Finding Joy and Health however we can right now

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here with my spouse, Royce, and together we are The Ace Couple. And today we’re gonna have a fairly cozy day, I think. We’re gonna be a little casual. Because I think a lot of us need it right now if we’re being honest. And casual doesn’t necessarily mean it is pointless. We’re going to talk a little bit about our lives, some of the things we’ve been up to. Mostly things that are joyful, fun, productive: hobby type things. Because I think something that we really need to emphasize in this day and age is finding joy wherever and whenever you can. And obviously our lives are never going to perfectly map onto anyone else, but perhaps just in talking about what we’ve been doing to refresh ourselves, what we’ve been doing for enjoyment, things we’re excited for and looking forward to, maybe it’ll give you a little bit of inspiration if you’re also looking for something right now.

Courtney: So let’s see, where should we start? Maybe we should start by giving everyone sort of a pet update. Quite a long time ago, we did an episode where we just introduced all of our pets to everyone, but we’ve had some changes since then.

Royce: Yeah, the pet roster has changed a bit. We lost a couple and gained a couple.

Courtney: Did we still have Lenny when we did that last episode?

Royce: I believe so.

Courtney: So we’ve lost three pets in the last couple of years.

Royce: One unexpected, two expected.

Courtney: Yeah, we had Quigley, the Chihuahua, who was getting old. He lived a long life. He was just getting to the end of it. We had Lenny, the opossum, brazilian short-tailed opossum. They just do not have long lifespans at all.

Royce: Yeah, they only live two or three years, I believe, which is what happened for our grumpy little possum.

Courtney: Grumpy little dude. And then we lost Sen, the Dumeril's boa. The first snake, which was Royce’s before we got married. And so we still have Chihiro, the second snake that we adopted together. And that one was a shock. I don’t think I’ll share that story now because, oddly enough, I think that’s relevant to our planned Cake And Asexuality episode. So I guess, stay tuned for that. But obviously that’s always very, very upsetting. And–

Royce: I guess I will say, just to not leave that completely open to speculation, it was– It was a health issue that happened not at the, like, chronological expected end of life, but a lot of captive bred animals just are more prone to certain types of diseases and things.

Courtney: Right, yes.

Royce: Oftentimes lung issues or cancer related things.

Courtney: And things like snakes, uh, most vets don’t deal with. So we– we did do everything we could have for him, but it involved a very long, several hours drive just to get someone who could see him, and by then, unfortunately, it was too late. Probably would have been regardless, given the situation. But we do have two brand new additions to our life, though. Which are such funny little guys. We adopted two bunnies, from a cousin of mine actually, and they’re very fun. They are so goofy.

Courtney: I’ve worked with rabbits before. I mean, I’ve mentioned that I was a zookeeper, so I’ve worked with a ton of different animals. I worked at a pet store at one point. Worked with a ton of animals. So this is the first time I’ve had rabbits in my home, though, and part of my family. So we have Hopper and Gracie, and I just love them so much. And they actually just fit in so well into our life. Because something else I’m sure we’ll talk about a bit in this episode is just like gardening, which is something especially you, Royce, have been doing a lot more and more, and so coming in from outside and gardening, like, just picking some fresh, like, dandelion greens for them and they just go wild. It’s very fun. Hopper is kind of the more friendly one. Like you can pick him up and he’ll just, like, cuddle on your chest and do these little, like, bunny chitters that are kind of like a cat purring but a distinctly different sound.

Royce: Two very different personalities. Hopper’s definitely the one to get into trouble. Just recently he started trying to jump up on things he shouldn’t jump on and has fallen a short distance a couple of times.

Courtney: He’s clumsy too. We talked about in our last pet episode that our snake Sen was really clumsy, and shockingly clumsy for a snake, but Hopper is a clumsy rabbit. And then we have Gracie, who is hilarious. She’s also very friendly, like she’ll come right up to us and she’ll let you pet her. But she doesn’t like being picked up. But she loves redecorating the house. [laughs] We have a whole area set up for them with some boxes and mazes and, you know, food, litter boxes, all that stuff. And she just sometimes gets in a mood where she will just grab the boxes and the little, like, houses and habitats we have, and she’ll just move them all about. Tossing them willy-nilly and we go, “Well, Gracie’s redecorating again.” But, yes, very silly, love them both very much. And gardening has been quite a joy as well.

Royce: Yeah, that’s been an ongoing thing that I’ve been getting into more for the last couple of years. It kind of started, not really intentionally purchasing and planting seeds, but using an app that I’ll actually mention.

Courtney: Not sponsored. They didn’t reach out to us and say the magic words. [laughs]

Royce: No, it’s also free. I use it on Android, but it’s called PlantNet. And it’s the best app that I’ve found for taking a picture of something and reliably getting an answer as to what the thing is. Which is important because we have native plants like snakeroot that are probably poisonous, and also a little bit of poison ivy in the backyard. And just some things where, for a little while, I was going around and just seeing what was growing in our backyard and testing, moving it around, cutting some things back, letting some things grow. There were a couple of things that were– actually had potential as a crop.

Courtney: Yeah, I feel like throughout this, we’ve learned a lot of, like, “Oh, people in our area consider this a weed, but in other parts of the world, this is actually a crop that they make for food.”

Royce: Yeah, there’s a species of celosia that I still like growing. It’s often known as cockscomb because it grows these little, like, rooster plume feathers at the top that– ours are always purple.

Courtney: Is that the one we’ve just been calling Not Spinach?

Royce: It’s not spinach. It’s also known as Lagos Spinach, because in some parts of the world it’s grown as a crop, because it’s really hardy and easy to plant. And–

Courtney: When it grows so, like, nothing, like all over our yard, it grows tall, it grows wide, without even trying, and so when we learned, “Oh, this is food.”

Royce: Yeah, the it–

Courtney: Let it.

Royce: It produces some pretty broad leaves that we’ve mixed into things before. It’s not as prolific as an actual crop that you would normally grow in North America, but it works well. It pops up, the bees like it. So that’s kind of how gardening started, was trying to nudge nature in the right direction, or in the direction I wanted it to go.

Courtney: Yeah, for a while you were just calling it like chaotic neutral gardening.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Where you were just looking at what was happening, naturally, and just helping it a little bit.

Royce: Yeah, and then last year I actually purchased some seeds before the harvest season, which is about that time, if not a little late now by the time this episode airs for this season to get started. But kind of took a shotgun approach, planted a lot of different stuff and saw what worked. We had some nice tomatoes and eggplants, and I’m a fan of kale now.

Courtney: Were you not before?

Royce: I thought grocery store curly kale was always kind of bland. [Courtney ums] But whatever this variety of kale that has worked around here, that came from a mixed variety, so I don’t exactly know what it is – I think it might be Siberian kale – but it’s been producing some really nice, like, face sized leaves that have a good flavor to them that we’ve been mixing into a lot of things. But I’ve found this as a good intermediate hobby. That is a nice contrast with other sources of entertainment that are often much more immediate. [Courtney agrees] Like, if I want to do something right now, I can go play a game or, you know, we can hang out with some friends or something. Like there’s– There’s like ‘right now’ stimulation, but this is something where you have to plan ahead and hopefully in a couple of months things turn out right, and you just kind of check on it here and there.

Courtney: Yeah, and that kind of feeds into something that I also want to talk about today, which is just the importance of having something to look forward to. That’s something I personally need. And so this– this can sort of be a part of the broader scheme of looking ahead and what’s to come. But yeah, last year being sort of the first real year where you learned a lot about gardening, you learned a lot about what is really happy growing in our yard and sort of fostered that a little bit, that like, we got seeds and started a proper garden on purpose. And it was a joy. I mean even just having those fresh tomatoes, having those fresh eggplants? Amazing, so good.

Royce: Well, one– one thing about gardening is that there are so many different plants that you can’t just buy at a grocery store. And when you can grow something yourself, it opens up a lot of possibilities. Because, yes, we grew some eggplants, but we grew a very specific variety of eggplant that was kind of smaller and rounder and had more flavor to it. And it worked really well for recreating an old recipe.

Courtney: It was very, very good. Well, and actually even like gardening tying into cooking as well. Because we do like to try new recipes. We aren’t the biggest cooks in the world. I used to be much more of a baker, but as far as cooking food, we like new recipes and we like to find things that are really nice, but we also aren’t doing extremely lavish gourmet things, or things that take a lot of time. So we’re trying to find just, like, really good recipes that are easy enough to recreate now and then to just put in our rotation.

Courtney: And one of my favorite dishes that I order almost every time we’ve ever gone to an Indian restaurant or ordered delivery is Baingan Bharta. And since we had all of these beautiful eggplants, I was like, maybe it’s time that I actually learn how to make this at home and do not regret it. We made it so often over the summer and it was my favorite thing that we’ve cooked all summer. And after a few successful attempts at making that, I was like, well, hell, can we learn how to make samosas also? And I looked that up and I was able to figure it out pretty easily. Actually, I found a great blog that has a lot of recipes for Indian food that are all vegan as well. And so it– that’s been very, very helpful. And very nice, and saves money, which is always a bonus.

Royce: Yeah, before we move off topic on gardening, I will say that we’ve been mentioning a lot about the backyard as a space, but a part of this has also been learning how to grow things indoors. Partially because: winter. It gets really– It gets cold enough here that things don’t grow anymore.

Courtney: Yes, all of our snow just melted, but we had a lot of it this year.

Royce: And if anyone else is curious, what I have found out is that unless you have a really good full sun window, you need grow lights. And a lot of the standard light bulb grow lights suck. So you still– you don’t need really expensive grow lights, but you probably do need the sort of long LED strip ones to have much success.

Courtney: Oh yeah, we fully just have, like, we have the indoor garden and the outdoor garden. And some things move between the two and some just live inside. But you also built us a little frog pond in the backyard, which was a delight. And I couldn’t believe that you came to me and you were like, “Would you want a frog pond if I made one?” Like, what world did you think I was ever gonna say, “No, I don’t want a frog pond, Royce.”

Royce: The purpose of that question was to not start doing something as a surprise.

Courtney: That’s fair.

Royce: It was not an: I’m expecting you to say no. It is: I am double checking before I order a drop off of a bunch of mulch and start changing our backyard.

Courtney: Right, it makes sense. But I was like, “Obviously I want a frog pond. Yes.”

Royce: Which, other money saving tip: if you do have space and you need to do landscaping, a lot of populated areas where there are arborists going around and doing tree trimming, there may be a program in your city where they will just drop off wood chips for free.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: So that’s what we did. It’s a lot. It’s a very busy day or week to move it all, but it is free.

Courtney: How many tons of wood chips did we figure we got?

Royce: Unspecified because it’s just like whatever’s in the truck that day, but probably like six.

Courtney: I remember talking to some of our friends that day, and just casually dropping like, “Oh yeah, we’re moving six tons of wood chips that just got dropped off at our house.” Everyone’s like, “What?” [laughs]

Royce: Well, maybe it was three tons, I can’t remember the estimate. Six thousand pounds.

Courtney: Six thousand pounds!

Royce: Something like that. It was a big pile. It took a bit.

Courtney: Filled up the whole driveway. Gave some to the neighbor.

Royce: The whole idea between– behind frog pond, aside from frogs just being great though, was having a little slanted part in our yard that was hard to keep nice, because it’s like in a weird position and not really easy to handle. So it’s like what can we do with this area? And also trying to, like, combat mosquitoes and whatnot. And so we just got some material and filled it in a little bit and pond liners are very cheap. It’s just, like, a thick black plastic that you can get pretty much anywhere.

Courtney: And yeah, I bought a little toad abode, a little house that kind of looks like a mushroom, to sit next to it in case they want to get out of the sun. And they’re so great because they do swim in the pond and we saw them all the time over the summer. But they also liked hopping up to our actual garden and sometimes we’d go to the garden and just see like a little toad sitting on a tomato, so good.

Royce: Yeah, they did eventually find it. We were wondering if this was one of these, “If you build it, they will come,” moments, and they figured it out eventually. I guess another tip for those with some space, one thing that I learned last year is that mosquito ranges are incredibly localized, and so if you do something to stop mosquitoes from breeding around your house, you will just have a little pocket of mostly mosquito free zone, even if all of the houses around you have a ton of them.

Courtney: Oh, it’s so true. I mean, I don’t think I even saw or felt a mosquito once in our backyard this last summer, but literally our next door neighbor spent a lot of time in his backyard and, like, they weren’t a huge problem, but there were some. And I was like, wow.

Royce: They were noticeable, they were annoying. But yeah, I guess another tip for anyone dealing with this or who is curious, there is a type of biological control agent called BTI. It’s a certain type of bacteria that only targets the larva of mosquitoes or very closely related flies. And so if you have standing water like a pond, or if you put out a bucket of water and you sprinkle a little bit of that in, throughout the spring and summer, you won’t have mosquitoes for the most part in that little area around you.

Courtney: Because, yeah, any standing water, it comes fast. I mean, you’ll put out buckets just to catch rainwater and we’ve learned that if you don’t bring that in immediately it will be filled with mosquito larva.

Royce: Yeah, within a couple of weeks, I think, is what happened after one big rainstorm.

Courtney: Mm-hmm. But yeah, it’s been great to just sort of foster our yard a little better, because it’s space that we have and we can use it and we can make food, we can make peace with the wildlife. I mean, we’ve mentioned that we– we feed the neighborhood birds extremely well. So we– we have regular birds, we have bird families that we know who come back year after year. So that’s a thing we’ve already been doing. But now we have all these beautiful toads.

Royce: We’ve done this before, but particularly with growing some greens out in the yard, one of the things you have to deal with is caterpillars, so we’ve also found a few of those on the leaves as we were harvesting them. And, for the most part, just put them in a bowl and gave them some of the scraps and then released the butterflies later in the season, which is just another fun thing to look forward to.

Courtney: Oh yeah, we have a ton of butterflies that we’ve released this year, and that’s been very fun. And yeah, I mean we, we’ve always been a very wildlife friendly house. I mean we– we don’t do pesticides and all the sort of nonsense you’d normally expect from, like, suburban lawns. We’re very opposed to those things. So we’ll pretty frequently get, like, possums. We had a massive groundhog at one point.

Royce: Once, just for a day or two.

Courtney: Huge round boy. Amazing. But this year we actually had foxes who moved in to our yard and that was amazing. Had a couple of fox babies, so we had like a few little ones running around for a while. I think there were two little ones and then there was definitely the mom.

Royce: You saw them more than I did. They were pretty skittish.

Courtney: The little ones were, not– not the big one. So I’ll talk about Tai Chi more here in a second, but my neighbor and I, we do Tai Chi in the backyard, like, minimum three times a week, especially when the weather’s really nice out and over the summer. While we were out, middle of the day, this is like noon, full sun, doing Tai Chi, and the fox just jumped over the fence into the backyard where we were practicing and just looked at us for a few seconds before scampering on her way. And we were like, “Huh! Neat.” But our gardening and cooking sort of doesn’t end at just the food we grow and what we make. We also have our multi tier disposal system, which I think is kind of neat.

Royce: Oh yeah, this is something that I have found that even if you think about, you know, pollution and climate change and all of that, you as an individual can do very little realistically. But sometimes I find that when I have the time and energy, just doing a little something to take care of something, to conserve some water, to avoid throwing something away, just makes me feel a little better. It gives me something to focus on. And so we don’t have a lot of food waste. We try not to let things rot. But if we do miss something or if we do have some scraps with food, it’s like, okay, can we eat it? If not, can the rabbits eat it? If not, can the mice eat it? If not, then we have a worm compost, a red worm composting situation. Red worms are just particularly good at very quickly eating through compost. We have a small worm composting station indoors and if it’s fine for them then it goes in there, and if not, then it goes into the sort of bulk outdoor compost. And if it doesn’t meet any of those criterias then it’s tossed away.

Courtney: So, yeah, tiered system. Which is very cool, and some people think it’s very odd that we have the red worm farm, but it was actually our trainer who got us started doing that. And I also want to talk about exercise, but maybe we’ll put a pin in that.

Royce: Yeah, I had been researching red worm composting and it just happened that we found someone who also did it around that point in time. But red worms themselves can be a bit expensive to purchase, so it’s nicer to just get some from someone who has an established colony, because they reproduce really well.

Courtney: It’s very sourdough culture. Like if you know someone who has a red worm farm, it’s like, “Great! I’ll bring you some worms to get you started. I have plenty.”

Royce: Yeah, but red worm composting is getting more popular, but I guess you have to already be looking into composting to have heard of it.

Courtney: Right. So I guess maybe that is a good segue to exercise, because it is very important. And it’s always been a difficult thing to figure out how to work for me with my body, with my messed up joints and my disabilities. Because it is important to do what you can. Sometimes it’s hard to find out what you can do, sustainably, long term. And I was really young when I had a doctor say, like, “Physical therapy isn’t even going to cut it for you, you need to get like a serious weight trainer and you need to practice like you’re a bodybuilder or else–” I mean it was a very flippant, like, “Or else you’re gonna be in a wheelchair by 30,” kind of a thing. And at that time, like my family couldn’t afford to literally hire a private trainer for me. So at various points I have tried to just workout at a gym or do things like weights. But especially if I have a free weight in my hand, I really, really need someone by me because even if it’s a good day and I’m able to do some of that, something could, like, go wrong.

Courtney: I could dislocate something, like, at any moment. Like, if I’m about to drop something very heavy or hurt myself further. I need someone next to me where I can say, like, “Hey, take this, like, take this now.” So often exercising on my own hasn’t always been good, but then, on that matter also, I’ve really needed someone who could help give me exercise modifications depending on the day, like, “All right, well, today I dislocated my elbow. What can we do that doesn’t bother that elbow today?” And, and someone who really understands that for me, with my condition, every day is going to be different and there are going to be some really good days and some really awful days, and then some days with just, like, freak injuries. And so I need someone who is so adaptable and understands that and can just work with me and roll with it, which is surprisingly hard to find.

Courtney: Before we landed on our current solution, I’d tried a variety of different things and people, and not everyone got it. And I stopped doing anything gym related when the pandemic started, obviously. But it did get to a point, maybe a couple years in, where it’s like, “I’ve got to start doing something.” I was trying to do some exercise on my own when I could and it really just was not cutting it, and we had to kind of weigh our options and say, “I’m not going to go into a public gym right now. I do need someone who will help. What are our options?” Luckily, we found a company that would just send a trainer to our house and work with us here, and I contacted them ahead of time and I said, “All right, here are my diagnoses, here’s my situation. I need someone who can work with this, I need someone who knows about that.” And also I need someone who’s gonna, like, come to our house and wear a mask, and not be upset that we’re asking them to wear a mask. And they somehow found just the absolute perfect trainer for us.

Courtney: We love her. She’s very cool. We hit it off with her on just, like, a personal level and interests. But when she was younger, she was a very serious, well accomplished bodybuilder. And now she’s a bit older, so even though she doesn’t have, like, the, like, disability side of things that I have, she can really really empathize with me when I’m like, “Man, I used to be able to do this thing and now I can’t.” And so she’s also just very good at finding those adaptations and working with people that need creative solutions. But then we’ll talk about gardening, we’ll talk about composting, and when we mentioned red worm farm, she’s like, “Yeah, I’ll bring you worms. Absolutely, I’ll get you started.” So I don’t know how that worked out as perfectly as it did. It certainly didn’t have to– I mean, we didn’t have specifications for, “Here’s the personality we want for a trainer.” We just want someone who’s good at their job and can do this. But so that was a stroke of luck.

Courtney: But it also started by doing a lot of research and asking very pointedly for the basic needs to be met, and here are the things that we absolutely need. And so that was a very, very good arrangement. And I can’t really say that I like exercising like that, because I don’t. I don’t. I’m– I’m a dancer. I– My main source of exercise, throughout my life and growing up, was also an enormous sense of creativity and came from a place of artistry and performance, and so just like exercising for the sake of exercising is still not something that I like. So I just do it because it’s good for my gosh darn health. But it’s nice that the two of us can do it together. The company we found was actually like, “Yeah, we’ll– we’ll train two of you for the same price as one.” So we aren’t both paying for a session, which is nice.

Royce: Yeah, it’s just the– the person’s time.

Courtney: Yeah. Because most places don’t do that. Most places are like, “Here’s the cost per person.” And I also found a pain treatment that works better for me than anything else ever has. It’s not perfect, because nothing is, but it has helped me lead a bit of a more normal life during this past period. And I’m not going to get into that too much now. We’ll see if that becomes a future episode or not.

Courtney: But my doctor who was helping me with this treatment was like, “Yeah, it’s really great that you’re, you know, doing this weight training when you can.” But he was all about Tai Chi. He’s like, “You need to start Tai Chi. Trust me, this is what you need to do.” And he knew that I was a dancer. So he even said, like, “I’m sure you’ll be very good at it, I’m sure.” And he’s like, “It’s low impact, it’s great for your joints, it’s great for your health. You’ve got to take up Tai Chi.” And he said this to me so many times before I actually seriously considered it.

Courtney: But when I did sit down to do my research, “Okay well, what are my options here?” Because if I’m doing Tai Chi I want it to be a teacher who really knows what they are doing. I want someone who has some connection to the cultural aspect, the spiritual aspect, and basically not just like, you know, a white gym bro who, on a fad because it’s getting more popular, has started, like, working Tai Chi into his regular training regimen. Like for someone to be my teacher, I wanted something a little deeper than that. So I did a lot of research. I found the perfect teacher. Could not– Could not be more qualified! Baffled she even lives in Kansas City. Absolutely absurd. And so I– And at the time she was just teaching in the park, so I thought, “Okay, I’ll go to the park.” She literally– I mean when I say she’s the most qualified, like she– she is part of the family that invented the original form of Tai Chi.

Courtney: Like she is a descendant of the originator of this martial art and was, like, born and raised in a village named after her family. And I was like, “Oh, okay, she’s just here. She’s just 15 minutes away from my house, teaching in the park. Awesome.” So did that. And just a series of luck and coincidences. Because this Tai Chi class was the first thing I did outside of the house at all since the pandemic started. So the people in my class were the first new people I was meeting in real life since 2020. And because of my history of dance, I’m really good at memorizing movements and things. So, in terms of like, remembering the form that she’s teaching, like that came very quickly to me, and it wasn’t long before she wanted me to start coming on a different night to a class that was a little more advanced.

Courtney: And the very first day I came to this new class, as still a very new student, I’m meeting a whole new group of people, don’t know any of their names yet, and just while we were warming up, people were asking one of these students whom I hadn’t met before, like, “Oh, how’s– how’s the new place, how are you liking it?” And just talking about, like, oh, moving. “Yeah, we still have some boxes to unpack,” things like that. Unbeknownst to me, that he moved in literally right next door to us. The house next door to us had been on the market for a long time and had just sold. Well, it hadn’t been on the market a long time, it had been vacant for some time. The owner had moved out for a while, so we knew it was empty for a little bit. Then it got put on the market. And Royce, just looking out in the backyard, like, that following Saturday a few days after this class was like, “Oh, someone’s in the backyard that must be our new neighbor.” And I look and about fall over because that’s the guy I just met at Tai Chi a couple days ago.

Courtney: So I came back to class the next week and I was like, “Hello, neighbor!” He was like, “Wait, what?” And I was like, “Yeah, we’re neighbors.” “Well, what house?” We happened to have been doing work on our house like that literal week, and so he absolutely saw the crews that were here and what we were doing, and so we were like, “The house that is having all the work done.” And he was like, “Oh, literally right next door.” Yes, absolutely.

Courtney: And so we got to know each other better. We’ve hit it off beautifully. We are becoming very close friends now. And now we’re Tai Chi buddies and we both work from home, so we basically on our lunch breaks, like midday at least three times a week, just go out in the backyard and practice Tai Chi together.

Courtney: And it is so healing in so many ways to be able to just, like, move your body in a low impact way, to be learning something that to me is a little bit more fulfilling than just lifting weights or exercising for the sake of exercising. And doing it with a friend and outside, just getting outside more is so good

Courtney: And it’s great too, because while we’re warming up like we can– if we’re having a rough day, like, we can bitch about something, we can gossip, we can– we can share how our day’s going and what’s on our mind. But then we can just come together and let it all go and just do our Tai Chi practice. And it’s very funny because we absolutely have neighbors that, like, watch us out of their windows regularly, who just sit and stare at us as we’re doing Tai Chi. It’s like, “All right, enjoy the free show.” Which has gotten even more so since we started learning our sword form, because now we’re outside with swords.

Courtney: And I suppose it is now time to talk about the all-consuming hobby currently in our life, which is Dungeons & Dragons.

Royce: We do do a lot of D&D. That’s been going on for a while and obviously has, depending on where we’re at and what we’re doing, has some peaks and valleys, for how much time and energy and attention it takes.

Courtney: Yeah well, we’ve talked before about how we have an all ace D&D group. We meet every week. We’ve been going for two and a half years, closer to three at this point almost. And it’s amazing. I mean, for as much as people online and on social media will refer to, like, the asexual community. I feel like people kind of tend to get this warped perception that, just like, all of the ace people that inhabit the same space are a part of a community, which gets even more nebulous when you’re talking about an asynchronous virtual platform like Twitter. Like all of the asexual people on Twitter are not a community in the sense that they are in community with one another.

Courtney: And despite that, there’s this whole conversation about how important community is, and I think some people begin to attach an importance to a community that isn’t actually tangible or anchored in anything meaningful. And then that can lead to a lot of hurt when you aren’t getting any true emotional fulfillment from it.

Courtney: And I’m not saying that you can’t build true communities on social media, because you can, but it takes a lot of work and concerted effort and actually finding and connecting with the real people and fostering a meaningful friendship with them. But just existing and participating in the discourse, and watching the news and seeing what other people are talking about, is very much not fulfilling for most people, I would venture to guess. And so having like a group of some of our closest ace friends who just get together every week, have a dedicated hobby, collaborating on a story, is so incredibly meaningful and it’s so powerful. And we’re getting close to the end of this campaign. We’ve been running Out of the Abyss for them all this while, and they’re so close to the finale. It’s almost over.

Courtney: So, on the note of having something to look forward to, as sad as I will be when this campaign is over– which doesn’t mean we’re not going to still be friends, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to keep playing even, like we can play another campaign, we can keep going, but this campaign has been very special, so there will be a type of excitement for the finale, but also a type of sorrow for when it’s over. And so I’ve been saying for a long time that for the finale we just need to host everyone and everyone needs to come here, and we can actually play for the first time in person for the finale, since we’ve been doing these virtual sessions every single week for years. And I did not actually think it was going to happen, but now I think it’s going to happen. People are, like, comparing calendars and looking at tickets and I think it’s really going to happen. And I’m so excited I’m gonna die. I love it!

Courtney: And having something to look forward to, so important. And it can be ongoing hobbies like, “Oh well, we planted some seeds, let’s see how they grow.” But it can also be a large event. Or seeing someone you haven’t seen in a long time. Or making plans that are just a little more special, not the casual sort of hanging out that we do with our neighbors all the time now. So it will be epic, it will be amazing. I dream of the day. Truly, cannot wait.

Courtney: But that’s not all the D&D we’ve been doing lately. Because this has been an ongoing one, and we’ve gotten– Like, we liked D&D before. Now I dare say, at least I may be a touch obsessive, which I’m fully aware is just a part of my personality. It’s the OCD. But we decided to take a class for miniature painting. It was just a couple hours in an afternoon at our local game shop. And didn’t know if we’d really like it or stick with it as a hobby, necessarily.

Courtney: But our neighbor has been expressing interest in playing D&D. He’s got a lot of friends who do, and knowing that this big campaign that we’ve invested so much time and energy into is about over, I’m sort of like what is going to be the next thing? How can we start something new, as this one is coming to a close. And I thought, “Well, I would be happy to DM in person for you.” Because all of my DM experience at this point has been virtual. I haven’t been a Dungeon Master at a physical in person table before. And I love DMing for brand new players. I really, really do. I think it’s some of my favorite, to be honest.

Courtney: And so we were just sort of talking like, “Yeah, maybe we can get a campaign going sometime.” And I just thought, well, you know, if the time comes where we do a campaign, it might be nice to have minis because I’ve never DM to physical table. Maybe we can have minis. That’d be nice. So we went to a mini painting class and I think both of us were pretty good at it. I think our instructor sort of told both of us that like, “Yeah, if my first mini looked like that I’d be ecstatic.” We’re both a bit naturally artistic in a variety of ways, which I think people kind of expect that from me, because I am a professional artist and people who know me know that about me. But I feel like people get surprised to learn that about you.

Royce: Depends on what information they’re coming in with. But yeah, potentially. I used to trace quite a bit when I was younger. Trace being just the pencil drawing of looking at something and replicating it. Color’s always been difficult because of the color blindness, but through doing a lot of UX work, design work on the job, like, I understand well enough how to compensate for that most of the time.

Courtney: But yeah, so basically this one mini class was like the beginning of the end for me. [laughs] It was my downfall, my descent into Dungeons & Dragons madness. After that miniature class I was like, “Yes, I love this and I love minis and I love D&D and I want to DM in person.” And so this is my hobby now. This is my biggest hobby now.

Courtney: And we had already had a 3D printer from your employer that has mostly just been collecting dust for a few years, because 3D printing hasn’t really been a hobby of ours. But now that we know how to paint minis, I thought let’s– let’s break that out, let’s see what we can really do with this thing. And I guess, super, super minor spoilers for Curse of Strahd, if any of you are ever planning to play it and you don’t want to know even the basic information about the first dungeon, I guess click away now.

Courtney: But we decided let’s actually give a good effort at Curse of Strahd with this new campaign and do it in person. Because some of you may recall, we had our own D&D horror story when we tried to play Curse of Strahd as players for a DM who ended up being incredibly acephobic and ableist and– among other things. And we have a whole episode about that if you want to listen to it and haven’t yet.

Courtney: But we kind of feel, like, robbed of that experience because we genuinely wanted to play Curse of Strahd and it fell apart quickly. So we kind of decided if I was going to DM it, I’d read the entire book and I’d prep this and Royce would just have to sort of feign ignorance for the first few sessions because you do more or less know some of the early beats in the story because of that.

Courtney: And so what did I do with this one painting class under our belt? Well, I scheduled us for a second painting class and we took exactly two. Two miniature painting classes. And then dusted off the 3d printer, bought some files and ended up printing, over the span– it took a full month, if not longer, to print all of this, but an entire 3D printed playable map of the death house, which is the optional first dungeon to run for players if you’re starting at level one.

Royce: That includes the dungeon underneath, and it is on a one inch grid, so the house itself is pretty sizable.

Courtney: It’s a good size house. And after printing the house, not only is there painting the house – the outside and the inside – but there’s also printing all of the furniture that goes in the house. The chairs, the tables, and then of course, the miniatures for any enemies they might encounter. And I was beginning to get nervous because online some people were saying like, “Oh, this took me nine months to do.” And I was like, “We don’t have nine months.” But I did all of it, beginning to end, including the printing and the painting and assembling it all: three months. Just under three months, did all of it. Spent just about every spare hour I had of my free time painting. Learned a lot in that process.

Courtney: And it was also kind of a golden opportunity, because around the time we were in the early stages of talking about, “Yeah, maybe let’s do a campaign,” it was shortly before the new 2024 rule set was coming out. So we also kind of thought, well, brand new player who’s never played before, brand new rule set. This is golden opportunity to train the new player on the new rule set, while it’s brand new and presumably going to stick around for a while. So of course we ordered the books. We read the player’s handbook, the DMG. And then, more recently still, the new monster manual. And, as of the time of recording this, we have played one session of that campaign. But it was so good.

Courtney: I think it was one of the most successful nights I’ve had as a DM running a game. There are a few sessions that really stick out in my head from our virtual Out of the Abyss campaign that I will always remember as that felt like a really successful night. But for the first time in person I was a little bit nervous because I had these maps, which I’ve never played on even as a player, big 3D maps like this. I bought a very nice DM screen and took some time to make sure all the information I wanted was hung up on it. But I’m also extraordinarily extra so I had like all of these theatrics planned. And because Curse of Strahd, one of the big things that you do to get into it is getting sort of taken and spirited away by these magical mists, I like fully went out to the store and got dry ice and put it in like a wavy crystal antique bowl that I used to only break out for like punch at parties. And I had dry ice spilling around the table to be the mist. Our players got some really cool photos of their miniatures just completely absorbed in the mist. Very beautiful, very cool.

Courtney: And then while one of our players, my neighbor, his husband is very interested in things like D&D but for reasons couldn’t be a part of this campaign, but he really likes mixing cocktails, and so he was like, “Maybe I can make potions for you.” And so I’d been like scheming with him, like how can we do this? And he said, “Well, if they’re getting taken by this mist, I have this drink smoker, but I’ve never used it before.” And so he brought that over and mixed something for us and then taught me how to use the smoker. And so, with like a blowtorch and wood chips, we smoked all these drinks and I prepared them and handed them out as each character was getting taken by the mists. And I fully had, like, Syrinscape on. I had music ambience for the background. I purchased scented thematic wax melts off of Etsy that are like the scent of the Spallage Woods and I turned on that wax melt as soon as they got into the Svalich Woods. So it was truly a multi-sensory experience. I had the dry ice and the sounds and the smells, and we had the maps and the physical minis. And somehow I managed to coordinate all of it so that none of it felt clunky or was slow and there weren’t any hiccups.

Courtney: And it just felt amazing. I was so thrilled with how it turned out. But one of my favorite things after. So this death house is obviously not good. It’s called the death house. There’s some ghost shit going on in there, there’s some magical shenanigans. And throughout the Curse of Strahd book there are a couple of little like, “Oh, as the DM, here’s an option you can do,” and to just sort of reinforce the horror element of it. Not very big fleshed out plot points or anything, but they’re a little like, oh, maybe your characters stumble upon a corpse in the woods and one of the players thinks it looks just like their own dead body, and that sort of thing. Like, do things like that now and then just to scare your players and to scare the characters. And I was like, well that– I like the idea of that, but having a you know, “Oh, this dead body looks like you,” seemed a little mundane for my taste.

Courtney: So my neighbor let it slip that he had a haircut scheduled, and I was like, “Give me your hair, take– take a baggie, save your hair.” And he was like, “No, my hair is surely too short to do anything.” I was like, “Trust me, I can work with any length of hair. Save your hair for me.” And this was not unusual. Most of my friends save their hair for me. This is, this is a thing about being a friend of Courtney. If you ever get a haircut, she gets your hair. This is a known fact.

Courtney: And he thought he was going to get away on a technicality just because his hair short. Oh, no, no, no, you’re not getting away on a technicality. But also in the back of my head, I knew I was in the process of printing and painting this massive haunted house for the first session of their D&D campaign.

Courtney: I was like, I am 1000% going to weave a miniature hair wreath and make a miniature frame and hang it on a wall in this death house so that his character sees it and gets this eerie, unshakable feeling that somehow, some way, this is made out of his own hair. And I did it. Normally I weave hair flowers around a knitting needle, with a knitting needle and wire. And his hair was very short. So I fully had to use, like, the skinniest, flimsiest sewing needle that I own and I wove his hair around the sewing needle with the wire. But it was so funny it might be the funniest thing I’ve ever done. Making this teeny, teeny, tiny hair wreath out of his hair for a D&D game. So suffice it to say I’ve had too much fun.

Courtney: Prepping this campaign has taken a lot of time, but it has been very, very worth it and I look forward, hopefully, to a long and healthy campaign that will heal our Curse of Strahd trauma. And even though I do say that that is like my main hobby, it definitely has been front loaded onto to prepping the campaign, it’s going to slow down a bit now that we’re playing and I’ve already prepped so much. And I certainly don’t have time, feasibly, to print every single map that they’re ever going to use. So I’m definitely not doing this for every single session. I would be prepping for literal years before we could even start playing if that was the case, because– How much time did we roughly estimate it took just to print that house?

Royce: It’s hard to say. The house would have been 30 pieces. The out– You’re talking about the outside, not the furniture.

Courtney: Yeah, just the outside and just the house, not even the dungeon underneath it.

Royce: I don’t know.

Courtney: Which is bigger

Royce: I don’t know what the average time for each piece was. I think the shortest one was maybe four or five hours and the longest one was maybe 14. So if you say eight across the board, that would have been 240 hours.

Courtney: For just the printing alone. So we did have the 3D printer running basically 24/7 for a couple of months. And then it took me– I did count. It took me about 15 hours to paint the outside of the house. That was not the inside of the house or the actual furniture or the minis, and then I stopped counting after that. So a lot of time, but very fun and creatively rewarding. Because, as an artist who, for a time, had to like turn off my custom order form for a while because I was so backed up, I had so many people who had placed orders that I had like a full year of work to do and was still getting more requests, so I had to sort of shut it down so that I could work through my backlog. I understand the benefit of doing art just for yourself, just so you still enjoy it. But I very much found myself if I was ever trying to work on my own project or just practice a different technique or work for fun, if I was ever in my studio doing that, I would just feel this enormous guilt that I wasn’t working on one of my custom orders because I had so many.

Courtney: And yes, as logical as it is to say, okay, well, you have work hours and you have non working hours and you can still do both, it just– it doesn’t work that way in your head as much.

Courtney: So there, there was a period of time where I felt like I wasn’t making art sort of just for myself, because I had that sort of work-life balance getting a little muddy in my hair studio for a bit. But being able to do something that’s very, very different from my job that I have done for money, is very, very nice. Because it’s just for me and it’s just for my friends. I’m enjoying the process of creating the artwork, but it’s also, in some ways, a gift I am giving to them by making a game that we can all play together and hosting this. So that’s been great.

Courtney: And I mentioned recently, on an episode as well, that I’ve been learning how to crochet and that’s been going very well. Just making little stuffed animals. I started with just a little biblically accurate angel amigurumi that I found on the MarketplACE. But then I started purchasing some larger patterns and making larger stuffed animals, instead of these little things that were more like keychain sized or slightly bigger, like fit in the palm of your hand. So now I have been making bigger things for myself and for other people and that’s been very nice. That’s something that you can kind of do like while you have a movie going or a TV show in the background, which is always nice to do.

Courtney: I also– while going to Michaels to pick up yarn for a new pattern that I purchased, I did also, very spur of the moment, decide to pick up some sculpting clay, which is not a thing I have ever done, but I was like, “I bet I could do that.” And came home and just started sculpting like little guys and making little, like, characters from video games. And, surprisingly, with no practice or classes or training whatsoever, I am halfway decent at making silly little clay guys. So that was also just a fun, like, hey, you know, fuck it! Let’s try a new hobby, just for the hell of it and see what happens. So that’s been very good.

Courtney: And I guess a hybrid of the art and creativity and the gardening and growing things has been bonsai. Maybe almost two years ago I purchased my first bonsai tree, and not really knowing if I could keep it alive. Because I haven’t had a lot of experience before this with potted plants, I decided to buy one that was a little bit older, a little more well established. It was a little more expensive at the beginning but I figured it would be worth it if it would be a little more resilient if I messed something up. And I had just a lot of fun. Purchased a bonsai book to sit and read how to wire them, the different kinds of soil, and then just experimenting, trial and error, to see what made my individual tree happy. And it was really thriving for a while, and I even got to a point where I repotted it, and I never repotted a plant before, so I was terrified. But it lived. And it did very well.

Courtney: So I did purchase a second bonsai tree which is a little finickier, not quite as resilient, a little younger and also a species that’s a little bit harder to keep alive according to bonsai forums. And we’ve had some ups and downs with that. There been a couple times where it just started dropping all its leaves. But because I read all these books, I’ve learned how to sort of experiment and figure out what it needs. So it is– it is still thriving to this day. But we really upped the ante on our bonsai. Because those first two trees that I bought were, you know, mostly my thing. I would take them outside to repot or to do trims. But you came in. And as I was trimming the trees, you were like, “I bet I could propagate this.”

Royce: Yeah, most of the growing I had been doing was from seeds and I knew that there were a variety of different ways to propagate plants, but I hadn’t really tried it yet. So I was curious to take some from cuttings. And your first bonsai is a type of ficus and it’s pretty easy to get going from cuttings. So after a bit of time we had a bunch of little bonsai.

Courtney: Oh yeah, so many little bonsai. And because they were getting bigger and starting to grow and flourishing, this last fall, we got to a point where we like, all right, these actually need proper bonsai pots now. And so we both picked just a really beautiful day to go out on our back deck and get all the bonsai cuttings, and we ordered a bunch of little mame pots for them, and got the soil, and we potted all of them, and trimmed the roots, and gave some of them wiring, some more extensive than others. But this was our first time working with such small young trees, so we didn’t know what to expect for survival rate on them at all. And we had– How many did we have? Like over a dozen, I want to say.

Royce: I think 16 was the number.

Courtney: 16. And so we were like, “Well, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if we lose some. But this is really the time to experiment and see what’s working with them at this stage.” And so that was a really nice thing that we could just both do outside on a beautiful day was– was pot these all and start wiring them. And most of them have done very, very well and continued to grow. And some of them really took to their wiring to the point where we already took off that initial run of wiring because they grew thick enough that they needed it to be removed or redone anyway. And kept their shape. And some of them were healthy and stable and sturdy enough that that actually ended up being sort of our holiday gifts for the people closest to us in our life this last year. So at least the local people that we know who are very close to us all got a little bonsai from us. And that’s been really nice to just learn more about that art form and have so many opportunities to practice and play with it and pass on our– our knowledge and our new trees that we’ve brought up to others.

Courtney: And I mean, politically speaking, things are still very, very bad, but one of the things that I would recommend, I say, to most people if you are very online and very on social media, I really do recommend, I think, most people it is healthier to spend less time on there. Because I haven’t been posting anything on our social media accounts for a very long time. I haven’t been moderating a discord group since ACAR was disbanded. And it has just freed up a lot of time and mental bandwidth, and what I have learned is that I’m still doing the same work I was already doing. I am surprised my voice is not scratchy today, because I was at a protest all afternoon yesterday and I was shouting and I was out there.

Courtney: I show up with my flags, my signs, my kufiyas. I’m still aware of what’s happening locally and nationally. I don’t feel like my awareness of what is going on has actually suffered by not being on social media.

Courtney: And, if anything, I have more of an opportunity to do more, because I just feel healthier and I have more mental space. And I have more time to do the things that do fulfill me and bring me joy, and I have more time to spend with the people that I really care about. Which is really important, not only for me, but also for them. We all need to be there for each other when times are hard like this. I don’t think I have a single important person in my life who hasn’t already been directly impacted by these executive orders coming out or by funding getting cut ever since Trump’s inauguration. So we are all being tangibly impacted. And we can still use our voice to show up within the community to contact legislators, but we also need to find joy whenever and wherever we can.

Courtney: And I kind of– I generally do not subscribe to the fact that rest and joy are acts of resistance. I don’t. I hear rhetoric like that a lot online. And it’s one of those things where it is vitally important. I do believe it’s vitally important to have proper rest, to have joy, to find joy, but I don’t think it’s activism and I don’t think it’s resistance. I think it’s just necessary to survival. Because, the way I see it, there are people who are completely ignorant of what’s going on, who don’t care to learn more, who aren’t going to get involved or try to change anything, and are just playing the ignorance is bliss game and going about their lives as if things aren’t happening. Those people are still resting. Those people are still finding joy. That’s not resistance. It’s not, and I don’t think it is for those of us who are politically aware as well.

Courtney: I think it’s important, necessary to survival, yes. But a trap that I think certainly not everybody, but a lot of people do fall into on social media is getting into the state of hypervigilance and hyper-awareness of what’s going on and doom scrolling and hearing every teeny tiny detail of every new horror that comes out in real time. And it can feel like you can’t step away because this is the way you’re staying informed, and it can feel like staying informed is doing something. But if you aren’t actually getting out and doing anything, it is not helping anybody to sit there and doomscroll and be miserable. And because there’s so much coming out so fast, it does lead a lot of people to feel helpless.

Courtney: And if you are the type of person with the mental chemistry that is going to just have you sinking into a hole of despair, which is going to prevent you from actually going out and doing something, then it is just not worth it.

Courtney: It is much more worth it to spend your time finding hobbies, finding friends, finding family, finding chosen family, curating your environment as best you can in order to foster your own happiness and comfort and having something to look forward to. Give yourself something to look forward to and let yourself feel that excitement. Because if you can find these ways to exercise however you can, in whatever way is most physically doable or enjoyable for you, and you can keep your body and mind as healthy as possible given these circumstances, that’s more energy that you can do to do something.

Courtney: And I think it kind of works both ways. Like I say, because I’m not online anymore, I’m still doing the same things I was doing. My productivity for advocacy out in my community has not lowered and I see an opportunity for it to be raised. I think if you’re also online and hyper-aware of this, and not actually doing something right now other than sharing posts, engaging online, there’s a strong chance that walking away from being online, you also won’t be doing anything, if that makes sense.

Courtney: So I think it’s just a time where we all sort of need to assess what we’re doing with our time and energy and how we’re engaging, and trying to find ways to be joyful and healthy as possible. And to be there for one another as well. Because I want to be healthy not only for myself, but for all of my friends and family. I want to be there for my fellow queer friends. I want to be here for my friends who are immigrants. I want to be here for my trans friends. Everyone who is being impacted by this. We do need to actually find those sources of community as well.

Courtney: And not only on the advocacy front, where social media can sometimes feel like we’re doing something when we are not, the same is true for community. Something might feel like a community when there’s very little at its emotional core to actually keep it together, and it can be very unstable. And so this doesn’t mean, if social media is very important to you, that you all need to log off completely. It doesn’t mean that everyone needs to shut down their accounts. But I did a lot of introspection about where my time and energy was going, and I can say in my experience, at the very least, I am a lot healthier for it and my advocacy, I do not think, has suffered for it. And I think that’s something that maybe some people out there need to hear. If that’s you, I hope it helped.

Courtney: There are a lot of reasons to feel hopeless right now, but I want all of us to find reasons to feel hope on every level. On small interpersonal levels too. That’s also powerful and important. So, on that note, as I wish you all joy and peace and health to the fullest extent that is possible for you right now, I am going to give you all a recommendation from our MarketplACE. As always, we’ll leave off with our featured MarketplACE vendor, who today is Cadaver Carnival Studios, which is an indie game studio run by three queer and disabled creators. And they have a delightful dating sim/visual novel called Ace in Space. We actually played this on the Aces Playing At Attraction stream. Was that during Ace Week that we did that this year?

Royce: That sounds about right. I don’t think we got terribly far into it.

Courtney: On that one stream? No, certainly not. But yeah, the the main character is ace, also nb, I believe. And has like a terminal cancer diagnosis, but gets, like, picked up and adopted by this group of alien robots? Alien robots who are sort of like, “Come with us, we can heal you, we can give you a whole new life. But you have to move to outer space.” And it was very cute. I had fun playing it. And I look forward to finishing it up too, since we haven’t actually had a chance to finish it yet.

Courtney: But, as always, links are going to be in the show notes. So if you’re looking for a new game, Ace in Space might just be that game. The cover artwork is great. It has the main character sitting on a rocket ship that is literally colored in the Asexual Pride Flag, with some of the robot aliens in the background. And that is going to be all for today.

Courtney: So thank you all, as always, for being here. Hopefully some of you at least got a little bit of enjoyment or comfort over just hearing us talk about our various hobbies and silly little things going on in our life right now. But if you’re listening to us on YouTube, maybe leave us a comment and tell us what is bringing you joy these days and what it is that you have to look forward to. Because you just never know, who might be reading those comments and say that sounds interesting. But in the meantime, take care of yourselves and one another, and we will talk to you all next week. Goodbye, I’ve got to do more D&D painting.