2nd January 2025

Happy New Year!

The new year is here, but I can't deny that a lot of stress has been brought through from last year. For 2025, I feel that I have more worries than things to be excited about. However, I am trying to look on the bright side, and focus on what I can do rather than what I can't do anything about.

First of all, I really need to renew my passport! I keep thinking about trips to other countries, but I actually can't go anywhere because my passport ran out. The part that is holding me back the most is getting a passport photo, but after that the renewal should be relatively straightforward.

I also can't go on trips to other countries without money, so the next thing I want to focus on is trying to get my finances in better order and start saving up more again. This... would be easier if I didn't keep buying things. I'm going to try to be really specific about any new lolita items I am thinking of adding to my wardrobe, and if I'm not sure whether I'll wear them, I won't get them. I would also like to actually sell some of the clothes I've been planning on selling, this will be helpful towards my budgeting also.

As well as selling clothes, I also have a few items of clothing that I would like to get alterations for. This is largely for clothes where the straps are too short, I need to speak to my local alterations person about getting the fabrics matched for a longer strap (for my noble bustiers, I will just be removing the strap). The good thing about wearing a lot of old school and gothic lolita is that it's a lot easier to find things that work to replace the fabric for things like straps.

I also have a couple of repairs I want to do for myself. This is largely for buttons that I need to replace, but also for a minor sewing error on one of my Atelier Pierrot OPs that I know I should be able to fix by myself. Overall I would want to clear my repairs and alterations pile by the end of the year.

Other than things I want to do, there's also some things that I've just been... thinking about. Or reflecting on. Considering whether I want to take action around.

In particular, I've noticed that I really fell out of touch with some of the people I was friends with in school. And while in some ways I'm glad, in other ways it really hurts, especially when I see posts on social media from my friends all hanging out without me, to be honest I feel like I was a bad friend for not keeping up with everyone and not making enough of an effort to hang out. I don't want to give excuses, but after leaving school I really struggled with keeping up with my social life. One aspect of the things I found difficult was making time to go and see people. There wasn't a good transport option to go visit people - there wasn't a regular bus and I didn't have much money anyway, and my parents were never able to give me a lift. So I found it tough to join in with plans, eventually I just felt that the plans weren't being made for me to take part, so I stopped trying to join in, and eventually started to prioritise plans that were made by friends who lived in more easily accessible locations, many of which weren't particularly good people to hang around with.

Along with the stress of going through college and starting work, I ended up falling completely out of contact with a lot of people. I've been slowly trying to ease into reconnecting with some of the people I was friends with, but it's really tough to put myself out there, especially since I have so much fear that resentment might have built up while I wasn't around. But I think it would be nice if I could get back in contact with a few people who live nearby. I've had some relative successes and some people who just ignored me, the people that just ignored me made it a lot tougher to reach out to others.

Well, since my partner and I have been talking about moving to Scotland at some point (I don't know if it will be exactly this going ahead, but we have spoke about potentially moving somewhere a little less populated for a larger house and more land), I'd like to give it a go to try to catch up with some people before we start looking into moving away. It would be too sad to get back into contact with people afterwards but then find it too difficult to visit.

About December - more serious topic

I wanted to update the website more in December, since I had some time off work. However I ended up being way busier than expected for a really serious reason. Not long after my last update, my sister was hospitalised with a new diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes, and I wanted to be there to support her. I wanted to talk about this because I read in the news that recently a lot of people have been catching norovirus, and the assumption from my family was that my sister had also caught norovirus. What I have learned from this is that it is crucial to listen to the advice to get to hospital if you're still throwing up after 48 hours, because it could be something even worse than norovirus, (and to be honest, even if not, the dehydration and lack of nutrition can become very serious). It was Wednesday when my sister became ill, and it was Sunday when the ambulance came to pick her up. It had become a very severe instance of diabetic ketoacidosis.

Thankfully she was able to wake up by Tuesday, but it was a really tough recovery process and she will likely be spending the next few months putting on the weight that was lost not just during the time that the diabetes began to develop and her body stopped being able to process sugars and carbohydrates, but also during the ketoacidosis, when her body began turning her blood to acid and eating away at her muscles and who knows what else.

There is a stereotype for diabetes to only affect people who are fat, and while maybe it is the case that Type 2 diabetes will be more likely to affect people who are overweight, that is simply not the case for people with Type 1 diabetes, and this distinction has been really tricky when researching information for adjusting her diet to put on weight because you only get suggestions to help lose weight and not to help gain it! As well as this, some of the comments from not just friends but even family members have been very insensitive regarding her diet - comments like "this is because of how much crap she eats" when it is an immune response, and had nothing to do with the foods that she has been eating (which is mostly very healthy! Though she did joke that she had a grimace shake on the day she started feeling sick).

To be honest it has just been a really rough time watching her struggle, and watching my close family struggle in coming to terms with the fact that there will need to be changes to their lifestyle, that this is going to be a permanent disability for her. Watching her struggle with getting used to injecting herself with insulin 4 or more times a day (she's a pro now! Or at least, she manages as long as nothing unexpected happens, and she isn't texting me panicking at 2am anymore). I have learned so much about diabetes type 1. Things like the difference between having a sensor in your arm vs checking your sugar via a pinprick test, foods that are unexpectedly quite dangerous due to having a high glycemic index, and ideas for foods you can substitute them with. The benefits and drawbacks to having an insulin pump (she can't get one until doing her insulin manually becomes like second nature). The warning signs for when someone is developing type 1 diabetes - though this is a bit late now.

The great news is that my sister got a lot of her eyesight back after beginning to take insulin, and she has a lot more energy than she had before, and my family are giving her all the cheese she could possibly want (as this is a great food for people who have type 1 diabetes and need to put on weight). She's getting a dietician and she also has a team to help support her through her adjustment. While the hospital stay was unpleasant for her, I am so grateful to the NHS that she is able to manage this issue and be treated and be healthy and it is costing very little. I'm so grateful she is alive. We got to spend Christmas together, I gave her some more Garfield pieces for her collection, she was pleased with them. I'm thankful.

Website updates

Just a small section to mention that recently I set up my website to have its own custom domain name! I'm really excited about it. You can now access my website at https://crow-queen.com! I still need to fix my guestbook link but I made a couple of other small fixes across the website. Thanks for being here!