Just wanted to make a post to vent that life's been a bit stressful for me lately, and will probably continue to be for at least the next month or two.

For those who don't know, my youngest brother was born with severe cerebral palsy and is non-verbal and non-ambulatory. I live with him and my parents and do a lot to assist with his care and needs. He usually also has home care nurses who take shifts to care for him and allow the rest of us time to take care of our own affairs without having to worry about his care. Unfortunately, over the past year two of the three nurses we had have left permanently due to unrelated health issues and the third quit this past week. We have not had new nurses coming in to replace them due to COVID concerns and my mother is finally starting to look for replacements now that the whole family is vaccinated, but there's also somewhat of a shortage of nurses willing to take new cases so it may be months before we get a break. We have heard from a few possible candidates but one cannot start until at least the end of June and the other could not work with us because we have cats. While my brother is generally a nice and pleasant person to work with I'm probably going to feel overworked and overstressed frequently until this gets resolved.

Another sad thing is that one of our cats passed away yesterday afternoon. She was 17½ years old and had been suffering from kidney problems for the past few months. Unfortunately she had become extremely weak over the past couple weeks to the point where she could barely walk across the room without stopping to catch her breath. We had an appointment to see the vet Monday and we probably would have had to make the decision to put her down then if she wasn't doing better. She was a very sweet, loving and friendly cat and we know in cat terms she had a long and good life and we all knew this was coming but it's still really sad when it happens. We still have three younger cats, one is around 6 years old and the other two are sisters who turn 1 in a couple weeks, so hopefully we won't lose another for a long time.

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On a more positive note, I am introducing a couple new characters to my portfolio. Weiko Breacher is a female dolphin character who I've had planned out for years. Her detailed reference sheets were finally finished this week. Also I won an auction to adopt a gazelle character named Erika. I'll be posting their ref sheets in the next day or two and my next art commissions will likely involve them.

Thanks again to all my watchers, friends, and artists. Stay positive, when things are rough remember they will eventually get better~

— Cetaphile