Animal Crossing Journal #29: The Cat Returns (To My House)

I hadn't visited my town in a while, so I thought I'd better go back and do some weeding after all this time. I was happy to discover a certain nosy cat was desperate to see the state of my home. The first thing I discovered is that dear, sweet, muscly dog Mac has moved away. He had been there since the beginning, but I guess everyone has to go out into the world, even the most muscly of dogs can't stay forever. I'll miss him and his constant taunts about my lack of exercise.

The second thing I noticed around town is that there are definitely a lot of weeds. They're lucky I love pulling them up. I blitzed through those weeds in no time!

Halfway through my weeding session, I fell into a trap. I guess I deserved this one.

I met up with Kitty and she followed me around for a while as I got to grips with the state of the place. Luckily, the flowers grow well in the snow, so they're still around.

Kitty was probably disappointed, since my house hasn't really changed recently, but it was nice to see her and everyone else. The town never needs much maintenance any more, but that makes it even more calming to walk around in, with all the flowers everywhere.

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5 Best SHINee Performances

I make no secret of the fact that I love SHINee more than life, and what with releasing two recent singles (including a Christmas one) and performing for New Year's Eve with an enthusiastically chirpy performances so typical of SHINee, I thought I'd compile a little list of some of my favourites performances of theirs. Y'know, so I have a convenient place to come back to and gently weep with admiration.

Here are five of my favourites.

1. KBS Music Bank COMEBACK 2015.05.22 - Love Sick + View

First up is this cute double song performance from the View/Odd era of 2015. I really liked the styling from this period of time. So cute and childlike and stripy and fun!

2. MBC Show Music Core 2013.10.26 - Everybody

Next, we see one of the most intense choreography routines of all time. I had to include Everybody here somewhere for that alone, but I love this song's sense of tension and I love the military costuming they played with during this time as well.

3. 2016 MBC 가요대제전 - 샤이니의 Tell Me What To Do + 1 of 1

Here's their New Year's Eve 2016 performance of 1 of 1 and a little bit of Tell Me What To Do for MBC. I love the Lego style background and Onew and Jonghyun's outfits particularly. They seem super happy in this one.

4. SHINee World IV - Excuse Me Miss

This is a really cute performance from their fourth tour in 2015. It's nice and chilled out and playful, they make an all white wardrobe look pretty cool, and when Jonghyun yells everyone's names out near the end (from 4:10) it's the best thing.

5. MBC Show Music Core 2015.05.23 - View

Last, but certainly not least, is another performance of View, because I just cannot resist the visuals of this era and the ultimate dance-y goodness that is this song. Also, Jonghyun is special and I support this irrefutable fact being emblazoned on his chest.

Cats, Bunnies, & Endless Darkness

Here are some cute animals wearing cute outfits and pondering things in the darkness. Thoughtful, gormless, and passionate, respectively.

They're exploring.

Diary: Christmas 2016

So that's it! Christmas happened, and 2016 is a short breath away from being behind us forever. What have we learned? Well, mostly that I love The Body Shop's 'frosted berries' scent and will be found with my nose buried in a tub of body butter at all times for at least the next month.

I'm always glad to move on to the next diary, since by now this one is all bulky and heavy and a little bit challenging to scan, but it's not quite time yet. Soon. I've been watching a lot of TV lately (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is my favourite) and I've been getting into another video game phase, particularly with Don't Starve and Cook, Serve, Delicious. Both excellent games.

I've been painting some birds and curling my hair, and being very happy with both of those things. It's satisfying to paint a bird shape, for some reason. I won't question that.

Of course, around Christmas time, I was pretty sleepy as can only be expected. It was a nice, relaxing Christmas and I ate a lot of mashed potato and got lots of nice bath stuff that smells the best. I got some shimmer mist too, which is a glittery spray of some kind. I'm not sure why it exists, but I've decided I love it, and I'm ready to be glittering for the rest of my days.

Pin Curls & Postcard Paintings

Here I am in a sunny winter moment. I pin curled my hair two nights before taking these photos and I'm a little astounded at how long curls last now. Everything feels so new and different after a haircut somehow, and I always notice little things about it so much for a while, like someone emerging from a thousand year chrysalis. If you ever dye your hair a really bright colour, you'll keep noticing it in your peripheral vision for a while, and it feels magical in that transition period before you get used to it being around. There's something really nice about transition periods like that. There's that unavoidable excitement. A little bounce to your life that wasn't there before.

I think now that I've experimented a lot with different hair lengths I just feel much more at ease with the concept of myself as a visually changeable person. They say our brains often largely recognise someone by their hair, and this sense of importance is definitely bestowed unto our hair to a ridiculous degree, but I'm pretty sure not much would change if all my hair fell out. I would just have a colder scalp.

I'm really happy that I get to enjoy my hair in all of its changing forms, and whenever it's doing weird stuff without my permission or comprehension like some wild, possessed thing. I love it.

I also love holding tiny paintings, it seems.

I want to make lots of postcard sized or smaller paintings. They're very fun, and pleasantly little.

Little Graveyard

I made some little postcard-sized paintings with a small percentage of my great abundance of black acrylic paint (I have three tubes of it - three!) and there is just something about these weird little things that I love.

I want to imagine all of these paintings' characters as existing in the same universe. There is a small and angry bird, a girl in a graveyard, a friendly rock, and a bunny who has embraced his own confusion and sits clueless amongst the flowers. The skies are cloudy and the beaks are pointy.

Everything is normal here.

Little Moth & Scully Hair

I painted myself a tiny moth, and here she is in all her glory. I do want to draw and paint some more moths, but then I feel that way about a lot of things. Hands, birds, trees. There are too many beautiful things to paint, and I can never decide or stick with one subject for too long. Except actually, that's a lie, because I paint lots of rounded shapes that are nothing in particular all the time, and I paint my little people with three lumpy fingers and dots for eyes all the time too.

Anyway, these scans are the first since I cut my hair after much deliberation. It's at my collarbones - no fringe. I don't think I've ever really had short hair like this without a fringe, but I like it. It's almost a Dana Scully haircut, and it feels so right (please send any X-Files in my direction).

Short or not, something feels right about having hair all one length. Everything is simple. No tangles and no getting caught by bag straps, other people, or my own body parts. When I was little I always liked cutting paper into tiny pieces because I liked the way it felt - both the sensation of cutting into the paper and the satisfaction of rendering it into something new again and again with each cut. I see a similarity with haircuts in that their changeability lets you become new and fresh and sharp in sequence. It's a really good feeling.