i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

I got a text this morning about Yahtzee: as of Thursday he can't use his back legs, and while he's still alert and appreciating belly rubs, it's basically Time. He has a vet appointment at 5 today.

This isn't entirely shocking -- he's 15.6 years old -- and I've been low-key anticipating this; but it's still sad.

He is a very good boy and the bestest first service dog.

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Last night's dream: I was playing Carlotta in an extremely abbreviated version of Phantom of the Opera.

Scene 1: Carlotta et al rehearsing for the elephant scene of Hannibal, for which I was using non-standard lyrics that included a reference to Pokemon, and that overall made about as much sense as "watermelon watermelon watermelon". [No elephants, even stage versions, actually appeared.]

Scene 2: Christine, alone in her dressing room, practices ballet, not realizing the Phantom is secretly watching her.

Scene 3: Raoul beats up the Phantom, The End.

*blinkblink*

Yes, brain, that is an exceedingly faithful adaptation... snorfle.

* today is the last day of Canine Companions' livestreaming puppycam. F litter, lab/golden cross, six black and one yellow, 7-8 weeks old. Super cute, despite video glitches. I want a cuddle pile of puppy...

* I want to figure out how to art-ify my D&D characters, but a) I can't ever figure out clothes, b) faces are hard, and c) my last two aren't even humanish -- current character, Ayla, is an owlin monk, and my previous character, Ek-ko-ao, was a xotlxotl [basically humanoid axolotl] drakewarden ranger. I tend not to do actual humans, but elves can be drawn as slender pointy-eared humans, and dwarves and halflings also are human-faced. I had trouble trying to draw a previous character (Bria, half-orc ranger with a pet velociraptor) partly because of jawline and teeth, though to be fair I couldn't even get my dwarf fighter drawn, so gah.

* also my weekly alphabet art project didn't get very far lulz. half-finished dragonfly is still half finished ...

* how the fuck is it almost April, wtf

* which also means it's almost Phoebe's bday \o/

* my dog poem book idea is one poem closer to completion -- 7 down, 13 to go.

tues-thurs: migraine

fri: migraine hangover

fri, 11pm: notice soreness in right pectoral? that quickly becomes "breathing hurts"

overnight: even shallow inhale causes twinges; deeper breaths spike to 9 on pain scale; each inhale feels like getting speared, muscle feels like it wants to collapse ??. get maybe 1h sleep.

sat: breathing still hurts. shallow breathing ok, but deeper -- including automatic inhale before yawn, or the little gasps of "you've been breathing too shallowly, stoppit" -- still hurt, albeit only to 6.

Can't tell if this is a FOP thing (it's not flareup pain and there's no swelling visible but could be caused by ribcage bone growth) or what

My brain, as I'm trying to go to sleep-- okay but what about Secret Garden But In Space. Or, no, space instead of India, which is why she gets so fascinated with gardens. And maybe the wife died to botched medical care, which is why Colin is hidden away -- and/or he would have to be carted away to hospital type places and Archie doesn't want to give up the last piece of his wife. Can't decide if this is part of, or at least should incorporate, my "Colin is actually disabled" rewrite, or what, but--

Anyway. Going back to trying to sleep... if my brain lets me, lol

A couple recent dreams ...

1. I was petting Loki, long head-to-tail strokes(that I can't physically do any more) that coated my palm in loose fur; I would shake it off before petting again. ...and I woke up realizing my hand IRL was 'petting' the sock I hold at night.

(The position my right arm is frozen in has my palm an inch or two away from my stomach, with the fingers curved down so the fingertips press against my abdomen; when I'm awake and using the tablet, that hand holds the stylus, but if I sleep with my hand unsupported my fingertips start to hurt. So I took a mateless solo sock, tucked it inside a fluffy sock that had also lost its mate, and 'hold' that to support my palm. Really it's just tucked under my hand, I'm not actually squeezing it ... unless my hand thinks it's a cat, lol.)

2. I was in a choir performance with a guest conductor, and about a minute in he stops and says we're doing it wrong, we should have gone up a fifth instead of a fourth. I double check and the score says it's a fourth, but I bite my tongue. We start again, going up a fifth, and it sounds horrible, so he stops again and yells at us. Now I say "We're just doing what you said, sir." It's the sort of 'sir' that really means fuck-you. He says he wants us to follow the score and go up a fifth. "We can't do both, sir. Look at the soprano part. We go from [X] to [Y]" (actual note values redacted for a reason I'll explain) "which is a fourth." He insists it's a fifth. I challenge him to count out the intervals; he does, using the piano, starting with 1 on X and ending up with 5 on Y+1. He says "See?" as if this proved him right. "But that's [Y+1] not [Y], sir." On it goes. And mind you, this is a performance, not a rehearsal! People are watching!

...and I was recounting this to my morning aide and realized that while the notes being sung match going up a fourth, the sheet music -- and the words I was saying in the verbal explanation -- had us going from G to B flat, which is a (minor) third, not a fourth; and when he was plonking out notes on the piano he landed on B flat for "four" and C for "five", except G-C is a fourth up, not a fifth. Awake, I can't figure out how he got four notes from G-Bb with a normal sounding scale... </nerdery type="music">

3. One of my art communities -- which, irl, has a monthly challenge where everyone who wants to participate uses the same inspiration image as a base -- had, in the dream, an image of a snake as the inspiration. I started drawing a realism-type copy ... using Paint. (My non-dream art these days is done almost entirely in Procreate on the tablet.) Somehow it was actually coming out decently snake-ish.

4. I was sitting on the edge of a stage as people started arriving for a concert of a choral group I wasn't in. The guy who used to conduct one of the choirs I used to sing in irl came up to say hi ... at which point I realized I was utterly naked from the waist up. He didn't seem to have noticed, so I was holding my arms awkwardly to hide at least the nipples, and skedaddled as soon as I could.

Stained glass #3: cardinal
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Planning out my art project. Each letter has two, under the theory that I'll loop back through a second time. Some have three (and ** ) because I need to decide.

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Behind a cut because I don't know how big it will look: stained glass Axolotl, which is a word my autocarrot loves to capitalize idek

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So even though my self-inflicted art challenge last year didn't last all year -- I fizzled out halfway through -- I kinda want to do something similar again. I liked the structure.

...except I can't figure out exactly what, lol.

Option 1: faces, maybe cycling by month through human and cat and dog (possibly and misc). Possibly different styles, e.g. cartoony one round and realistic-er one round.

Option 2: Weekly projects, maybe different styles each month? (currently kinda obsessed with stained glass look)

Option 3: Weekly alphabet project specific to animals ... only x might be tricky, lol

Option 4: ???