I usually stay home alone on Christmas so if you are asking me my Christmas plans that’s what they are. I don’t usually go back to my Mom’s house for Christmas anymore and I don’t stay with her when I’m in town anymore either. So I’m kind of used to just hanging out with the dogs. I had a dream about my dog Little Mister last night, he came and visited and wagged his tail the whole time. Which is what he did when he was alive until he got arthritis. CONSTANT tail wagging, he was the cutest little muppet. I’m glad he still visits me because I still think about him and love him and the little bright ball of light he was/is in my life.

I love all my animals though. Todd is growing into a sweet boy. He still pees on the couch though and I’m trying to get him to quit but I’m tired of getting angry at him and don’t know a different way to stop it. Sigh. He’s adorable though and funny and he makes a little squeak noise sometimes so one of his nicknames is Squeak. I find boy dachshunds to be very vocal. Although Posey makes noises too but I don’t know, Todd and Little Mister are/were very verbal ha ha! Posey’s an angel and still tries to bite the vet techs. But she’s absolutely a sweet senior. I have to admit I was worried I would have to put her down because of her aggression but she’s mellowed out a lot. And she warms up to dog sitters too when she gets over her initial suspicion.

My headphones turned up! I thought “where is the most ridiculous place I could put them?” and I felt up the laundry hamper AND THAT’S WHERE THEY WERE! Not only that, but the hamper was in the direction my dousing rods had pointed, so they were right too! OMG.

But also why did I put them in the laundry hamper?

One time someone I know was trying to hide a hard drive and put it in the bottom of a garbage can under a bag and it got thrown out! So omg, if I had done laundry in some kind of crazy way I could have washed my headphones, except that I always sort my laundry, BUT YOU KNOW. There’s always a risk.

I hate feeling like I have to be quiet about projects. I have a project I’m not anticipating making a lot of money on, but it’s making a sex toy for trans men who haven’t had meta and I think it’s a good idea I just have to mold it somehow and cast it and then make a couple of prototypes to test. I am determined I am going to see this project through in my spare time. I don’t know where to take it if it is successful. There’s a lot of trans masc toy makers, there’s one in Montreal that might be able to produce it on a larger scale but I would want some kind of compensation if they took my product and I don’t know how any of that works. I know I don’t want to make a sex toy factory myself though because I don’t have the time. But it would be awesome if I could make it because I think it could be successful (although with a tiny demographic). I think it would also fill a need that isn’t being filled right now with other toys of this particular type. I know I’ve owned other versions that aren’t very useful with my anatomy.

I’m doing beading. I beaded a trans pride flag. Here it is:

I’m going to sew some velcro to it and put it on my bag so that I can carry it around but also take it off when it goes into the wash (or I guess also easily take it off if I am in a hostile space). It’s pretty cute, I can see things I wish I did differently but it’s also only the second beaded thing I have made since I was 12. I used to do a lot of crafts as a kid. I know beading can be fine art (for my Mom it is) but for me right now it’s just a hobby while I’m learning. Along with making music I am trying to do some art that doesn’t involve ambition, just creating things for the joy of creating them. I feel like ambition is a good thing, but I guess I feel like my ambition was tied to my film career and I was trained in film and all that and I feel I have more professional cred in film and video than beading or music. And I’ve still only started making music. My guitar teaching was showing me how to improvise with someone else doing chords so that was fun to learn.

Today I was doing some exercises to learn the CAGED system and what notes sound good with each other. I haven’t ever been doing bends on my acoustic because I learned that on electric (and it’s easier to bend on electric guitars) but the exercises have some bends in them and damn that’s fun! It’s basically using pentatonic scales up and down the fretboard and learning to make licks with them.

I guess while I learn guitar (and singing) I should probably go back and review what I have learned and how far I have come. When I picked up a guitar in August of 2024 I knew next to nothing about it. Barely knew how to strum, didn’t know ANY chords, nothing! I did some youtube tutorials but then I got my guitar teacher and he showed me all these different songs and different techniques for each of them. I would ask him to show me something that was usually really hard to do. And sometimes I could learn it and sometimes I tried but put it away because I wasn’t ready yet. And then sometimes I went back to hard stuff later and it was easier. I learned a bunch of chords, hammer ons, pull offs, bends, all kinds of things. I think the first song I asked to learn to play was Wish You Were Here and I couldn’t sing along at all. I didn’t even start being able to sing and play until this Fall. I remember when I first started I just wanted to learn Wish You Were Here and then, I dunno, re-evaluate. But I started falling in love with guitar more and more and now I try to play it every day if I can.

When I was bummed out about the string of rejections, playing guitar sort of got my spirits back up. So did singing. So did beading. So there’s something about letting creative pursuits continue that is making me happy.

I wrote a treatment for a film. I think it needs work but I’m trying to put stuff away for the holidays and relax. Still it was nice to write something down like that, a story! I also still want to write this other story I thought of. I am figuring it out still. Sometimes stories need time to cook. I have had stories on my mind for years before they became a thing.

My Grandpa used to tell stories. Like historical stories from our family, but also traditional stories that had been passed down from his family and others. He just did it with his voice, I think sometimes he wrote them down. He was an oral storyteller in the traditional sense. He was also a minister when that was one of the few ways Indigenous men could get an education. I think his being a minister also saved that part of my family from residential schools, because why would a minister’s kids need to go to residential school to learn about God? Our reserve had day schools and he did attend one. But my mom didn’t have to attend day school or residential school. So she’s an atheist which is hilarious from a minister’s daughter. BUT ANYWAY the reason I bring up him being a minister is that I think his storytelling is why he went into that line of work, because it is a lot of stories. People love bible stories. I think there’s more interesting stories but yeah, and it’s not like he only told bible stories either. Def not. I think he was adapting to society in the way his family thought was most advantageous at the time. One of his Facebook profiles came up with his birthday the other day and he would be 107 today, obviously a crazy old age but he passed away some years ago now. I still remember seeing him in his hospital bed meeting a spirit. He was looking at something/someone in front of him that I couldn’t see and he shook its hand. Crees shake hands a lot, so it was probably one of the ancestors getting ready to bring him home. He was mostly sedated after that and I think I was the only one who saw him shake a spirits hand. I still talk to him a lot. He was the first spirit to really more clearly contact me.

I’m going to make a Saskatoon Pie for Christmas dinner. I’m also going to get a beef roast and I have some potatoes and carrots and cranberry sauce. And I might get a squash to make a roast squash with cranberries, brown sugar, and walnuts, because I fucking love that dish. I also want to make Yorkshire pudding because a large part of the white part of me is Scottish/British so I love that shit ha ha! I know people always bitch about British food but I fucking love it!!!!

I’m not really anticipating many things this next week. Just staying home minding my business. I might write here a bit more if I think of things that I want to share. I am looking forward to the new year when I can teach my classes. I’ve got to do some lesson planning and update some PowerPoints. I am ready! Almost. But it will be fun educating students again. The video art production class is very similar to the video production workshops I was doing with youth online, except longer and we also see videos. So that will be fun. I’ve got a guest artist coming also which is super cool.

Well this is long enough for today I guess. I usually write here just to keep my brain working. I have never used generative AI except for the early days when I was trying to get DALL-E to make stupid pics. But then I learned more and stopped. I think it’s unethical in numerous ways and contributing to ecocide. I also think it’s harming users brains and there is research supporting this. I’m a bit terrified of the future when people who have used Generative AI are supposed to be taking care of us or making things and they have no critical thinking or creative thinking anymore. I don’t care that I have grammatical errors in my writing all the time, at least it’s MY writing. And a good editor can always spot grammar errors anyway when I publish things professionally (this is not a professional blog!).