Life is Full of the Unexpected and Miracles

I hope everyone's doing well! This week was a week full of babysitting. The boys wanted to check out all my latest mash-up drawings and recommending additional combinations for future drawings. They had me sketch out a few ideas, and they wanted to color them. I was fine with collaborating; they had asked for me to color some, but I prefer to color them with my art markers--they decided to use colored pencils. I enjoyed that they wanted to be creative. I plan to color my own versions by the next time I see them so they can enjoy my finished version. I'm grateful I can help provide some joy and inspiration with them. They're super sweet kids.

I did create some finished fusion drawings this week. I completed The Land Before Time group. I did some fusions with Farfetch'd/Galarian Farfetch'd. I also created a bunny-hedgehog fusion after watching the Pumapard video from Fact Fiend/ they had been talking about what animal fusions they would have if they could pick. They mentioned a bunny and a hedgehog, and it sounded really cute!

I had some goodies arrive this week, too. The correct pyramid arrived from Spiritual Supermall (they sent me a regular amethyst pyramid last week instead of the amethyst and quartz pyramid I ordered). Also, my back-ordered Stitch pin arrived this week. Other pyramids I ordered arrived, too! I ordered an Atlantis pyramid and green mica pyramid. The shirts I ordered moths ago finally arrived, as well. I had planned to wear those new shirts this summer, but summer's kind of over now. I am grateful to have them now, though.

The sky was really interesting this week! I loved looking at all the clouds! They always look so intriguing. The cloud I witnessed on the way home from babysitting one day this week was especially mesmerizing; it was literally a wispy rainbow. I've never seen anything else like it! It felt truly miraculous. Even my cat sat at the window to look at the sky this week.

Corliss and I decided to check out a different Sunshine Daydream over the weekend. Turns out, they have a crane machine, which we found out to be pretty interesting. It seemed larger than the typical Sunshine Daydream we visit. I got a good laugh out of their geode sign (it had Geodude on it). I bought a geode to try the technique John had told us about. We'll see how it turns out. I was a bit bummed that their crystal selection was rather small, but it just wasn't meant to buy any that day. The staff assured us that normally they had a much larger selection, but current happenings were affecting their stock. I don't blame them for it, but I had hoped to find a sweet new addition to my crystal team (but maybe the geode was the awesome new member).

After we finished browsing at Sunshine Daydream and had some lunch, we decided to watch A Lull in the Sea. Highly recommend this anime! We ended up binge watching it this weekend; we never wanted to stop--it was full of amazing storytelling, interesting characters, and intriguing cliffhangers. It tells the story of the inhabitants of the sea ("sea people") from Shioshishio. There's a group of four middle schoolers from Shioshishio that end up going to school on the surface because their school closed down. There's tension between the two groups (people of the sea and people of the land) because there's a missing, mutual understanding. The kids start building that bridge of understanding and acceptance, but it takes some time (even the kids picked up on the biases of the older generations, remarking how the other group reeks of fish or pigs). There's an upcoming calamity that the children (and surface dwellers) are unaware about, which causes some tension--the children have made friends on the surface, but, understandably, the Shioshishio parents are considered about the well being of their children (they aren't forthcoming at first as to why they want their kids to cut ties with the surface and stay in Shioshishio). This anime explores the meaning of love, sacrifice, fate, free will, understanding/respecting those different from you, and finding a harmonious, peaceful coexistence. We can learn a lot from it. It's a really powerful story with breath-taking animation.

Speaking of powerful stories, Corliss and I loved the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, and we immediately read Impostors when it first came out. I remembered about the Impostors series by Scott Westerfeld this week and searched to see if the second book was out yet. It was, so I ordered it. It's called Shatter City. To prepare myself and make sure I was up to speed, I reread Impostors before it arrived. I read it within a day. The following day I finished Shatter City. The next day I watched this video about "Boomerang Earthquakes" (see below). The second book has been out for some time (since last year I do believe), but it was NOW that I remembered about it. In the book there's an individual who uses a machine to cause massive earthquakes to destroy a city; someone tries to warn the city, but the city and its residents write them off, not believing the warning because they're convinced their safe. When the first tremors start, the individual trying to warn the city figures out what they were trying to do with the machine, but, again, no one believes her until it's too late. The city falls, along with all it's security measures. I've seen too much for these two pieces of information occurring one after the other to be written off as mere coincidence. Stay safe everyone; sometimes there's more to the story you're being told--sometimes the truth is much deeper than the surface level, but remember that life is full of unexpected miracles.