I got nothing

Had a bad dream last night. I don't remember too much of it other than the end - half running, half sliding down a slope in a forest, trying to get to the roadway at the bottom where there was a Greyhound station and hoping I had enough cash on me to get a ticket (and that they'd ask no questions) so I could get away from there. Because I was being pursued by an evil person who would kill me if they caught me...

it was about 11:30 when I woke up from that. (I thought it was much later at first) but it took a very long time to get back to sleep.

So anyway. My latest impulse purchase came:

The so-called "Comfy Princesses" (this is a Ralph Breaks the Internet thing - haven't seen the movie but have seen clips of the "Princess Sleepover"). They are Anna and Elsa, in case you can't tell without the pseudo-18th-century-Scandiavian clothing. ("Frozen" is far from my favorite "princess" movie, but I liked the idea of having a pair of sisters, and of the other pairings, I was either "meh" about one of the princesses or I really hated the clothes they had her in - so, like: Tiana was super cute but Rapunzel was in ugly clothes...)

I bought these with half a thought of redressing them - really hoped they were Barbie sized.

They are not, quite. Barbie height, maybe, but even skinnier than Barbie. But their feet are a lot bigger so they can't share shoes, not even with fat curvy Barbie, who has bigger shoes. Boo. And I am assuming the marketing idea on these, even though the clothing is removable, is that you don't change the clothes so I DOUBT we'll see shoe packs - it's hard to even find shoe packs for Barbie these days. (I would hope eventually with 3-D printer technology....well, maybe someone invents a "shoe creator for dolls" where there is like a little box you can stick the doll's feet in, and it scans them, and then you can pick from styles, and it will make them in the right size. That would be excellent, because there are a lot of odd-scale dolls out there, and for people who thrift-shop for dolls, they often come shoeless.)

They're closer to Monster High size in terms of upper body proportions....so now I'm thinking if I can EVER motivate myself to do handsewing again, I pull out the set of Monster High patterns I bought ages ago, and some of the small-scale print fabric I have, and make them dresses? Because I like them in casual dresses better than in these outfits. (I should try the little knitted dresses I made for my Monster High dolls on them to see how those fit; if they do, maybe the patterns I bought would work. I know they were for mostly fairly "traditional" style dresses - nothing too short or extreme, and there might have been one "loli" style dress in the mix, which might....actually work with Anna's high-tops if I used black and white for it)

I did find things that kinda sorta fit. If I find something I love so much on one of them that I'd never put it on Barbie again, I'd have a go at taking in the seams a little to make it fit more closely:

Elsa is in a ruffled top (that kind of falls off her shoulders) and a print skirt, Anna has a sort of sloppy t-shirt dress that has a lion (?) and the phrase "California Love" on it. I've kind of headcanoned now that Elsa is the "prissy" or "traditional" sister - she is wearing blue slippers that could pass as ballerina flats - and Anna is the "punky" one because when the only shoes available for a doll are black high-tops, there's a limited number of dress styles that will work for her...

I will also say these are not as well made as the made-to-move Barbies, but they are cheaper (about $30 for two in a pack, as opposed to closer to $20 for one MTM doll). The joints have a much more limited range of motion and the plastic feels cheaper. (These are Hasbro rather than Mattel; I guess Mattel lost the Disney license a while back)

But yeah. Where my heart would be today if it could be would be at home, either sewing for these or knitting or sewing on the current quilt top, but I can't really take a "mental health day" on the basis of "really don't feel like I can be bothered to work" and I'm also really extremely far behind on a lot of things, so....this will also be a mostly-working weekend.

I *am* contemplating if I still feel like wanting to do doll sewing, and I never get around to it, maybe at Christmas? Pack these two and some patterns (and maybe some bits of fabric, though doubtless my mom has some things she'd be happy for me to scavenge) and take them up to Illinois with me....it's going to be just my mom and me at Christmas (at least, that is the plan so far) so there will probably be a lot of time open for me to do things like that. (I'm already trying to think of fun things she and I could do together - maybe go see the various Christmas displays at the historical places around town; it's been a couple years since she's been able to get out and do things like that just for fun).

(Edited to add: if she WANTS to go out and do stuff like that. I also know for some people the first big holiday without the loved one is hard and they want not to celebrate it. If she feels that way I will be okay with it - I will still give her a present even if we don't have a tree or do the traditional dinner or anything like that. I will be sad, but I will respect it. Then again, given how she seems to be doing now - going back out and doing stuff she hadn't been doing when he was unwell - maybe she will be up for some of the celebrating)

Other than that, yeah. Looking forward to better times is about what I've got right now. Somewhere I read - I can't remember now if it was someone from ITFF sharing advice, or if it was an essay I read about grief - but they likened it to a giant hole in a path you regularly take, and the problem is you periodically forget about the hole, and then you fall in it all over again and get hurt all over again, and it takes time to retrain your mind to know the hole is there without hyperfocusing on it, but eventually you do, and while the hole is still there, you learn to navigate around it most of the time. And that makes sense to me....I did kind of fall in the hole again midday yesterday. But I hole out hope that while the hole will never fill in or close up, at least I'll eventually learn how to stay away from its edge.

**
Addendum: this has not been a good week and I wish it was over already. In my "informed daily mail digest" (an e-mail you're sent showing at least some of the mail you are to receive) I see the final decision from the IRS is set to come today. I am greatly hoping they accept the re-analysis that the second Jackson-Hewett agent did (I admit I am enough of a pessimist to feel like her correction of the problem seemed "too easy"). If she was right, I get about $800 back. If the IRS doesn't accept that, the next best thing is a grudging "well, okay, you don't actually owe us anything." Worse would be "you owe us, but it's not a huge amount." The worst would be "we don't accept that revision, you still owe us [what amounts to more money than I have in my savings account right now] AND we want you to come in for an audit" because....well, this is like the worst possibel time for me to cope with that, and I presume "come in for an audit" would mean going to either Dallas or OKC to talk to someone and....I don't drive in cities and I'm already spiralling in my mind to "who do I know that I can beg to drive me there?" and also wondering what I cash in to pay for the penalty and fine....

this just feels like too much on top of everything. And I know the IRS won't care about my dead dad if indeed they think I'm some kind of a crook.

(That's the worst thing: people who are fundamentally honest but maybe simply clueless wind up getting taken to the woodshed; the genuine terrible criminals often skate through with no penalties.)

***

I also still have that stupid, stuck-in-molasses brain, where I click on the wrong thing (like when I want to print a document) first even though I've spend 20 years clicking the right way. Or I drop stuff. Or I can't remember things. My administrative assistant asked me about "which office is coordinating this" for something and while I could picture the person who would do it, I could not think of their name or their office's name and then spent a couple minutes raging at myself because I could not. (She sympathized; she lost her own father several months before I lost mine, and she's dealing with even more heinous paperwork than I am over it because some distant relative thinks they have a claim to a property he owned that they do not have a claim to).

I just want my brain to be better. I want it not to be filled with fuzz. I don't know if there's anything that would help this; I know people who went on antidepressants or similar said they had MORE fuzz until they got the dosage dialed in and I'm not sure I could even deal with that. So I think I'm just going to need to keep white-knuckling it for at least a while but it is horrific having such a broken brain.