Blog

(For better or for worse ...)

First of all, thanks for 100 followers, everypuppy!! I was planning on writing up another blog post but I wasn't prepared to hit one hundred first, so please excuse me if I'm a little scrambled! I'm just wagging my tail n shit I'm excited thinking about it! I know that not everyone following me actively keeps up with my blog - some people just like the look of my site or some old version of how it looked, some people like my creative endeavors, and of course there are plenty of inactive users following, but no matter why people are following me ... that's a big number ! That is one hundred people who clicked on my website at least once and decided that they like what they see.

At the summer camp I work at, we usually have about 100 kids attending camp each week. So if I think about a whole camp's worth of human bodies ... my goodness! That really puts it into perspective!

Whether you just found my little corner of the web or you've been here since day 1, I thank you very much for following along, everypuppy. I never started this for attention or anything - in fact I was confused when I got my first follower because I had no idea that was a thing on Neocities, but it really warms my canine heart to know that someone out there likes what I'm doing.

Hitting this number today is actually right in line with the blog topic that had already been ruminating in my mind for some days now, the recent phenomenon that I seem to get whatever I want. Of course, as I mentioned in my last post, I got into my ideal college. And just last week I got hired again at my summer camp (I survived the staff cut of 2025!). I really was feeling shocked because usually the things that happen to me don't align quite so well with my wishes. You know what I mean?

For some days it honestly made me feel restless. I was thinking, "all that's left to do is graduate, pack up my life, work the summer, and then leave this town forever," which is such an exciting train of thought, except that the restlessness came with the fact that the next four months for me until all of this happens feels like filler. I'm not used to getting everything I want. I'm not even really used to wanting thimgs, honestly. It always made me feel guilty to want, even as a child. Ordering at restaurants, going on trips to museums or shopping malls, asking to see my childhood friends, everything made me feel like a waste of time and thought and space. Who knows why ... not me, that's for certain, but I'm starting to try and unlearn it. It's so mentally challenging trying to navigate relationships and young adult life because I second guess myself constantly, always feelings like I'm doing something wrong. But I must be doing something right because I'm achieving everything that I set out to. I have friends who love me and a design teacher who believes in me, and, according to my employer, a lot of children who look up to me. So I don't know. Maybe it's okay for me to want because wanting is what keeps one driven. And maybe it's worth it to be driven, even if I have to take up some space.

It's all felt a little bit too good to be true, and I suppose that's because it is. I wish I could just keep talking about how I'm happy about everything but in the past couple days an obstacle has appeared that will make everything just ... more difficult than it should be. It is my father. I don't feel the need to get into the gritty details but he's threatened to take my mother to court if (when) she tries to move across the country because of my thirteen year-old brother. It's stupid. He doesn't care about his son or even his home in Arizona; he doesn't even spend time with us and he spends at least half the year overseas anyway. He can't win and it's a waste of time, effort, energy, and money for everyone involved. He's just an abuser who wants to continue to control his ex-wife 5 years after their divorce.

The thing is, I can't afford to go to college if I have to pay for the out-of-state tuition, and since before I applied we've been riding on the fact I'll be a dependent of a resident of the state of Ohio. So on the off chance my shitty asshole father traps my mother here in the desert, I'm trapped too. Thinking about this makes my chest tight and it makes my head spin and it makes me sick. The worst part is that my aforementioned brother actually likes our father. I'm the only one of his four children who actually remembers all of the abuse. It's frustrating but I can't blame them because it's just a facet of the child mind to block out the sicker things. Whatever. I'm tired of talking about this but I felt like I needed to get it out somehow. It's hard to talk about this in real life without feeling like a downer.

For the photos this time I offer you some pictures I took of the moon a couple nights ago. There was a huge, bright ring around it and bright stars in each cardinal direction, looking like a compass. I tried taking long exposures for the first time. For my first shot, I think they turned out okay.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. ♡

I feel insecure about my writing style lately, like I'm regressing. I don't know. I'm just a puppy. Love u all.

Big old site update and also I'm going to design school ...

Dogblog 4.0 is up! This update has been a long time coming ... I really didn't like the previous 3.0 layout. The only reason I deleted 2.0, the last version to feature sidebar navigation and the clover picture(s), was because it got too complicated and started to stress me out. So I made 3.0 excessively simple to avoid that sort of feeling, but let's be real here ... it was BORING! And it was UGLY! And it really didn't feel like ME!

With this new layout, I brought back some of the whimsy and coziness of 2.0 (actually, I think it's even cozier ...), but I also took great care to streamline my file directory and even make my HTML more coherent and legible, so I shouldn't get too stressed out to update the site and delete everything this time lol.

There are still a couple more things I need to work on, but overall I'm really happy with this layout. I think it's my best work yet and I can't wait to jump off from here and keep adding more cool stuff.

As for the blog, if you've been following my site you might notice I've started over again. I Really hope I can stick with blogging this time, though, because I'm trying a new blog style that I think I'll like a lot. I want to try writing this blog almost like a diary. I was thinking the other day about the fact that I was actually a very avid journaler this time last year. I kept up my journal every single day and I only stopped when I LOST the notebook I had been journaling in at the time at the end of the summer. I was really upset about it and hadn't kept a journal since, but if I'm keeping what's essentially a web-based journal, I'm never going to lose it. Right? So hopefully I'll be sticking with this blog style and updating more frequently than I did in the past.

Okay. We've been over the site, we've been over the blog, and now I want to talk about the rest of my life, because I've been pretty quiet on here the past couple months, working on all the background sutff, but my life is actually pretty awesome lately!! I think too much has happened in the past couple months to talk about everything at once, so I suppose I'll have to write more in-depth on various events individually, but recently my biggest news is that I got into college! My dream school, actually. And a program I'm actually passionate about. Wild stuff! I'll be moving across the country to Cincinnati and studying graphic design for the next five years. My family is moving with me, save my twin sister, who will be studying in St. Louis. To be frank, I'm elated. If you've been keeping up with the various scrapped dogblogs, you'll know that I was born and raised in a small town in the Sonoran Desert. You'll also know that I totally hate it here. BUT I like Cincinnati ... there's trees there! And I like the buildings and the traffic lights. I feel like every other street in Ohio looks like the prettiest street in Arizona. That's an exaggeration. Some pieces of Arizona are really pretty. I'll miss the Prescott National Forest. But there's, like, two trees and two people I'll miss here. Overall I'm excited. I'll let the days pass quickly, and soon enough I'll wake up somewhere else every day. That's life and that's the dream!!!

In lesser news, I'm reading lately. I wish I could say "I'm reading more" or "I'm reading again," but to be honest I've never been a reader. Ever. As a kid I found it boring, I think mostly because I had a teacher when I was younger who told me not to read age-appropriate children's books, funny as it sounds. I had a high "lexile" or reading level, I guess, and I was told to only read classics and more advanced books. But that shit's boring if you're eight! So I thought reading was boring and I never read for fun and then I never read for school, either. SparkNotes is my main bitch. And now my reading skills are probably pretty shit for an 18-year-old. Or, well, I don't know. I do well on standardized tests and essays, but I find it really hard still to just sit down and read a book. The issue is, I need something to fill my time that at least feels productive. I have a short school day and no job, so I come home before noon and then I just. Like. Play minecraft and read people's blogs for ten hours and maybe binge eat and then go to sleep. I've been doing cool stuff periodically that I want to write about, but my typical day is really, like ... depressing and it makes me feel bad about myself. So I took up reading.

First, I finished a book my painting teacher lent me last semester. Elliot Gish's Grey Dog. It was mid, but I like books about mentally ill women (especially lesbians!) so I was able to get through it. Albeit very slowly. It took me more than a semester. After I finished Grey Dog I figured out how to use the hold system at my local library and I picked up a copy of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. My friend A.R. said she would do "buddy reads" with me once I set up an account on The StoryGraph and The Handmaid's Tale was the first one she suggested we read. I liked it a lot and, like I said, there's time to fill, and I finished it in 4 days. Good read, relevant! To pass time I'm working my way through Steven Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, even though I'm not really interested in YA. My friend M.S. recommended it to me. I'm actually quite enjoying it! I started the day before yesterday and got about halfway through, but I haven't picked it up since. Next in line I've got a hold on George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, bound together as one book, and then A.R. and I will read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye as our next buddy read for BHM.

If any of you folks on the internet have book recommendations, feel free to send some my way via email! Or leave a comment on my Neocities profile if you want. I like fiction, but I want to start reading nonfiction, too. I like fiction about mentally ill women, bonus points for homosexuality, extra bonus points for no [healthy and/or happy] romance between said homos. I want to read more feminist literature as well. Don't be shy to get in touch! ^.^

This entry is getting long and I think that's most of what I want to say. I've been enjoying cool, rainy days, but for the past 72 hours or so it's been way too hot here for early February. I'll leave you with some pictures I've taken on my little digital camera. I hope all my readers have a wonderful day / night, awoof!!

Images are from as early as New Year 2025 and they are not in chronological order. hover over an image for a caption.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. <3