Lycaina is here! Recap of winter Holidays

Hi, Lycaina here! 

Happy past Holidays everyone! I hope y'all had very lovely and pleasant holiday season last year. 

I had a delightful season myself, although very filled up, hence my totall absence here. 

With my wife we saw 2 movies in cinemas in December: Five Nights at Freddy's 2 and Silent Night Deadly Night (2025). Both of these were a delight to watch. Silent Night especially surprised me, as, well, I was expecting a stupid killing spree, with logical problems and shitty dialogue and instead I only raged at the very end at the character's behavior. The one killing scene where main character goes to a certain party was especially delightful to watch (you'll immediately understand what I'm talking about after watching it lol). And, for those who did watch it, can you imagine that a pair left the cinema when that scene ended? 

Best way to out yourself to the whole cinema, without saying a word lmao.

We had a lovely Christmas tree this year, with very very delightful gifts for everyone (especially after I have introduced the concept of a Wishlist lol), all the Christmas dishes turned out great and we had a very lovely family Christmas dinner. We did have a pretty big meat mishap, but in together efforts w my wife it was gladly resolved early morning on Christmas Eve. But yikes was it stressful. 

On New Years Eve we were alone with my wife at home. We had a smaller dinner of our own and just chilled. Surprisingly we had snow for New Years! I'm not sure already how much was there at that point, but quite a bit for sure. Right now actually we have good few cm of snow and very winter like temperatures. A good freezing winter kind. 

And we wrapped up the holidays season for our family with a family trip to the mountains. It was very fun, snowy, places dangerous, bc we definitely were not equipped with the right gear for a stroll on a mountain path, but in general we had a very lovely time with a mix of okay food, beautiful, breathtaking nature, and some fun "touristy" activities lol. I definitely want to return to that place for sledging some other time.

I want to take a piece of time to just talk about the nature. We had a beautiful moment of when we stopped on that mountain passage, just me and my wife, and quietly stood there, looking at the beautiful panorama that opened in front of us. It was quiet and still. Seemingly empty and lifeless. But you realize that it's a trick, forest is never truly lifeless. So you keep listening and looking. We heard snapping branches somewhere below, most likely an animal we couldn't possibly see. Clouds and fog slowly move through the black and white surroundings almost covering up forest's secrets. I don't have any photos, but even if I did, they wouldn't do the forest and mountains justice. 

Don't forget to listen, look and feel the nature. 

Back to reading books

Hey, Lycaina here and I've picked up reading again! I was buying books for a Christma gift and I saw the shiny beautiful rows of books in the store. I got painfully reminded that last time when I tried to read a scientific book I have and immediately repeat what I just read, I was struggling heavily. 

So I chatted with a lovely shop lady, confirmed with my wife that we can afford a purchase, and got myself a "Where The Dark Stands Still" by A. B. Poranek. Best way I can describe it - slavic romantic fantasy. More specifically Polish. So far I'm in 2/3 of the book, maybe more, and I highly recommend it. It is also a one shot, so it's perfect imo to get back into reading and not get overwhelmed by a full fantasy series. 

In my personal journal I'll write a small recap of each chapter out of my head, as a measure of conscious reading journey. Daunting, but very needed. Once I finish the book, I'll try to write some sort of a review here too,  to make my brains analyse the material even further. 

My wife power housed us through the highway

Hello, Lycaina here!

Let me preface this by saying that I love my wife Wren so fucking much. She's the best person I could have ever imagined to have by my side and I'm so proud to see her grow every month into a better version of herself and I'm so happy I get to grow near her. 

So as I was sharing in my quick updates, last few days we had quite a bit of a snowfall, which is very unusual for the end of November based on how I remember the last few years. The snow was falling for almost 3 days straight, but it didn't fall in total more than maybe 10-15 cm. It was mostly wet snow, but surprisingly it lasted and only today it started to melt away significantly. Even then there's still quite a bit off it lying around. 

On literally the first day of the snowfall we had a scheduled car cleaning which regrettably so we had to cancel due to the weather. It was a big bummer as we had to cancel literally less than 24h till the reservation and for allegedly AuDHD brain it's a nightmare. I couldn't focus on doing absolutely anything the evening when our relatives recommended us to stay home (it was almost 12AM mind you, I'm a night owl so I was fine, but what was their business writing so late is still unfathomable for me). Aside the mental crash out, logically speaking I was glad we didn't go, because I believe them when they said the roads were a nightmare. We've had a calm weekend and we managed to even build a huge snowman! 

Yesterday though it was The time. There's an important visit we'll be having on a Saturday so we had to have our car cleaned and some things bought. Instead of taking our usual route through villages we decided to take a more straight road, with less altitude differences and turns for, hopefully, a safer drive, and a part of that road was through a road similar to a highway. That was our time on a road so big and fast paste and YIKES that was scary. My phenomenal wife took it as a CHAMP. She did so unbelievably good, despite the shitty weather with rain and fog in the morning, and the stressful night drive. To be fair she did a few mistakes, but fuck we're both alive, car undamaged and we weren't stopped by the police, and in my opinion that means she did fucking great for a first time on a highway-like road.
Besides the highway-like road drives she also drove us through basically the whole city that day, parking in shitty tight parking spaces, walking around the malls almost endlessly trying to find that One specific thing, enduring the endless questions of "Do you think this box will fit there?", "I don't know if this and that or those are a good choice", "Omg can we get *another capitalism mass produced useless toy/trinket*" for almost 12 h straight. We literally started our drive from home at around 7:30 AM and came back at around 8 PM. Oh also we both had doctor visits scheduled that day too.  

My wife is an absolute powerhouse through and through and I absolutely adore her. A year ago she would be terrified of a thought of driving in a city and look where we are today. We started from awkward and scary drives through the villages and now we're doing regular weekend drives to the city she was so terrified of before and even dabbling into highways. We started from her blowing up at every inconvenient driver on the road and now most of the time she calmly brushes it off immediately. 

Wren might not see this the same way as i do, but, if you're reading this, my sweetheart, please know: 

You are truly growing and you're growing really fast. I hope I express my love and pride of you enough, so that one day your achievements will outshine your mistakes in your head. Yesterday was a very lovely day all of which happened only because of you and your efforts. Thank you my dearest and I love you <3

Winter has come

    

   

  

Hya, Lycaina here! There was a big snowstorm yesterday, and apparently it's still snowing outside. We unfortunately had to cancel our plans to drive to the big city due to it, but after our short trip to the nearby village post office, I'm glad that we had not. Our car was really having a bad time in that snow so we had to drive at like 15km/h. And after we returned we had to at least shovel some snow in our yard cause our poor Lada was barely digging though it. Shout out to my lovely wife on the last pics <3 

I love having a lot of names

Heya, Lycaina here.

I've never liked my birth name. In my mother tounge it means "Love" and it always felt like a mockery of me. I didn't have a lot of luck in my love life, and/or in loving myself, until recently. So my resentment towards it really grew in my young years. 

Now I honestly feel neutral about it, I simply got used to it. I don't feel much of myself in that name though. It feels more like a legally and systemically required "normal" name. While I'm in Slavic rooted countries it doesn't pose too much of a problem, but if I were to move long term to, say, Germany, I'd seriously consider changing my name. Exactly for the reason of making it easier to have day to day interactions with the society. So for me my legal name became a social interaction mask - something to make other people comfortable of identifying you by. 

As the time went on, as a teenager I got introduced into the Internet and started to be known by my made up alliaces. They were pre-teen - teenager silly, like "Ender" or later "DarkEnderHero" (yes I was really into Minecraft and Herobrine, how did you guess?) and others. My online and irl friends never really called me by my real name and here might be where my ceparation from my legal name truly started to grow. 

Nevertheless, in the recent year I found myself in a personality crisis, where I didn't feel like my legal name is really reflective of me. Nor was the "conventionally easy to use nickname" that I had at the time. So with my wife's help I started testing if I like any other name. 

We tried Ray for a few months but it didn't stick. Then my wife called me by one of those "cute names" like sweetheart or sunshine in English, but she said an equivalent of that in Slovak. And that's where S. name stuck to me. It really feels lovely sweet and safe being called by that name by my wife. I really, really like it. And that is why I won't say the full name here. It's simply too personal and intimate for me.

And that's probably why it doesn't feel right asking my friends to call me by that name too. 

My bff always called me by a jokish name, like "Sherlock", "Duder", "Clown" etc. And it always felt..right? The nickname changed with time so maybe it feels appropriate because the way she called me changed with me and the circumstances that happened in our life. For example now she calls me Clown, because I started out a Discord server called Clown Circus that recently blew up in popularity in our friend group (which I'm so fucking happy about like yes finally my baby is being used). And it feels...right? And comfortable. So for now I won't be making myself a friend name, cause Clown works perfectly for me so far lol.

I also have separate names for my accounts for different websites. I tried staying true to one nickname - MorselMint throughout as many websites as possible for recognizability, but I had to change it for Steam recently (and I actually feel much better about the nickname ForestMint than MorselMint) and for this blog it just felt right to have a separate name.

In the near future I also want to find a name with which I'll talk and identity myself to Gods. A name that only they will know and hear. Because they deserve an intimate and deep connection like that.

I'm honestly kind of happy and proud of myself of having many names. For some reason it almost feels like making myself multifaceted in a way. It feels good. 

First post!

 Hi everyone! 

For this blog my name is Lycaina and here will be my ramblings. It's so peculiar to have just a full on blank page to write on to make a post lol. I'll introduce myself better in the next post after I get my ass to my PC.

I'm making this blog in hopes to decentralize my online presence from the bitch ass social media. One lovely creator opened my eyes to realize that we're putting too much of us on these pages all the while we can't be searched or achived online. Tumblr where I'm mostly at is better at this, cause I can actually search myself up and customize it Almost like a blog. But there already was a time where Tumblr was in shambles (from where I'm not even sure if it has recovered fully, I have a very tight info bubble there) and no one says it won't be in shambles again

Anyhow yay, new blog :) 

Look at this picture I took on Halloween eve