Ha! Well if by normal you mean pjs until 2pm and scrounging for leftovers and extra chocolates like a fairground rat, then YES!

A Christmas tree in front of a fireplace with evergreens across the mantle, and a pile of twinkling lights where a fire usually is.

Happy Day After Boxing Day from my living room that is still full of boxes!

Happiest of days to you! You're one of the reasons I still linger here 💜

It sounds like you're having a truly splendid, well deserved day! May there be many, many more 🎂

It's beautiful and moody, and I would live there quite happily!

thank you! I was so lucky to be able to get in with the artist when she was doing a guest spot in Vancouver.

Shoulder tattoo of a lady-faced snail with a black and white castle in her back, surrounded by lit up Chinese lantern plants and black stars.

Freshly picked beets with the tops still on in a stainless steel sink.

A colander full of freshly picked potatoes with the dirt still on them.

Snippet of a garden bed with orange snapdragons, purple delphiniums, pink cosmos, and orange nasturtiums.

The summer is winding down and I feel there may be a light at the end of my deep dark tunnel of caregiver burnout. Despite my exhaustion and extreme social withdrawal, there have been good things.

A bunch of freshly picked beets in a stainless steel sink.

First beet harvest! In fact the first vegetable harvest ever for me! They were delicious 😋

generally speaking, we are! I've largely absented myself from most of the social medias these days - what was once fun and beautiful and informative has become just an endless cycle of misery and fear and it was really not good for my mental health.

Oh no! I hope it can be fixed. Not silly at all, I'd cry too.

Is it weird that I miss the internet from the late 2000s and early 2010s? People were getting paid as bloggers, polaroid cameras were popular again, Instagram was full of pottery and people photographing their lunches, Etsy was full of real artists selling real stuff...

these are fantastical!

An old tree with moss and scarred bark, and one wide open eye.

The summoning tree in my old neighbourhood was very clear about its nature.

Yeah. I'm going to miss viewing Thedas again through a new character's eyes.

And at least in the game the bad guys get what they deserve.

I still haven't finished Veilguard, not because I don't love it (I do, very much) but because I know it'll be the last first time forever and that makes me sad. So I continue to teeter on the line before the final mission, dragging it out as long as possible.

#DATV

the potatoes are coming up! I figure in a few months between the garlic, beets, potatoes, & onions I might have enough of a harvest to make one pot of borscht!

I appreciate the yeoman's work being put in on these play-by-plays - means I get the gist while being able to laugh instead of cry.

I can handle that, what's getting me at the moment is kid #1 will turn 27 this year, which is the age I was when I had them 🫠

Birdsong on a bright morning never fails to give me a little thrill

Into this dark and distrustful world comes Neverfell, a little girl with no memory of her past and a face so terrifying to those around her that she must wear a mask at all times. For Neverfell's emotions are as obvious on her face as those of the most skilled Facesmiths, though entirely genuine.

The people of Caverna are more ordinary, but for one thing: their faces are as blank as untouched snow. Expressions must be learned. Only the famous Facesmiths can teach a person to show (or fake) joy, despair or fear — at a price.

"In the underground city of Caverna the world's most skilled craftsmen toil in the darkness to create delicacies beyond compare. They create wines that can remove memories, cheeses that can make you hallucinate and perfumes that convince you to trust the wearer even as they slit your throat. "

Fuck Harry Potter, read literally anything by Frances Hardinge.

Especially the perfection that is A Face Like Glass.

oh man I LOVED those books when I was a kid!!!!

I just hope I have enough to make one big pot of borscht!

Closeup of a tiny beet seedling. It has a red stem and 2 bright green leaves

IMPORTANT NEWS BULLETIN!!!!

My beet seeds have germinated.

Just one half of the yard to start, it's huge and I don't have the energy to do the whole thing. I might look into hiring someone to use a sod cutter on the other side next fall or spring.

Oh I'm actually removing the lawn! I'm using the dethatching rake to pull up the all the dead grass and roots - it's all dead, I deliberately killed it. I'm reseeding it with bee turf and putting in a new flowerbed.

Dethatching my dead lawn is brutal. I can not stop sweating.

I am basic - Kettle krinkle cut Salt and Black Pepper, or if I'm going Canadian then Miss Vickies Lime and Black Pepper. With a Fentiman's Ginger Beer.

I believe it!!!!! Every vacation is just an hors d'oeuvre for the main event these days