This year has been, well less than ideal. My mental health has never been worse and that's something I didn't even think was possible. I feel like most people who care at all are just so burned out and exhausted from all the horrible bullshit worldwide this year has churned out.
My therapist has been telling me to think about what I want to do and most of what I truly, desperately want is just not possible with my health and the way things are. However one thing that I have always loved is surprising people and seeing a genuine smile. I just love to see people happy.
For the past few years @howlingwolf23 and I have bought chocolate fundraising boxes from Sam's club and printed out positive/motivational messages on just regular printer paper and taped them onto the wrappers for his coworkers as an end of the year pick me up. They have always loved it.
A few times we have offered/given candy bars to the drive through workers at some restaurants and most of them were both shocked and giddy about it.
So this year we bought a larger variety and amount of candy and decided to make them look a bit fancier/more festive. We typed up a file with 22 different positive adjectives. Each one says You are and the adjectives we chose are: awesome! fabulous! terrific! valuable!stupendous! incredible! outstanding! splendid! spectacular!remarkable! stellar! stunning! resplendent! wondrous! enough! magnificent! marvelous! valuable! amazing! dazzling! captivating!fantastic! appreciated! a Rock Star! (yes we ran out of adjectives I was comfortable using because most of the rest we thought up or found were things that I have no way of knowing about people like kind, determined, lucky, jolly, personable, friendly, you get the point). Also if anyone has any suggestions for other positive/nice things that are short enough to fit on candy bars please let me know so I can save them for next time we do this.
We then printed four copies on silver card-stock we had and I finally decided to use a roll of ribbon that my uncle found and gave me 21 (shit that's so long) years ago and I've never used because it says I love you and has hearts on it and I have always just thought well I don't know if I love this person or even if I do if they will take it wrong or think it's tacky or any number of negative things (yeah I way over think things because I have been misunderstood so many times over the years, turns out I'm autistic so that at least explains why I've struggled with social situations and conversations). But I decided who cares, this years been awful, why not use the I love you ribbon and don't think about it, even though I'm very obviously still thinking about it. So I tied the individual candies up like a package, the soft packages are actually my favorite because the squish in the middle and look like a bow, added the sentiments and curled the ribbons. Just got done with them and I'm hoping that they make at least some people have a bit of a better day when we start offering them.
I think it's a pretty simple/easy idea that perhaps others would like to try but wouldn't have thought about so I wanted to share it. Of course it could just be the candy or a small candy with no ribbon or words and definitely doesn't have to be the quite large scale that we have decided on for this year, I mean I think 88 is a pretty large scale. I mean you could also do flowers but they can't really be tucked in a pocket and need to stay moist and not crushed, also they are pretty expensive at the store, though everything feels like that now.
This is probably kinda rambly, it's 1 am and I'm really tired but can't sleep.
TLDR: cute gift idea for strangers or coworkers to possibly brighten their day.
So, one of our staff members gave me this as a little “appreciation” gift. 🥹 Look at this cute little baby ghost strawberry. 🥺 👻 🍓 I guess I’m a good colleague? 🥹
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I've completed uploaded Claire Gabriel's Quartet Plus Two to AO3. This includes six short stories encompassing Amanda and Sarek's courtship and early marriage, Spock's birth and middle adolesence, Kirk's first meeting with Spock, and The Thousandth Man, the unabridged version of Ni Var which appeared in the paperback Star Trek: The New Voyages in 1975. Quartet originally was a print zine c. 1975 collecting the four stories set on Vulcan, and Quartet Plus Two added the other two stories in 1977. I've added them as six chapters under the title Quartet Plus Two rather than stories in a series because that's how Mom organized her other TOS work when she created the account.
Her other works on AO3:
A Second Season: a Janeway/Chakotay AU of Star Trek: Voyager season two
Simple Gifts (TOS): The story of Mom's OC raising Kirk's and Spock's children from the end of the series through the end of the Genesis trilogy.
The last time I wrote on this blog about Ni Var, my mother’s Star Trek fanfiction which was printed in the paperback Star Trek: The New Voyages, I linked to the collection of her stories on Jacqueline Lichtenberg’s Sime-Gen series website (where Lichtenberg has also archived the epic Kraith series she marshalled in the 70s when she and Mom were 70s Star Trek fanfiction writers together). The collection at the Sime-Gen site includes six of Mom’s stories which were originally published in zines titled Quartet Plus One or Quartet Plus Two. The quartet is four stories covering Spock’s parents’ courtship through his youth. First Contact is Mom’s take on when Kirk and Spock first meet. And The Thousandth Man is the unabridged version of Ni Var, which had to be drastically cut down for New Voyages.
When I made that post, however, I tried and failed to find Mom’s pages at AO3 and didn’t link to them then (though that post is edited with the link now). On those pages are her Voyager J/C stories and her La Femme Nikita (original series) stories. But also there is Simple Gifts, Mom’s magnum opus, her story of Kirk, Spock, Mom’s OC, and their children, spanning the time period from just after the events of the animated series until just after The Search for Spock. Simple Gifts is here.
This came off the needles awhile ago, but I finally got to blocking it this past weekend. The pattern is Simple Gifts by Dee O'Keefe. The yarn is Studio DK by Neighborhood Fiber Co in the MDSW 2020 colorway Bentalou. It was a fun and quick knit.
