all made up with nowhere to go

Bullet points because I have not a lot of nothing to say:

# I finally ordered The Matrix: Resurrections, so I can get to watching that, and also picked up Bill & Ted Face The Music while I was at it.

Neither of these are sequels I wanted, but I will watch them all the same. I did laugh at the one B&T trailer I watched back when it came out, so that bodes well? And I think we all know how hype I was after seeing the Matrix trailers, so fingers crossed it turns out to be at least okay?

# The last six weeks or so have been this weird, horrible fug of me feeling really tired thanks to work (and some other stuff), and I thought I was feeling a bit better, but then I had a combo of a super horrible migraine and the clocks changing! So I'm still feeling gross, yay!

# In P5S, ~weird~ things are happening! (It's an SMT game, when are weird things NOT happening, let's be honest).

I'm around 30 hours in still (I haven't played a lot because of aforementioned migraine and clocks), and I'm still enjoying it. Fusion seems to be this weird mystery I can never get the hang of (I swear it changes from game to game what fusion produces which demon! Perhaps I should start writing it down in a notebook so I can compare next time).

# I'm finally nearly at the end of the offline diary I've been using for almost exactly a year. It has 200+ pages, and I didn't think it would take this long to fill it, but it has!

I know I said this a month ago, but this time I mean it! There's literally four pages left, all I have to do is write some nonsense on them! And then I will swap to the stripy notebook I bought in Tesco a while ago. I originally planned to put French revision in it, but never got around to it, so it can be a diary instead. Maybe I will use an exercise book for French revision (assuming I ever get to it, lol).

# Drive by tea review:

Tetley Lemon and Ginger: I'm not very keen on it. It doesn't taste of lemon AT ALL. It tastes of a fruit, but it isn't lemon. The ginger is apparent, and not unpleasant. Even leaving it to stew for ten minutes doesn't really improve it. Will not be buying this again! Also I should probably stop buying Tetley teas altogether, as I haven't had great experiences with most of the ones I've tried!

After having migraines/bad headaches all week, it occurred to me that I might have been sleeping funky, so I attempted to change that last night. So far, so good. Although I've had week long migraines before, so it could be they've just naturally passed. WHO KNOWS.

I will keep sleeping in the non-funky way, and see how things go.

So because I've had headaches all week, I haven't been doing very much, I say, having collated my mum's diaries, and rearranged mine so they can all go in the same box, among other things.

There is, in total, 116 of her diaries and commonplace books (mostly diaries, though). I do not know if this is all of them because she was a prolific diary writer, and she also wrote diary entries in notepads (presumably because that was what she had to hand at the time). I also don't know at what age she started keeping a diary - the earliest I've found so far is 1974, although I think there's earlier than that, because I'm p sure she wrote about the boyfriend she had before she met my dad.

I, compared, to my mother, am very much not prolific, unless you count this last year, in which I filled five diaries, and wrote almost every day. (I managed from February to August without a break, but then I was ill for a few days, which meant I didn't want to write. Since then, I've taken breaks and not chastised myself for it, as this is the most I've ever written in any diary format, ever).

I have also reclaimed some older notebooks that I haven't used in ages, like ones I was writing stories in that I haven't touched in over three years.

I think if I do start writing again, I'm going to go back to file paper. I only started using a notebook because published authors were like, "this is how I do it!" and I was all, "I have all these notebooks lying around that I'm not using!" and so...except it turned out more inconvenient than anything for me. This was partly down to having specific notebooks for specific stories except that, if my story went nowhere, then that was an entire notebook claimed. Whereas if I'm using file paper and it goes nowhere, no biggie. Not that I've been writing any fiction recently, but there we are.

(Shoutout to that person on the notebook subreddit years ago who said you should cut pages out of used notebooks rather than tearing them so it doesn't destroy the binding).

~

In other news, a small handful of small tea reviews!

Lidl Sleepwell: this is nice, but it makes me feel extremely groggy the next day after drinking it in the evening. I think it's the chamomile. Also it has lavender in it, which is a bit of an acquired taste (and I know some people don't like it - a friend of my mum's used to say she thought it smelt medicinal and thus was put off).

Lidl Mixed Berry: this is also nice, but it has chicory root in it, which I don't like (one of the reasons I can't drink coffee substitutes). I also think it may have contributed to some headaches, so am avoiding it for the time being.

Lidl Deluxe Superfruits: this is a mixed berry which doesn't have chicory in! And while it's more expensive (15 bags per box versus 40), I think it's nicer? It tastes really fruity when it brews for a long time (5 min+) and I really like it.

I also got some more of the green Rooibos and peach, which I haven't seen for ages for some reason*. The last box I had didn't seem as nice as the first box, so I'm going to see how I feel about it again. I also have a box of just Rooibos on its own, but I'm scared to open it in case I don't like it (which is daft, because I know I will?? I can't imagine green Rooibos tastes that different from normal Rooibos, right?)

~

*I mean, the current circumstances means not going out much, and working in an entirely different town that doesn't have a Lidl in the centre of town is probably the reason.

So one thing I have been doing for the past week and a half is writing an offline diary. I'm just putting what happened in my day in it, and how I feel, and leaving it at that. I actually like writing a diary (which is why I liked LJ and like DW), but I've fallen off the wagon, so to speak, with regard to writing an offline one. I used to only write in them when I was angry or upset or crushing on someone or likewise, so it's kind of refreshing to be like, "well, nowt major happened, but that's okay!"

I'm actually surprised with myself that I've managed to keep it going, but I have! I've almost used up the notebook I was using (A5, 100 sheets), and most of that's just been from recent use.

This is part of the reason I have so many notebooks. Because I've written diaries since I was...approximately 11? and I assumed I would be prolific at it my entire life (because my mum was - I have Quite The Stack of her past diaries) Except that when I was younger, I didn't expect crippling depression or the internet to take these things away from me.

But if I keep writing at this pace, maybe I'll use up some of those older notebooks and so on (of which there is also Quite The Stack, especially if you include the ones that were mum's that are still unused). My next one at the moment is similar size to the one I'm using, so I don't overwhelm myself. (I rarely use A4 size books, and the one thick book I used lasted me five years and I was sick of it by the time I got to nearly the end).

I am actually kind of excited about this, as weird as that sounds.

~

I looked up herbal teas online, and now I have fallen down a rabbit hole, and am considering buying a tea strainer for if I ever get any loose leaf tea. I do drink them occasionally, but want a different variety than what the local supermarkets can provide for me (which, if you're mostly shopping in Lidl, as I am, isn't a whole lot).

I also learnt Rooibos isn't a type of tea like black or green tea, which is good news, as I wanted to try it. (My sister in law occasionally drinks it, and she likes black tea, so I assumed it was similar). I don't like black tea in the slightest, and wasn't taken with green tea when I tried it, and I have no idea how I feel about Rooibos, but it's worth a try!

Maybe I should do what my friend Liam does, and make a tea review when I try a new one? He has an entire twitter (and it's only for black tea), but I'd probably put them here because I know what I'm like. And I don't need another twitter account.