When did I get a social life with actual plans and where can I return it? I mean, seriously, I spent years doing nothing on weekends (3 hours of learning Mandarin on Saturdays from the age of 6 to the age of 14 does not count as doing ’something’ because I would have much rather had been drinking acid or something more fun.

And now, suddenly, I have plans. Like actual plans. I’m kinda impressed (with the fact that I have actual plans). Check it out:

Friday – The day that my new doll should be arriving!*
Friday/Saturday – C’s birthday/sleepover party**
Saturday – Potentially volunteering***, date with Clay****
Sunday – Attending a parade with friends
Monday – Day of rest (it’s a long weekend because August 1 is BC Day), sleeping in

* She was released by customs at ~8am and arrived at the postal sorting centre at about 10am today. And since parcels are driven around by trucks rather than delivered by the normal mail carriers – I’m hoping she arrives tomorrow! I even have a bunny-earred hat waiting for her! (Sophie gets one too, in a different colour.)  I realize this isn’t really a “thing to do”, but I’m still super excited about her arrival!

** Chances of me writing anything tomorrow or Saturday is slim to none. I’ll try though! But doubt I’ll get any time to write, at least not on Friday.

*** Not sure yet. G said I didn’t have to go in, since I’m quite good with showing up regularly and I let them know whenever I don’t show up. She said she’d understand if I don’t show up, and she’ll just have to tell the charmers that I’m busy with another guy, hah.

**** Not sure yet. Depends on his work schedule. Boo.

More crafting is also in my schedule. As well as not doing a whole hell of a lot. I still need to wrap stuff tonight, for tomorrow. So I’m going to go off and do that. Maybe watch some tv, or just sit in front of a fan to cool down. It was 38 C today when I was leaving work. So hot… The nice thing about it being a long weekend is that more people will be taking the day off tomorrow (and Tuesday!). Everyone else that I share my general office space with is gone on vacation, so I’m going to get the entire space to myself. Which is rather nice, I’d love to have all that space to myself!

The downside is that I’m going to have to drive to Building B tomorrow. In a car that I’ve driven… twice so far? Yeah, that’s going to be swell. I’m concerned with the parking, but the driving should be okay. The times that I have driven that car, I stayed in my fairly well. I’m crossing my fingers for doing remotely well tomorrow in that car. Hopefully.

Questions:

1. What do you have planned for this weekend?
2. When’s the last time that you were tracking something in the mail that was coming to you?

Wednesday… What can I say about Wednesday?

Work Issues…
Well, for starters, it was 40 degrees today. Celsius, for all you people thinking “Zomg, that’s so cold!” as that would be 4.5C – which is almost freezing! – if that was 40F. But no, it was 40C, which is 104F. Yeah, I was incredibly not impressed. My general office area is like a neat little freezer, which I fully approve of, in terms of temperature. I heart the air conditioning at work. It’s only cold because it has to be kept cool (my cubicle is in the same area as the company servers). The rest of the building was piping hot. Plus, it still smells like tar because the roof is still getting done. Oh, and the roof people? They somehow get chunks of stuff into the building and falling onto the floor and stairs. I am not impressed. At all.

Work was kind of hellish. People from Building B realized twice today that they had sent me old(er) documents that had all the data that I was entering. Each of those original documents took a week each as I needed to collect the rest of the data, enter it in, double check everything and then it gets checked off. I had moved on from both of those files about 2 weeks ago. And now they decided to go “Oh hey, we have a newer copy of the data – sorry about that”. So I spent a lot of today cross-referencing data and really wanting to pull my hair out.

Boyfriend…
And to make matters worse, I had a fight with Clay today. While I was cross-referencing, going in and out of meetings and really wanting to pull my hair out. Emotionally, I was just drained for most of today. I had lunch late, I wasn’t happy for most of today. Mostly because of work, and then because of the fight. But we worked through that (the fight, not the work). I still have more cross-referencing to do, but at least I’m not longer fighting with him. I mean, looking back, the fight was pretty stupid. Although, looking back on most of the fights we’ve had… Most of them have been pretty stupid. Of course, some of them have been valid, but for the most part, we have fights over really stupid things. Sigh. But, we’re not fighting any longer.  Which is good, because I hate fighting with him, or anyone else for that matter.

Crying…
My dad was going on and on about my weight and how much I eat today during dinner. I ended up in tears over it because he just wouldn’t stop it. I was told by him that I was being dramatic and that I should stop trying to seek attention. Don’t really want to get into it so…

Crafting, but shh….
Moving on… I’ve been working on a top secret project lately, that will get posted over at Chelle-Chelle.com when it’s done (and given away!). I’ve been keeping mum on it since I don’t want to spoil a certain friend’s birthday surprise before her party. Of course, C, if you’re reading this, you obviously know it’s about you. But luckily, I haven’t told any of our mutual friends about it yet. So it’s being kept a secret for now. (I’m impressing myself so far, normally I can’t wait to share my present ideas – I think I’ve grown up a bit!). So I’m quite excited to see friends, and friends of friends, this weekend. I need to get out more and do something, you know? I feel so lazy, laying about my house and just playing with my dolly. Although, to be fair, at her price, I’d better be damn well playing with her! She’s not paid to look pretty, after all.

Anticipated new arrival…
Speaking of dolls… My second Blythe (and first EBL!) is currently in Canada! Canada Post finally updated with her status, after having her as ‘just left origin country’ for over 24 hours (like it takes 24 hours to fly from Tokyo to BC!). But she’s finally in Canada. I just need to wait for her to get through customs before she gets delivered. I’m so, so, so excited for her to arrive (even though I just paid for her on Sunday, she’s already in the country! I’m totally in love with EMS shipping!), the shipping time has been just so fast! Now it just depends on how fast Customs wants to be for me. The last time I got a package from overseas, it was a set of stuffies from my uncle in Hong Kong, it took a month to arrive. They picked regular air mail though, which I suppose explains it. It kicked around customs for a while and the box got opened, but everything was there so I was pretty damn happy. I always get really excited for mail that I know is coming to arrive. Especially when it comes with cute things inside. I do have a name picked out for her, but I’m going to wait until I get her in my hands to see if her name fits her or not. Still, so excited! And beyond talking about doll purchases, all other doll posts will go onto my dolly blog, Little Miss Sophie, instead of here.

Anyways… How was your Wednesday? I hope it went better than mine did!

So what is a girl to do when gets questions (and comments) like the following? Write a blog entry, of course!

Those Blythe dolls are scary. And I’m not too sure why people like them so much. o_O – Dane

I’ve never really understood the whole Pullip-Blythe obsession some of my friends have, so could you perhaps write about it? What is the “deal” there? – Jonna

A little background information for you all…

Blythe was first manufactured in 1972 for exactly 1 year. They weren’t a huge hit and toy shops were practically giving them away because no one wanted them. They only had 4 different hair colours (red, blonde, light brown and dark brown) and a very limited number of dresses. What the vintage Blythes have in common with the Neo-Blythes is that they all have a pull string that comes out of the back of their heads and when you pull on them, the eyes close and open to reveal a new set of ‘eyes’. There are 4 sets in total, 2 front-facing sets and 2 side-facing sides (one to the right and one to the left). The standard stock eye colours are blue, green, orange and pink. With the Neo-Blythes, there are occasionally “special” eye colours, depending on which doll you are getting. You can also customize the doll by giving them whole new eye chip colours.

The dolls are, from my point of view, charming and cute and just downright darling. They’re incredibly expressive in photographs. And the idea that they are just ’scary’ doesn’t really bother me because the original Blythes didn’t do so well because little children thought that they were scary. Blythes were manufactured again via 2 different companies (Takara-Tomy and Ashton-Drake Galleries) after the successive of Gina Garen’s photobook, This is Blythe.

Now in terms of Pullips… I’ve never seen one in person. So I can’t really comment on them. I also cannot comment on Nikkis or Wonderfrogs or Lati dolls. But I can comment on Blythe.

There is just something about them that’s just darling, I swear. I first photos of them online in 2004 (right after the doll “Velvet Minuet” came out) and I fell in love. From 2004 to 2009, I would periodically “stumble” across them again online. And just remember that they existed. I couldn’t justify buying one (or two!) when I was younger because a) I didn’t have my own credit card so that made online shopping doubly difficult and b) I just wasn’t sure if I would really like them. That is, until I saw them in person.

I’m lucky enough to live within travel distance (just a few hours) from a small store in BC that sells Blythe dolls. The vintage ones fetch a very pretty penny, but they had a few of the newer dolls in stock. I was just smitten by them when I first laid eyes on them. See, I knew, based on what I read online, how big that they were supposed to be, but I honestly expected them to be smaller (despite knowing that they’re the exact same height as a regular Barbie doll).

As some of you might have read, back in late June I broke down and bought my first Blythe doll (Sophie, who is a Cappuccino Chat Blythe). I’m frequently obsessive about hobbies, but there’s always some things that capture my attention and never let go and I do honestly believe that Blythe is one of those things.

It’s like with my yarn obsession. People who don’t do any of the fibre arts (i.e. crochet, knitting, spinning, etc.) don’t really understand the obsession that people have with yarn. They don’t understand how yummy yarn can be, they don’t understand the idea of feeling and basically having to touch all the balls of yarn in the store. To them, one blue yarn is the same as the other. But to someone who knows their yarn, they know there’s a difference that comes out when it is 100% wool or a wool blend. They know how wonderful a hand painted soy yarn can look when it’s knitted up.

To someone who doesn’t knit or crochet, they’ll take a look at something that I’ve made and go “Why can’t you just buy something like that in a store?”. But to someone who does crochet or knit, they’ll look at it and see the amount of stitches it is made out of.

It’s like the same thing with Blythe.

You can look at a photo of one online and all you can see is the fact that she’s got a huge head, she’s incredibly pricey (for a doll) and “Why don’t people just get a Bratz doll instead? It has the same concept!”

But that can be all you see.

Or you can see a doll that has so many expressions, albeit a little top heavy at times. You see a doll that’s worth every penny because you know she’s worth it. You see a doll that takes you back to when times were simpler, even if it’s just for a little while each day.

Blythe has a wonderful charm that makes it very easy to fall in love with the sound the doll makes when you pull on the string or when you’re arranging her for a photo. There’s a charm about her that you can understand if you took at her with an open mind. I don’t think she’ll ever be a particularly popular doll, mainly appealing to a niche market and to mostly adults for the most part as well as they are generally collector’s toys. But there’s still something ever so darling about her.

Some links that you might want to consider are:
This is Blythe
Blythe (official website)
Blythe (Wikipedia page)