⛤ October Q&A (Patreon)

happy almost thanksgiving! no, don't panic yet. thanksgiving won't be until the 24th, but the way time has been getting away from me, I'm sure it'll be here faster than I can say pumpkin cheesecake. I hope we can get some part of a turkey this year so I can dabble in the traditional thanksgiving dinner cookery part of the holidays. last year was no dice, same for cranberry sauce, but hey, that one is easy as thanksgiving pie to make from scratch I found out. 

so I haven't forgotten about you guys (I've just been physically extremely busy) but now that I have a new hour+ long super relaxing video rendering for the foreseeable future, your questions have my undivided attention. 

Have you seen Darkest Hour? never heard of it. it appears to have overall very good ratings, maybe we can make a movie night out of it. I'm sure Jack will love the opportunity to tease me about only ever watching a quarter to half of a movie before getting bored of it. 

Did you and Jack have fun at the Halloween Wedding? it was the most fun wedding we've been to, by far. pagan wedding, dress code = halloween costume, just about everyone we knew was there. I found out I have the hardest time recognizing people in costume. unless I know them well enough to be able to pick them out of a crowd by the way they walk, I am just at a complete loss. much awkward staring ensued with me thinking to myself "that face is so familiar, I know this person, who is this???" now I understand how people could not figure out that Clark Kent was Superman. one of my good friends came dressed as Hulk Hogan which was quite amusing seeing as how she's a petite girl. she pulled that one off quite well. I ended up throwing together a very affordable genie costume which I am still amazed fit me quite well. you never know with those "one size" costumes. my one hope was that this one size fits nobody outfit was on a small asian model, so I crossed my fingers and rolled the amazon dice. I won! it fit exactly the same on me as on the model. can't wait to get my hands on those pictures, mostly to see if I look like shit or not (and if not I'll share them with you), but also because us and a bunch of our friends recreated the last supper at the bbq table and I need this picture printed out in poster size and hung in our dining room. but I think what I liked the most was the fact that I didn't have to act prim and proper and pretend to be normal. traditional weddings can be suffocating like that but we were very comfortable amongst our kind!

Hello again Ally! Thank you so much for your last response - took your advice and went with a diffuser / babby's first essential oils set for aromatherapy. So far I quite like tea tree, lavender, and sweet orange. Have yet to try eucalyptus & peppermint. Hated lemongrass, was a rather unpleasant assault on the senses. Are there any other more "out there" scents you'd recommend based on what I've responded positively to so far? if you like tea tree, you might enjoy camphor or rosemary. like tea tree, they smell herbal, woodsy and green. if you like lavender, you may want to try rose or jasmine. they definitely lean more floral than the powdery and herbal lavender, but in a refreshing way. just make sure you get Bulgarian rose oil, not that soapy, stuffy garbage they will try to sell you at arts and crafts stores that smell like your grandma's powder room. it is more expensive, but worth every penny. for sweet orange, you can diverge into mandarin orange which is more intense, neroli which is more floral or grapefruit which is equally sweet. since you don't like lemongrass, I would steer clear of lemon, but bergamot is a far superior citrus scent that you may enjoy the freshness of. I always recommend patchouli essential oil and you'd be surprised how much fresher and more attractive it smells than what you probably associate with "patchouli" in incense and perfumes. the plant itself is actually related to mint and smells musky, herbal and earthy. I hope this list gives you a place to start and happy diffusing! 

Do you like hoodies? not particularly. it is absurdly difficult to find any that fit right anyway. especially in the women's section, designers have at some point decided that hoodies should either cut off just under your belly button or just be straight up dresses that hover at your ass crack for no reason. why? it's too short to be worn as a dress but too long to wear comfortably over pants! I also don't like the limited range of motion hoodies leave me with and for me, they are strictly outerwear in the transitional seasons and only get used when I don't want to get my coat sweaty. I can't even begin to explain my dislike for hoodies. they just straight up suffocate me with how heavy and bulky they are and how poorly they fit. 

Does Jack like cars? Jack is very indifferent about cars. 

Are you interested in analyzing nightmares? sometimes. I generally like psychology and especially dream psychology, but more so for what dreams tell me about a person. their subconscious desires, fears, and of course the entertainment of dream logic. the deep hidden things people don't want to talk about. the same force that draws me to the occult, draws me to the minds of people. 

What is your favorite song rendition in the musical episode of Lucifer? I don't like musicals and I did not like the musical episode of Lucifer. I'm not sure we even watched all of it. 

Do you find cooking is a calming hobby? it can be. cooking for me is walking the fine line between stimulation and overwhelm, between satisfaction and exhaustion. while I love food and preparing food of all kinds, my personal weaknesses are coordination and time management. if there's too many steps or too many things to keep track of simultaneously, it stresses me out to the point of meltdowns. most weeknight cookery, however, does not demand more of me than I can come up with in terms of focus and energy. most meals I end up making are basically second nature and I only challenge myself with new recipes when I am bored of eating the same kinds of meals all the time. oh, and planning. that's another weakness. just thinking about crafting a meal plan and subsequent shopping list for the whole week and only one week is making my head spin. it's so hard to predict how much we're gonna be eating, how much two people should be eating, what we will feel like eating in the foreseeable future, not to mention our erratic shopping habits. we don't make it to the store every week and I randomly come up with meal ideas based on what we have but then we're short an ingredient or two and there's not enough room in the kitchen to store a lot of pantry foods and there's basically a timer on perishables anyway so every time I open the fridge I note the things that need to be used up and brainstorm meals I could use those things in, then rank them by life expectancy, shortest to longest, then have to figure out missing or insufficient ingredients, put them on the shopping list, then pray the store has them next time I send Jack to pick up odds and ends and this is basically how I feel about cooking, budgeting, planning, food prep and minimizing waste. 

but the activity itself is pretty zen! 

I hope your questions have been answered to your satisfaction. now I have to go get ready for an appointment and pat myself on the back for using time productively while waiting on a very important and long awaited upload. if all goes well, the new hypnotherapy should be live by the end of the week! here are some screenshots just so you have something to look forward to. 

these are from the hypnosis induction! just the aesthetic visuals alone make me tingle. 

another q&a post will be available within the next few days in case you have follow up questions. have an excellent day and I'll be back soon with more content.