October 20, 2025
Salaam cousins joon,

Sorry I haven't written in so long. Things here have been busy. We got a lot of books in at work so I have to scan them in and catalog them and make sure they get call number labels and then barcode labels and then they have to get shelved. But I did make a red ghost cake!

Are y'all ready for Halloween? I might go to the beach for my birthday but I don't know if I will do anything else. Is it getting cold up there? It is the same down here but a little less rainy. I wanted to make a cardboard haunted house mask where you can look out of the windows of the house but I am not sure if I will get around to that. I have been working on a couple of comics so that takes up all my time.

Hope that you are having a fun spooky season. Get lots of candy!!! I miss y'all and I love y'all!

Love,
your cousin Shahrzad.

September 29, 2025
Salaam cousins joon,

I changed the background of this page so it would be a little more Halloweenie! Just a little fun thing. I like to imagine that you have found this website and are excited that I have changed the background, even though I doubt it, haha. But that would be cool and fun.

When I was a kid I had this cookbook for kids...actually, I think I left it there and had to buy a new one. It's Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls from 1987. Anyway, as you might know because it is still in your kitchen, there is a recipe for a Ghost Cake with Flaming Eyes:

We made one a couple years ago and now I am going to make another one, but with red velvet so the ghost is red on the inside. You're supposed to use a licorice string for the mouth so the ghost is cute and smiling, but all I had were Haribo Bats, so this one is making a WoOoOoOoOoO mouth, which I think is much better for ghosts.

Saw that Palsh is wrestling...going to an AEW show on Wednesday. It should be a pretty good show!

Hope all of y'all are doing well and having fun ^_^ I miss you!

Love,
your cousin Shahrzad.

September 22, 2025
Salaam cousins joon,

Happy Autumn Equinox! I am listening to an Autumn Equinox playlist and "Cauldron of Changes" just came on, do you remember that song? ♫ Cauldron of changes, Feather on a bone, Arc of eternity, Ring around a stone. We are the old people, We are the new people, We are the same people, Wiser than before. ♫

Tonight we are going to have roast chicken, salad, stuffing, and fresh bread for dinner. Maybe with some apple cider if I can remember to go grab some!

Are y'all excited for Halloween? I am feeling a little spooky lately. Usually I draw a haunted house every year, and it's about time for the annual haunted house. Are y'all dressing up this year? I don't think I will dress up for anything, but I also usually don't feel super Halloweenie throughout October. By the time my birthday rolls around, I'm usually just ready for Yalda. I got a Yalda fortune teller/cootie catcher from Etsy so you can do your fal-e Hafez with that, haha. One day I will actually get a book so I can do Yalda fal. But for now I am reading a lot of ghost stories and buying black nail polish hahah.

Hope everything is good with y'all! I miss you!

Love,
your cousin Shahrzad.

September 8, 2025
Salaam cousins joon,

I'm so sorry I haven't written in such a long time! We had summer break at my job so I guess I was on break from writing letters, too. I did have a dream that I saw all of you and you were so grown up! Also in the dream your mother was having another baby. I'm sure that is the closest I will come to seeing all of you for a while.

It is the rainy season here and it is pouring, pouring rain outside. It has rained a lot for the last week, which is nice for drawing and for movie-watching but not so nice for roller skating or skateboarding. I did watch a very silly movie the other night called Pharaoh's Curse. I also got a new backpack because the one I have had since 2021 was completely wearing out. It has two velcro straps that hold my skateboard if I want to carry it with me.

Went to Satellite Beach over the long Labor Day weekend and that was really fun. My hair was really long, so I got a haircut. There is a really big flea market nearby, so my friends and I went to the flea market one day. I bought some Archie comics and some parrot earrings. Then we ate hot dogs and drove up to Cocoa Beach and went to the Ron Jon surf shop. We used to go to Cocoa Beach on vacations when I was a kid and sometimes we took Cousin Michelle. We would always point out bathing suits that were the kind we thought your grandmother would wear, haha. Unfortunately, the days of those fun bathing suits are not right now, but maybe those shiny bathing suits will return in the future. I did not go to the beach but I did swim in the pool. I even went out swimming in the pool when it was raining, which is fun. The joy of being an adult is that you can swim in the pool when it is storming and you can also eat chocolate Oreos for breakfast, because no one can tell you not to.

Also went and got covid and flu shots for the year. Had to wait a long time so it was not as fast as I wished it had been, but I went and got donuts before I went to get my shots, so at least after I got those vaccines I got to eat a donut.

Remember Baby Lipstick? I have been drawing her lately. I am trying to think of some new things for her to do, and I don't have anything yet but she is on my mind. And so are all of you! Hope that the school year is off to a good start.

Love,
your cousin Shahrzad.

August 11, 2025
Salaam cousins joon,

Did NOT get to go swimming this weekend because 1. it was rainy and 2. they changed the lock to the pool but it wasn't finished yet. It used to be a regular key, but now it's a fob you touch to a sensor, and there's no sensor yet. It's been hot and so if you swim after the day is over the water is really warm. I did go for a walk, though, because I'm playing a game where if you walk 10,000 steps on a certain day you get a badge. So I got my badge for this month.

I'm looking at this site a lot and I don't really like the navigation images, so I think I might change them. Maybe everything will just be in those fridge magnet letters. Still thinking about it.

It's almost summer break for me! Just gotta finish out this week and then I will get three three-day weekends. Maybe I will take a couple more days off. Not sure what I'm going to be doing yet! Hopefully playing outside and having the most fun.

Love,
your cousin Shahrzad.

August 4, 2025
Salaam cousins joon,

Went swimming on Friday night! I got goggles and hand paddles. The water was too warm for it to be really fun. I will have to go first thing in the morning so that it won't feel like swimming in a bath. There was a dad at the pool playing Kidz Bop for his kids and it reminded me of you. Kidz Bop is a scourge though. I've been trying to find a snorkeling set so I can learn to snorkel.

Not much going on here. Been making some fun envelopes, drawing some fun pictures. It's almost summer break here! Just this week and next week. My friend is getting married in January and I am going to be one of her bridesmaids, so I have to order my dress and some silver shoes.

I'm looking forward to having a little break. I don't know what I am going to do yet, but I'm gonna figure it out. Looking forward to taking some pictures and drawing some drawings and making some collages and maybe making a mask. I have been thinking of making a mask that looks like a TV that has a gimmick on the bottom that you can turn that will look like the feed on the bottom of a news broadcast. I saved two Pringles cans so I can try to make this work. But I am not sure if I can get it to work...guess we'll see!

I hope y'all are having a great summer! I miss you!

Love,
your cousin Shahrzad.

July 28, 2025
Salaam cousins joon,

How are things going? Y'all are probably on summer break, but I don't get to go on summer break until August 18th. It's not really a whole break, either, but I do get Fridays off and I don't have to be at work for as many hours. Maybe we will go back up to Satellite Beach and go swimming around Labor Day. Or maybe not. Traffic is pretty bad that weekend, I guess.

On Saturday I had a fever so I didn't do much, but on Sunday I went to the mall and looked for shoes for my friend's wedding. I did not find any, but I did buy a shoe cleaning kit for my rainbow Vans and they had a Disney store that sold these very discounted Orange Bird picture frames, so I got one of those. I really love Orange Bird so I snatch him up whenever I see him.

When we were kids I used to spend summers at Cousin Michelle's house and sometimes her mom would tell us it was "too hot to swim", which was definitely not true back in 1992. However, it is probably too hot to swim in a pool this summer in 2025. The ocean is always good for swimming, though.

I hope y'all are having a great summer! I miss you!

Love,
your cousin Shahrzad.

July 24, 2025
Salaam cousins joon,

Sorry I haven't written in so long. I got COVID at the beginning of July. It was very different fron the time I had COVID when I was living there, but it still wiped me out!

Yesterday I was telling my friend about the time Austin threw a book at Alec right before y'all went on vacation. Remember when we went to the lake and saw a snake in the fire pit?
Oh! Remember when Ada saw that big snake in the woods? That was the day we saw the baby fawn, too.

Things here are okay. I've been drawing a lot. It's super duper hot here and I went to the beach last weekend. The water here is very clear and there are lots of tiny fish that come nibble at your legs. I was just looking on Etsy and there was a person selling little personalized mesh bags that you can use when you are seashell hunting. So cute. Down here there isn't very good seashell hunting, though. It's pretty good back home on the island. I got some okay shells last time I was in Satellite Beach, too.

I don't know if anyone will ever actually find this site but I hope you're all doing well! I miss you!

Love,
your cousin Shahrzad.

June 23, 2025
Salaam cousins joon,
I'm trying to do this taped paper here to see if it works and hopefully it does. if it doesn't i will figure something else out. my nails are very long right now so it's been hard to type. they are very exciting fingernails though. i miss the cicadas. i guess they are in kentucky right now. maybe they have already come and gone, but they were so fun.

this weekend i went to orlando to an anime convention. i learned how to play chinese mahjong and now i wish i could teach y'all how to play. it was so fun. that was saturday. on sunday we went to this place in orlando called old town, which is like a little mall that also has a lot of expensive carnival rides including a big ferris wheel and a small roller coaster. we also went to this store shaped like a huge orange.

I don't know if I can get this to look like there is a little piece of tape on the top of this letter, but I am trying to make things fun over here even though the world is not very fun right now.

Love,
your cousin Shahrzad.