Wired

  HO BOY it's Friyay!

What am I gonna complain about this time!?
Well, this time around, there isn't much I can think of! The only annoying thing that happened recently was my car getting towed in our own complex's resident parking area. "Non-operational."
I leave the house never and am punished for it. Trying to contest the impound fee, but considering how they haven't answered any of my attempts to contact them, I'll just have to eat it. Sucks.
But things could be a lot worse! I have my car back, and good things are coming. That's really all I'm focused on ^_^

I started journaling, kind of!
I haven't the slightest idea of what I'm doing. Not to mention there isn't much creativity that flows in my head. Like, I can't fathom concepts of attractive designs or come up with artistic ideas. Idk, the wiring in my brain for that just... isn't set up. So I'm just jotting down whatever and trying to make it bright and loud, and appealing enough for me to continue. It's day 3. I like it.
I like lists, but only implement them in essays, and not to organize my own thoughts. For the longest time I felt that I had my own errands and chores under control just by thinking about them, but all that really came down to was being overwhelmed, not knowing where to start, and putting things off- leading to not getting many things done.

Journaling now allowed me to organize things I want vs. have to get done and it's been helpful. It's working! I like looking to and consulting my little journal to see what other tasks I can knock off. It's like work. ...Ew. I'm managing myself.

I've noticed now though.... I always leave the artsy stuff for last lol. Like I'll have clerical/school tasks and house chores prioritized over my own creative endeavors. And even if I have time to start a creative thing, I'll still put it off til the next day.

Which brain is that? The non-art one. Right? Left?
Googled it:

Correction: I prefer cats, and cannot math to save my life. I'm also highly sensitive (HSP). Like, not feelings lol but in that I pick up on everything... like someone glancing differently, or their body language can shift for 2 seconds and it's just as apparent as someone outwardly stretching their arms. Clear as day. It's annoying, especially when old bosses gaslight you about it. I don't infer emotion from it though, just notice they do it. And based on the vibes of the room or conversational context, deducing positive or negative affiliations are almost always common sense. To me. Apparently.
It's stupid ANYWAYS yeah.

What was I getting at? Oh yeah. Left brain. I'm not creative. So I put off artsy stuff listed in my journal that I wanna do. Stupid. It seems fun-ish but also taxing lol. Because I can't come up with anything satisfying. That's probably why I try to support artists who perfectly capture my love of niche bullshit, but well and beautifully.

MOVING ALONG.
Chickeng wangs

Homdray is always hangry.

So Lifa looked up a recipe for fried chickang wangs. We have the lovely set of Hot Ones sauces to explore, thanks to Chicken. And it was the perfect night to indulge in delicious suffering.

Behold. The instruments of pain.
Delicious torment awaited us
We were so excited to be hurting loololol
I'm also delighted to mention that there weren't filters placed on these photos. That trippy green/red shadow effect on the wings came from the lightbulbs

It's beautiful.

Three rows all beneath their corresponding sauce, arranged by level of scoville. Lowest on the left- highest continued to the right.
While Chicken, Lifa and myself set ourselves up for chicken wings, Homdray insisted on the shrimp variant.

I prepared a cup of cocogoat for myself. Chicken had pedialyte, Lifa had his whiskey, and Homdray his water rofl.

To bump up the levels of fun, Homdray put up 10 questions on the whiteboard that we would answer as we ate the wings. One by one. Everything was fine until we got to the last 4.

I like to think that my spice tolerance is decent. But these, one after the other, had me thinking of Pinhead cruelly playing with me. My throat, lips, tongue, and sinuses were sad.

But my resolve to not drink anything until I finished was stronger. I ate everything, answered my questions, and chugged my cocogoat milk.

Our reward for getting through this was ice cream.

The next evening, since we had more wings to go through...

We still used the sauces, but leisurely lol. And!
Lifa got Sense - 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story on his Switch :D

He already has it on PC, but for whatever reason opted for it again. It made me happy. Mostly because he hadn't played it on PC yet, and this way we could all watch him play.

He finished the 1st playthrough in two sessions. There's a lot that he can still unlock, as it has a lot of re-playablity, but from what he got to experience the first time he really enjoyed. Said it was unique in flavor and style.
I can understand why some wouldn't want to play it, as it's controls and playstyle are probably even too niche, but personally find enjoyment in exploring things I'm unaccustomed to. If I can't see myself getting into it, at least I gave it a shot. If I do find it to be a fun new experience, the surprise is always a pleasant breath of fresh air, especially in a market so heavily saturated with patterns in trends and catered to streaming as a new way of marketing.
Nothing wrong with that, just the whole picking up on everything thing. It's tiring. For me.


ARTSY ENDEAVOR
It's been a little bit since I bothered with clay. Now hopefully it's better understood why that is.

Bat, Opossum, Hyena

I've been wanting to make something bat related, but couldn't think of what. Nothing unusual there. I knew I wanted it to be tangible and cute. What color, how big, what style, or design never crossed my mind. It couldn't. So I did the next best thing, and replicated a miniature I'd made like 4 years ago of a baby bat wrapped in a blanket, inspired heavily by Batzilla's youtube channel.

But this time, I wanted it to have plush features. How can I do that? Idk. The miniature was of a brown flying fox wrapped in a lilac blankie with white dots. That's kinda cute. I made several of those miniatures, they're ... somewhere. I made 4. That one, an albino one, a black one, and a Brown bat (they have tiny faces and funny noses). I'd do that again. But how?

Well. If I wanna do plush stuff, I need fabric.

He's such a good, supportive Chicken.

I thought of taking the shortcut of just buying little wash cloths online because I dread going out, but ultimately decided that it'd be cheaper to buy the fabric, and I'd probably need other things I hadn't thought of yet. So to Joann's we went.

And I was right. I hadn't thought of additional things I'd need like stuffing lmao. And some paints, and ... other stuff I immediately forgot about.

I over-baked the heads, but whatever. These are test babies.

So why those 3? Well.. because I like opossums and hyenas...
because they look like bats lmao

First baby bat completed. Took longer than I liked. I realized my first huge mistake was forgetting to texture the clay. Big whoops. So mimicking fur patterns with watered down acrylic and pastels was needlessly agonizingly meticulous and dumb, but the face is cute.

The wrap was too long. Learning. But I hemmed it! I hate hemming. Also I cheated, and used a glue gun instead of sewing a hem because I don't have a sewing machine anymore OOPS.

And then I moved onto the opossum. I like the face, took forever to sculpt the way I wanted it, but I don't like how heavy handed I was around the eyes. Learning! The wrap was shorter, but too thick. Gotta take it easier on the stuffing.

Until I figure out how I wanna ultimately make them better, I'm focusing on mastering the faces first

I remembered to texture this time.

The cool thing about these is that bats come in all kinds of shapes and colors, so they don't all have to look alike. This relieves me of all kinds of stuff, because I'm a perfectionist... and looked into making molds. It's disgusting. But decided against it.
I'm working on this one now. Obviously. And this time, I didn't over-bake the head! Also used a different clay. And this one will be sent out to my mom. She'll have her own little baby bat to snuggle.
They're not huge. One day maybe I'll get good enough to make bigger, 1:1 sculpts. If that happens, I'd probably start exploring silicone. Clay is cool, but if I had a plush with a silicone or some kind of flexible head, that'd be dope.

The hyena got put off because I was struggling with etching the fur pattern into the baked clay, and got impatient and annoyed lol. I might just redo it, idk. But so far am prioritizing the bats. The opossum was pretty cute tho lol damn. I DON'T KNOW we'll see.

There are other artsy things I wanna do, but if I'm honest here, I want another work area. My PC area has been fine but

awesome, some people just walked into our house unannounced in the midst of a global pandemic. lovely. swear to fucking god. and everyone is like WHY ARE NUMBERS GOING BACK UP

i can't fucking imagine why that would be.

there goes my good mood.

happy friday.