Christmas without cats

Less than a couple of weeks before Christmas I was home alone for the first time. Before, cats were there to protect me from ghosts. Now the cats are ghosts themselves. Both nights my heart was pounding so hard I couldn't sleep, I had to take hawthorn.

 

 

The food order was already a week before Christmas, and I wondered if the hams and especially the rosolli would last long enough, and they were surprisingly good. Just to be on the safe side, I bought all the different rosollis, so that at least one would last over Christmas. I don't need much at Christmas. Ham, rosolli and mayonnaise are enough. And The Snowman, the Christmas peace declaration and From All of Us to All of You. Amazingly, I managed to watch Home Alone 2 in its entirety this time, I left it unfinished last time.

 

Since there are no more cats, we could put up a Christmas tree, real or plastic one. We couldn't have a plastic table tree because Tabitha wanted to eat it. We only had a real big tree once, and the cats really were into it. At least Olivia wanted to mess with a paper table tree, I don't remember if the others wanted to too. But these pictures are of a real table tree from ten years ago. And I should probably mention that all the photos in this post are old.

 

 

 

I could take a poisonous Christmas flower, and not worry about the strings on gift boxes that are deadly to cats.

 

 

This Christmas, there will be no board games, just Friday, on its last Christmas. We'll see if there are enough players, or if everyone is on some kind of "Christmas party". But the goal is to shake Chad's red speedo ass.

Last Halloween

My favorite game has two months to live. In that fact there's more than enough horror for Halloween. Friday the 13th: The Game, I hardly knew you. Just a little over 2000 hours played, during six years.

 

So today I should try to play all day. Last year the true horror of Halloween was all about playing as Lachappa, and I thought about the same thing now. But then I realized that for me the above-mentioned thing would be playing as bunny Deb... I wouldn't want bunny roast :(

Somewhat related: In Finland the free Pluto TV has recently shown the Friday the 13th (affiliate link) movie series on its own channel, apparently in honor of Halloween. I can say that they are definitely not suitable movies for me. But the funniest thing is keeping an eye for familiar places from the game, how well they are implemented in the game.

 

 

Last year I had a long fight with a pumpkin, and the reward was very little edible part. This time I won't make that mistake, I bought ready-made pumpkin puree. I eat it with prepared meatballs (gluten-free). Yummy and so gourmet!

 

There are a lot of ghosts around this Halloween. Cat ghosts. Fresh cat ghosts. You don't believe that? At least this picture proves it. I would have others similar, but I will save the blog from them.

 

After losing the cats my life is meaningless. Nothing can make it better. Nothing. Everything is completely broken and ruined for good.

 

Two nights ago I petted Olivia (again) in my sleep and cried. I knew it wasn't the real Olivia, but she had only come to comfort me.

World Animal Day?

I'm worried about my cat Kali. She has been living on dry food and dry treats for years, and now she doesn't want to eat them. Instead, Royal Canin's kitten mousse would do, i.e. wet food. I've been putting off placing the Zooplus order for a while, because I'm afraid that Kali might be dead by the time it arrives. Anyway, I'm drowning in cat food, and still I should get more so that it would be the kind Kali would like.

Kali has started channeling Olivia. She wants to go to the balcony all the time to check the temperature, has summer come back? But I'm terribly afraid that summer will never come again. At least not for Kali.

Kali has also started to have a pretty scary-looking sleeping position at times.

 

I used to do a picture post of my cats on my blog on World Animal Day, but now I won't do it. Before Tabitha's death, I was going to make a post about it under the title "Kuopio's Leaning Cat". We have a slightly crooked cat scratching post on the balcony...

The playing of Friday every day has started quite well. Because I realized to make it my goal to ragequit in every match... or that I don't even dream of escaping. I have to act like this so that idiots don't disturb my peace of mind. When idiots happen I just calmly ragequit. But it was especially nice when a Jason from Sweden did a ragequit because of me. SWEDEN HAS BEEN BEATEN

 

It had been a long time since I made an Iherb order, but now I got a 28 percent discount on everything. I really had to get lip balm, and you can't get that from anywhere else? When sending the package, Iherb claimed that it would be delivered by Matkahuolto. But soon a message came from Budbee that the package was coming to them. That could be a bit of a problem when, at least according to its website, Budbee does not operate in Kuopio. The package arrived in Finland on Friday, and after that the status was just "Your order is on its way to our nearest sorting center". Budbee took a WEEK to get the package to Kuopio within Finland. That is, longer than it took for the package to come from the USA to Finland... Well, miraculously, the package finally arrived, and by home delivery as it should.

International Women's Day 2024

Happy Women's Day to those who still believe in the existence of women.

If this modern-day nonsense had been in fashion in my youth, I would certainly have believed myself to be non-binary then. Because I don't fit into that narrow mold of femininity. 

I have also always thought and said out loud that I will never experience any good aspects of femininity, only negative ones. Femininity may even kill me.

 

 

And what else would I do to celebrate Women's Day than play my favorite game. Of course, femininity tries to prevent that with bad health.

 

 

Of course endometriosis has rarely been found in men as well. It seems like the few men with endo get diagnosed and treated much faster than women. Because a man's pain is taken seriously, a woman's is not. I am currently reading the book Unwell Women, which tells about how women have been treated in the history of medicine.

But when it comes to celebrating femininity by gaming, I couldn't decide if I should only play as female characters in honor of women. Or as a man wearing swimming trunks?

 

Weekend's fake party

After waking up on Friday, bad news came right away when I found out that my favorite Domen Prevc is not participating in ski jumping. I had been afraid for a long time that this would happen at some point. And Viaplay couldn't (of course?) show Friday's qualification on its TV channels or online. How often during the season I have to ask what exactly are we paying Viaplay for? Well, my spouse found a stream of a Polish channel online. Practices are also shown live in Poland.

Friday night I played for quite a long time, I finally got through main story of God of War Ragnarök. Or my spouse did, I outsourced all the bosses of that game to him. Too difficult game for me even on the easiest difficulty level. I will write more about that game later in some blog.

We were watching RE2 Randomizer race on Twitch when Olivia pooped on the bedroom floor at two in the morning. After cleaning, window had to be opened even though it was 18 degrees below zero (-0.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

 

 

I had a long dream where I was trying to get a friend to go party with me. I have a common nightmare that I have forgotten to put wine in the fridge. I probably woke up when I couldn't get my legs straight in bed when a cat was lying at the foot of it. At eight in the morning, luckily, I was awake when suspicious noises started coming from the windowsill, and Olivia jumped into bed to throw up. I rather quickly threw her on the floor.

I had been waiting for a long time to celebrate the New Year, i.e. drinking sparkling wine, and finally it was time. I was sure something would ruin it. Something in mine or the cats' well being.

 

 

Sometimes it has been difficult to get Kali to eat her food and the drugs hidden in it, and it's stressful. I myself started to have pain in my mouth a couple of days before the party, there was also blood. The place where the wisdom tooth has been removed. And it's certainly not the first time there has been pain over the years. However, I don't remember what year I had my wisdom teeth removed. I've begun to wonder if that inflamed feeling under the chin could be caused by the teeth. They suffered when I gritted my teeth last spring because of endometriosis pain. Well, I'm supposed to go to the dentist next summer.

It was exciting to try a new sparkling wine for the first time. Tutusaus, expensive, as much as 20 euros. As a great wine expert, I can say that it is good, i.e. as tasteless as possible.

In addition to sparkling wine, the program of the New Year's party included, of course, playing Friday. During the winter, it's always annoying that the ski jump delays the start of playing, even now. I got something extra for my party when I got to play with a certain streamer for the first time in a long time.

 

Dinner for Zero?

New Year's Eve was already ruined when I missed the classic Dinner for One. Actually, I checked television program listings many times in advance that it is not on tv in Finland. In one service, it was only visible in past programs, not the future ones. On New Year's Eve, I was just about to complain about the topic on Twitter and looked for the program on Yle Areena. I told my spouse that it was in Areena, and he wondered why I didn't watch it when it was on TV? What?! He told me that when I watched Yle in the morning, it showed that the next program is Dinner for One. What?! Thanks for telling me? He thought I noticed it. Well, I didn't notice. :(

And the good news continued when my favorite Domen Prevc was disqualified in the qualifying of the New Year's Day ski jumping competition because the jump suit was too permeable. I had been paying very close attention to that suit for weeks because of its dirty rear. Well, maybe it's hight time to change the suit? (And another favorite of mine, Andreas Wellinger, who has been doing surprisingly well lately, is the subject of a suit scandal)

New Year's Eve's Foodora's McDonald's order was incorrect, I didn't get a dip and my spouse didn't get a cinnamon bun. :( And I myself decided not to drink sparkling wine now, and save it for a better time.

 

How was the past year? I lost my job, I have no income, all three of my cats are old and sick. Someone with hindsight could probably argue that a poor person shouldn't take three cats, or maybe not even one. Cats' medication, well-being and expenses are stressful.

A year ago I promised to finish writing/editing my two novels, the oldest and the newest. Did I do that? No way, Jose. I did make quite a lot of progress. Now I promised myself to focus on the novel I most want to finish in the coming year. From which I originally made a short story (the first one in this short story collection) and I knew even then that it was only the first step, the actual goal of that story is a novel. At the moment, there are a good 26k words. Of course, that debut novel should also be worked on so that I could finally enter it into Books on Demand. I decided to put my short stories back on Amazon since they can't be removed from Goodreads.

But of course, the most important New Year's resolution is to play Friday the 13th: The game as much as possible. My favorite game of all time only has a year left to live. :(

 

 

For New Year's Eve, of course, I played Friday. I was supposed to continue playing past midnight, but a toxic Jason made a rage quit and ruined the party (when Jason leaves the match at a critical point, the game glitches), and I didn't want to continue anymore. But I did play for more than 6 hours straight.



We welcomed the new year by watching fireworks from the kitchen window with my cat Tabitha. My cats are not afraid of fireworks, they just marvel at them.

 

Christmas miracle?

It's hard to have to wake up before 11:30 am on Christmas Eve to watch The Snowman and the declaration of Christmas peace. And then to make rice porridge without rice...

We were supposed to place a pre-Christmas food order from Prisma, but suddenly all the home delivery times were gone. I had looked at the situation a couple of days before, but it wasn't enough. The main reason why this happened was my spouse's work trip. I'm surprised that anyone even orders from Prisma when the home delivery fee is 20 euros. It took me a while before I realized what will be the worst lack when the Prisma order is missed: Frozen carrots from certain brand. I just can't stand peeling and chopping fresh carrots anymore. Well, fortunately, now is the rosolli time of the year.

 

So I had to order from Citymarket. Just when I was complaining that I haven't bothered to buy the traditional cheese variety pack because it hasn't been on offer, it came on offer, so I got my Christmas cheese. This time I didn't even dream of baking a (small) ham, I just looked at the finished Christmas ham slices. In the last couple of years, they have been quite edible. And even though it seemed bad at first, I finally got some chocolate candies when Red's sugar-free candies came on sale at Citymarket.

 

 

I started eating Christmas food, i.e. slices of ham, rosolli and mayonnaise already on Thursday. I calculated that the food is enough for six days, that is, it will run out on Boxing day.

I haven't bought a single Christmas present again. Because of my income, I didn't even participate in grandma's gift, it's really embarrassing. And even this Christmas I won't go to my mother's because of covid, obviously I'm a terrible daughter. Recently, a large part of the family has been sick with covid again.

Due to Kali's situation, it has been difficult to focus on anything, so this week I have mostly been playing games. Snow appeared early this time in Red Dead Online. I found out about it by chance on December 8, I don't know how much snow time I missed. Although, I haven't been able to be terribly interested anymore.

 Christmas tree at camp.

 

Christmas decorations in moonshine shack.

 

Festive lights at Saint Denis.

A cat in snowy Saint Denis.

 

This christmas I wish for only one present. That Kali eats and poops. 

 

 

I got my Christmas miracle when Kali started eating on Friday night. I really wanted to cry with happiness. And that night, for the first time this week, she came to its favorite place, lying on top of me. During her illness, she only hung out in unusual places, probably desperately looking for a place where she would feel better. Yesterday it was also wonderful when Kali willingly ate her PEG constipation medicine when I added the broth of the soup wet food to it. I hope this trend continues.