An update to Green Grass

This is an update to a post I wrote, holy fucking shit, 5 years ago. I’m not sure what else I can say except that all those things in the post are still true, except now that I’m 30, I feel like I have to do something before I’m 35.

This is the one: Smartphone edition #3 (review)

A quick one. I ended up using the Hisense as my daily driver for about 11 months. The dual sim capability was not that great – the second sim would randomly lose service, and smses would often not come through at all even if there was service. That was a huge problem, as it was literally the reason why I chose that phone.

Battery life was decent (still is). The camera was shitty, although I think I’m still trying to get that 1020 experience back, or perhaps even the N8.

I bought a different phone in November 2017, which I will elaborate on in another post. The Hisense currently hosts my mobile number for work, so I’m back to carrying two phones (sigh).

That one time I bought my husband a PS4 and accidentally became a gamer myself

My husband has spoken about his desire to own a Playstation console since we were both broke-ass students. In May 2018, I finally grew tired of over a decade of whining about this topic, and popped off to Makro at tea time to pick up a PS4 Pro for him. It was bundled with Horizon Zero Dawn, Gran Turismo Sport and Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite. I resigned myself to the fact that I would be husbandless for at least several weeks while he got used to his new toy. I was more excited about the fact that we could finally make proper use of the 43″ 4K computer monitor.

So it was with great surprise that I found myself button mashing Jedah to death while playing Infinite. All my husband had said was, “Why don’t you give it a try?” Next thing I knew, the weekend was gone and we’d finished the game. We scrolled through the store, looking for other games to buy, when my husband paused on Yakuza 0. I had no idea what the Yakuza games were about, so we watched the trailer (spoilers below)

And that is how over the last 6 weeks I have been spending any time I have outside of work doing things like beating dudes to death on the streets of Tokyo

Singing karoake

Operating a cabaret club

Crying for Majima 😦

In fact, while looking up links for this post, I found myself watching a 12 minute recorded stream of when Kiryu gets kicked out the Dojima family, and then promptly tears through and destroys at least 20 dudes since they no longer outrank him. This is after I went on a rant with my husband a few months ago about “Why is Twitch even a thing? Why do people want to watch other people play games?” I’ve replaced my entire boxing music playlist with the OST. Here’s a good one to get the blood pumping. This is another one. Here is the song that plays when you dress up your hostesses before opening for business.

Two weeks ago I ordered the Premium Edition After Hours box set for Yakuza 6. I now refuse to drink my gin out of anything besides those glasses. Last week we bought Yakuza Kiwami. This week I pre-ordered the Steelbook Edition of Yakuza Kiwami 2 off Amazon. I’m probably going to get the PC port of Yakuza 0 when it drops.

I’m not sure if it’s because I love Japan, or if it’s because the game is really good (my husband says it’s both), but I have gone all in. I just bought Persona 5, which I’m sure is going to just suck me in even further. I never thought I’d say this, but apparently, I am a gamer now.

Small milestones

I used to be very good at remembering dates. Attaching importance and sentimentality to dates was something I always did, automatically. I see now that it was a symptom of something.

I do feel like I need to put down some milestones reached in the last few weeks:

• 1 Feb: My 29th birthday
• 28th Feb: 2nd wedding anniversary
• 1 Mar: 7 years working experience (and I used to complain about it being impossible to get a different job until I had 5 years exp)
• 7 Mar: 6th anniversary of starting at Aurecon (wtf)
• 7 Mar: 1 year anniversary of owning a house (wtf)

I’ve also finally, finally, started therapy. After a false start (always go with your gut people), I’ve ended up with a great counsellor who’s been an amazing resource so far. We’ve also been going strong on The Regimen for 2 weeks now, and I know that it’s working this time because my various forms of eczema and allergies are flaring up in response to the dietary change (the same way it did last time, but much worse). I also had the cramps/low mood associated with the instant removal of all junk food, so I know the worst is over.

Here’s to the many months of carb cycling, DOMS and whooshing ahead!

Another curly update

I hadn’t made any progress on the frizz problem at all since my last update. I resigned myself to having frizzy hair for the foreseeable future. Last week though, I decided that in the name of reducing our water usage even more, I would lose the squish-to-condish step in my Wednesday hairwash, and just do the co-wash. I then applied the leave-in conditioner in the shower and plopped the hair immediately.

No more frizz! Just like that. I still pineappled the hair overnight, despite it feeling more “creamy” from holding onto the conditioner, but in the morning when I loosened it, I had large, well-defined curls with nooooooo frizz in sight. Now I still have to figure out the trick to refreshing the curls by the time day 3 rolls around, but I feel like I’m almost there.

Back

After taking some time away from everyone and everything to mourn the loss of our baby girl, I feel coherent enough to return to the blog and life in general. I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for almost a year now, so I have decided to have her little name tag and initial tattooed on my wrist. I’ll probably go have it done in a few months’ time, as I’ll need to be strong enough to go the tattoo artist by myself.

As usual, I haven’t done much in the last few weeks. We did go see Lifehouse in concert last night (we left after their half, didn’t stay for Collective Soul) because Rahul’s never actually been to a proper concert before, and we have an attachment to Lifehouse. Their songs kept us going during our long-distance years, we walked out of our wedding ceremony to “Hanging by a Moment”:

and our first dance was “You and Me”.

We had supper at the Hussar Grill before the show, which was a first for the both of us. It was quite enjoyable, we will definitely be going back when the macros allow. It was also my 29th birthday last week. My husband and I have never been big into gift giving, we rather buy each other things as needed/wanted, or save up for experiences. Our rule for birthdays is no gifts, but the celebrant gets to dictate how the day is spent.

I ended up going factory shopping because our freezer was low on proteins, and then chilled with the cats for the rest of the day. Rahul cooked my requested supper (Indian chilli chicken, exactly how they make it in the restaurants in Kerala) and I had seconds while my mouth was on fire and my eyes were tearing. It was wonderful.

We also completed the 3 week transition to the Regimen. I sorted out the snags, so we’re kicking off properly today. I’ll be posting some back-dated blogs as part of my MCU review series as I’ve managed to stick to the viewing schedule.

MCU :: Phase 1 :: Movie 4 :: Thor

Link to the series

Year of release: 2011

When I watched it first: 2014

Number of times watched: 2

I never liked Thor. I was super into Greek mythology when I was young – I checked out all the books and encyclopedias (how fucking old am I???) from various local libraries and reread them multiple times. I knew the origin stories of the entire Greek pantheon, their powers, their major (and minor) adventures, as well as those of their children (soooooo many children born as a result of “mischief”) and the human heroes who had to contend with these crazy gods.

Once I had exhausted the Greeks, I started reading Norse mythology. I did not find it as interesting as the Greek, I’m not sure why. Maybe it was the names, who knows. My point is, I only knew the basics, and those basics made me not bother watching Thor when it came out.

When it became evident that the MCU was not going anywhere, I made an effort to watch it. I was disengaged throughout, and all I could remember about it was that it was dark, as in literally dark – all the sets seemed dim, like they couldn’t afford the electricity bill. Now that I’ve rewatched it (and paid attention), I enjoyed it more (seems obvious). I generally like anything that Kat Dennings is in, and Chris Hemsworth is actually a pretty funny guy. Also, I can see how badly Tom Hiddleston’s Loki wig has degraded over the course of the sequels. Just, no.

My totally arbitrary score: 5/10

Next up: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011).

MCU :: Phase 1 :: Movie 3 :: Iron Man 2

Link to the series

 

Year of release: 2010

When I watched it first: 2010

Number of times watched: ~3.5

I always felt like this movie was just nonsensical (the 0.5 viewing was where I fell asleep halfway). Sam Rockwell is very underrated, even when he is hamming it up like in this movie, Mickey Rourke is, something, and the gratuitous stuff surrounding Black Widow’s introduction is just, ugh. Gwyneth Paltrow irritates me even more in this sequel, and Tony becomes Tonier. I do love Don Cheadle replacing Terrence Howard though.

There may be….something…wrong with Terrence Howard.

Next up: Thor (2011).

MCU :: Phase 1 :: Movie 2 :: The Incredible Hulk

Link to the series

To be honest, I had completely forgotten about this movie. The Hulk never appealed to me as a character (still doesn’t, even though I’ve had a soft spot for Mark Ruffalo since this ridiculous Reese Witherspoon movie). I was aware that this movie is what caused Edward Norton to be replaced by Ruffalo (and I’m sure he’s not bitter or anything).

Year of release: 2008

When I watched it first: 2018

Number of times watched: 1

I found this movie annoying. I know it’s only meant to bring The Hulk into the MCU – mission achieved. Beyond that, it sucks. That is all.

Meh.

Next up: Iron Man 2 (2010).

No words

Today my husband and I picked up the ashes of our sweet baby girl. The stabbing pain in my chest is starting to give way to a large hole.

The day we brought our beautiful Kagura home.

Last week, I planned on (finally) starting my post series about all of our cattens, how we came to adopt them and our ongoing relationship with the Animal Welfare Society in Stellenbosch. I did not think that I would instead be dealing with the passing of my sweet angel.

I would like to write a long post about her, and post the hundreds of photos and videos we took of her in the short time she was with us, but my mental and emotional health has improved enough in the past year to know that I am not ready to do that.

The day I put her big girl collar on.

I’m taking a break from everything for a while – Facebook, blogging etc. My husband and I are focussing on getting our health back in order (physical, emotional, mental, financial etc). We were already on that path but this loss has made us even more determined.We lost a lot of time and opportunities in our lives due to other people’s fuckery, and we refuse to lose any more. I put my life on hold last year to heal from what happened to me, but that’s not really how healing works (duh). We want to move on and be happy with the little family we’ve created.

I don’t think we will ever have a sweeter kitty than Kagura. Below is the last photo I have of her, 2 days before she disappeared and 4 days before our neighbour found her body. She would sit next to me in bed and purr like a truck.

The last photo I took of her.