This week’s challenges were to take 10 deep, mindful breaths, color for 10 minutes, and to take a cold shower.
The deep mindful breaths were easily done. Coloring for 10 minutes extended into coloring while listening to music for much longer. I have two coloring books that I have received as birthday gifts, and one of them is the Swearing Cats Coloring Book. I flipped through it to find a page I wanted to color and came across this one with one of my favorite sayings:
I even have a bracelet with that saying on it. I don’t color a lot, so the books are mostly not filled in. I’m also really awful at choosing colors for things. But it was a fun way to waste time and daydream while listening to music and still staying occupied with something.
I took a cold shower for all of a minute before I couldn’t stand it. I even waited for a day that I had mowed the lawn so that I’d be a bit overheated after, but the weather isn’t quite hot enough yet. I’ll take the minute, I suppose. I can almost guarantee that later in the year I will willingly take a cold shower – when I’ve mowed the lawn in July in 100 degree weather. Of course, arguably, the water in the pipes when it’s that hot out isn’t very cold either.
On an unrelated note, I also went to the Castle of Muskogee this weekend. It’s a far drive for me, but I was curious what it was like. They have a Renaissance Faire that runs pretty much every weekend of May every year. When you enter, it’s a little village of shops and storefronts, with a few staging areas for performances and special events, a playground area for children, as well as some animal attractions (rides, petting zoo, peacocks). I watched a few of the shows and spent too much money, but it was fun at least.
And as a penpal update, I have been awful in not responding to one yet. But I did respond to the other, and used it as an excuse to play with some of my wax seals.
On top of the dragon seal, I also have a phoenix, a yin/yang, and a Hogwarts houses seal.
My sidequests for this week included doing a puzzle, warming up a blanket in the dryer and getting cozy, and evading responsibilities to have a self care day. I will admit to a little shuffling because the weather was quite rainy and cool this weekend, and I originally pulled a cold shower challenge. I didn’t shuffle it too far back though – it’ll be next week. So spoiler alert? I guess?
The warm blanket was easy enough. I have a smaller throw blanket I recently bought and have been keeping on my bed, and I decided to go ahead and wash it. Then as soon as it was out of the dryer, I curled up in it. Of course, the warmth got zapped out pretty quickly, but it was nice and relaxing while it lasted.
The evading responsibilties card wasn’t too bad either – I had asked for this entire weekend off owing to nerdiness (Star Wars day, have to have your nerd holidays off). This week was a little bit of a bummer, owing to a variety of reasons. I had found a baby bird outside and was keeping an eye on it (I left it outside so the parents could watch it) but it still died. Also I had originally planned to drive to a Ren Faire, but the weather got very rainy and overcast, and I didn’t want to spend the day soggy. The weather also messed with my lawncare plans, and Dinnerly’s delivery messed up and didn’t arrive. On top of a couple of other more personal things, spending an entire day moping and indulging in escapism via books seemed in order.
So on Star Wars day, I had a good sleep in, spent most of the day curled up in bed or on the couch reading, and ordered out instead of cooking. It was relaxing, and I do feel recuperated and ready to tackle the next week thanks to it.
The last one was to do a puzzle. I ordered one of the Unidragon wooden puzzles, since they have really fun designs and the pieces are made of wood and have different shapes than a typical puzzle. I’m not really a puzzle person – they actually frustrate me to some degree. I kind of lack the patience to work on them. But I persisted, and managed to finish it! This doesn’t happen a lot, so I’m kind of proud of myself.
I belatedly also ordered an adhesive mat that they make specifically for their puzzles so that they can be hung. That should come in a few days. The adhesive portion can get cut down to size, and from the description of it, there is enough material to fit a few of their puzzles, so if I have a lot left over I might order one more. Because frustration is fun? Or because the designs are really neat? Hmm.
Darling boy Everything about you would destroy Everything about me and yet And yet I desire that destruction. Make me your toy.
And we have reached the last day of April, and finished the poetry challenge! I got lazy here at the finish line and am using the last of my built up lee-ways that I wrote before April started. The other two lee-way poems were April 16th’s “communication” and April 23rd’s “The Game.”
Strangely, up until this week, it hasn’t been too hard to write any of the poems. I don’t typically consider myself a “poetry person,” but I’m thinking I might start cycling it into the rotation. Although I have been awful at keeping up with my story prompt cards, I would like to start getting back into that. And I keep telling myself I need to get back into painting too. Ideally, I would like to do the following things every week: the Sidequest update, a prompted response (either from one of the daily prompts or flash fiction from the storymatic prompt cards), a poem, a painting, and perhaps a serial story. But, I am fairly lazy and I doubt I will do all of that every week. We’ll see if I can at least do a few though.
Regardless of what I intend, things may get a bit quiet after this. Now that we’ve been done with the 2023 Writing Challenge for a month and have had some time to sit on it, my friend and I are going to compile the chapters, exchange feedback, and work on rewrites, with the goal of slapping the polished products on Amazon’s self publishing by 2025. So no serial updates of any sort this year as we finish that out. But once we’re done with that, we can start a 2025 writing challenge.
My sidequests for this week were to go to bed early and get an early start the next day, stand barefoot in grass, and to take myself on a date.
I actually went to sleep early a few separate times this week – both Wednesday and Thursday, I felt generally pretty tired and conked out. I think as a result the poems were later in the afternoon, and I used my backup for one of them. But that was a pretty easy one to do. The first night that I fell asleep early didn’t really felt like it had helped much the next day, but the next night I felt really refreshed when I woke up.
The next one was to take myself on a date. This coincided pretty well with a weekend that I had a lot of plans. On Friday I drove to OKC to check into a hotel, and then later that evening went to the Science Museum’s 21 and over night.
The theme for this one was “Ye Olde” SMO21+. I had never been to one of them before, nor had I ever gone to the Science Museum. It mostly seemed like an excuse for adults to browse and interact with the exhibits without having to share the space with children, since it is a very child friendly and hands on museum. They played music and had areas set up for activities and to sell drinks. It was pretty packed and the activity tables filled up quickly so I wasn’t able to squeeze in at all of them, but one involved making soap (mostly you just chose the scent you wanted and mixed what they gave you), another involved cutting your own stamp from an eraser and possibly being worked through making your own mini Gutenberg press out of cardboard. They also had bookbinding and calligraphy, an area set up for jousting on bicycles, a small trebuchet which they used to launch balls, as well as microscopes, medicine bags, an armor station, and flower crown making.
In the VIP room, the VIP ticket got you a free drink and you could make your own personal coat of arms and design your own facemask. It was a lot of fun, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even get a chance to wander through all the exhibits before they were shutting down. They do the 21 and over nights a few separate times throughout the year, so it’s something I definitely plan to return to with a friend that was interested but worked this weekend.
The reason I got the hotel room was because the original plan was to attend a water lantern festival the next night, which would have made a good opportunity for my self date. Alas, the weather was bad so the water lantern festival was rescheduled. So on Saturday, my self date did not involve a romantic lantern send off, but did still go pretty good. I actually put on a dress and took myself up to a cake store I had been wanting to try to buy a Japanese fluffy cheesecake and a Vietnamese coffee (both really good, at Cake It by DaDa) and then I drove back downtown to go to the OKC Museum of Art. Unfortunately, the art museum was closing early because of the weather as well. I still managed to see all of the exhibits at least. OKC also had their art’s festival this weekend, but it was all shut down because of concerns with the weather as well.
Originally I had a reservation for a spendy restaurant downtown, but I didn’t want to linger for an hour wasting time before they opened, and if everyone was that concerned about the weather I figured I would spend my evening in the hotel room. Still, a cake luncheon and browsing the art museum counts as a date, as far as I’m concerned.
I drove home today and have been cleaning and doing laundry, but after running out to get some thai milk tea, I paused for a moment to complete the last card: standing barefoot in grass. I will admit that on occasion I do shuffle the cards around a bit, and this was one that I had pulled earlier in the year when everything was still winter dead. I didn’t think it suitable to do it at that time, so I put it back into the deck and pulled another, and it finally came back around.
My yard is mostly weeds more than grass, and very overgrown at the moment. I need to mow on a less wet day some time this week! I think I expected it to be pokier because of the weeds, but it was still quite soft to stand in.
So that all completed the sidequests for this week! As a follow up addendum, I have heard back from both of my penpals at this point. When I got the PO Box, I also signed up for Informed Delivery so that I wouldn’t have to regularly run 15 minutes out to where I rented the box to check it. Whenever I have mail delivered, I get a picture of it sent to my email, and it has been quite exciting each time to get an actual letter. I have responded to one of them, and will work on the response for the one I received yesterday sometime this week.
i saw it in a movie once. the best place for a secret – go deep into the mountains whisper it into the hollow of a tree and seal it with mud. leave it behind you.
why do we do this to ourselves? harbor these things and wish to share them? throwing unspoken desires digitally anonymously to strangers in the form of unsent letters postcard secrets, poems missed connections, music and indulging in the idea that maybe they will see… or maybe it is the hope. that maybe you will see where your secret reached for you?
don’t do this to yourself. no one is reaching for you. it is time to let go. find a hollow to whisper into. let it out. seal it. and leave it behind you.
(Non poem related addendums, the movie is In The Mood For Love and it’s fucking beautiful, and I just googled it and can’t believe PostSecret is still running, and every time I sign up for reddit I get sucked into reading Unsent Letters. There is something compelling and beautiful about the things we can and can’t let go of.)
mehryment 