#so the tldr exists and covers the bases

Whee, updates!

Short summary (because it gets reeeeally long under the read more and I totally don’t expect anyone to read everything):
Pupper died, kitty died x2, mom’s in a wheelchair because the VA is terrible apparently, epilepsy is still a thing, money’s still a bit tight, and our winters are cold.
But! Video games are fun and I’ve adopted a new feral kitty and her kittens! Also I’m trying to make a game now! And my uncle is nice enough to take me to church whenever he can! :D

• Still living at home with mom; still have epilepsy, still not able to work or drive, still trying to earn my keep by helping out around the house.
• Last winter we had some pipes burst! I’ve had to master the art of DIY plumbing and got it mostly fixed but it was way more stressful than it should’ve been and that was preeetty much why I vanished on here again.
  
• I don’t recall ever putting it on here; our dog, Elvis, ultimately passed away about a year or so after my step dad did. He ended up with cancer and we had to put him down. He was a good pupper right up until the end and I had to do my darnedest not to cry in front of him since he was such a sensitive bab. At the time, our car was in the shop and we had to call for a taxi. The driver was insanely kind to us and put up with us putting a hundred pounds of dog in his backseat, and didn’t charge us extra when we asked to stop at a gas station to get some junk food to drown our sorrows in. He also told us the story of how he put his own dog down, and how sorry he was to hear it had happened to us, too.
• One of our cats died- Tricky, our big black kitty. She got cancer, as well, and when we couldn’t get her to eat even with taking something to increase appetite we had to have her put down. She was an absolute sweetheart and the vet let me hold her while they gave her the injection.
• I’m pretty sure I posted on here when our other kitty- Moony- died year before last? In case I didn’t: It was kidney failure. There wasn’t anything that could be done. He became joined at the hip with me when he first started getting sick, and having to make the call myself to have him put down hurt.
• More kittens happened!! We had a feral kitty (feral as in you didn’t want to approach her or she would probably attack) that was best friends with Elvis and used to eat and sleep with him for protection against our other feral cats. After we lost him, we kept putting food out in his bowl for her to eat in the garage. That became primarily my job and after working with her for around three years (I’d started trying to work with her before Elvis even got sick) she started approaching me and rubbing against my legs. Then she proceeded to have kittens and I had to activate CODE ADORABLE and we adopted all four of them- and her! The kittens were darlings and one in particular (named Cobbler now) considered me his second mother, but it was pretty easy to coax them inside the house once they were around three weeks old. Mama cat followed them and we led them into a spare bedroom. That was two years ago, and they’ve all been fixed and given their shots and they’re a bunch of healthy little babies! Cobbler is still the mama’s boy, though, and he won’t eat in the morning unless I pick him up and talk to him for a good few minutes.
• Pokemon!! Pokemon has been something of a saving grace for me! Between car break downs (which happen every few months it seems), doctor appointments, and just life being generally not fun, Pokemon has helped keep me a little sane. In the past year and a half I’ve played through around… seven games, including the USUM and LGPE. Let’s Go Eevee is stupidly fun, for the record, and Eevee, Mew, and I are steamrolling over Kanto and finding shinies along the way.
• This spring! This! Past! Spring! I saw someone reblog a post on here talking about turning characters without a set backstory into a fighting game, then someone added to make a dating game and included links to Ren’py and a few other engines and whoo boy. I decided to try Ren’py and I got hooked and now I’m making a game I guess?? It’s a weird mix of point-and-click, dating sim, and adventure at this point. I’m making it entirely myself (art, programming, writing/plot) and it’s been super fun!! My art’s improved a lot as a result and I totally need to share game progress on here!
• My mom’s wheelchair thing is a loooong story. In an effort to keep it a little short: basically her VA doctor ignored her back pain, sent her to physical therapy, ultimately drove her into a wheelchair. Not fun.
• This past November was a mess of no sleep and little food and I’m still kind of reeling from it. Slowly getting back into the swing of things, though!
  
• Throughout all of this, I’ve been super grateful for my uncle!! He lives an hour away and preaches at a church in his city, but he makes a concentrated effort to come and pick me up once a month to go to church with him and have a meal with his congregation. He also sometimes drops some food off for me and my mom when he knows things are particularly tight for us. I’d never tell him and he probably doesn’t realize it, but he feels like the closest thing I have to a dad these days. <3