No.

I didn't read as many books as I wanted to this year, and I didn't do much photography or writing or make progress on other projects, despite having a little bit of time mostly to myself for the first time in almost 12 years. I did manage to make my new monthly and weekly planners instead of buying them.

We spent New Year's Eve watching the last episodes of Stranger Things

( Spoilers )

These little brown rabbits are all over our neighborhood this year. They show very little fear of people, and most of them have rather ragged-looking ears.



Summer seems to have gone by very fast.

Today was the last day of my daughter's summer social group thing, and the week after next she starts preschool, which means that I will have actual time entirely to myself for the first time since her brother was born in December 2013. It's been a while, and I have a lot of tiny things waiting to be painted, paper things waiting to be cut and folded and sewn together into larger paper things, and also I should probably clean my house or something. Finally clear out what was my mother's room. Find my own childhood diagnosis paperwork. Actually do photography again. Finish some fics. Etc. Her preschool program is three hours 4 days a week, so it's not a lot of time, but still, a very odd concept after so many years.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any pictures of the giant isopods. Apparently the aquarium people spent two years acclimating them to surface pressure.

2024 was a difficult year. We lost Nora to kidney disease. My daughter was diagnosed with autism. I realized that my son's school is failing him in ways I'm not sure how to address (the response I've gotten most often from IRL people is "Take them to court"). The worldwide explosion of antisemitism post 7/10/23 is not exactly surprising, but it is definitely disturbing, especially when it manifests in unexpected places (hobby groups on FB, for example, as opposed to political posts on X, where all sorts of nastiness is just kind of background noise).

My relatives in LA, who I haven't seen in 15+ years, are so far ok, but the whole situation, and the extent to which government incompetence seems to have contributed to it, is horrifying. We have occasionally talked about trying to move back to north-central Cali to be closer to family, but that is a fire zone too.

A docent at the Monterey Bay Aquarium told us that this exhibit was only supposed to contain one turtle, but at some point a second one appeared. Their best guess is that it was abandoned by a visitor.

I was up until 4am on Friday refreshing Twitter and trying to keep up with whatever that was that happened in Russia. Possibly the most bizarre (and yet not all that surprising) thing that I saw was the Russian civilians cheering the mercenaries and bringing them food. If thousands of Wagner fighters appeared in my town with tanks, I would not be rejoicing; I would probably hide in a storm drain in sheer terror. But I suppose that is what it means to live in a country/empire that is genuinely in the process of falling apart. An artist in my Lovecraft group on Facebook lives in Rostov-on-Don, and his primary concern was how to get to work around all the mercenaries, as though their presence was merely a confusing inconvenience.

If one has cats, one must also have cat kitsch.

I haven't been keeping up with this blog as much as I wanted to during the past few years, and 2022 was a hell of a year. In February we finally got my mother into care. In June I gave birth to a daughter (who arrived with much less drama and trauma than her brother). Later in June my mother passed away, and in July my father-in-law did as well, both from cancer, untreated in her case thanks to more than a decade of refusing to see a doctor. My father-in-law did see doctors, and he might have lived longer if his insurance hadn't denied the last-chance treatment his oncologist wanted. Neither met their granddaughter except through pictures. My mother didn't leave a will, and so we had to deal with the hassle and expense of probate.

I have learned a lot during the past two years, and my feelings about a lot of things have changed as a result. My mother's last year could have been safer, for her and for us, if not for well-meaning laws that made it impossible for the police to take her into care after the first time she attacked me. Instead we spent months living with an increasingly violent person who couldn't take care of herself and wouldn't accept help. A few years ago, before I had to live with its consequences, I would have supported that legislation and believed everything that went along with supporting it. Not anymore.

My daughter is now walking, which is alarming given how much of my mother's hoarded crap is still hanging around our house, waiting for us to find enough executive function to sort it for the junk haulers.

We adopted my father-in-law's cat, Nora, and she has adjusted fairly well to being indoor-only. She is also more tolerant of the baby than I expected, although we've mostly been able to prevent direct contact. When my son was a toddler, she just ran away from him, but she's older now, has arthritis, and doesn't really run. We set up steps for her to get to her favorite spots (and to the toilet, which is the only thing she will drink from).

Nora: