Today’s deck is The Other Tarot.
Better known as “the ther 23tarot ACORALINE TAROT DECK”.
Jokes about the format aside this is a really good one! We’re talking “it would be S-tier if I was into Coraline at all.”
Today’s reading is saying that should I need to make difficult choices, I can be sure I’ll make the right one.
Woke up straight to the usual bi-weekly meeting, which… gotta say, vaguely remembering having to type in that I did that when it happens gives me quite a bit of perspective on how fast the time flies.
The meeting went fine until I had to cut it short from stomach pains and rushing to the bathroom though.
There wasn’t much else to do. The weather got nicer so I decided to finally do things like throw out the many many many trash bags that were piling up and I moved on to emptying a new bookshelf which…
There’s your title.
What I suspect happened was that THIS specific bookshelf was by the room’s only window, and when I turn on the heating in winter the door and balcony windows actually get a LOT of condensation to the point there’s usually a small trickle of water going down the hallway.
Honestly it’s actually shocking how all in all the worst that happened to the book (mainly Granblue Fantasy artbooks) was… you know how magazines and such bent if they’re left near a shower just from humidity? Like that but kept in check by the pressure of other books. That and one book’s lower corner tip had the smallest bit of black something (looked like the black of the bookshelf).
Of course, this means also that extra priorities have been added to the whole endeavor, now it’s not just “Fer is being capricious and wants to remodel the room” but “ok let’s see what other damage might be around here.”
By the way, I cleaned up the floor with this one cleaning spray made for mold specifically and I wondered why it was for mold until the smell of bleach hit me.
Yes, I had a breather on. I made that mistake BEFORE, thank you.
I went out late at night to pick some stuff at the nearby 24/7 supermarket and I actually came across a conbini clerk that recognized me, I actually remember hearing “こんばんは” before realizing it was towards me.
It’s still wild to be a “local”. Like, there’s this black kid that lives nearby (I assume from how he dresses when he’s out playing with other kids) and ever since I moved in I’ve seen him be a small kid, a couple of years ago I saw puberty hit him being all lanky and as Terry Pratchett once said “all knees and elbows”, and the other day I saw him, as the old people say “all grown up like a man”.
Obviously this specific case I noticed because being a foreigner he sticks out (I should know), but there’s others. For example this one store clerk I mentioned I saw her cut her hair short and also lose quite a bit of weight. There’s another conbini clerk that has ALWAYS taken the graveyard shift at this one specific Family Mart and I’ve seen him lose SO MUCH weight. There’s other faces I recognize from the supermarket, the home center, the post office. Not all of them address me by name or even directly but you can tell the spark of recognition in their eyes, which was especially notorious when I had to shave my head last year for the hair transplant and you could see that quiet “oh! it’s you” in their faces.
And I kinda wonder if it goes right back. If all these people keep in a corner of their brain their recurrent encounters with the single foreigner that’s clearly not american or east asian but also not quite european. Seeing me go from depressed, to depressed with a beard, to crawling out of a hole with pink hair, to long hair, to shaved to long hair again.
Considering how much time I spent afraid of if I’d be able to make myself comfortable in this country or not, those moments of being “a local” and remembering changes in the area are the kind of thing I cherish.