Rae Roy

A table decoration from the 2023 OQSL Athletic Banquet. With 14 weeks left of 2023, it's time to switch to my autumn schedule. My plans include a return to Twitch streaming, playing in two curling leagues, indulging in spooky activities, writing, and continuing home improvements. First up on Monday was moving some donations to my car and fixing the cabin air filter door. Apparently, it is easy to put it back in place when it isn't hot in the car. Lesson learned. Or perhaps I had more muscles after 3 days in a row of softball? The RPMs are looking much better now that the airflow is better and the car smells better inside. After work, I watched some curling and got my bag ready for next week. Next this week was the Annual General Meeting for the Getting Started League. This is the league that will be teaching me how to curl in a thorough way. I didn't end up going. While I'm super excited about all the things planned for the fall, part of me also has difficulty with chan...

Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay. The focus of this week at home was to get my main living area reorganized. As a full week was ahead of me, I knew I wasn't likely to get a lot more done, but just having my furniture in the right places would make me feel better about the state of Tiny Condo. This started with purging the awful excuse for a gaming chair that I had for a bit. It was uncomfortable, the arms broke, and the vinyl on it was flimsy. Monday was bulk item day for this month at my building. I missed it the previous month and made sure not to miss it again. Monday evening and quite a bit of Tuesday was spent on getting set up and though I was quite sore, I felt happy to be making a huge amount of progress. On Monday, I got my desk and seating into the living room. On Tuesday, I relocated my air conditioner to my new music space. I cleaned the windows in the living room (from the inside). I set up some of my music items in the music room. I wanted to do more, but my back wa...

This week I've made a bigger mess at home in order to get it in order. Breaking a few eggs and all that. I relocated my headboard to my bedroom, so it's actually a headboard again. I was using it as an art shelf for my very large Doré print of Souvenir of Loch Lomand . It became my favourite after an enjoyable date at the National Gallery many years ago. I switched to a couple of large hooks once I figured out how high to put them on the wall. This reclaimed 11 inches of space between my TV and my daybed/couch, while making my bedroom feel more complete. It wasn't without a fight. The hooks come with the part that is screwed onto the wall flipped from how it needs to go on the wall. They also didn't come with enough screws to keep them in place correctly. I also had to get two new surge protectors that had flat plug heads on them or I wouldn't have been able to have my daybed couch against the wall. At least I found a deal on those, but talk about spending money I w...

Early in the week, I read some posts online that suggested we are supposed to be the most unhappy in our 40s. That has not been my experience despite the increase in thoughts of mortality and questions about the whole of existence, which are normal in middle age. Yeah, apparently 40 is middle age, so I've been in it for a little while. I spent my 20s attached then married, my 30s healing from that, and in my 40s, I feel like my life is improving by the day.  Does that mean everything is perfect? Nope. But I am putting a lot of effort into building a foundation for my creative efforts and that is bringing me a deep sense of happiness because I've yearned to reach these steps for so many years. Starting a newsletter has been helpful for accountability. Joining team sports has also been helpful for my self-esteem, my social life, and my self-improvement. Learning to work better with my brain is making my everyday a little bit smoother. I still have meltdowns from time to time and ...