at around 63F so it could be possible. :\a




The peas are coming up slowly and something keeps eating them, which is extraordinarily frustrating, especially since I know what would help but I am not in charge of the money to do the thing with (I deeply love W but only one of us is proactive and it's unfortunately the one without the money).

(something I don't want to be too openly excited about because I am a Cursed Human but I have a new extremely part-time job at a nationwide pet care store and I'm really, really hoping my stupid brain cooperates because the discounts are amazing)

Also look at this extremely fun activity! I've hit three shops already and will hopefully get to hit more shops soon!



And coming soon:



Oh hell yeah, guys, I very much love my city a lot. ♥ I'm very excited about ACTIVITY SEASON in Seattle.

A fun little project for the month of April: Aesthetics Bingo over at allbingo.

Ukiyo-e	Beatnik	Afrofuturism	Indigenous Futurisms	Lunarpunk
Mori Kei	Goth	Rustic	Safari	Ancient Egypt
Crowcore/Goblincore	Bohemian	FREE SPACE	Punk	Prairie
Baroque	Cyberpunk	Witchcore	Fieldcore	Diner
Liminal Space	Xenophile	Paleocore	Kawaii	Yé-yé

HOW FORTUITOUS THAT AFROFUTURISM AND INDIGENOUS FUTURISMS ARE ON THE SAME LINE, that's extremely helpful. XD Anyways, this is an excuse to draw characters in beautiful, beautiful clothes, and I'm very excited about thaaaaat. <3

Daylight Savings is much easier to handle when you're unemployed, lol.

So far we have planted: 25 strawberry plants, a grape vine, a passionflower vine, two veggie beds, and two flower beds (mostly irises, pansies, violas, fennel, angelica, and some others that are escaping my memory). We have two different varieties of blueberries waiting to be planted on the front porch, potatoes on the way, and so many more flower seed packets. It's going to be so much work but with so much payoff.

I'm ready for spring to officially be here, I know we have a chance of frost during the early parts of spring, but my gosh I'm so ready. ;o; The sun being out so much later in the evening has been a balm to my poor little soul.

Also! cypher and I have our marriage certificate! We've applied for a courthouse spot on March 21st but I'm not sure we're going to get it...but we're getting married! No ceremony or anything like that, I'm pretty sure we're just going to have a court provided witness lol but it's no less an exciting ceremony for that! It's going to be a wonderful day. <3

I've been cooking a lot lately! Because eating out is so expensive but I love flavors so much. ;o; Putting the food under a cut but there's both chicken and pork here!

( fooooood )

YUM.

Anyways. That's mostly what's been going over here. Trying to focus on the good, of which there is plenty! I hope you guys are doing okay! I've been trying to keep up and I'll probably be commenting a bit today. <3

Sunday we drove to Portland and back (from Seattle) because One Green World was holding a little event to pick out your tree root stock and then pick out what kind of tree it gets grafted onto it. It was a three hour drive (one way) and absolutely soggy (we're under a flood watch) but so much fun. Grafted trees, we got two pear and one peach. But! It was the last few hours of the event so they gave away tree cuttings that you can try to get to root! So we also got multiples of two different kind of varieties of olives, a pomegranate, and a loquat. They're sitting in root hormone in the kitchen sink window. Fingers crossed for the little guys!



Today we worked on the garden beds, cleaning out blackberries and weeding. Should be time to plant some of the cool hardy veggies and flowers!



Lots of good, fertile dirt. <3

Rare Kink Buffet 2025 is happening! I love this kind of challenge so much! It's not an exchange, so I'm not letting anyone down; just picking up prompts that I think might be fun to make. I've claimed nine so far. :D

I have art to share but it's very NSFW so I won't add it to this post. I'll save it for the next one! :3

I still want to reply to comments to my last post but I also want to babble so that's gonna happen first lol.

Found out some unpleasant stuff about my immediate boss ( transphobia and misogyny ). So that's kind of a bummer and I'm heavily thinking about applying to a higher level position that's no longer under him. It would be a bump in pay, I would actually receive raises (I was hired in at the highest level pay for my position), and it'd eventually be a hybrid schedule. There's three months of training that goes into it, it's definitely a more specialized field and my workload would increase, but I would like to continue working in this (frankly, shitty) company and earning a pension, and I enjoy doing paperwork way more than I thought I would. :p I don't know what to think about this.

ANYWAYS, this is very belated but I wanted to share our Christmas tree! :D It is small and cute and the cats didn't manage to knock it down until well after Christmas (and, uh, the new year as well haha)



Tada~! I love it, it fit so nicely where we put it. <3

Onto the new year! I've managed to read a book! Already! The Twisted Ones. I'm pleased. I'd bought it at Half-Price Books on a whim (I'm only passable familiar with Ursula Vernon and not familiar at all with her work at T. Kingfisher) and liked it. I, personally, would have preferred it to be a bit scarier (and there were specific choices made to dial back the creepy) but that wasn't the story she was telling. Ultimately, pretty happy to have picked it up!

Also I've signed up for a Storygraph account. The talk of AI was a little alarming but I think it's the kind of AI that I don't actually mind; the kind that you feed information (in this case, books) and it gives you suggestions on what to read next. That's fine. I probably won't use it because I'm there for all the statistics. Also: challenges! I've signed up for a manga publisher reading challenge and a non-fiction reading challenge. These should overlap nicely with my general "reading 24 books a year" challenge. I don't really use GoodReads enough to miss any of its features and the community aspect isn't a priority for me. I like seeing what my friends are up to but I'm not so much interested in the groups or communities or anything like that. I love data and Storygraph looks like that's what it wants most to provide.

...it also helps that the AI felt very earnest in telling me what kind of fiction I like based on the one book I'd archived. ;3; It's trying its best, maybe.

The Warhammer bingo challenge continues apace! I've filled one square (paint a WH40k centerpiece) and am now working on another (painting WH40K skirmish unit - the unit I chose has 10 minis, whoops). I got some really nice advice from Steve the Warhammer Man on how to make the base more engaging. They're all Mechanicus minis so it very much looks like one big mama duck and his ten heavily armed babies. XD I will post pictures when they're finished!

Today was day one of a four day weekend and we're not having Friendsgiving until Saturday, so I started a new game in BG3.



The first image is my favorite of him; the second shows off his blue-tipped horns. He's a Mephistopheles Tiefling sorcerer specializing in storm sorcery. The scar on his face is due to a lightning mishap when he was younger. He compulsively lights every candle (because I gotta light every candle) and is generally good (although he's a survivor and he'll do what needs to be done to save his own neck) but he'll also egg situations on if he thinks the outcome will be funny. He's the most beautiful character I have ever created and I love him.

Also some spoilery screenshots under the cut (that could be considered NSFW if you work in a very conservative environment; it's basically a vampire bite with the victim apparently dying (he gets better).

( screenshotting this scene is basically an obligation )

and in a completely different vein, also played some of Space Marine 2. This game stresses me out so much l m a o but I press on because I want to write porn shippy stuff with these characters.


The Big Lads.

In other news, I've been doing a lot of work for Warhammer 40k OCs lately, haha. Actually using a spreadsheet to keep all the info together neatly. Here, I will show you!



It doesn't look like a lot but it still took me a little while. XD; It's really nice to be able to just. Do what I want with these characters. They're mine! I'm being super self-indulgent, their relationships with each other are messy, they don't understand feelings, but they're definitely feeling a lot of them! It's...a lot of fun. ;3;

I started listening to Carry On by Rainbow Rowell but I'm really struggling to stay interested. I think I might be over teenagers in stories unless I'm in a very specific mood. Give me grown adults please, preferable 35 and up. XD

America, what the fuuuuuuck. :\ Flabbergasted, y'all. I think I was in my blue bubble up here in Seattle; I knew people weren't thrilled with Kamala but I still thought the consensus was that she was better. And House and Senate are Republican majority now too! Goddamn.

I'm not super worried about me personally. I'm queer but Washington is one of two states to go even bluer (the other is Maine) and Seattle has stalwart political leaders who openly oppose Trump (one of the reasons why he talks shit about us so much). But goddamn, my friends and family in red states, I'm so, so sorry. This is truly worst case scenario.

Ugh, you know when you wake up and you just know that You Can't that day? You fully can't handle going into work, no matter how pleasant and chill your job is? So you call out with an apology.

And then you fret the rest of the day over having called out?

Weh. :(

Happy Fall, everyone! ♥ I'm really not ready for the weather to change; the short days absolutely kill me. XD; But I can't deny fall is the prettiest season and it puts me in such a cozy mood. ;3; I made the first stew of the season on Friday! Beef and barley stew. First time making this and using this cut of meat (chuck steak) so it ended up being a bit chewy, but the veggies and broth were amazing. Nomf nomf. <3

Continuing to play Stardew Valley, which is the exact kind of coziness I've needed! I've spotted Krobus for the first time. <3

I've finally bought a ticket and will be visiting back home next weekend. Friday-Sunday, yes that's a short trip for what's five hours of flight time, not to mention the fucking airport bullshit. But I'm grateful to be able to go.


EDIT: I started this entry last week. I ended up not visiting back home this weekend because of Hurricane Helene. :\ It actually has been, and continues to be, an absolutely wonderful time spent with cypher. Which is frankly what I would rather be doing anyway. :P

Yesterday, we went down to Tacoma to pick up some supplies at the Warhammer store and W bought a book that seems extremely promising and gay; Yndrasta: The Celestial Spear. <3 I have her mini and it's easily the one I am most proud of so far. ;3;

This morning we went to a coffee shop and did a bit of writing. I've just started Space Marine 2 and I'm having feelings. Shippy feelings. I haven't written porn in a long time but damn it if I'm going get something written and posted today. I'm holding myself to this and because I've posted it here, now I really actually gotta do it. Because fanfiction is a hobby and it doesn't have to be perfect. Raaah! Let's fucking go!

Anyways, I hope y'all's weekend is going well! I'm going to be spending part of the day catching up on my reading page so if you get an influx of comments, it might just be me yapping. XD

Edit: I have completed a ~1k fic! It is even porn! With a beginning, middle, and end! Holding off on posting anywhere until tomorrow, I want to give myself time to check grammar and stuff. But I did it! I wrote fic! I'm so happy!

Because these are fun and I never do them. Maybe I'll start! It's a guaranteed weekly post, at least! |D

1. Are you and your birth family close? Physically, no, but I'm very close to my mom and my niece. My dad passed away 2016 and I'm not close with the rest of my family (okay, maybe the sister that lives with and takes care of my mom, but I don't really like her very much and her care, from what I can tell, is less than stellar (my mom is not in danger, my sister is just selfish and stupid)).

2. How far away do you live from your various family members? I live about 2700 miles from my mom and about 1300 miles from my niece. We all live in the same country tho!

3. When was the last time you visited with relatives? OOOF. Probably 2022? W and I flew to GA for two weeks to take care of my mom after her surgery.

4. Do your relatives travel to visit you? No.

5. How do you stay in touch with family: phone calls, email, snail mail, texts, other? I call my mom almost every day to chat and my niece and I talk over facebook messenger somewhat regularly.