It's been a long day, and in case no one else has told you...I love you. Every one of you. All that is necessary for that is that you exist. Even if we wouldn't get along and be friends, I can still love you. You are a living being. You are worthy of compassion, healing, growth, and so much more. Go back far enough and we have shared ancestors. You are family.

My spouse ordered a Star Trek:TNG tarot deck for me, and it's here now! I was going to write about something else for my Substack this week. But...new cards!

I'm not usually excited by fandom decks. There's a history of just throwing popular characters on cards whether they really match the meaning or not. Star Trek has rich lore, though, and I feel the characters were chosen well for this deck.

Said in household debate about why someone cannot climb into a space someone else can:

"Because my body is not a flat, finely trimmed carpenter's board! MY body is a fine art sculpture made from mashed potatoes!"

We have the best non-arguments around here. 😄

Being able to say that about myself with love and joy was a big step in my healing. And even though I'm not a kid anymore and I do understand what's really being said, some unconscious part of me wants to go hide in my school library and cry while the librarian covers for me again and says she asked me to help with something and my teacher must not have gotten the message.

Kids aren't going to get it. Not all of them. Most likely not the younger ones. Many of them will pick up, "It's not nice to call people names, and it's okay if I'm weird, but weird people shouldn't be President." By the time the do understand it, that still will have done harm.

And I'm kind of afraid that proudly saying I'm weird will turn into people thinking I'm saying that's who I voted for. Again, they embraced "deplorable".

I have realized over the past few days that this whole "weird" thing is raising my anxiety. The people it's aimed at might just embrace it. (Remember "deplorable"?) And I have spent a lot of my life learning to love being "weird". Learning to stop trying to bend myself into fitting others' expectations so they won't give me That Look and say, "You are WEIRD..."

How do we tell kids it's okay to be weird while they also hear, "Don't vote for the weird guy"?

Actual conversation in our house tonight:

"I'm not ugly, but I'm not pretty. Like, you can be lawful or chaotic pretty, or lawful or chaotic ugly. I'm true neutral."

"I think you're chaotic pretty."

My Aqua Dragons are already hatching, AND...a baby Sea Monkey hatched! That one is from an egg layed by the ones I've been raising since March.

We have to find joy where we can. I'm finding it swimming around with brine shrimp.

#snake - I actually got to see Shai-Hulud at his water bowl today! In almost 4 years I've seen him in positions I recognized as "on the way to water" and "on the way back from water", but never "at the water".

I set up the Aqua Dragons (Artemia salina) tank and added the eggs. Now I have to keep track of two different numbers for days. Day 138 for the Sea Monkeys (Artemia NYOS) is Day 1 for the Aqua Dragons. I'm glad I'm writing this down! 😄

https://youtube.com/shorts/8Vi4GEy77BU?si=YMtXPddTSPTCypHy

Why do I always think an arthritis flare-up that is preventing me from playing instruments is a good time to change my strings?

I've been doing this 20+ years. It's not like I just haven't had time to learn yet.

I'm still awake at Should-Be-Asleep o'clock. It's been a physically rough week. Decided to play with the digital collage thing again and do a Lake Monster one.

There have been days when I got out of bed because I needed to pump air for them and add to the video diary. Then I might as well start the day since I'm up.

Many things bring me joy, but they do it even on days when nothing else does. I never expected to be raising brine shrimp for mental health, but it seems to work for me.

I'm getting more Sea Monkey supplies because the second on died today. I started them 130+ days ago. These aren't going back to cyst to hatch in better conditions. They just don't last forever. I'm afraid the rest might go over the next month, so I'll need to start new ones. Also going to try Aqua Dragons, which are a varient of the same species of brine shrimp.

This is like how I've seen people argue that if they don't have children in school - homeschooling, or kids have already gratuate, etc - then it's not fair for them to still have to pay taxes for funding public schools.

Those kids in school are going to be your emergency responders, store clerks, and a lot of other roles in your community one day. Just because they aren't your kids doesn't mean this has nothing to do with you.

#politics The very idea that one does not have a "direct stake" in the future of the US unless one has biological children...wtf??? I can only make sense of that as a lack of empathy. You shouldn't only be able to love your biological child like that. You can want the best for anybody's children. You can want the best for people you don't even know just because you know they exist.

Okay...he hunted, caught, and prepared his meal. Still waiting on the "eating" part. He seemed to forget it was there for a few minutes, came across it again, and acted like it's suspicious because it's dead.

Sir, YOU did that!

After 9 weeks, Shai-Hulud is eating again! And he did shed, so that explains why he wasn't eating. The snake is healthy.