December 14, 2023

Ugh, this weekend took up like half the week I swear.

My cousin's baby shower was on the 9th, but we had to travel the afternoon before to get to an AirBnb since my family lives like 4.5 hours north of us. We had to bring the dogs since my dad works out of state and can't come home for weekends to pet-sit in the winter, and we had to bring two of our cats who have more specialized diets to be sure they're eating properly. My cat kept breaking the carrier (it was one of those ones that are built like a duffel bag, he would split the zippers to escape), so I spent most of the car ride trying to keep him from climbing all over the place.

The baby shower itself went a lot better than I thought it would. It was neat to get to know my younger cousins, and it was nice to finally understand what my older cousins were talking about during family discussions. I'm the youngest of the first cousins, with my youngest first cousin being almost 10 years younger than me; my other cousins are their kids, my first cousins once-removed, and the oldest one I know of is apparently a high school freshman now(?? those kids are quite a bit more removed due to some immediate family issues so I don't know them well but DAMN) and the youngest were literally born last month or so. As such, I was the only kid at most family gatherings for most of my life, and with no one else in my age group and some untreated sensory issues that would make parties a literal hell, I would spend most of my time isolated in some room so I didn't have to hear everyone else or engage in small talk. On top of this, I grew up on the other side of the country in a lower socioeconomic class than the rest of my family, so I really couldn't relate to the rest of my family much at all, nevermind the age gap or the undiagnosed autism. But this family gathering was quite chill, with the older cousins matured and the younger cousins playing with each other in the basement; I played a few rounds of ping-pong with my younger cousin, and got to engage with my older cousins now that I had at least a clue of what they went through with experience.

The relatively alright day couldn't make up for the three days away from home and probably a combined full day of travel in a cramped car with the animals. I spent all of Monday just decompressing (had myself a bath spell and slept most of the day ngl), then spent Tuesday running errands, worked yesterday, then attended therapy and cooked a more involved dinner (burrito night)

I finally got some sketches done for various webpages. I figured that it's about time to design some more elements for the site, otherwise I'm not gonna get much of anywhere. Going to stay with the current color palette/aesthetic until all the elements are added. I'm honestly kinda procrastinating on designing the elements; I started with the "about me" section and got annoyed with having to do perspective on the pose I chose (I guess I was a bit ambitious given how little experience I have, but I gotta learn perspective eventually). Gonna focus on some smaller ones first, like the container for the "Stuck in My Head" feature (current plan is to make it a flatscreen or something similar) or the buttons leading to the different screens on, for instance, "Stuff I Made" so those pages have actual links to them and can actually be designed. I do have thumbnail designs now, and that's a hell of a lot more than I had to work with before, so at least there's a plan now.

That's all I had, felt like you guys needed an update given how little I've touched this site as of late. It's mostly just a creative block combined with a lack of spoons. Once I recenter, hopefully I'll get out another update at least by spring.