October 20th, 2025:
September Wrap Up

Time: Smack dab in the middle of the afternoon
Weather: Clear autumn skies
Listening To: Youtube
Moon: New Moon in Libra
Mood: A little tense
Gratitude: Journaling, wooden jewelry, live music, fleeting connections between strangers, daisies

Time for a speedy September wrap up! I want to get in the habit of doing weekly wrap ups, like Marina at notprincehamlet's, or at divergentrays! But before that I wanna get caught up, so here are some highlights from last month!

In September, a friend and I attended the Symphony of Seasons! For those not in the know, it's a concert series centered around live orchestral renditions of the music from Stardew Valley. This was my first time attending a concert dedicated to video game music (Final Fantasy Distant Worlds, I'm coming for you next), and it couldn't have been a more magical experience! These ultra charming animations were projected onto the screens, making the show so immersive. The setlist was spectacular, too. While the orchestra played the seasonal farm tunes you would expect, songs that play frequently in-game, but they also did some deeper cuts too. Some of my favorites include The Sun Can Bend An Orange Sky (my favorite farm track, luv the sitar), Dance of the Moonlight Jellies, the Night Market (sooo atmospheric!!), and way too many more.

Enthusiasm coursed through the concert venue, which made things electric. It was super cute the way was laughing and cheering at the in-jokes, just so happy to be there! Some people were dressed to the nines even, wearing suits--while others were in cosplay! I counted at least three Emilys, but I also saw a Mayor Lewis and others.

Another high point was actually the car rides to and from the venue! The friend who I went with is also in the throes of a Homestuck Renaissance, so I played audiobook reader and read aloud this particular fanfiction, introducing it to her for the first time. And When I Say We Were Losing Our Minds ......... I'll always treasure the memory of us cruising down the freeway going absolutely crazy lmao (if I do a Homestuck shrine, maybe I'll talk about this fic??).

Let's fly over everything else from September!:

I attended one of my best friend's birthday party! To protect her privacy I won't go into a ton of detail about where she hosted it, but it was held at a museum she volunteers! She's a wonderful host, the atmosphere was very lively and full of laughter. One of her guests actually works at the Internet Archive, and admittedly I was a little starstruck LOL.

One day I had lunch with a friend I hadn't seen since May. Nothing like catching up over a very pretty poke bowl.

I baked a coffee cake! Left out the walnuts on about a third of it since my dad doesn't care for them, boo! But that's okay. During autumn I crave cinnamon-y, nutmeg-y stuff like a fiend so this fit the bill.

AT LONG LAST! I FINALLY, FINALLY FINISHED MY SUNFLOWER BLANKET!! GOD!!!!! I started this bad boy back in 2022, and after Literal Years of on and off work, SHE LIVES!!!!!! I still need to clean to weave in all the yarn from where I sewed the rows together, but other than that!! This is something I'll share more of on my fiber arts page, but enjoy this sneak preview for now!!

Anddd because I'm tired of writing, that's it for now. Take care everyone, talk to you soon and thank you for reading!!

Love,
Sarah

October 15th, 2025:
Belated Birthday

Time: Sleepy o'clock
Weather: Soggy n' slick
Listening To: Image by Magdalena Bay
Moon: Waning Crescent in Leo
Mood: zzzzz
Gratitude: Golden age Homestuck fanfic, rainfall, warm lighting, being alive

In late July, I turned 30. In late August, in true Leo fashion, I threw myself a birthday party. And now, in mid-October, I share a diary entry about it! Better than never, right?

Take: when you turn 30, you're sanctified with a sense of whimsy, wonder, and awe wielded openly by small children. And what better way to celebrate this than by rejoicing these traits with the wisdom of getting older? Hence, a fairy-infused pizza party! A midsummer night dream of a soiree! Pure self-indulgence, down to the flowers!! It was a delight raiding my mom's china cabinet!! Shoutout to my family for helping me transform the backyard into this!![emoji]

A group of close friends came over for dinner, and even now I can't feel more fortunate. Love and laughter and spiked lemonade flowed freely, a night that still fills me with light. ;w;

Also let's be real, a pizza party is a stellar choice when you don't wanna fuss around a stove. The whole menu was designed with minimal babysitting in mind. I made a few different flavors, my favorite of the bunch being peach and proseciutto.

Besides the pizzas, I made a strawberry spinach salad with a tangy Dijon mustard dressing, and the fruit salad from the Stardew Valley cookbook! The recipe has you poach apricots (or nectarines, which is what I used) to make a white wine reduction that you drizzle on--definitely the most involved fruit salad I've made, but delicious!

Confession time: dessert was designed with my color scheme in mind (lots of lilac!), but hey, it turned out tasty as well! I made a devil's food chocolate cake with a blackberry buttercream frosting. Chocolate's my middle name, so of course it had to be that lmao--and I'm so proud of how it turned out! The recipe called for coffee to heighten the richness. Packed with a potent fudgey flavor, it didn't suffer from the problem that these cakes can have sometimes, where the chocolate in the chocolate cake tastes more like an afterthought. Despite all my fuss about the buttercream, it too was delicious! Initially I was worried that it was excessively sickly and saccharine, but doctoring it up with more berries and lemon zest tempered the sweetness. After frosting it, the flavors harmonized together--a huge relief come day of!

Here's a picture! This was my first time doing a "naked" cake, but I think the results are nice enough! Definitely something to keep practicing in the future, though.

And!! Since you can't have cake without ice cream, I churned my own ice cream!! Mom's ice cream maker from the 80s coming in clutch, yeah!! [cute image] I've made homemade ice cream before but it's been a second--churning some was on this year's summer bucketlist, so my birthday is as good of an excuse as any!

Homemade ice cream isn't challenging to make, but it does require patience. It's a two-day process, one for the custard and the other for churning it. I started with a french vanilla base and then after spinning it, I swirled in ribbons of blackberry puree. It was a huge hit!! [cute image] Sky's the limit with homemade ice cream, there's so much you can do with it. Next summer I want to further explore this frontier lol

At the risk of sounding cheesy (too late, we're already here), the sweetest part of the night was having so many friends there. It means more than I can say to be blessed with so many loved ones. Entering this new era surrounded by so much care and warmth... words aren't enough!! Adult friendships can have their share of challenges, whether that's with making or sustaining them, or finding a social circle you can thrive in. Having people in your corner, that you can trust, is worth beyond their weight in gold. As loneliness rates continue to climb, as our live becomes increasingly digitized, this sentiment is more timely than ever. If this is something you're struggling with, my heart is with you, truly! I hope you can find those connections, those friendships, that everybody deserves to have [emoticon]

There's more that I can say, but this entry has already taken me forever and a day to get published, so this will Simply Have To Do! Maybe in the future I'll go back and make edits, but for now, thank you so much for reading, and please take care!!

Love,
Sarah

September 7th 2025:
Mayhem Ball Musing

Time: Naptime-slash-snacktime
Weather: Late summer weatherless weather
Listening To: LoveDrug by Lady Gaga
Moon: Full Moon in Pisces
Mood: Could be better; nostalgic
Gratitude: Creative expression, memory making, cleand rinking water

On July 24th, 2025, a lifelong dream came true: I saw Lady Gaga perform live! This entry's all about my thoughts. Take my hand and come with to relive a night at the opera.

Some background first. In 2008, Lady Gaga was on the mind and mouths of millions, and often with a certain level of mockery, too. Much of the public did nawt know what to make of her. But this isn't the time nor place for a deep dive on the kaleidoscopic shifts surrounding Lady Gaga's image throughout the years––after all, we have a date at the opera house to attend!

Just know this. One fateful day, when I was 13 years old in every sense of the age and stuck in an orthodontist's chair, Poker Face warbled out from the office's crummy radio. And my first thought? "More music should sound like this." That impression always stayed with me, single after single, album after album. Music still should sound like this, and thanks to Gaga, it does. Her third imperial era is a wonder for ears to behold! With how much I have loved her latest record, MAYHEM, I knew it was time. 17 years is a long time to adore an artist. So with a close friend at my side, the two of us made the pilgrimage.

My wish is to bottle up my feelings about the concert and share it with you that way, to take a sip out of it yourselves. Or the opera, I should say. Even outside the set design, the show in many ways actually felt closer to a Theatrical Performance(tm) than a Typical Concert(tm). Much of this is due to the narrative created through the concert set. Of course, the song selection centered around MAYHEM's track list, but the order of performance, along with pieces from her previous albums, forms a story that's similar to a musical's structure. This direction is a wonderful compliment to MAYHEM's themes, and tbh themes present across her work. Lady Gaga has long been fascinated with duality, the darkness/ugliness/pain that's inherent in humanity, and how we must incorporate these qualities within ourselves for a more holistic sense of self.

Fame is also a theme that crops up frequently. Sometimes people can overlook that "fame" and "the celebrity" aren't always ideas meant to be taken literally in her music. Rather, they're concepts she abstracts into archetypes that everyone embodies at some point. Everyone has experienced notoriety to varying levels, even if it's at the level of high school cafeteria gossip. This is something explored in the concert, too.

You heard it hear first: Lady Gaga's discography will become a vital addition to philosophical discourse someday (kidding) (kinda) (trust).

Anyway, something else I admire about Lady Gaga is how she like. Fully gives herself over to her artistry. She never quits the bit. She's sooo committed to her performance, to the point where she's unafraid to be ugly or off-putting or unsettling. But it's because of this raw honesty that we as the audience are able to connect, but she doesn't sand off the rawness of being human!! Being unhinged in your art takes lots of bravery, but you're always rewarded for it by having something real. Life can be ugly, the world can be ugly! By expressing this, Gaga fosters an authentic connection with her audience despite the spectacle of the show.

Going back to the production, it took a lot of cues from rock and metal shows, and for the better tbh (Lady Gaga rock album when?). It gave haunted midnight mass, 300 year old red wine that may or may not be poisonous, paparazzi found at the scene of the crime, vestal virgin being buried alive in her cell because you're disallowed to kill her outright. It gave Pandemonium from Final Fantasy IX.

And all this hasn't even touched her talent yet! Obviously We Been Knew about her genius from recordings, but hearing it in-person is on another level. Actually god given. Her skill at modulating her voice with such ease is astounding; one second she's doing a death growl, and the next she's whipping out the classical chops. Highlights for me include the RELENTLESS first act, Perfect Celebrity, Disease, THE BAD ROMANCE FINALE!!! and so much more.

OH, and another dream come true: I wore lolita to see her!! Ahhhhh!! For the longest time I have been dead set on wearing old school lolita when I see her, and that happened! My coordinate was a variation of the Gobelin Dreams flatlay, with some tweaks and additions. I wanted to wear something high contrast to pay homage to the duality in MAYHEM's image, and this fit the bill! Also, let me say that sooo many people were dressed to the nines for the concert. Half the fun is seeing everyone's self-expression, creativity, and love. There's a lot of overlap in concerts and conventions in this way.

Just days after the concert, I turned 30. This was the perfect way to usher in this new decade of my life, by celebrating something that I loved as a child and continue to love into adulthood. It's like a culmination of sorts. Looking back over a month afterwards, it also excites me to image of what will be the next culmination--hopefully it's one surrounded by more love. Certainly, this is something to treasure forever!!

All in all, it's awesome to see Lady Gaga so back in her element, especially after the difficulties of this decade.

Here are some more pictures from the show, taken by my friend L. L has such an eye for photography--she knows how to get these stellar shots without being distracted from the actual performance! I'm so grateful she took these, haha. ;u; So we can relive it, and also for how potato-y my few pitiful attempts turned out.

WELL I'm not sure how to wrap up this entry other than saying THANK YOU for taking this trip back to the opera house. I hope it was as fun for you as it was for me! There's other things I want to catch you all up on, so talk to you soon!!

Love,
Sarah

August 21st, 2025: Catching up!

Time: Smack in the middle of the afternoon
Weather: Encroaching Heat
Listening To: The Night We Met by Lord Huron
Moon: Waxing Crescent in Leo
Mood: Alright! A bit fatigued...
Gratitude: Leading with love, the power of the human imagination, Lady Gaga's discography, Karkat/Terezi

Yikes, is it really the 21st of August? Long time, no write! I feel like I wrote a similar opener in my last diary entry, but alas, here we are.

Also like my previous entry, this won't be long either! It's mostly sake for of uploading this diary layout––which, as you can see, I'm doing a yearly one! While the seasonal ones are fun, they're going to be retired unless/until I feel like blogging more frequently about my life. Over the course of this year, I fell into a cycle where I wanted to write but it would be in-between seasons, so I felt like I had to wait to make a whole new layout, and by then the urge to journal would pass. So here we are! I wanted this diary to feel especially scrapbook-y and I think that comes across!

But anyway, I'm alive, yay! My summer turned out to be busier than expected. Not a bad thing by any means, but there's a lot to catch up on! Here are my current plans:

Look forward to it! I'm excited to start compiling these pieces, share them, and reconnect. But for now, I'll be back with another (more susbstantial) entry soon. Take care everyone!!

Love,
Sarah