"Daddy!"

Shu'karr smiled even as the excited shrill pierced his ears when he stepped through the portal of his family apartment, dropping his gear to be able to snatch up his exuberant daughter as she barrelled into his arms in a whirl of fluff, and casually kicking the door shut behind him as he stabilised.  Coming home while Mya'le was awake was by far the highlight of his days, which were currently short given that it was winter and training was a bit more gruelling than usual due to festive season.

"You're up late," he commented, switching her into a carrying position as he scooped up his bag with his tail, transferring it to his free hand.

"We have to hang our baubles tonight Daddy," she replied matter-of-factly.

"Oh, that's right!" He hadn't forgotten of course, she had only been excitedly banging on about it since the school had started all their Christmas shenanigans.  "You and Mama got the baubles ready?"

October started out with 11yo's bestie staying for the weekend and them asking if we could wander around Perth for a bit after visiting a store they wanted to browse.  9yo requested my phone to take a couple of photos of things that interested him:

The city has been trying to do more fun and interesting stuff so we tend to find random things whenever we go there.  At the time they were celebrating the arrival of spring so there were these random bird cages there, which were apparently great for photoshoots.

Yeh yeh I'm late again.  Much shenanigans happened on the weekend taking 11yo, a bunch of her giggly friends and 13yo to Bounce (9yo was meant to come to but he'd sliced his toe open on Thursday by deciding it was imperative that his iPad be unlocked on the way to the car rather than in the car after he'd clipped in and thus he didn't notice the kerb I'd parked next to), and then one of the girls stayed over (which I found out was happening on the day, fortunately I'm cruisy).

Also I didn't visibly progress as much as I wanted.  As far as the work is concerned well I'd love to tell you how any times my perfectionist tendency has kicked my sorry tail to the kerb repeatedly (aka I kept redoing the thing because I wasn't happy with something or other and because of how the scales intersect it was really hard just to remove the section that was causing the problem) but I've long since lost count.

I progressed!

`

Thud.  Rattle rattle.  Thud thud thud.  Rattle rattle.

Shu'karr glanced at the time on his comm, wondering how long his triad leader had been here already.  Tsa'run always made it a point to be at least fifteen minutes early to meets.  Shu'karr had rocked up half an hour earlier than their appointed time, and from the sounds of things Tsa'run was well settled in.  Shu'karr quietly shut his bag into a locker and walked to the doorway to the training room.

He only just saw the familiar form of Tsa'run in the mirrors that lined the training hall, in his favourite corner that was difficult to spot from the doorway unless one knew where to look.  He had that intense look about him that made him so intimidating to watch and even more to face off against, and while it seemed like he was concentrating on beating the stuffing out of the wooden dummy he had chosen, Shu'karr had no doubt that his presence had been noted.

I missed two aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Anyway.  I'm currently stuck with the dance animation because the characters didn't end up where I wanted them to be due to a severely truncated tumble run.

I originally planned for Zara to do a proper diagonal with at least a slight run-up and 4-5 tricks.  Then I had a problem of Rei's tumble run being not nearly as long because she's just learning and doesn't know nearly as many tricks as Zara, plus she does a slower and more graceful one that doesn't utilise a run up.

And that's pretty much the extent of this progblog XD

This week has been pretty slow on all fronts.  9yo had a cold again so we couldn't go out and do much, so we just chilled and reconnected, which of course meant not much work getting done.  It also wasn't helped by having to make a hundred million phone calls to government departments.  I don't do phones so it was exhausting and I had to go hide for a little while afterwards.  I did get some villainous upgoats done, but even though I made some big swatches it didn't occur to me that I'd end up with a foxgoat til after I'd done it.  Sigh.

Please excuse the banding, jpg hates me sometimes.

I sent this song to a couple of friends who were having a rough time, as it's pretty uplifting and the lyrics seem to be about not giving up no matter what life hurls at you.

TeamAustralia on steem is currently trying to fund a hayrunners truck, and the not giving up theme seemed appropriate there too.

I'm pretty rubbish at explaining why I do anything so have each frame with associated short stories that have something about overcoming whatever life hurls at you because three short stories in one day is easier than explaining stuff.

-=[o]=-

I did the other two progblogs pretty much back to back and managed to forget that and thought I was doing 2 now but apparently I'm up to 3, getting old in my old age and a bit more sleep wouldn't be remiss either.

I still have a process/progress video for Embers but I've decided I'm way too lazy to edit it and just need to finish Embers because it's already November next month and while I would love to make a tiny bit more steem for hayrunners I also want to progress all the other stuff (including the stuff I'm "supposed" to be doing! XD) and end of year stuff is ramping up so things are going to get busier soon.  Fortunately the gymnastics end of year display didn't clash with the dance end of year concert!

One of the things about not learning in an institution is accepting that the stuff taught and learned in institutions isn't the grand authority on all that's worth learning.  I know this, but sometimes I don't really know it.  Like on her day, 11yo said she wanted to get her nails done.

My immediate response was "pick something educational".

I'm not sure why mouths sometimes just randomly fire off before engaging the logic part first as not only would it make a lot of things so much easier, it would probably also make the world a better place in general.  11yo has spent a couple of years studying makeup artistry, nails were part of that, so we would learn how nails got done professionally.  Also, I got her to research the nail places at the shopping centre we were going to in order to get some idea of prices.  As it turned out none of them had prices on their websites (which is really annoying) so we had to do actual legwork.