Dear Diary,

I have a lot of musings to write about.

First off, the reason for no Captain's Log? Because I wasn't teaching wacky science this week. Both great and terrible.

Great because the experiment had something to do with foam and I was not a fan of that happening under my watch. Terrible in the form of two things: I couldn't get paid for time that I wasn't in class, and the reason I wasn't in class was because I was seeing and saying my final goodbye to my elderly dog, Sasha.

I know there are a small number of readers of this blog, and they know what happened already, but someday the reader count will grow and I want this post to exist for the future.

I will be writing a memorial tribute to Sasha. It will be reminiscent of the book Dewey: The Library Cat (or whatever the title is, I'm sure using these words will bring it up). It will be long. It will have memories. It will have pictures. But because it's long it'll take a while to write. I have awhile.

I'm still grieving. I wanted to sing Cracker Jack by Dolly Parton at Karaoke on Wednesday, after I discovered it watching some youtube clip where a dog and their trainer did a whole performance for a big talent show to the song. It's a lovely song, but it's sad, and right now I can't emotionally handle singing it. I will cry. It would be ugly.

So on Wednesday I sang some other songs, some fun and some rock, and I will sing my sad tribute songs when I'm ready. It could be a week from now, or a month. I miss my dog. She lived a good, loving long healthy life, and I miss her.

I'll probably post photos of her on my posts as well, just as I do for Loki.

Anyways, passing through the sadness; I want to write a post about the flora of higher Issaquah, where hills create plateaus of higher altitudes. When Washington is already a place where rain is expected and sun is hoped, the flora that I pass by when I drive to one of my schools to teach is so captivating for its lushness.

Trees are covered in moss and vines and ferns grow everywhere, and it's like what you'd see if you went deeper into the Hawaii forests where high humidity provides great opportunity for growth and color. I look forward to going to that school every Wednesday for this particular sight; driving up a mountain on cautionary windy roads under 25 miles per hour, I get to drink in the view long and slow and no one could blame me for it.

I also have a post about board games being a social lubricant that I've got to publish, and I want to write about my awesome firefly petunias. I have an idea for a book, and I think if I use my bias and competitive streak against AI-generated writing I could get it started. That's always one of the harder parts of writing a book; starting it, like carving out the scene sentence by sentence on a big chunk of marble. Heck, I might even have two book ideas in mind.

I also need to submit my writing to some newspapers or writing hubs. Engage with more people.

I need to crochet a dragon plushy that I've been planning for months. It's been a couple months since I made my last plushy, so my crocheting skills could be rusty. But I have to get started soon. Maybe today?

And I should write some reviews. God knows there are a lot of things I can write reviews about.

A blog is supposed to be about writing what's on your mind, what's happened in your daily life, or what adventures you've been up to. So maybe I'll make these Dear Diary musing posts a bit more often, to remind myself what I want to write about. With so much going on, it can be hard to catch a breather and figure out what I want to do versus what I should do and could do.

I'm just glad I'm not in school anymore. I don't need to be saddled up with homework on top of all this adulting.