Saturday dawned overcast and wet, and with plans to paint all day, I sighed and got down to writing.

Word count in, I headed off at 9am to the communal riding arena, where my 4-H club had already power-washed the jumps earlier in the week and left them to dry. For today, we painted.

And in case you don’t know how much work there was….

And some of it you can’t see, tucked in the corner. Five adults, five kids (and a few stragglers), and five hours’ work and one break for pizza, but we accomplished our goal. Eventually the sun came out, not that we really got to see it.

I got home by five, utterly exhausted. I woke up on Sunday similarly exhausted, with my body pointing out it wasn’t used to certain things (kneeling on cement and lugging heavy coops). My body laughed at the idea of writing, so I spent the day slipping into depression and watching TV.

But unlike my umpteenth watch of GBBO, I watched new stuff! Two new episodes of Fruits Basket (2019) and six episodes of My Roommate is a Cat.

For the unfamiliar, Fruits Basket was originally released in 2001….before the manga had finished. The new anime is following the manga more faithfully, although the beginning is pretty much the same as previously. If you’re new the to show, it’s worth a watch, although it’s not without problems (I abhor Kagura’s opening episode at least) and parts feel a bit dated because of the source material.

If you’re familiar with the original but haven’t picked up the new stuff, then I’d recommend holding off until you can watch chunks at a time. Much of the beginning feels repetitious since it’s the same material with only a few new bits sprinkled in (or at least more obvious).

My Roommate is a Cat is an excellent anime if you want to watch something cute and sweet and low-key. Say if you’ve slipped into a depressive funk and can’t bear the idea of emotions. (CW: story opens with parental death, later episodes have flashback cat deaths.)

The story focuses on an extreme introvert author who is being forced to interact with the real world. While his aversion to people is being “fixed” to an extent, it’s also done in such a way that I found positive – as in, being an introvert is fine and part of who he is, but he took it too far and needs to find balance in his life.

It also touches upon found/chosen family, facing things that are difficult, and learning to do things for those you love. The episodes spend half the time in the human’s POV and half the time in the cat’s POV.

I still have two episodes left, but I’d recommend it as a nice slice-of-life story with an overall positive feel to it.