a sign of life

Sometimes, when everything happens all at once, I disappear from social media and resurface again in about two to three-ish months. 

👋

Which is basically exactly what happened in between this weird period between May to July. But I'm here now, so I live to tell everyone the tale.

First of all, the reason I basically abandoned everything and everyone: my cat got sick. 

stein's battle with flutd :(

He's fine now but it was really touch and go for a while. He was confined at two different animal hospitals for the same issue which drained most of my mental strength. I really didn't want to interact with anything or anyone for a while because I was so worried about him. Now that he's stable and well, I've relaxed enough to well...at least look at people again. 

I've done many important-ish things over the past three-ish months that I haven't shared. I previously shared that I was a senior in high school, which means that during my three-ish month hiatus, I graduated from high school!

It was actually pretty anti-climactic. I came to terms with it really quickly, but mostly because in between graduation practice and the like, I was actually also doing another musical. Not as big as Beauty and the Beast, but it was big enough to miss a few days of graduation practice. 

It was a Tagalog musical with a mid-size cast of maybe 10-15 people. The entire musical was staged and rehearsed in less than two weeks. The set was actually really beautiful for something made in 2-ish days too. I'm not very good at Tagalog, as I have mentioned many, many times, so I was glad that I had a fairly inconsequential role. It kinda peeved me though that I messed up one word during the show. Sigh. 

it was a really fun show though!

Besides doing another musical, I had to do some community service in the middle of graduation practice with a castmate since we hadn't gone to the outreach program a few months back (when we were rehearsing for Beauty and the Beast). We sweeped an entire courtyard for an hour. I'd say I was pretty good at it. 

proof

The process to graduating high school in my school goes like this: graduation mass --> graduation ceremony --> graduation ball. The graduation mass was pretty chill + they gave us food afterwards. The only thing that really peeved me was that we had club awarding right after. 

I got a gold medal for my club but when I went to take pictures with the higher ups, we took one picture and I immediately said thank you. It was wayyy too early since we were still in the middle of taking more pictures. The guy next to me (I think he was a higher up) laughed at me and I was told afterwards that it was a cute mistake. Still, it was pretty embarrassing... T_T

The actual graduation ceremony was, like I said, anti-climactic. I guess I was expecting a lot more tears since I'd been with my school since kindergarten. To be fair: I'd already cried myself out at graduation practice, so I didn't have any more tears left to cry. I had my makeup and hair done at a salon before the ceremony and got at the venue on time. 

my graduation dress + my tote

Once I was there, my adviser gave me this flower necklace thing for graduates and I almost bawled right then and there. The only thing stopping me was my makeup.

The graduation ceremony didn't take too long in my head, but it probably lasted around 5 hours. I mentally checked out once they started announcing the names of the STEM students since there were more than 500 of them. My parents gave me some chocolate and water to entertain myself during the ceremony. I was thoroughly entertained with all the sugar coursing through my veins.

During my turn getting my diploma and shaking hands with the higher ups, the owner of the school gasped and told me, "you're already graduating?!" Yes...yes I was.

After the ceremony, my parents and I took many, many pictures. My feet were burning. We even took pictures with the owner of the school and we had a very long conversation about where I was going for college.

(Speaking of college, remember when I had to take an entrance exam for my dream school on school festival week? Well...I got in! It was a pretty big shock to me since I thought I didn't do very well. I'm just really grateful that I got into my first choice. Cy and I are going to the same uni so I'm very excited!)

Back to graduation -- it started raining really hard after the ceremony. My parents parked at a nearby mall and we were originally going to take a cab to the mall to get there, but no one would accept our booking since it was raining. So...we waited for the rain to pass and walked. 

We actually got there pretty quickly, but that wasn't the end of my misfortune. They forgot where they parked, so we walked around the entire mall to find it. 

It was awful. I was wearing high heels so I limped the entire time. Walking around the mall in heels should be considered an extreme sport I think.

We actually did find it thanks to my awesome deduction skills. We made our way to this hotel where we had my graduation dinner. It was a looot of food. But it was really good!

the wallpaper was veeery nice

Graduation ball was a different kind of beast. I got up reeeally early to get my roots fixed since my blonde highlights had grown out. I also got my nails and makeup done. My dress was really pretty so I was very excited!

our theme was "crazy rich asians"

I don't really have anything to say about gradball besides that I had fun. I loved my tablemates and I danced a lot. After grad ball I kinda went quiet and stopped responding to everyone. This was because of my cat's condition and...

Stardew Valley.

I actually started playing on May 25th. It was midnight. I wasn't instantly hooked, but once I got the hang of it, I played every. Single. Day.

So much so that I achieved perfection within 2 months. 

spoiler: the summit....

Besides playing Stardew Valley, worrying over my cat, and just generally relaxing, I actually have another really cool thing that I've been doing this past June and July. I'm very excited to talk about it here soon!

That being said, this was my ultimate sign of life. TLDR: My cat got sick, I graduated, I played a lot of Stardew Valley.

See you next time!