I have decided to Do Things during my vacation. I may not be able to go anywhere or see people, but I Shall Do Projects!

Vacation Day 1:
Amount of time slept: 7.5 hours, woke up in the 6 a.m. range anyway, blech. I'm curious to see what my actual natural sleep schedule is (it's so rare I get to find out) for two weeks.
Did I exercise: Yes, walked around the apartment for 90 minutes and even lifted weights with a gallon water bottle for like 5 minutes. Go me!

I plan on working on at least two craft projects a day and one writing project most days:

Assigned projects for the day: In addition to whatever other projects I may do, I'm assigning myself one to finish during the holiday season and to work on unfinished objects around the house.

* Patchwork sweater: knit 4 squares (I'm doing this per day until I hit count), blocked some more squares. I have now knit enough squares (18 apiece) for the front sides. Sleeves will have 24, back will have 30. One of those sides is totally blocked and/or drying. My plan is to make 106 squares out of my handspun yarn (which is lumpy bumpy "art yarn" that you can't do much else with) and sew them together into a cardigan sweater, per the "Harry Styles" one that is going around the Internet. I actually do not like the Harry Styles sweater (it's huge, don't really like how the colors went together), but I saw this girl's crowdsourced squares version and really liked them better, so I'm going for something like that. The goal is to finish this by the end of vacation.

* Unfinished Objects #1: I have decided to work on my butterfly sweater. Years ago I designed a sweater with a built-in cape and then I wanted to put butterfly appliques on it. I hand spun yarn trying to replicate a blue morpho butterfly. Then I looked for butterfly patterns on the Internet, I knit/crocheted a few....then didn't like how they were coming out... So I frogged some of the butterflies I thought came out shitty, and I blocked out two of them to see if they look better while all flattened out. That's all I did on that today because...

Unassigned projects:
* I didn't do much on the butterfly one because I want to make my own dragon, and the yarn I ordered for it actually came today instead of tomorrow when it was due! It's a Christmas miracle! So I did that.

Writing: Other than writing this journal, I did not start on the writing project I intended to do since I was busy all day (see below) and spent like 7 hours on Zoom. Well, maybe tomorrow.

Other Activities:
I went to an online workshop on boundaries with this lady again, since clearly I need some assistance with this sort of thing. It was some lecture and some group discussion stuff about your issues, role play, practicing asking for things.

I will say at one point that I was partnered with this poor girl whose issue was that her boyfriend criticizes her all the time and the boundaries of asking him to stop it when he doesn't want to, argues back, and "loves to push boundaries." I should not get into details, but it sounds like he does it all the time to the point where I thought, "Does he actually love her or does he enjoy making her feel like shit all the time?" Because even if he does something wrong, somehow it's her fault, said he "pulled a (her name)" when he messed up....I was seeing red. Also, he hates Dolly Parton and was giving her shit for liking her, WHO IN GOD'S NAME HATES DOLLY PARTON?!?!?

She said she asked one time what with all the criticism, is he trying to help her, and he was taken aback and said "sure," but.... Oh yeah, and he's proposed marriage to her! Meanwhile I was thinking, does he like her at all? Would his life be perfect if she wasn't there ruining it by being a human and accidentally dropping something once in awhile? Good god.

Anyway, back to the workshop, I liked a point Florie made about how you want to caretake other people because you know how hard it s for YOU to stay no, so you don't want to do that to other people! So you don't want to ask! That's exactly how I feel about it! "We're so rewarded for NOT having needs." Which led into the practicing asking things bit. I dunno if I think it covered so much of my issue of "how do I deal with having to escalate my no's/scream and shout/slam the phone down/refuse to talk for days/weeks/months in order to set them?" but I don't think most people have that issue in the first place.

Later in the day my online friend Claire (she is the one who got me into online plays early in the pandemic) threw an impromptu crafting Zoom party, inviting the crafters on our mutual chat channel and some of her friends. That went on for like four hours and was lots of fun and with good conversation, albeit I didn't like, take notes on that since I was working on the second dragon.

Things I Watched:

(a) I watched a play last night, “Guilty Pleasures.” I wasn’t sure about it, but I did get interested, at least.

Larry (a Pulitzer-winning playwright) and his wife Jinx (college professor) are not having sex for the last 3 months. Larry is yet another self-absorbed neurotic Jew who wants to write serious works about Rwanda and I hate him. Jinx just wants to get laid already. They are on a cruise* with a famous married couple, Charlene the actress and Peter the news anchor. Little does anyone know that those two hate each other and want to split up, but are keeping up appearances on the cruise. Meanwhile, Larry and Jinx agree to give each other a “free pass” to sleep with the other couple. Charlene apparently claims to Peter that she has slept with Larry, which Peter then mentions to Jinx, and then Jinx sleeps with Peter, and then it turns out Larry didn’t sleep with Charlene, so to even the score Jinx says she’ll help him sleep with her.

.....Yeah, it’s that kind of show. Frankly, I was rooting for Jinx to sleep with Peter, who may be a cheater (Charlene says he’s sleeping with the private detective she hired to see if he was having an affair), but god knows he’s nicer and funnier and friendlier than navel-gazing Larry who can’t even bang. Jinx even says the best parts about Larry are AFTER he’s had sex, but he can’t even get there any more.

Anyway, the plot continues along those lines, with Jinx and Peter contributing to this whole wife-swapping/fake jealousy plot. I have to say, I root for Jinx and Peter, who are at least fun, whereas the other two are wet blanket assholes. I can’t think of anything likeable about Larry. I hate Larry. I do NOT root for Larry to get his wife back. Guess what happens. BLEAH.

* I’ll note that there’s one mention 15 minutes in about how there’s Purell everywhere for no good reason, but you should use it frequently. I about choked, but no, this play doesn’t go to pandemic places.

(b) The Shows Must Go On has Kinky Boots on this weekend. I've seen that before IRL and I deem it worth seeing again and would tell others to watch it.

(c) The Sacramento Comedy Spot Holiday Special. Highlights: "A Karate Christmas Miracle."
Lowlights: let's face it, talking about redoing the stage is not very exciting. Especially the paint samples. In all honesty, I got bored and shut it off after awhile. I miss the Comedy Spot, but I dunno, it was just feeling so-so for me.

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