My husband is Puerto Rican, so I was introduced to Second Christmas...um, I mean Three Kings Day...when we met. Things got in the way this year, and it was today that his mother gave us our gifts.

Y'all! She got me a tiny kalimba! 🥰🎶

@Linwelly On your own. Look up neurographica or neurographic art and there are tutorials online. Since you really just need to see the process, I've found multiple tutorials are good for seeing how different people do it, but you really only need to look at one to get started.

The book is absolutely worth getting, by the way! The author is Tiffany Hammond, and the book is "A Day Without Words". She is a Black autistic woman who is mother to two autistic sons, one of whom is non-verbal.

It's a children's book about all of them communicating without verbal language for a day. This is something their family regularly does to understand and support non-verbal people.

Saw someone who has a book coming out in May say we'll all have her book on our shelves before we have a Speaker.

@Vhines38 Congratulations!

@Shelter I don't think I've ever adjusted to how commonly people say they "love" something. A casual, "Oh, I love that movie!" is maybe more like, "It's a good movie. Not a favorite, but worth watching again," from me.

So I hear, "I love..." and I go full "YES! We have a common interest! I can info dump for HOURS!" I've been scaring potential friends off that way for 45 years.

@XaoslordErie It's a form of art therapy. You focus on what's stressing you and make some scribbles. Then you go back and go over lines, round out and color in angles where they cross. Coloring is optional, black and white is fine. Done regularly, it can help retrain the brain to understand stress can be transformed into something beautiful.

Experimenting with neurographic art again. After the first piece, I let myself get too caught in what I wanted the end result to be and hated the next two pieces. Working this time on being more mindful of giving myself over to the process and appreciating the result for what it is. #CoSoArt

@XaoslordErie I'm resisting the urge to look it up and check because I don't want to spoil it if I'm completely wrong. I want to say it's either Ed or Ted.

An article on why all dinosaur stories are cosmic horror. Yes, it references "The Land Before Time".

My generation was doomed early. We didn't make it out of elementary school before the deaths of Optimus Prime and Littlefoot's mom.

https://www.tor.com/2023/01/04/the-land-beyond-spacetime-dinosaurs-and-cosmic-horror/

Me: "I can do this real quick! It'll only take, like... 10 minutes!"

Me, 4 hours later: "Am I ever going to accept the fact that I cannot estimate time with any level of accuracy?"

@ThrasherPrime They can go back and forth, sometimes skipping one for a while, and the intensity can change. It's really more "these things make up the cycles of grief", less "5 Simple Steps to Get Out of Grief and Back to Being Shit On".

@TomeReader This has actually been so confusing for me. Once I realized people were abbreviating Mrs. Greene's name, I've still had to stop and re-read things several times, trying each option to see what makes sense.

@BlockDerFraun I'm still learning to handle feeling like my body has done something without my permission, but my family is really good with seeing me through the fear and helping me with things around the house.

@LarsTheWanderer This calls for a song about songs about rain.

https://youtu.be/iEkQGa_O5tU

We're pretty sure I had a seizure in my sleep again. All the symptoms are there. My seizures are non-epileptic, and having one makes me afraid for a while...which increases the chances of having another one.