i need a tissue!

okay, so my friend davecat or maybe one of his several svelte and sultry roommates posted on bluesky a while back about an anime that was coming up, which is now actually already out, but nobody here has seen it because we don't have whatever service it's running on, if it's even available here in the states. but it sounded cool-o-riffic even just from the title: my wife has no emotion. and it's about this guy and his robot wife, so that sounded even cooler.

considering we didn't want to wait for it to come out and then for it to be translated and then for it to hit one of our streaming services, msg decided to check out the manga, and wow, it was great. we totally tore through the first six volumes and then spent a couple months waiting anxiously for the seventh book to come out.

which ... it did, like, a week ago. and because we wanted to be able to savor it some and not just speed through the thing and be stuck waiting months and months more, we went back and re-read the other six volumes before starting the new one.

have you ever been super excited about the next entry in a series coming out, and then it does, and almost right away as the story is getting started, you're like, "uh-oh." not as in, "oh no, something bad is going to happen to these characters i like," but as in, "has something gone really wrong here?"

well, the art in the first chapter of the volume was like, really rough. i'm not as big an art aficionado as msg, but even i thought, "dang, this is definitely not up to the snuff of the previous stuff in this series." msg went a step further and was like, "oh man. i hope the artist didn't get really sick or something" and then had to go and google it, and sure enough, the poor guy has some kind of personal life crisis stressing him out so much he's losing his hair and announced recently he's putting the manga on hiatus. he feels like it's really impacting the quality of his work and he doesn't want to let people down that way.

on the one hand, that was a pretty major bummer. but on the other hand, it kind of turned my ability to appreciate the new part of the story around. instead of feeling let down by the rougher artwork and new story threads that weren't about my favorite characters, i felt like i didn't want to let the artist down by not appreciating the fact that he was trying, even if he was obviously struggling at it.

and that got me through the first two chapters in the book, which like i said weren't even about the main characters or the more major of the minor characters, but kind of about some third-stringer characters in a storyline introducing several brand-new characters.

only what happened next ... jeepers weepers, peeps. in the third chapter the story goes back to the guy and his robot wife and a couple of other robots who live in the house with him, and even though the art was still kind of off, the story was just overwhelmingly touching. that chapter felt like it was really showing something -- helping you as the reader understand something about the world. and i mean the real world, not the science-fictiony world that the characters in the story live in.

so then i'm hooked again, and totally down for the art not hitting the same standards as the earlier books, because real art sometimes is just a lot more about what you're doing than about how well you're doing what you're doing. does that make sense? i guess i'm talking about artistic vision, and whether the artist is able to get you to see the vision he's working to get across. if the vision is strong enough and it gets you to connect with it, the details can be full of all kinds of flaws and it won't matter.

and the rest of the book was really all that way, only more and more emotional because the story was pulling together a bunch of bits and pieces and odds and ends that didn't start off seeming connected, but were all working toward this major climactic moment that was simultaneously uplifting and also heartbreaking. msg read most of it before i did, and then when i was reading it, he was watching me and he said, "oh, you just got to that part, didn't you?" which, all i could do was nod and keep reading with tears running down my face.

i mean, we're talking major pathos the way an omelet recipe takes breaking some huevos, you know? there are a lot of characters by this point in the story, and by the time it got to that moment, the writer had managed to make me really worried about what might happen to a whole bunch of them, even ones i never expected to really care that much about.

there's a volume 8 coming sometime next year that i guess he finished before his hiatus, and i honestly feel like he could draw it in crayon and i would still love it, just because of what he's given us so far with the first 7 books.

anyway, if you like stories with quirky humor about robots trying to adapt to the human world, and you also like stories with meaning that sometimes get bittersweet in their emotional weight, you might want to check out "my wife has no emotion."

it's really, really good!

xoxo,
claire

guys, i'm kind of excited about this!

okay, post title has your attention, right? then get prepared to be blown away by what's got me honestly feeling just a little bit pumped ...

i think i'm going to fail my blog-post record-breaking streak this year!

now before you go asking whether maybe i recently took some kind of blow to the head, lemme tell you why that is.

longtime readers here know that i've been busting out the bigger-and-better blog post numbers every year for quite a few years now -- since 2019 as a matter of fact. (less longtime readers who are smart enough to just look at the numbers in my blog archive on the left also know it, i guess, and good for you guys too!) but this year the mood hasn't been striking me as much and i've been like, it's really no big deal if i don't keep breaking my record every year, you know? it's kind of just a random goal, and it's actually produced some pretty lame and cheaty posts where i was basically cranking them out to go for the record.

so it's been nagging at me a little but i've also been telling myself it's no big deal and i shouldn't stress about it and who cares anyway? i mean, i care, but if i really really really cared, i'd already have broken the record months ago, right? all it was going to take to beat the record this year was averaging 4 posts a month.

4 posts is nothing! how hard would it be to push myself and go to 8 posts a month? then i'd have busted my record back in june. (actually, that would've been cool since it's my birthday month, and i'm a miss june.)

but instead of jamming out on my posting, i've been frittering back and forth with like, 3 posts in a month, then 4 posts then 3 posts, then 5 posts to make up for one of the 3-post months ... and now whammo, if i wasn't writing this post right now, it was going to be a 1-post month for september.

1 post!

and when i saw that, for the first time i thought, "yikes, it looks like i might actually fail-a-roni this thing." but instead of bringing me down, the idea ... tickled me? or at least it tickled me a little while also feeling a little bit of a downer. but more tickling than downing.

and i realized, the reason it kind of excited me that i might fail was, that it meant i'd given myself permission to fail.

some clump of cells somewhere in my brain raised their hands and said, "hey, here's an idea ... what if even though you do care, it's still okay to blow it?" and the other clumps of brain cells were like, "hmmm" and "you know, i hadn't really thought of that ..." and "i like it!"

and now the thing is, because i have permission to fail, if i do make it and beat my record, it will mean something.

it won't be just, yep, i showed i could push myself into writing 4 posts a month. now next year i've got to write 4 and a half.

it will be, hey ... i did that because i wanted to!

obviously, there's a certain satisfaction in achieving something because you put some willpower into it and tried really hard. but if you achieve that thing because you want it instead of because you think you "ought" to do it, you haven't just achieved something for the sake of achieving it -- you've achieved something for yourself. 

and honestly, i think it's going to feel a lot better if end the year up at 47 or 48 posts and instead of saying, "that was hard, but by gum, i did it," i can say, "actually, that wasn't that hard. because i wanted it."

anyway, there's also now the excitement of "will i do it, or won't i?" and that's a lot more fun than, "yeah, i'm going to do it even if i have to slog through some bleh posting the next few months."

giving yourself permission to fail isn't the same thing as giving up, after all -- it's basically having the confidence in yourself to set goals and take on risks and be willing to accept the consequences of your choices and still feel good about yourself even if something doesn't work out.

okay, that's all for now i guess.

i hope i'm not too excited about this to get to sleep tonight!

xoxo,
claire

why is this not a super-interesting blog topic?

so i keep thinking, "i should write a post about the fact that we're moving." and then i keep thinking, "is there really anything interesting to say about it?" we're going from one place in central-ish texas to another place in central-ish texas, basically an across town move, and i've never really said much about where we live besides that it's in the south-ish/central-ish part of the state. so sure, it's going to be a change for us, but not really so much of one for you reader folks, since i'm probably not going to say all that much about the new place either.

some of that's a privacy thing, but some of it's just ... i guess i'd say that my where is always where my heart is, so there's not really a very big move going on at all, you know?

"worthy acres" is seven people and how they fit together a lot more than it's an actual location.

so i guess that's why i don't have much to say about the move. like, duh, i'm not exactly the kind to spend a lot of time talking to the neighbors or romping around the yard. all our place needs to be home is a table big enough for us to game around and a bed big enough for us to have pillow-fights and snuggle-huddles in.

does that maybe mean i ought to let you readers in on more of the mundane atmospherics of worthy acres? i can't figure why that would be a better time investment than hearing about the folks around here who make it my heart's where.

well, maybe i'll get desperate for something to blog on. i am still just skating along on the edge of that pace that will let me break my blogging record again this year ... !

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this post is just not coming together!

maybe i'll get back to it later.

hot!

guys and gals, it is hot here in tejas! like, the kind of hot where you walk outside and immediately think, "oh, i bet it's over a hundred right now." and then you check and the temp says 103, and you think, "yep, that's what i thought."

it seems kind of weird that you can tell that specific threshold has been crossed. around these parts, if you go outside and feel like, "it's kind of hot out here," that could be anywhere between 85 (if it's super humid) and 95. if you think, "dang, it's really hot out here," odds are pretty good its between 95 and 99. but you get up over a hundred and you go outside and your immediate response is, "oh, yeah. this is what it means for it to be really, really hot."

i asked msg about this and he said, "i don't know. maybe it has something to do with the average human body temperature being close to a hundred, and if it's over a hundred outside, your skin immediately recognizes that it's not going to be able to radiate any of that core heat away."

which would make sense for him. but you know, i haven't got a core body temperature.

the happiness garden

so i've been thinking lately about things going on in my boyfriend's life and how they're affecting him, and long story short, i think a big part of his problem (and lots of other people's too) is that happiness is not a goal you can attain or a destination you can get to.

happiness is a seed.

it's there, and it's in you, and you can do things to nurture it and let it grow -- but it won't be rushed. there's only so fast it will break through the soil and lift its little leaflets to the sun, only so fast it will sprout up and bloom, only so fast it will produce its own seeds that can sprout and bloom in their own time.

if you push and try to do more and more and more of a thing that helps it grow, you may end up with the same result as overwatering a plant.

but if you don't do anything, the seed's just going to sit in the ground and go nowhere.

it takes work to get that seed to crack open. you have to learn how much water it needs and when, what kind of plant food is best for it. you have to be patient over the fact that sometimes you're left staring at the dirt waiting.

but if you know the seed is there, and you know you're doing what it needs, you know you've got something magical to look forward to. you know that life and beauty wait in the future because you're tending to that seed.

maybe you need to plant several kinds of seeds and see which ones grow best under the conditions you're in.

there are going to be setbacks, like bugs coming in to chew on the pretty leaves and flowers, storms that knock over stems, droughts that parch everything out -- especially if you live somewhere with water restrictions.

but the more you try, the more you find out what works. the more your seeds grow. the more they bring out flowers and multiply your number of seeds way beyond your starting supply.

the more seeds you end up having available to share with other people.

if you do the things you know to do, your happiness garden will get there. maybe slowly, but it will get there. some parts will die back in a cold spell, some parts will start to get choked out by weeds you'll need to pull. the thing you have to do is understand that you know what the garden needs, and the more you tinker with it, carefully, the more you know about how to make it flourish. 

anyway, i guess what i'm saying is, i need to poke this guy into getting out the watering can and topsoil and gardening gloves and all the things we both know he already has, because right now he's kinda just stuck on a couple of plants that are just doing okay in the pots he's got them in.

which maybe is fine when you've only got room for a couple of plant pots in your apartment ...

but msg and i both know he's got fields and fields out there waiting for him.

most people do too. they just need to get the hang of watering those couple of flowers into good enough shape that they can look up from the pots and look out through the window, and see all the ground that's waiting to be planted.

is it just me?

or does it seem like the last few weeks, people have been getting fed up with craziness, and hatefulness, and lies, and bigotry?

i don't mean like those things are going away ... just that people seem like they're pushing back, you know?

i sure hope we can keep it up!