Monkfish Dolls and Toys

my left tonsil is seriously swollen and so painful. I barely slept last night for the pain. I feel really shit.

that and the paddling pool, which i can go sit in when the headache starts and cool my blood. helps prevent the headache becoming a full thing.

what confounds me is there's no real medical reason for my inability to regulate my temperature. my thyroid is fine and this predates the meds. it may be related to the nerve neuropathy thing. my body yet again just not quite working right.

this is a major weather event.

I nailed a sheet over the window in the hall to block that one and we have blackout blinds/curtains on the front windows. May need to figure something out for the conservatory though. I don't know if it is worth blocking all the back windows too as they're north facing so don't get direct sun on them, they have the shade of the whole house blocking it. Some people mentioned foil on the outside to bounce the uv but i'm not sure how effective that is.

Air con unit is running full blast and a fan at the other side of the living room is blowing that air back to create a little cool oasis but upstairs is already very hot and it's only (hah ONLY) 29C today. I opened the hatch to the attic in the hope that the hot air might rise into the loft space but i'm not sure if it will.

I''m going to have to email them telling them to leave me alone. Yes it's burning the bridge but let's be real here, given the 10 minute fucking lecture last time, I don't think this was ever going to go ahead and even if it was, do I really want a team who talk down to me like i'm a child handling my care for something that's so emotionally and physically taxing? Top surgery is one of those funny things where there's a lot of feelings involved, it's not uncommon for people to get extremely emotional afterwards, it's like this weight being lifted but also this massive change to your body and sense of self and it's a lot. I've seen so many stories of people sobbing uncontrollably and not being certain if it's joy or sorrow, it's just raw emotion. It leaves you very vulnerable and do I really trust a team who's spokesperson made me feel stupid? Because she did. She made me feel stupid, naive and ignorant. I did not enjoy that conversation at all and I have no desire to speak to her again and I certainly don't want to be spoken to like that when i'm in a highly emotional state. It sucks and ultimately I DO think they're being overly paranoid but that's their protocol and given all my health problems, it means it's very likely if I wanted surgery i'd have to have it done by the NHS doctors rather than the contractors. The problem is, the NHS doctors do the old fashioned "good enough" method and haven't innovated or changed in decades, it's very much the "it'll do" technique rather than trying to get the best possible result. The reason this particular surgeon (who was my second choice as my first choice no longer practices in the south) was the one I picked is because she's been working for years to innovate techniques that improve healing and aesthetics and if i'm going to put myself through the trauma of surgery, I want it done WELL, not "good enough". But from the last conversation, it doesn't look like that's actually viable for me. They're also demanding a load of paperwork I cannot obtain. They want a mammogram done, my gp won't refer me and when I rang the hospital they said they won't do one because i'm too young, so i'd need to do that privately and that's a whole ordeal. I can't get a hold of my nephrologist easily either, when I did contact him I just got a brief email back saying "yes, they can have surgery" but they want a whole load of paperwork from him and weren't very clear about precisely WHAT he needed to provide.

And the biggest problem is that i'm extremely horribly honest, so when a medical professional asks me "do you have any preexisting conditions" I tell them ALL of it, even if it's probably irrelevant. And then that fucks me. I bet most people wouldn't have mentioned any of it, but they asked so I told them and the more I told them the more unhappy the woman on the phone sounded until she stopped me speaking and started to lecture me.

I don't want to do that again. Just thinking about it has me welling up. And that's the thing. This whole ordeal has been extremely emotionally taxing for me. I've said before that if I could snap my fingers and have a flat chest I would, but the reality is that I need to jump through countless hoops, hit roadblock after roadblock and force my way through so much red tape, then subject myself to the trauma of hospital and healing. Given my past trauma not only with surgeries themselves but with accessing medical care in the first place, this whole thing is triggering me badly. Every roadblock brings up decades of grief and trauma and upset, it reopens old wounds. and I really don't think i'm well enough mentally to put myself through another fight. I mean, just getting that scar dealt with was hard enough. So many back and forths, so many times I just wanted to quit because it was too hard and was hurting me too much. But in that case the pain I was in was the only thing keeping me going, because continuing to live with that pain was worse than the pain of pushing forward. But with this one? My chest doesn't hurt me, not much anymore, not now my hormones are sorted. It's just aesthetics, they're ugly, they gross me out, I feel a creeping sense of unease when I think about them, but i've lived with that for 30 years, i've become pretty accustomed to ignoring the "ick". It's not physical pain that leaves me unable to walk or sit or function, it's just "ick". I can live with ick. And that makes pushing through all the shit so much harder because at the end of the day, it's easier, it's less stress, it's less emotional toll to just roll over and quit.

YES, I would have liked to have this done. But it's too hard. It's causing me too much grief and emotional pain. I need to protect myself and not trigger the ptsd, and the roadblocks, and the lectures.... the hopeless feeling that i'm not worthy of help or compassion and i'm just a stupid hysterical little idiot kicks in. DECADES of doctors treating me as such, talking down to me, making me feel small, it's left deep scars and I suspect that's why i'm finding this all so difficult, coupled with the whole emotional aspect of dysphoria on top. I don't want to push forward, I don't want to speak to this person because it reopens those wounds. It makes me feel belittled and foolish and helpless and I fucking hate feeling like that. So yeah. I don't want to talk to them. I don't have the mental fortitude to push forward with this, I may never have it. I just want to ghost them and be left alone to lick my wounds in peace. Let me fucking grieve. Because I haven't finished that process yet. And it IS a grieving process.

I thought this would be straightforward, I thought it'd be a long wait but overall be fairly simple because for everyone else it seems to be. Thousands of people post their success stories, their photos, their joy at finally having it done and I admit, I seethe with envy at how fucking easy it is for them. They just make the request, go along, have it done. But nothing is ever simple or straightforward for me. I get such envy and also bitterness thinking "why can't it be easy for me too?" "why can't I have that?"

and so I have to grieve and come to terms with the reality. I'm high risk and it's extremely unlikely any private surgeon will touch me. And i'll have to run around and stress myself out getting all this paperwork in place, only to be told "yeah you're still too high risk and we're not comfortable doing it, bye."

Why do that to myself? Why go through all that? Why fight when I already know the result? The woman on the phone already TOLD me.

The package I thought was lost showed up.

It was posted out on the 12th of MAY, it's now June 9th. Evri lost it for a bit, no idea where the fuck it went but the tracking never updated after it was dropped off at the parcel shop. I assume they failed to scan it and it ended up somewhere in the system until someone noticed it. I genuinely believed it was lost but the seller and I held out hope because they mentioned they'd had another parcel sent on the 5th that took 3 weeks to turn up to the buyer too. Sounds like maybe their evri people are a bit shit at their job.

And vinted's process means I couldn't file for a refund til the 15th anyway, so I was just kinda waiting for that to happen. I was SHOCKED when our local evri driver turned up and had a big squishy package for me. I have nothing en route to expect so I knew it HAD to be this clothing bundle and yep. Amazing.

just generally... ARHGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH at the world right now.

I wanna slap people, or worse, but I know it won't achieve anything. I hate feeling helpless and I hate feeling hopless. I hate relying on other people's humanity. I just.. I fucking hate people right now. I hate this country, I hate the state of the world, I hate it all. I want it to fucking BURN.

However,

the walk, which is about 10 minutes each way, so fuck all distance, has wiped me out. My legs ache, my back aches and I feel unwell.

and i'm fucking PISSED OFF about it.

I feel like things are backsliding, my energy levels are getting worse and the payback for minor activity is getting nastier.

And I hate it all so fucking much.

This poor little "Unique toy company" doll has been sitting on ebay for ages, they were asking far too much for a doll who was in such a state. She was FILTHY too. But I wanted to fix her, I wanted so bad so when they finally dropped the price and offered me an okay offer on her, I went for it. Unique made a few Sindy/Tammy clones but I think the most common one is called "Judy". There was a hair grow doll too but this girl is a basic model.

Now, because the company has such a common word name, finding information about them is really really fucking difficult. But I do presume this girl's hair was originally in a bubble cut or pageboy cut like Sindy and has been cut shorter.

Thing is, it's pretty thick and the cut honestly reminds me a bit of the haircut Mia Farrow's character gets mid way through Rosemary's Baby with that extra short fringe and everything.

I touched up her damaged paint (she'd lost a lot of lip paint but my carmine pink is an exact match and lost some eye paint and most of her lashes had faded to a ghost) but curiously her brows and blush was all intact.

and that blue panda eye... I took her head off and it goes RIGHT through the vinyl, completely. I don't think it will shift. I assume it's a stain and not intentional, but she's going to have to live with her makeup choices.

I dressed the dolls.

Midge looks like she's babysitting lol.

I'm not sure i'll keep Ginny and Jennie, they're nice vintage 70s dolls but they're not really MY personal vibe. Jennie isn't a rare doll at all, but I can't find any of these slim Ginnys with the dark skin and afro on ebay uk. I don't know how collectable they are, if at all. She's an odd doll. she has sleep eyes which is weird on a small fashion doll like this. Though i do dig her hair.

Pissed off Fairy needs an outfit that properly fits her. The dress she came in is far too big and this pippa sized dress is not her vibe. But I enjoy pissed off poundland fairy, she's got a pretty face and stompy boots. also a raised fist. She's ready to kick ass.

Peggy is adorable with her funny little annoyed face. She looks like she's sucking on a lemon and it makes me smile. She's really tiny. I thought she'd be Skipper sized but she's really slender and honestly closer to Licca Chan or something. So that's interesting.

And isn't Midge lovely?

She had some chipping to her paint so I redid her lips in the closest colour I had, which is a touch lighter than her original lip paint but matches this Barbie dress perfectly. And the MTM body (green tie dye yoga I think? The brunette with the top bun) matches her orangy skintone really well I think.

I don't typically like 80s and 90s Barbie dolls, mostly because I don't like the Superstar sculpt and that's the doll you usually see. I did consider keeping Cut N Style Barbie purely because I think her undercut is fucking cool but aside from that neat feature, she's just another Superstar. I'd only be keeping her for the sake of keeping her and i'm trying to be strict on myself.

Now i'm not sure how much market there is for broken Barbie bodies, but I can probably rehome the heads fairly easily because people like doll heads. There's i think 4 intact Barbie dolls in this whole bundle and a lot of broken ones. I made a list of who they are too. We have:

songbird Barbie (who has the nicest hair because it's saran. I fucking hate kanekellon and I don't understand why people like it. It's so fucking poofy)

Ski Fun (poofy huge kanekellon hair. Eugh)

Evening Sparkle (really dark eyes and pretty makeup. Hair is blah)

Tropical Splash (again, fucking huge hair)

Wedding Fantasy (more huge hair)

I Love You (the only 80s barbie, the rest are 90s. She's in a really sorry state)

Cut N Style Barbie

Sparkle Hair Barbie (her hair is horrible, it's so fucking horrible. it's all broken off and frizzy in places, there's so many tiny broken pieces and when I combed her hair so much hair came out. What IS this hair? It's shit is what it is)

And Sun Sensation Ken who's one of what I call "the potato kens" who have a body that has about as much articulation as a spud, that looks like a spud and has a face that looks like he took a masher to it. Sorry any vintage Ken lovers but I fucking hate him so much. He looks like a pervy uncle and I don't understand why he looks so OLD when Barbie is such a youthful elegant thing. YUCK. Get this fucker outta here. There's also two other shit clones who are probably from poundland. One is a winx clone with one arm. The other is a barbie clone. Both are truly terrible.

and some other random bits and bobs all of which are broken. Not sure what to do with those, maybe i'll take the heads to the next doll meet and see if anyone wants them.

There's one of those pregnant dolls with the spring loaded flat belly that pops out. No babies, but she has her bump and her ugly as fuck dress. God it's an ugly dress, it's so so ugly.

My girl, my girl! look at my girl.

Okay so to actually give you an idea of why i'm so happy I have to explain a couple of things.

one this was her auction photo:

Look at the state of her! She had massive bald patches, she was filthy and she was missing a whole ass leg. Her hair was a matted mess of wooliness. Oh she was in a bad state.

I genuinely assumed i'd have to reroot her, but it turns out she has all her original hair and it was just really fucking tangled.

two:

She's one of the first Patch dolls from 1966, so she's 60 years old this year. Happy 60th Patch!

I have one other Patch doll who's a slightly later one who has saran hair rather than whatever this is, so her hair is a lot nicer but similarly scraggly in the cut. The scraggly cut was apparently fashionable or something. She's a hong kong girly, this one is a made in england one.

My one other Patch was a lucky charity shop find for a few quid and I have never gotten any more because Patch is fucking expensive and often sells for more than her bloody sister does. A bald, nude one sold on Ebay for £35 last month. A nude one like my charity shop girl is about £65 and these england ones are not as common as they were only made for a year. Patch herself wasn't made for long, she was discontinued in 1972.

One curious thing about the England girls is that they don't all appear to have freckles. Now how many it's just a case that their freckles faded and how many just for some reason never got them painted on I don't know. I can't see any ghosts of freckles on my girl but her eyelashes on one side are fading so it's possible she once had some. But I have seen other dolls who don't appear to have them either, so perhaps freckles were hit and miss with Pedigree's quality control. I don't know.

Three:

this particular Patch also has a unique facial expression i've not seen before. The angle of her eyebrows is such that she looks worried rather than mischievous and that's fascinating. All of these dolls were hand painted so every single one is going to have minor differences, but this one changes her whole vibe which is super interesting.

She's really heavy with solid vinyl wired limbs that can't bend because the wire is fucking thick. I think it's more there to provide stability than anything else.

I'm going to restore her lashes and fix her wonky eye shines but then she's done and ready for me to dig through my stash to find her something to wear. I don't own many patch outfits, but I think I have a dress of hers somewhere in my sindy stash.

So, I put in two "best offers" on some bundles of tlc dolls a few days ago. both from the same seller. One bundle contained a very sad looking Patch doll with only one leg as well as a couple of other vintage dolls and an interesting clone.

the second bundle was mostly Barbies with a couple of hasbro sindys, some random heads and body parts and a Peggy Von Plasty (Petra's sister) who's quite hard to find.

so, curiously not only did the seller dispatch both these parcels separately, they also used different couriers for both. The first used royal mail, the second Evri.

why? I don't know. Sometimes sellers with large inventories have multiple postage locations they send from, so perhaps the two lots were in different places.

anyway,

i did know that the Glady doll from bundle 1 had one of his children in bundle 2, but given they're fairly common dolls that doesn't mean a lot.

anyway, bundle 1 arrived about 10am and I got to work fixing up this Patch.

I was planning to see if I could get my father to maybe scan her other leg, mirror it and print me a replacement or something, but I was going to wait for bundle 2 to arrive to see if there were any random parts that could work instead. Clone parts often will fit.

so bundle 2, which I expected tomorrow, arrived at 4pm and what did I pull out of the box?

Patch's other fucking LEG

so she's now complete and i'm fucking delighted.

There was also the missing leg from the Eric doll in bundle 1 lol. Wtf?

And I should hasten to add, this seller had a LOT of bundles. A LOT.

And there's some fun stuff here.

A Jem doll missing her hands (I shall have to find something I can use as a replacement. Hmmmm), Camp Barbie Midge who already stole a MTM body because she's fucking fabulous.

A very sassy bald clone doll

A black Ginny doll which 1: I didn't even know what a Ginny til I picked her up and 2: I didn't know they made black ones either.

Several terrifying Lucky corp clones including one with sleep eyes

two Betty Tongs in various states of dismantlement.

2 Steffi Love dolls both with broken off legs.

a lot of barbie heads and a lot of barbie bodies with broken necks. I COULD probably fix them, I just don't wanna.

But I did id them all.

Sun Sensation Ken and his iconic gold mesh top. I fucking hate this era of Ken but that top is iconic.

and a small pile of interesting clothing some of which needs quite major repair.

to get a spousal visa for husband so we could emigrate to NZ would cost around NZ $6k, which is about £2600. That's a HUGE amount of money and that's JUST the visa application.

Passports for the kids to claim their NZ citizenship would cost £185 EACH. So that's £555 for the kids to get their citizenship.

So we're already looking at over £3k just in paperwork.

Then you have to factor in flights.

flights to NZ you're looking at let's see... at the cheapest one way, £2500 for all five of us.

So that's now £5500

Then you have all those incidental costs.

and transporting our belongings unless we pull the shit my parents did to me (don't recommend) where we were only permitted ONE bag each. (yeah, we arrived in the UK with literally two suitcases. One small one for me, one shared one for my parents. That's all we owned. It was fucking ridiculous)

Shipping things like my pc, our collections (which we'd have to severely cull to make space and money), mementos, shit like that would be another chunk of change.

we have £8000 in our bank account

And that's not "8k savings", that's literally all the money we have to pay rent, groceries, energy and water bills, transport and entertainment... the works. We live on that a month, that's all we have. Which is, arguably more than apparently many people, but only because we live so frugally by cramming 5 of us into a 2 bedroom house that we pay under market rent for.

We also don't drive, which will be a huge detriment in NZ where, outside of Wellington, the public transport system is fucked. So i'd have to pay to get my license, which is expensive too.

and then we'd have to run a car which costs a fucking fortune.

We'd have to rehome the cats. It's around £2k PER cat to get them through all the tests they'd have to go through and they're old, that stress would be unfair on them.

Finding a special needs school for the kids would be difficult. NZ doesn't have great SEN care unfortunately and my younger two both failed to integrate into mainstream despite valiant attempts. That's why they're both at special schools now.

There are 21 special schools in the entire north island of NZ. Only 21. (and for some reason one is in Paeroa? Why? It's a tiny rural town, why does it have a special school when Wellington, the fucking capital, only has 2?)

Then we have to factor in finding a place to live. Auckland is expensive and I don't have a lot of family there any more, most of them are either in the waikato valley or taupo. Hamilton, though small, IS a city and is near to my mother's side of the family while my dad's side has one brother in some rural middle of nowhere outskirts of auckland area and one in taupo with all my cousins and their families. So, rent in hamilton and taupo.. let's see.

3 beds near taupo town center is $800 a week. so that's $3200 a month. That's £1392 which is actually more than we pay NOW in fucking LONDON.

So let's look at Hamilton. Which also happens to have 2 special schools.

you're looking at about 5-600 a week. So let's do the higher end, that's $2400 a month which is just over £1k. Closer to our current rent, but in a much smaller city. Probably a bigger house though.

Move in costs apparently are 4 weeks as bond and then 2 weeks upfront though, so that's basically 6 weeks rent up front. So uh.. $3600 just to move in. That's quite a wad of cash. I mean that's like £1500 up front.

And so just like that we've wiped out that 8k in our bank.

So hmmmm.

I mean, it MIGHT be doable if the parents all gave us a bit of money toward it, but it'd still be really tight financially and would be extremely reliant on husband being able to get a job.

On top of that, there's absolutely no guarentee NZ isn't swinging wildly right too. The current government certainly is having a good try.

So eugh...

I was curious about their bodies and their clothing, which is the only reason I bought this girl. She was half price on vinted because she had no code. I have no need or desire for a code, so suited me fine. But I mostly wanted to get a good look at her clothing.

I didn't expect to actually like her.

I mean don't get me wrong, she's a fucking bizarre looking doll. She has a strange cube shaped head with this heavily filtered looking face, but her weirdness kinda endears her to me. Also while her body doesn't have brilliant articulation, the articulation it does have allows for some pretty expressive poses. Her head can tilt quite a lot, her bust joint lets her twist all weird and the rounded joints for her hips mean her legs have a decent range of motion while still being extremely stiff and stable. And good god her legs are stiff, she squeaks every time I pose her legs. Her hair is soft as all hell but very thinly rooted. It's fine, there's no bald patches so long as you style it right, but yeah, it's not the most generous rooting pattern, she has huge gaps between plugs of just nothing. the face is done really well. I assume it's uv printed but it doesn't look grainy like Mattel's uv dolls. Her clothing is pretty nice. I mean it's not Rainbow High quality but it's significantly better than a lot of Barbie stuff these days. She came with three outfits which is nice, which included three pairs of shoes.

Her feet are fucking huge though, so I don't have any other dolls who can wear said shoes.

Barbie can fit her other two outfits but not this dress, this dress is tight even on the body it was made for and on Barbie it won't even start to fasten. it's also sinfully short.

I assume the other dolls in the series can probably donate clothes to Barbie, they all look to have outfits made of stretchier fabric or with multiple pieces. I picked this more expensive "deluxe" girl because I liked her clothes best of the bunch. She's "y2k" themed supposedly, but I think she looks more snowbunny personally.

My random "coppy parker" girl got the leopard print dress and stockings. The dress isn't brilliant, it's far less detailed than the other two outfits but that's because it's the "mystery garment" so it's kinda just a random extra that little budget went into. But I do think it works well as a base.

I do always appreciate a good base piece for dolls. So many doll outfits are very... extra.. which makes them difficult to accessorize while leaving them still not quite feeling complete without something. Anyway, I had fun playing with my new dolly lol.

I need to find my other roblox doll, she's more cartoonish and substantially more marshmallow headed but they both are fucking weird dolls in general. Up there with the boxy girls for "wtf? why?" in cranium shape.

tumblr gonna hate this pic but the DTI body is really unique, I don't think i've ever seen a body quite like it. The torso is super athletic in shape while still being extremely slender, the legs feel strangely short but are actually probably more proportionate than most fashion dolls, her hands and feet are massive and some of the jointing choices are interesting.

Her proportions fascinate me. I actually am super curious what a more barbie-like head would look like on this body but I couldn't get her head off without boiling water and I didn't want to risk breaking her.

stupid roblox doll is here.

i'm gonna have fun with this yassified marshmallow

Also, I saw some fucked up dolls in the charity shop i was tempted to buy because they were fucked up but they didn't have a price on them and I didn't want to find a staff member.

let me find a pic. i took a pic. I assume they were made to compete with those poopsy rainbow unicorns or some shit because they're also.. cat.. bear... unicorns... um...

edit: I found them! They're called Bonica Unicorna/ Rainbow Unicorn and there was a bunny one too.

Also baby knuckleduster. It made me laugh. I know it's a teether, but look at it! It's a knuckleduster!

I found in stock images of the unicorns too:

*does so*

"no that's wrong"

*clicks the fucking flower pot*

"yes correct"