Well, I got some very nice feedback for last month’s blog post, so I am going to do it again.

February was less exciting than January because I didn’t go anywhere. Mostly it was a month of whistling in the dark; finding things that retain joy and hope in the face of a whole lot of uncertainty and stress and fear. February is a stupid month at the best of times, and watching the United States self-destruct definitely does not make it less stupid.

Here is a summary of the 5000 words I could write about that:

Anyway, instead I will write a non-exhaustive list of the things that are helping me cope.

My daily crossword and NYT games, but only the good ones. In case you don’t know, the good ones and the correct order are Wordle, the big crossword, Connections, Strands, and the Mini. I accept the sudoku but I personally have a different app for that and it is for insomnia purposes. (Sudoku is my insomnia pro tip: ideal for using up just enough brain capacity to get the racing thoughts to chill out but not enough to start a new train.)

When I’m done the word games, I do the Colorfle, both normal and hard mode. My record streak is 65, and it died just a few weeks ago. I’m back up to 20 now. Colour puzzles are one of my favourite things because I am very good at them. I finished I Love Hue last year and now I’m in the middle of I Love Hue 2. I have made certain members of my family angry over it, though, because I always use fewer moves than the world average and the game calls me a magnificent butterfly or something, and they cannot. But I knew I didn’t spend my childhood buying the biggest boxes of first crayons and then pencil crayons and then sorting them for hours and hours for nothing. One of my first Big Purchases was when I saved up my allowance to get the big tin of 48 Staedler watercolour pencil crayons – I am one of nature’s spenders, so this was difficult, but I still have the complete set. The purple is the shortest because every single purple pencil crayon I have ever owned has been cursed to break constantly.

My friends and neighbours came in clutch in February. We got hit with a polar vortex and it was absolutely frigid for two weeks. For ten days of that two weeks, our furnace was borked. Yay! It is very old and has already done this once a few years ago, and we are going to replace it this year, but rather than do it in a panic, Sam figured out what was broken and ordered the replacement part. However, the part was shipped from Ontario, which disappeared under a monstrous snowstorm that stopped the mail. So we borrowed two space heaters and three oil heaters, plus used our own three space heaters, and survived. The days were ok because the sun was out and that helped it stay warm, but space heaters scare me so I didn’t want them all running overnight, and it would get awfully cold. Plus we essentially had to have someone in the house at all times to babysit them. It was a whole situation. When the part finally came and the furnace turned on, the house felt SO quiet without all those heaters!

I got to watch small basketball a couple of times. It was delightful. I love seeing kids learning skills – it’s the same as going to middle school band concerts. The range is wide and the competency is minimal, but there’s a lot of heart. I am being perfectly sincere – I think there is a tremendous amount of value in trying activities and sucking at them, and I love watching the journey of skill-building. I remember doing middle school basketball tournaments. The exhaustion and euphoria and camaraderie are core memories for me, and it makes me happy that my kid gets to experience it too. This level has tryouts but no cuts, and then the kids are separated into skill tiers, so it’s basically like a rec league, and that is the ideal sports category in my opinion. The level where you’re committed beyond just dropping in and the stakes are just high enough to make winning fun but not so high that to lose is devastating. I would love to be able to play rec league sports again someday, but that’s possibly a pipe dream. Alas.

Arts and crafts are always a go-to. Tragically, I lost my best toque during the wretched cold snap, and I was so devastated that I had no choice but to order the same yarn and knit an identical one. Equilibrium has been restored, and also crucial ear warmth.

I didn’t read a ton in February, probably because I read so very much in January. I am plugging away at The Count of Monte Cristo, my longread for this winter, and with 300 pages to go, I am still unconvinced on it. It’s fine, I don’t hate it or anything, but good grief Mr Monte Cristo can out-Mary Sue anybody. (I know the term Gary Stu exists but I shan’t be using it.) The women are all only here for Plot Reasons and not because they’re real people, but I have a lot of feelings (derogatory) towards all their fiancés, who are manipulative assholes. One guy threatened suicide if Valentine wouldn’t literally risk everything to defy her father. Another guy refused to break off his engagement, even though they don’t like each other and don’t want to get married. Another guy KNEW those two were engaged and inserted himself in the picture and is now the one engaged to Eugénie. He is a murderer and a scam artist and I hate him. Eugénie has literally only ever smiled on-page when she is with her tutor, who is her own age and also a woman, and they are absolutely definitely lesbians and should be left alone to be happy together. Mr MC himself has a young woman/girl hidden away in his house and calls her his slave and the way she is described is a whole lotta yikes, even though there’s no sex there. When I finish this book I am going to look for scholarly works on these women and then find or write some fanfiction about them teaming up and getting the lives they deserve.

The other two books I read were The City In Glass by Nghi Vo and Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee. Nghi Vo writes gorgeously, and I adore her Singing Hills cycle. This one wasn’t quite at that level for me, but still really interesting. Raven Strategem is the sequel to Ninefox Gambit, which I read in Cuba, and had some middle-book-in-a-trilogy syndrome, but I will read the third one for sure. The calendar-based magic/science is so weird and cool and I don’t know how anyone could have thought it up.

I finished playing Horizon Forbidden West and its DLC, and I adored it. Magnificent. Horizon 3 when. (It will be years and years woe is me why do I get invested in incomplete media all the time.) I’m replaying Zero Dawn now because it’s therapeutic (or something). Please see my most important item: the toy bow, which is plastic and shoots suction arrows that do 1 damage. I love it. I am not going to attempt to complete the game using it, but some people have.

Finally, I am a fan of cats. Cats are the best thing I have right now for mental health support. They are so silly and they do not care about politics. They just do their thing. I highly recommend cats. I hear that dogs are also available for this purpose, but in this house it’s cats all the way.

Good luck with March! It’s treacherous out there. Both in terms of the effing ice everywhere and the general situation. Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum.