AngryOwl Productions

studio for Farmhouse Familiar Crafts and myriad other projects of mine

[heylookitsratatoskr]

It's been a rough day at work, and I'm proud of myself because even though I made a mistake 10:30 in the morning that felt like it was going to throw me off for the whole day, I've been able to get stuff done with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

I do not handle stress well. This is hard. And today I have done a hard thing. Part of that hard thing was recognizing that I was freaking out about it so I went for a walk. When I came back I had a cup of cloning tea to settle my stomach and I ate lunch. It was now 2:00 in the afternoon and I have completed a good 80% of my checklist. I have a little less than an hour and a half left in my day. I don't think I'm going to finish that last 20%. But I bet I could do 10.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

1/02/26

I was so tired at the end of the day. I didn't feel like I could do anything. It was a bit stressful at work. The thing that made it all better was my darling husband trying to arrange a date. I was too tired and overstimulated to engage in the mild and comforting activities that he had planned, Basically watching TV on the couch together and having this sweet treat while we cuddle, but it made me so happy that he arranged it that he thought of it and he was so considerate of me. Romance means something different for everybody and being seeing, recognized and understood. That's what I need. I'm so grateful that I have him to give that to me.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

I was inspired by another blog here and I feel like I did something like it with my previous photo posts.

Something Good every day.

1/1/26

For new years day, I got to finish 2 separate projects that I've been working on for a while. One was a gift for my MIL and he put it on right away, which was delightful. The other is a massive scrap made pouf Ottoman which I now need to figure out how to stuff, but in the mean time, it is full of craft supplies to fill it out. The day ended with a cuddle puddle on the couch watching a movie together as a family.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

Today is very busy, but I was visited at work by these absolutely perfect little fairy angels with the bluest eyes I've ever seen. It is 50° f and raining gently today.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

[heylookitsratatoskr]

I don't know how to take a picture of a sun shower, so here's a bunch of flowers that I saw. It is December 19th, 12:15 p.m. The temperature is 45°F.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

Week old chicks! This video is about two weeks old itself now and the baby birds have fully feathered wings, though their bodies still resemble cotton.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

They are older now. And bigger. More than doubled in size.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

Week old chicks! This video is about two weeks old itself now and the baby birds have fully feathered wings, though their bodies still resemble cotton.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

A little cup of succulents, growing on the corner of my sink. The cup is old and cracked, and leaks when filled. Perfect for a tiny plant.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

They got taller!

[heylookitsratatoskr]

There is another baby!

[nitewrighter]

I actually do feel like the "unemployed friend on a Tuesday" meme actually helps de-stigmatize unemployment because it frequently affirms that when you don't have a job you're more likely to be getting up to some weird shit rather than just lazing around. But I also feel like the unemployed friend is frequently up to some random shit because there's a whole pile of miscellaneous life tasks that full-time employment keeps people from. The unemployed friend is helping their cousin move, or babysitting, or checking in with a neighbor with mobility issues. The unemployed friend is a walking thesis on the inflexibility of our current labor landscape and just how much work exists outside of work.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

This is why it is so important for the "normal" people to maintain their friendships with the "mess" people. Not only for the perspective, but so they can help each other out. I have a job, a house, a child, and a tax guy. My life skills are wildly different from the skills picked up by the twice divorced marine who posts on Thanksgiving about sharing a meal with a homeless man he found by the side of the road and this world needs both kinds of people.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

A little cup of succulents, growing on the corner of my sink. The cup is old and cracked, and leaks when filled. Perfect for a tiny plant.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

They got taller!

[hackfurs]

me in the. me in. the. uhm.

[orcboxer]

it's snow i think

[heylookitsratatoskr]

This exchange could have been written by either Shakespeare or Sir Terry Pratchett. I would believe either.

[homunculus-argument]

You know what I've never really seen realistically depicted in fiction? The way that people in places that get a huge amount of snow deal with said snow. Specifically in the cities. I get that it's probably not exactly an intuitive thing to think about if you've never lived in a place that gets a lot of snow, and even if you do, you probably figure that they must have some really sophisticated infrastructure systems specifically for this purpose. It's not like they'll just scoop the snow off the streets and gather it into huge piles, and then just climb over the progressively larger and larger snow piles every single year for months while waiting for the piles to melt in the spring.

We do. There's no point in planning more sophisticated systems to get rid of something that'll eventually just go away on its own. So they just pile the snow into randomly designated spaces that cars or people aren't supposed to go through, and let it pile up. There's significantly less street parking available in the winter because some spots where you could otherwise park a car are currently the parking spot of a snow pile three times taller than a car.

You get used to it. And if you grow up around here, it never even occurs to you to think of it as something strange in the first place.

[rozenkingdom]

When I was a kid, where I grew up, we'd have a couple of good, hard snows in winter (and sometimes in April but its fine dont worry about it) and the school would do the Exact Same Thing. They'd shovel all the snow into these huge piles along the chain link fence denoting recess from freedom and we, the children, would push it all into a rough wall shape. And then we'd climb up to the top and run along the snow wall and occasionally you heard a crunch and then a yelp and suddenly Caleb from the class over wasn't behind you anymore but hey, man, thems the breaks. You play on the snow wall and sometimes it takes a child.

[homunculus-argument]

That's just the way it is. Natural selection picks out the weak ones by fourth grade.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

When I was a kid in Vermont, we dug tunnels through the snow bank in the playground. It was a straight up rabbit warren. They never tried to stop us, or if they did, they didn't do a very good job of it. It was a mixed ages school, but I don't remember how old the oldest grade was. But I'm pretty sure there were some teenagers out there digging the best tunnels.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

Who is trying to bake their foot warmer?

Got a new foot warmer for under my desk and... What? Why is this necessary? Yeah it was a bit curled when it came out of the package, I get the warning against ironing, but baking? Really? Did someone do that?

[heylookitsratatoskr]

Very proud of myself for figuring this over out. Crochet my herbs together to dry to them. Hung on command hooks. Probably could have put them in a better place, but meh. Good enough for now.

[halcyonnightmare]

Does anyone else get nauseous as they read their own first draft of writing? Even just putting the words on the screen that I feel are a facsimile of what I want to say fills me with endless dread and embarrassment.

[heylookitsratatoskr]

Oddly enough, after 2 decades of trying to write on a computer, I have found freedom in writing in paper and ink. I get a cheap but comfortable notebook, and a cheap but comfortable pen, and I fill the notebook with what I'm trying to say on one page, and on the facing page, I add notes about what I want to change, people I want to ask for help, rewrites of sentences that didn't come out right. And I know the whole time I'm writing that before anybody else is going to have a chance to see it, I'm going to go through it all again and rewrite it by typing. Every word and letter I put down I will have an opportunity to change and fix. It's been very liberating.

Because, and I can't say this loud enough, you can't edit a blank page.

But what do I know? I've never published anything.

[vintageeveryday]

Joseph Ducreux (1735–1802) was a French artist known for his expressive and unconventional self-portraits. Unlike many portraitists of his time, who adhered to strict formal conventions, Ducreux infused his works with humor, exaggerated expressions, and an almost modern sense of personality.