Our first foster child is arriving any minute.

13 hours in. No one has died and/or cried yet. So this is good. She is safe at school and all is fine.

Why I didn’t RP tonight:

If some internet person changes and doesn’t do the problematic shit so well that I can’t tell they are the same person, then congrats, I’ll never know.

I have so many positive feels about Norwood’s end. I’m really happy now it wasn’t RPed out, because I’m not sure it could have been done as gracefully as the action result came out.

Norwood was such a big part of my soul that even after I came to admit I didn’t have room to actively RP any more, I couldn’t let him go. I would sign on every few days to check on him.

Everyone who was involved gets .

May I share my foster kittens with y’all here? Even if I can never find here because it doesn’t show up on Google Results. (I have it bookmarked finally.)

My foster fail Calypso is a HUGE cuddle bug. She loves to cuddle up with other cats.

My senior baby Kiva is not a cuddler, but she doesn’t mind Calypso much, and basically raised her.

So they’ve come to a compromise. Calypso is allowed to lay NEAR Kiva and Kiva will not complain. Calypso tests this sometimes to see how much cuddling she can get away with. Today it was being curled into Kiva’s tail with one Calypso aw on Kiva’s butt. It makes my heart melt.

He sees more ghosts.

Yeah - Until the very end they had me CONVINCED I was the bad person in the interactions. I fell over myself apologizing for hurting them and making them uncomfortable. It wasn’t until I found myself sobbing with my laptop on my lap at the top of a staircase that I finally realized - this wasn’t okay. It WASN’T ooc personal my female alt didn’t like their PC. It WASN’T my fault I didn’t want to RP some things. All of those were perfectly good boundaries and I was being emotionally manipulated by someone who knew exactly what to say and when to say it.

Now, do I think the person behind the screen is some kind of cartoon villain twirling their mustache, petting a white cat, and itching to press the destroy button? Nah. I think they found a way of behaving that typically results in them getting attention (often it doesn’t matter if it is positive or negative) and so they repeat the behavior because it fills a need.

If they are reading this, I hope they know that it is possible to get attention for doing the right things. This doesn’t have to be your entire internet legacy.

Tiny asshole kitten Benjamin Sisko was wrapped around my leg chewing and clawing.

I got tired of it, and now only 60 seconds later, he is asleep with his head supported by my palm.

My revenge will be letting one of the insane other six pounce him once they realize he zzzzed out.

Just the bestest of mamas.

OMG THIS IS A DOG PARK, AUNT YOU BROUGHT ME TO A DOG PARK.

Am not human, just cat bed.

It still amazes me that Thyme (gray cat) sleeps with us from the second lights go out till we get up in the morning. Even if her BFF and chosen sister Calypso wasn’t there Thyme would still be asleep on my feet.

It is ABSOLUTELY OKAY to realize a mistake, apologize, but then

NOT FUCKING DO THAT THING AGAIN.

Ghost particularly has shown HE HAS NOT CHANGED. Reading his posts is making me flash back to arguments about CRT and making sure we teach “both sides” of historic events. Guess what!! There isn’t always two sides. If one was pure evil, I am not going to teach that as a reasonable path to follow. I’m going to tell kids (in religion removed language) “This is the paved path to hell, watch out for people doing this because all THIS OTHER SHIT will happen as a result.”

How do we heal the community? Maybe we start by not trying to apologize for the well established bad actors.

Also… weird how the only person to mention BMD is Derp. I would say a majority of us here are now NOT THERE and if we had some organized conspiracy we would just all go make fake accounts to fuck up MSB. We wouldn’t sit in our little thread here and complain.

I hope Boots (Chai) giving his mother a kiss while pretending to be a hat makes you feel a tiny bit better.

@farfalla

I get your point that it isn’t actually time wasted, but it sure has every hallmark of wasted time as well as the emotions.

I heavily resent the time I wasted building up relationships on Gray Harbor with someone who turned out to be at best a sex pest and worst a downright predator. All of the fun I had before they turned on me is soured now. I can’t get that time I now know was ill spent back. Not only that but it has had long lasting effects on my ability to enjoy rp and the building of a story. I can’t just dive into a good narrative any more without first exploring if this is worth my time… and that just isn’t fun at all, so in practical terms I don’t engage to that level any more.

Husband and I have a year long bet going.

Goal: I read 100 new-to-me books this year.
Reward if I win: I choose where we take our next vacation and husband has to plan 100% of it. No mental load for me.
Reward if I lose: Husband chooses and I help plan.

We have added some tweaks for my sanity sake:

1. Two books previously read count as 1 (so I can still use them as anxiety control but not hold back the challenge)
2. Audio books over 8 hours count as 1, under 8 doesn’t count.
3. Books all have to be 100+ pages long.

My happy: we are halfway through the year, and I just hit 50!!!

It has been a stressful few days, but the FIP medication has done WONDERS. Skipper started eating on day two, and last night was strong enough to start complaining of being lonely. We took the chance to reunite her with her older brother (same mother, different litters) Ken. He had been crying of loneliness since the moment she left. The instant she saw him she began to purr loud enough to be heard outside the room. The purr made him realize she was there and he darted into her cave and gave her a head lick.

She still had a LONG road, (84 days of injections!) But we are optimistic!

My husband and I are officially certified as foster parents!!

Our certification worker wants to see us one more time before we get a placement.

Our foster daughter has some pretty extreme behaviors, and today she exploded pretty spectacularly. So we had to call off going TO a fireworks show because helping her regulate in a crowd of people is impossible.

We didn’t deprive her though and went outside to see what we could of the big shows. There were A LOT. She was screaming with joy and jumping in and down out of her mind with glee.

A few houses over a family was setting of some legal fireworks and so she asked if we could go watch. I agreed and we walked over to ask permission to watch.

This family just reached out and ENVELOPED my little girl in love. First offered a sparkler, then a whole box (“don’t let the fun end!”) Then s’mores, and finally they broke out extra chairs for all of us. Grandpa of neighbors teased her like mad. Just such amazing kindness I almost cried several times seeing the joy on this little girl’s face.

There are just good people.

(Also the dad was a smoker and little girl has had some bad experiences with smokers in the past, so it was really healthy of her to have a healthy one.)