December 26th 2023
Yule is officially over. Sort of, we're still in the liminal space that is the last week of the year. Somehow time always feel like it passes so slowly in the moment, but then all of a sudden it's the end of the year again.
I spent another big chunk of the month recovering from being sick. At this point I'm mostly back to full health again, though my cough keeps hanging on for dear life.
Sweden celebrates yule on the 24th of december. This year, as we have for a few yearsnow, we celebrated at my parents' house. We were very lucky that there was so little traffic and the road was moslty free of snow when we travelled there. Only the smaller roads had snow on them at the time.
This has always been my favourite yule decoration. It's a part of a song that translates to "Good evening, good evening, both Mr and Mrs. We wish you all a delightful yule". Only for some reason the person who made it put in an extra 'r' in 'Mr' ('Herre'). Also, Fröjdefull is one word, not two. The errors are what makes me so fond of it though.
Me and my brother baked jam cookies to bring for the celebration. In Swedish they're referred to as raspberry caves. I think they turned out very cute, though we didn't always get the right amount of jam in the center. They tasted really good and we got a lot of compliments on them.
When I came back home everything was freezing. I had to bundle un underneath every single blanket tat I own, except for the one I keep in the car. Njord barely wanted to leave her box, as it's positioned underneath one of the only radiators that's heated with electricity rather than firewood. And by then we'd run out of hot water, which meant no heated house either. That's the downside to celebrating away from home. You can't tend to the boiler to ensure you have hot water. At least I got to do some cuddling in bed with my cats. They took turns, of course.
My little brother is so skilled when it comes to music. It was the first time he'd ever used an accordion, yet he's already learned parts of playing Sjösala Vals on it. Our family was talking about grandpa's dad's accordion, because it's currently kept in my parents basement, and thus, little brother went and got it to try and play. He said it's difficult, since you can't see what you're doing, but he still grasped so much of it so fast.
My family doesn't really do a lot of gifts anymore. Grandpa gave me and my brothers chocolate though, and my twin gave me two pairs of earrings. My friend Ren gave me pocky. I've already finished the chocolate pieces that I don't dislike. What do I do with the leftovers though?
Dressing up is one of my favourite parts of festive seasons, holidays and parties. m not very good at makeup, but I do try. I'm now almost out of the lipstick I used to draw the little bow on my face.
As for the clothes I wore, I wanted to wear the red dress on the right on its own, but felt like I should throw on something warmer on top since it is the middle of winter after all. The shirt flashes and is of cours,e of Gävlebocken on fire. Quite exciting that it's going down by being eaten by birds this year, that's a new one. The dress is something I made a couple of years ago. I need to adjust it, I've lost quite a bit of weight since I made it. I did a quick adjustment the day of cus I didn't consider that it wouldn't fit properly anymore. Next year I'll be more prepared.
Anyway, whether you celbrated anything or not, I hope you had a good time and that you won't have too stressful a time te rest of the year. Soon we're in 2024!
December 8th 2023
I've spent the last weekand a half sick. I still have a cough that gets nasty at times, but at least I don't have a 39+ fever anymore, that wasn't very fun. I hope it's not gonna become a yearly thing, getting really sick this time of year. Last year I had covid, I'm glad I was vaccinated cus I've never been so sick in my life as I was last year.
Anyway, I made a journal section for the website! Really simple stuff for now, I might improve on it later.
I've been procrastinating going to sleep the last few nights cus I get so congested when I lie down, which means I have to sleep sitting up which is... well, I already have sleeping problems without that, so I'm up later than I should considering I'm still sick. Been catching a lot of livestreams on twitch though, it's fine.
That's how I caught some deer in the garden, actually! Wild animals (aside from hares) usually hang out further north in the garden, where I can't see them, but this time I caught sight of them!.｡.:☆
My cats have been wonderful nurses while I've been sick. Njord even stayed in the bed after noticing Kalma was already up there with me when she jumped on it for a whole 5 minutes! She doesn't like her twin brother very much. Usually she'll begrudgingly allow him to jump up on the bed when she's already there in the mornings only, she's too slepy to hiss at him most of the time in the morning. But this time it wasn't even in the morning, and he was there first! Small victories and all that.♡♡♡♡
She's also very picky with cuddles, she only realised she can get cuddles outside of bed a few months ago. Only took her 5 years to figure out. She actually sat in my lap at my desk yesterday. She enjoyed my wool skirt very much.
This week the order me and my brother placed from Japan arrived in the mail! His stuff was full of cute 659 and kinda slutty 13 from Show By Rock!!. They're fantastic little anime men. Little, I say like they're not both way taller than me.
I got some cute stuff, a Sumomone acrylic stand, little prints of Reijing Signal bromides, two doujin (one with Aion x Crow, the other a very R18 Amatelast one), all from the series Show By Rock!!.
But also! Lovely clearfiles from the Mars Red rock musical♫ It was cheaper to buy them as clearfiles rather than as posters. Shopping second hand is the luck of the draw and timing, really. I still gotta frame them and the Reijing prints so I can hang them on my walls.♡
I also got the yule presents I ordered for my brother and my bff Ren, but I'm not gonna show what that was yet lol. That'd ruin the surprise, I know at least my brother checks my site once in a while.
Tonight, my brother and I decided to make our own ice cream sandwiches. They didn't sell the gingerbread ice cream sandwiches in the store yet, so we made our own! You can really tell that we didn't bake the first batch quite long enough, but that's okay, they tasted great anyway. We got a lot of use out of the cookie cutters for both the dough and the ice cream, lol. My fingers got very chilly.
I only ate one, and nibbled on a second, but I think I might have a dash of a food poisoning on top of the remnants of my cold, so I can't eat too much of... anything really right now, without feeling sick, and the ice cream was very sweet. It's been a while since I had ice cream so I'm not as used to it anymore.
I look forward to being back at full health again, I'm planning on going to Stockholm, I wanna go mermaiding again, I wanna get back on track with my exercise... So many things you wanna do when you can't. If I could get rid of that cough and my nose stopped being so rude, that'd be great.