I'm worried I'm coming down with something. The fatigue is still really bad, my throat is red and sore, I feel weak and a bit achy all over, and my brain just feels fuzzy. I don't feel as earth-shatteringly horrible as I did when I've had the flu in the past and I don't feel feverish, so I'm hoping it's just a fluke. I was spending time with my nephew on Sunday and he was coughing a lot, which my sister was insisting was just allergies. I was skeptical then, but now I'm really not so sure about that. I really don't want to get sick. I've had a difficult past couple of years health-wise and I'm worried getting an acute illness could set me back. I have a chronic illness that can get flared by acute illness/infections and periods of bed rest so when I get sick, I get worse overall and it takes a while to dig back out of that hole. I've still managed to not get covid up until now, so I hope it's not that either. I should probably take a test though. My husband is going to get the humidifier cleaned up and ready to use tonight so I hope that will help my throat some.

Since I wasn't feeling too good last night either, I started playing The Sims 4 again. In general I find that TS4 is just simply lackluster even with mods. TS2 is my forever favorite and I still play it a lot. But a few months ago I started Morbid's Ultimate Decades Challenge on TS4 and I was having so much fun with it. I took a long break and now I'm getting back to it. I started in 1300 and I'm now in 1340 on my 2nd generation. I'm considering making a page on my website to share my legacy family portraits and updates. Basically this is how I feel about my sims:

I feel like crap so I'm done writing. Probably just going to lay here and stare at the ceiling for a bit. Maybe I'll have some soup.

I'm soooo fatigued today so I'm just vegetating, trying to hydrate, and get some rest. Luckily, I don't have much that needs to be done in the next few days. For New Year's Eve I think we're going to go see one of the Christmas light shows and then come home and eat snacks, have some champagne, and watch the ball drop. We don't have cable, so we might just do the ball drop on Animal Crossing. Then New Year's Day we're supposed to be visiting my family. I should think of something to make to bring. Probably a dessert. I made a gingerbread loaf cake and some cookies for our family Christmas get together. The cake was just okay to me, but others liked it. The cookies were delicious though.

My Christmas overall was really nice! Mostly a low-key event which I'm happy about. I got a lot of really great presents and I think the presents I gave out were well received too! Some highlights of things I got: an electric blanket, some new clothes, games, a book... I got Stray and started playing it the day after Christmas. I beat it the next day, I was just so into it. I loved it so much that I got my husband to start playing it after I finished it and he just finished it yesterday. I was eagerly awaiting the game's release earlier this year, but didn't end up buying it for myself because I'm trying to stop buying new games unless I've worked through enough of my backlog (which is probably never going to happen). I was so glad to get the game, and I think I ended up loving it even more than I expected to! If you're reading this and haven't played it, go play it now! It's so much more than "cute cat game". I loved the world and level design, the sound design and music, characters, story... the whole thing was just amazing to me. I still have some trophies left to get, but I'll probably end up playing again and getting the platinum soonish. I would honestly recommend the game to anyone.

I've been a loyal devotee to Revlon's Balm Stain in Honey for a long time. Probably close to 10 years? Whenever it was that those and the lip butters came out and were the hot thing. Early 2010s? It's been my go-to simple, no maintenance required daily lip color. Sadly for me the balm stains were discontinued a while ago and I still haven't been able to find the perfect replacement. I want something that matches the color pretty close, leaves a lasting stain, is not drying, doesn't smudge... and I just can't find it. I haven't even found a product that's functionally good enough to start worrying about nitpicking the color match. The only other balm stains I've tried so far are not pigmented enough. Products that last long enough and ARE pigmented enough are usually too drying. I got an Etude House Fixing Tint in Mellow Peach for Christmas, and I like it. It's not a balm stain. It applies kind of like a liquid lipstick, but it's not dry and doesn't make my lips look all cracked and sad like most liquid lipsticks do. Once it dries though, it doesn't really feel like most liquid lipsticks, it's more like a tint. I also have one of the Peripera Velvet lip tints, and I really like the texture of that one. But anyway, the Etude House one is not bad, I do like the product. The color isn't quite right for daily wear for me though. I thought peach would be nice, but it's a bit too peachy. I might try some other shades of the same product. Why does every product I love have to get discontinued? ;~;

I managed to clean the bathrooms and study Korean a bit today. I haven't studied in ages, not because I particularly dislike it, but actually sitting down and starting the study session is the hard part. The only reason I'm still studying anyway is to communicate better with my in-laws, but I already get by well enough and use my husband as a crutch to translate when needed. So I think I generally don't feel this great sense of urgency to keep studying, but I know I should. I read, write, and listen pretty well, but I'm terrified of speaking so I just try to say as little as possible. That's my big weakness and something I know I need to work on, but I've been saying this for like a decade, so... will I ever change? My husband is the eldest son and my mother-in-law had a dream of the typical Korean daughter-in-law, which I'm obviously not in many ways on top of just not being Korean. She's very kind and she loves me, and I do feel bad that we can't have a closer relationship because of the language barrier. Aside from my anxiety about speaking, I do feel like I'm just at a difficult point in language learning as well. I'd say I'm somewhere in the intermediate - upper intermediate range and making progress feels impossible. It's like a never-ending plateau. But maybe I'm just making excuses for myself.

Lately I've been lacking motivation to do the things I should do and lacking the energy or will to do the things I want to do. So the days just pass by doing absolutely nothing other than scrolling and refreshing the same websites that are doing nothing positive for my mental health. There's this fucking annoying fetishist who has been posting on vintage and vintage fashion subreddits for a long time now and has just recently come back on another new account. It's a guy wearing a mask made to look like an old woman, a wig, and breast plate, and the tackiest outfits that are never actually vintage. I'm so sick of this guy. I want to see vintage items and clothes, not whatever this is. But there's almost always people patting his ass saying how great he looks... He constantly makes new accounts after getting suspended, but it's always weird shit about pretending to be an old woman who loves sex. It's gross. The mods on the vintage sub don't do shit about it either. I know, I know, how could I expect anything better on reddit? This shit is on every women's fashion-oriented subreddit so I should really know better, but I just wish they'd stop. Luckily on his latest post people are calling it out more, so I'm sure he might disappear for a bit again, but he always comes back. Reddit in general just seems to irritate me a lot.

Though, I guess I've just been irritable in general lately. I wonder if I'm sliding into a bit of depression. I've been sleeping alright and eating okay, so nothing too bad. Just lazing around doing nothing productive with most of my time. Maybe I'm feeling a little down due to the holidays. I've noticed that happening to me over the past few years. I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting older, because holidays are hard when you're involuntarily childless, or if it's the pandemic, but I definitely notice feeling less excited about holidays. Even Halloween, my absolute favorite holiday. I usually celebrate Halloween starting in the beginning of September at least, but the past few years I've been really struggling to keep it up. It makes me sad if this is just the way it'll be for me. I still feel cozy and happy sitting by the Christmas tree and watching Christmas movies, but there's a bit more of a melancholic color to it than there once was.

I don't feel like making dinner tonight, but I have potatoes and chicken I need to cook... ;~;

I had my birthday this weekend! We had a nice brunch at home, did cake and presents, and went to Medieval Times for dinner. We haven't been there in forever, but it's still basically the same. I think the storyline seemed different from last time though? The food was pretty good as always, but I'm not really a food snob. Simple, comfy stuff is always good to me. My husband also bought me a bunch of girl scout cookies in addition to the cake :3 I have an excess of sweets available in the house atm. Not sure how we'll get through it all. I got a cute Pooh birthday puzzle and paint-by-numbers kit that I'm looking forward to! We finally got those puzzle sorting trays recently so it's easier to do puzzles even without a ton of available space.

On another note, I've really not been playing any games seriously lately. FFXIV and The Sims are usually in the rotation, but that's just like casual pop it on and turn brain off stuff. I want something to get into, just not sure what I'm in the mood for lately. Crisis Core Reunion comes out tomorrow, so maybe that? But should I REALLY be buying a brand new game when my backlog is absolutely massive?

This was initially way more personal about my medical issues and periods but I edited out... y'know.... maybe I'll keep that to myself for now.

OH! Also, we watched Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio last night and I really liked it. It was touching and got some tears from me (though that isn't always necessarily difficult). The animation was really cool to see, I definitely recommend it!

Getting some much-needed rest today after being extra busy the past couple of weeks. Next few weeks will probably be pretty busy too. I've been doing a ton of cooking and baking and have a lot more I need to do for Christmas and other get-togethers. I've got my Christmas shopping done and Christmas cards sent out. The majority of the decorations are up. This week I need to make a ton of cut-out sugar cookies for kids to decorate at a family Christmas party this coming weekend. Also volunteered to make a dessert for the same party. Tiring, but I'm getting a lot done so I'm pretty proud!

On the other hand, I went into a weird little gloom spiral yesterday. I woke up and started watching youtube as background sound while I got ready; it was just normal lost/unidentified media stuff so nothing out of the norm for me, but I found this case in particular pretty interesting. I spent a while looking around to see if there was any new info; I saw a few common ideas of who the singer could be, and a pretty common theory was that it could be an unreleased demo of a well-known idol. As is always the case with anything to do with idol or idol-adjacent music, if you keep clicking related videos and topics and researching things there's always darkness in there. Idol culture is of course rampant with human exploitation/abuse and mental health crises. I think people (me included) might be more drawn to stuff like this (bright + dark) because of the contrast. How could something so bright and cheerful be so horrific behind the facade? That's the case with lots of things though. At least I think so. Anyway, somehow I got from this to some kind of existential dread about how people can exist, live, and be known, maybe even in the public eye and then disappear or be forgotten either in life or after death. Even though your perception and version of reality is all there actually is to you when you're alive, when you die your reality ceases to exist altogether. And we all just live and die that way. It doesn't scare me, but it feels like a concept I struggle to grasp.

My brain gets so attracted to gloominess, but I think knowing that about myself helps me get out of the hole sooner. I know it's just some thoughts my brain wants to examine, not that darkness and gloominess is the one true reality and all there is to life. I used to feel that way when I was younger and dealing with major depression, but I think my perspective is clearer now and I'm better able to disconnect from those thoughts when they become no longer productive. I love and embrace my sadness and ugly emotions. I think it's something so beautiful about being human.

Once I got out of that mood, I was fine. I started watching Inuyasha again for the first time since I was a kid. I went with the dub for nostalgia's sake and it's just like I remember. Rewatching things is so much easier than watching the huge number of new things on the "to be watched" list. I'm perpetually adding movies/series/games/music/books to "the list" and rarely make progress on it. I think I just have to accept that this is the way it is and I will never change on that front.