Well, much has changed since I posted in December 2024. My mom passed away on March 17th 2025. It hasn't hit me in the ways I would have expected, but as time goes on and things come up where I would have asked her a question, it's hard. My dad is doing pretty well adapting to live as a single man for the first time since he was about 23 and met my mom. He didn't know how to use the microwave until 2024, and now we've got him attempting to use an air fryer as well. He is going to doctor's appointments and dealing with his nutrition in order to get better control over his diabetes. I'm very proud of him.
Courtney spent Sept 2024-June 2025 in the UK and I'm so proud of her. She traveled solo all over Europe while she was there. Now she's home and is planning to do her Masters degree next year. She came home for Christmas and spent time with my dad, which was nice. Unfortunately she was sick so I didn't get to spend much time with her while she was here, between her being tired from a full day of travel and me having to work the other days. We spent Christmas Eve together and had a good time with my Dad, aunt Sharon, my cousin Joey, my brother & his family.
Johanna has begun college, which is a huge accomplishment for her. She took 2 classes in the fall semester and made the Dean's List with a 3.5 GPA. This semester she's taking a couple classes on campus and a couple online. On the last day of her first semester she met a fellow student whom she is now dating. She is happier than she's been in the past 8 years she's lived with me.
I started my final semester of my associates degree last month. I'm taking 3 classes, all online. I'm going to finish in May with an Associates of Science degree in Liberal Arts. Then I will be transferring to a 4 year school to get my Bachelor degree in Psychology, I hope. A degree in Social Work would probably be more conducive to what I want to do, but I want to focus on the psychology aspect in school. It's a fully online program, at the closest 4 year state school, so if I needed to go to campus, I could. So far I'm liking the online aspect. The requirements and expectations are clearly spelled out. I can work on my classes at 5am or after work, depending on my sleep schedule and level of exhaustion after work.
As far as fiber arts go, I am currently working on a pair of socks for my coworker, Sumia, who whined that I made a pair for my friend Nick but not her at Christmas. I'm also building a stash of crocheted granny squares made with sock weight yarn scraps from various sock & hat projects. I plan to turn them into an afghan. They take considerably more time to crochet 8 rounds big compared to the 4 rounds I was making the worsted weight squares for my Aunt's Christmas afghan. I'm using a 4mm hook. When the socks are done, I will go back to either the sweaters I have on needles or the beaded shawl.
I've been doing a LOT of journaling lately. I decided to combine morning pages and random journaling into the same hardcover journals. I was thinking that the set of 5 matching journals I bought on Amazon were going to be enough pages for the year, but it's only 5-6 weeks into the year and I'm already on page 250+ of 312 pages in the first journal. I started a Thinking Book today. I got the inspiration from Rachelle in Theory on Youtube. The notebook I'm using for that is a B5 Sterling Ink grid notebook with Koji Paper. Not a big fan of that. It's too cream colored and the ghosting and bleed thru is less than ideal.
I also have 3 planners I'm keeping up with and a 4th I've pretty much abandoned so far. I think I'm going to revisit it next week. I've got a Jibun Techo, a Sterling Ink Complete planner, a Turquoise Bullet Journal pocket sized notebook, and the ignored Happy Planner. Do I need all of them? No, of course not. Especially when the Complete planner has the layouts for daily, weekly and monthly all in 1 book. But I like to keep different information in each one.
I've also splurged on another few fountain pens and a felt tip pen from Tom's Studio. I bought the Lumos Duo from there last year, but this week I decided to splurge on the Wren pen for journaling. I also got some Platinum Preppy pens that I plan to convert to eyedropper to write in my morning page journal. I've been in love with the Pilot Kakuno pens, but they go thru ink cartridges too fast and I'm not in the mood to fill a converter that often either. I'm hoping that the eyedropper pen will last a lot longer between fills. We shall see. The package from Jetpens should arrive on Monday, assuming my mailman isn't a baby and actually delivers the mail if there are a couple inches of snow in my driveway. It took an extra week for my last 2 packages to be dropped off. I will be super mad if the pens are delayed.
My birthday is coming up on Friday the 13th. Sarah & I are planning to get flash tattoos that day. Not sure what else I will be doing. On Monday, Dan & I are going to the casino in Niagara Falls overnight so I can gamble. Dan isn't a fan of doing that, so we are staying on the property so that he can go back to the room and play games or watch videos while I have fun. We got a corner room with a jacuzzi tub. Because my birthday is the day before Valentines Day, I always get screwed trying to go out for my birthday. Hotels cost more, restaurants require reservations or have prix fixed menus, it's all more expensive. So we're going Monday to Tuesday. I originally had Wednesday off but I can't afford that much time off without vacation time to cover my hours, so I'll be back to work on Wednesday.
It's bitter cold today (currently 1 degree F), so we are having a cozy day in our PJs and staying home. I have to get up and go to work tomorrow, unfortunately. I hope the roads aren't too bad. I will probably have to pick up my coworker who lives about 15 miles away and then go to work. I have snow tires but still don't enjoy being on the road if I don't have to be.
