Weekly thingy and the Five of Pentacles/The Little Match Girl

I feel like everyone knows this story? Poor little match girl huddled in the cold, begging passers-by to buy her matches and having no luck. One by one she lights a match to stay warm and sees visions of a cozy home, a lovely dinner, etc. in the flame till they burn out. She sees a vision of her dead grandmother and lights the entire remaining bundle at once to keep the vision going longer, and in the morning she’s found frozen to death with a smile on her face because now she’s happy in Heaven.

As usual with Andersen, it’s full of Victorian morality and this weird ‘pity the poor but also they’re better off dead’ thing, which I guess would maybe make more sense to me if I’d grown up in a religion that focused on an afterlife? Nah, still dumb.

The imagery is gorgeous, though.

Places to buy stuff!

• TEEPUBLIC: mostly t-shirts, a few other products.  Watch for sales, when shirts drop from $20 to $14!
• REDBUBBLE: Just, I don’t know, a ton of different stuff.  T-shirts are more expensive than Teepublic, but there are a lot more options.
• AMAZON: Home of the Geeky Gals Coloring Book!  Daydreams and Whimsies!  AND NOW, The Neurotic Owl Compendium!
• ETSY: paper dolls, a knitting bag pattern, and a bunch of vintage dolls of various sorts from my collection

Did I miss something?  I think that’s everything.

What’s making me happy this week:

Some time off work, woohoo! And I’m much less salty than usual about Christmas being an automatic couple of days off now that work has revised their holiday policy. Now, instead of having to use regular PTO for Jewish holidays, everyone gets 4 flex holidays per year to be used for anything from a pretty comprehensive list including major Jewish and Muslim holidays, some less major Christian days, lunar New Year, first day of Pride, election day, MLK day, just a ton of stuff.

Hopefully this will be the end of certain dickbags joking about being Jewish at High Holy Days because they think we’re somehow getting away with an awesome treat having two days off that we basically have to beg for to fucking pray and repent and such.