Arts & Crafts
This week I worked on a thin sash style scarf in a colour that matches my floral buttondown for the wedding I attended on Friday. I skipped the weekly craft group as I was in a lot of pain that day. I decided self care was the best idea.
Of course, by the end of the night, I was just wearing the floral buttondown. I should alter that as it's a bit too long for my arms, but I really didn't have time with everything that has been going on lately. The vest also doesn't fit quite right. It's hard being short and chubby.
Decluttering & Minimalism
My goal for this week was to get my craft area set back up for streaming.
I got none of that done.
The first thing I took care of was pinning this cable to the wall as it had been bothering me quite a lot. Such a small thing, but it's another thing off of the neverending to-do list and I no longer have to think about it.
I did some paperwork on Monday. I have a huge bin in my closet to go through, but I got a chunk done and was able to put it away for now. I figure I'll get at that a bit later and a little at a time as their are larger tasks needing attention. My files are now also in my closet away from view and I feel so much better with it handled for now. I, of course, found other papers throughout the week that need to go to the closet. How irksome!
I didn't have time for anything until Saturday morning because of the other events that went on this week.
Gaming & Streaming
I spent time adding alerts for things. I want to tweak some in the future to match my spooky theme more, but for now, I just wanted to have alerts happen.
Thursday's Cyberpunk 2077 stream was entirely forgotten as I got ready for my friend's wedding. A family member isn't well, so that was also on my mind. And I was in vacation mode. A massage had me at the mall too late anyway.
For Saturday's crafting stream I planned to add holes to the arms on my chair, so they could be moved in further, but after I got the arm rests, I felt like I didn't need to do that anymore. This meant I could work on my fairy cross-stitch project instead. But, I had hardly slept after the wedding and needed more rest, so I cancelled stream and went back to sleep.
Lifestyle & Sports
I was having a lot of elbow pain early this week. I put a Tensor bandage on and suddenly I could rotate my arm much better. So I started to look into that. Apparently, my elbow is probably sore because of weakness in my wrists and forearms, which is pulling on my elbow then messing with my still healing rotator cuff further up. More muscles to strengthen that are probably weak from office work. Once I put my wrist braces on, I was able to sit with better posture much more easily.
But I also figured out that I was getting a repetitive strain injury happening. I regularly switched from mouse to keyboard with no arm support. I decided it was time to reengineer my desk a bit. The new setup lets me use the standing ability with arm support as well. My keyboard will no longer be on a tray, but on the desktop and I'll have clamp on, rotating arm rests attached to the desk. The pair of them were $75, but hopefully this fixes the underlying desk problem.
This week was an anxious one for me. I awaited news of which softball team I would be on this summer. I had a tongue (myofunctional) therapy appointment that I hoped would be the last before surgery, but that depended on if I was strong enough for surgery. I also had a wedding to attend.
On Wednesday, I got the news that I would be a member of the Peaches this summer. Some of my curling friends are on my team. I'm one of only two women, so that will be quite different from last year. Also on Wednesday, my new keyboard came. It's delightfully small, but will take some getting used to. It was only around $40, but I still deliberated not spending on it. I'm glad I got it because I've never been so comfortable typing in my life between it and the clamp on arm rests. A work station that actually fits me is so foreign after a lifetime of everything being too big for me. Usually, I don't get mechanical keyboards because of how loud they are, but I did a bunch of research and got a 60% keyboard with red switches, which are quieter than regular mechanical keyboards. It's backlit and came with some extra keys in a different colour, so I changed some of them to red.
I also switched to a wheel-free set up for my chair because my floor has an incline and I had to regularly fight with it. It was so annoying and unhelpful for writing, gaming, working, etc.
I got good news on Thursday. After much unnecessary worrying, I was cleared to have my tongue tie release and it has been booked for early June. After work, it was off to a massage. There was no PWHL game to watch, so I watched a silly creature horror called Zombeavers as I began to get ready for the wedding the following day.
The wedding was held at Bean Town Ranch in Plantagenet. A scenic woodland backdrop with ponds, little islands, horses, and carriages. After pictures, on one of the islands, the couple had their first dance as fireworks dazzled onlookers. It was the most magical, romantic, fairytale wedding I've ever been to. Dinner was tasty, but especially the sugar pie for dessert, which gave me a much needed energy boost.
Saturday was largely recovery from the late night before. I went to roller derby and just relaxed. The student massage therapists were there, so I got a little free massage as my shoulder was a bit sore. The first game was the Ottawa Junior Roller Derby vs Peterborough Area Roller Derby Juniors. Sadly, Ottawa lost. The other game of the night featured two of Ottawa's house league teams, The Street Rats vs The Alley Cats. My coworker and her partner were on the Alley Cats and they lost, but fought the whole way.
When I got up on Sunday, I made it a point to get my air conditioner installed before I got sore or something else came up. It's been a bit warm for May as of late. Air conditioners are also helpful for filtering out pollens. Next, I changed the filter on my air filter. Onward to reduced allergies!
Sunday evening saw the first of the finals series for PWHL. It was Boston and Minnesota playing for the prestige of winning the first Walter Cup. These were the two teams that struggled to get into the playoffs, so it was quite a surprise that they are the finalists. At the beginning of the season, I thought it would be Minnesota and Montreal.
Music & Podcasts
I regularly wake up with this particular song by Danielle Allard stuck in my head: No Longer Silent. That was 7 years ago. And Dani's voice has only gotten better. It's a song I want to learn on ukulele. It was a song written in support of Voice Found, which is a national non-profit for survivors of sexual abuse and human trafficking.
This week, I moved all my podcasts to Spotify. They were with Google Podcasts, but then Google decided they want it all through YouTube Music. When I initially transferred them to YouTube Music all my previously listened to episodes were marked as unplayed. Not cool. Also, there was this annoying queue that did not put episodes in order. And autoplay could not be turned off. Basic functionality was not there for podcasts, so F that. Like, why didn't they add the proper functionality they already had in Google Podcasts to YouTube Music before deciding to have us need to move there?!
But then all the ones I followed on Spotify disappeared from my library despite being a premium user. So I lost all my podcasts thanks to Google and Spotify both sucking.
While installing my new keyboard the next day, I hit something and suddenly, a podcast was playing on Spotify. Then I could suddenly see more of the ones I chose to follow the day before. I guess it needed time? I'm having trouble trusting it. YouTube Music is terrible for podcasts. Don't do that one for sure.
I'm using Podcast Addict for now. It doesn't have a web player, but that's something they are planning to add at some point.
Writing
I feverishly wrote some notes about various parts of my novel on Monday. Tuesday morning, I couldn't sleep past 6:00 AM and needed to work on my novel. I went back a couple of chapters to fix tenses.
Friday morning would have me putting together a package after I saw a submission window for a reknowned publisher was open for a short time thanks to a publicist friend posting about it on Facebook. I'm not just there for the memes. Then I awaited the email to actually submit the thing and I was worried as I was off to a wedding in a rural area that may not have steady connection.
Am I still improving the novel? Yes. But the story is finished. I'm adding garnish as it were to fill in some blander areas. And fixing some parts that are admittedly a bit messy from changing settings, tenses, points of view etcetera over the years I have been working on it. I decided that shouldn't stop me from submitting as there will be many rounds of edits before publication if I get chosen. I'll work my butt off to get the story into a marketable state.
When I returned home from the wedding, I completed the submission and began waiting to hopefully hear something. In the meantime, I continue the edits on it to make it the best I can.
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