I hope the past week has treating you well! All things considered, I did a pretty good job of keeping some normalcy to my week and not letting it overthrow me. It's been quite the intense week over here, with metaphorical storm after storm getting dished out. To start things off, there was a major heat wave that spanned the week, which made things absolutely unbearable. The AC on the porch broke down, so having my brother and his massive dog stay with us when there's major allergies got real interesting. Then there was my grandma's memorial and burial, which took place outside; that resulted in me getting heat exhaustion and nausea. My aunts completely blew up on my parents, siblings, and me unexpectedly, going all out with the verbal onslaught and emotional abuse; there are now major rifts in the family that my grandma would be devastated by. I didn't sleep well despite going to bed incredibly early. I lost my voice from trying to talk family members down from doing things that they would later regret. My brother got me sick. The punches just kept coming. My friends didn't fair any better, unfortunately.
I woke up feeling a bit sleepy on Monday. My dream felt like it was all over the place. There was something about Shadow the Hedgehog. There seemed to be this group after us, but part of the group ended up switching sides after bartering and trading. There was something about April's mom driving us and going over one of those bridges that open up for ships and such. There was something else about being at a pool and the diving board going under water. More definitely happened, but details got real fuzzy.
It felt like a lot happened in my dream Monday night/Tuesday morning, but details were fuzzy, so it was hard to put my finger on everything that happened. There was something about a movie theater, though. I think April, Iris, Corliss, and April's mom went to see some new Makoto Shinkai movie. There was some kind of after movie montage/collection of clips, and for some reason there was a clip of me when I was 3 involved. I ran into a variety of family members when leaving the theater. There was something about Hiccup and Astrid from How to Train Your Dragon; Hiccup was trying to comfort Astrid, but she didn't seem keen on showing any emotional weakness or vulnerability. April, Corliss, and I ended up in like a valley or something. There was some kind of being after us; other people wrote it off as like a fairy tale/not real or something. It seemed like a very deceptive being, presenting itself as "good" when it had mal intent. I'm not sure what its end goal was. There was something else about my aunt's ex-husband, although details were quite muddled on that. More definitely happened, but that's everything I could remember.
I did not sleep well Tuesday night, and it had a lot to do with how heated it got. Not only were we in the middle of an unbearable heat wave with my grandma's burial and memorial service being outdoors, but my aunts got super heated and attacked everyone verbally and emotionally. They lashed out big time, and it was completely unexpected and uncalled for. On the one hand, I knew that people were highly emotional and suffering from the loss of my grandma, but on the other things that were screamed (without provocation) were highly hurtful, untrue, and uncalled for. I had gone over to my grandma's house to support my mom in cleaning up a bit; I had just gotten over there, and my aunts started screaming at my mom, siblings, and I about not caring about grandma at all (they used much more colorful and vulgar language) and that we were just in it for the stuff and money, acting like vultures. I hadn't tried to take a thing because while a memento to remember my grandma would be nice, it's just stuff and not necessary. It got super heated, and they started attacking my dad and claimed that he had no idea what it was like because losing his brother three years ago wasn't the same (for the record, he lost his mother when I was 11). They just kept going and going, and it got downright vicious. My younger cousin, Caleb, who's 20, did his best to break things up because nobody bothered to listen to me. I have never seen my siblings and parents cry so much. I tried going to bed at 8pm because I felt so awful, exhausted, nauseous, hot, and achy, but I couldn't fall asleep until after midnight because I just couldn't get comfortable. It was quite rough. Dreams were veiled in a thick haze, too, so I had no idea what transpired.
It was a struggle falling asleep Wednesday night, too. Not sure how much sleep I actually got since I had to get up at 6:30 to take the boys to school. I was grateful that we were almost at the weekend, though, so I could sleep in soon. This week had been a tricky one. My dream recall was a complete haze, too, so I had no idea what happened. Didn't sleep all that well Thursday night, and I woke up extra groggy on Friday. Dreams were a blur, and I had no idea what happened. I was exhausted when I woke up Saturday morning; I had tried to sleep in, but I woke up at 7:30 and couldn't fall back asleep. My brother passing on his sickness to me has been rather rough. I'm not able to sleep as much as my body wants despite my attempts. My dream recall was kind of hazy, but it involved meeting up with April at my grandma's house. Iris' paternal grandparents were trying to dictate things, and April got royally ticked off. A bunch of college-aged students started randomly showing up and invading the house. I walked outside with April to see what was going on. April ended up getting a piggyback ride from me, and we found my boss from the preschool acting as leader of the students. She seemed to think it was fine to just show up and try to take over my grandma's house. I called her out and told her I could easily call the cops on her for coming over uninvited and trying to invade my grandma's house after she just died. More probably happened, but that's everything I could remember.
I slept somewhat better this morning, able to sleep in to about 10:30, which was quite nice. I still felt kind of groggy due to my residual sickness from my brother, but I could pretty much breathe like normal, too. It felt like a lot transpired in the dream realm, but details were a bit hazy. What I could remember for certain was my family had gone of vacation to visit our relatives in Colorado. We had been driving around in cars with my aunt, and we passed up a gas station that was charging $4.29 for gas (basically $1 more that what it currently is where we live). We ended up parking and going to some trail by a stream or river. As we were walking, I was impressed and shocked by what I saw. I asked my relatives if they saw what I did, and my dad thought I meant the ostrich running on the other side of the road. While that was interesting in and of itself, I pointed out the giant tiger/cheetah in the distance that was about the size of a mountain, and it was slowly changing colors. There was something about crystals at one point, something about Lilo and Stitch, and something that seemed to be some kind of event/training taking place at something that resembled a Japanese temple/old fashioned house involving walking on rice paper. Pretty sure more happened, but that's all I could remember once I woke up.
The boys were somewhat excited to start the new school year, but the massive heatwave this week was miserable (understandably, they weren't too keen on it). The younger brother was spread a bit thin, as he had swim practice almost every day after school, except for Friday when it was before school because they had a practice meet after school. He also had band practice and had to perform with the band at the first football game of the year. The boys were grateful not to have any homework since it was the first week of school, but I have a feeling they're going to be disappointed once the homework starts getting assigned. Hopefully, next week will be cooler for the kiddos; they had a fire drill during peak heat on Friday, and I felt bad for all of the students standing out in the heat on the hot asphalt parking lot.
Tsuki didn't care for the heat (or the fact that my brother and his dog, Yogi, were over). The first half of the week was spent in hiding in the closet from the large, loud visitors. Otherwise, Tsuki enjoyed her week pretty well, opting to snooze and nap to her content. She had fun hiding in the box, stretching out across the carpet, and rolling around on the bench seat. Over the weekend, she enjoyed watching the rain from her window shelf. The weekend was pretty chill, which was a very welcomed blessing.
Artwork for the week included more diamond art:
I wrote more new content for Creativity Chronicles this week and created new YouTube shorts, receiving over 4.5 million views for the tie dye one! Feel free to check out the newest articles and shorts!
New Creativity Chronicles' articles included:
Please, please, please take care of yourself. No matter what hardships, obstacles, or nastiness appears at your doorstep, don't take it personally. You are awesome and worthy no matter what comes your way. How others treat you or what they say to you does not define you or your personal worth. You get to choose who you're going to be, so choose to be someone you're proud to be. You can choose kindness. You can choose to be genuine. You can choose to treat others the way you want to be treated. You never know what's going on in people's lives, so do your best not to take things personally, not to let others’ negativity rob your joy, and live true to yourself. You've got this, so be gentle with yourself, give yourself time, and allow yourself to rest when needed. You do so much more than you realize. Have a blessed week!
Food for thought for the week:
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