madgraceflint

01:40 am: Not yet
So, I broke down with a bit of a smash in front of my co-worker, boss, and pretty much of the nonprofit mentoring community in the area... Like, bawling, sniffly, tear-leaky for... errm... hours.

I never seem to know how to be emotionally healthy, in spite of being in the business of making other people successful by helping them with their issues and encouraging them.

I'm probably too soft a touch and should be tougher, but I'm afraid I'm baby-tender... veal, really.

Three months. Three.

09:39 pm: wishing my eyes would open the whole way
but the tired just won't go away...

04:01 pm: Watching _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix_...
So, I'm catching up on movies...

Partially it's a means of positive motivation to get my mother to puff her medicine.  When medical mayhem went down earlier in the spring/summer, we had a diet of the classic Upstairs, Downstairs, which we decided we were not into.  We also checked out some classic Miyazaki which was much better.

Anyway, last night, I paused the movie around when the reintroduction of the Thestrals took place so we could take a break to wash the nebulizer/eat frozen yogurt.

Mom:  How do those little creatures pull those carriages?

Me:  Uhhhmmm....  How do they fly on broomsticks?  How do they make buildings slide back and forth?  How do the pictures in the newspapers move?

We had a good laugh and have agreed that broomstick travel is much to be envied.

HP 5 always seemed the silliest Harry Potter to me, and after watching it, I still feel that way.

I am fond of Luna Lovegood though.

I wish I weren't so ridiculously tired.

02:32 pm: waiting for the tomatoes to ripen...
The mozzarella ripened, errm, too much.

Oops and alas for caprese salad.

Anyway, thanks to the rain, I haven't had to do much in the way of watering lately.

Our rogue silvery fir tree tomato collapsed (a bamboo hoop was not sufficient substitute for a cage apparently), and now marauding beasts are nibbling any slightly blushing tomato before I get to them.  I did harvest one, which I just ate, and it was nummy.

Lots of basil, and miraculously, my Mom's kumquat tree has begun to bloom.  Whether we shall get actual kumquats remains to be seen.

A yellow bird, which I suspect is a goldfinch seems to be frequenting our faded sunflower for the seeds.

Everything in that corner seems to be free-spirited-- the sunflower from the seed in the birdfeeder, and the tomato from a tossed one that had gone unhappy last summer.

I start next week, and it still doesn't seem real.  I've done three interviews with a total of six people for a stipend that will keep me here for the next year.

Considering that I got through much of my childhood envisioning an escape into fabulous success in the misty future, I'm feeling rather odd about it all.

The job itself seems interesting.  However...  Honestly, I'm not sure if I'd prefer the wilds of the inner city to the conservative suburbia I am going to be in this year.  Granted, a ten-minute commute is hard to beat.  In a way, I suppose it would be something like facing down the demons of my childhood, though I suppose the superheroine attire would be rather inappropriate (not to mention probably uncomfortable-- don't really fancy the high heeled boots).

I just wish that helping other people came with my own space-- one with hot water, a washer/dryer, a/c, and a papasan.

12:52 am: hooray for rain!
The latest round of thunderstorms finally broke the steamy weather, and I'm beginning to feel more human again.  Of course, it also made it possible for me to rip out probably three square feet of vinca from the rock garden today and replace it with creeping geraniums, impatiens, clown flowers, lobelia, and mazu reptans.  I am unearthing rock buried under mounds of vinca for ages. 

Now my hand/wrist is warning me that I will realize this was stupid tomorrow.  I mean, I'm having issues doing dishes-- I really should know better.  I just felt horribly guilty that our annual purchases have been subsisting in seed packs for almost a month.

sigh.

And somehow I need to find more containers, clear off the upper patio, and plant the eggplant/ bulb fennel shoots that are stretching out from the seeds we planted.

I feel so guilty weeding, though the thistle tends to take its revenge with relish.  S is going to take my pulled vinca, at least some of it.

Had the first ripe raspberries and the last ripe strawberries, and an initial harvest of basil in a caprese salad today.

The patio tomato has yellow spots and I suspect it's been a bit wet for its liking.

I enjoyed digging out daffodil bulbs-- they were like unearthing treasure.  My attempts to dig out tulip bulbs have so far not been as much fun.

Need more mulch.  Will need more compost.  Still need to plant the front beds with geraniums.

I'm seeing more wildlife in our soil-- earthworms, big hairy spiders lugging around egg sacks, and ants...  Lots of ants.

Rescued a baby bird from the garbage can that is as tall as my chest last weekend.  The poor thing was cheeping and trying to flutter in the bottom of the garbage can which only had a tattered garbage bag with two cans in it (I suspect it was generally used for mulch runs to the recycling center instead of actual garbage prior).  I tried giving it a stick to climb up, which didn't work.  Then I finally gingerly tilted the can and gently pulled the plastic out.  I popped the bird through the hole in the plastic, and it hopped off, up the stone wall, into the thicket of forsythia and managed to hang out on a forsythia branch with a lot of familial cheeps encouraging it.  Thanks to the bird ID website, I think they were a family of gray catbirds.  Its parents seemed to be feeding it dark berries.  It stayed on that branch for the next day as well.  No pictures, because my hands were garden-grubby, and I figured the poor thing was traumatized enough without a mysterious black shiny thing being pointed at it by the girl with mussy hair beneath a large hat.

The birds and the squirrels don't seem interested in the bird feeder lately.  I wonder if that has anything to do with our mulberry tree being ripe.  The chipmunks did manage to squeeze under our bird netting to have selective bites of strawberries...

I've been generally virtuous about bug repellent, but I still don't like it.

12:52 am: Procrastinating from finding where my eyes should be...
Yay!  I mowed the lawn.  Boo!  The lawn's revenge is what the mower did to my right arm and hand.  Really, getting the mower started was the hardest part... and accidentally mowing a renegade resilient iris, and feeling forced to level a field of violets.  Still grumble at the sound.

I really hope things* don't come in threes.

Today was kind of a waste.  I have scanned in horrible sketches that will look even more horrible in juxtaposition.

Tomorrow I need to darken cloth, insert eyes, darken eyes, lips, and figure out how the heck to paint in a scarf that keeps on changing positions and colors depending on how it's wrapped (why did I think bicolored scarf was visually interesting, why?!)... And the silly model just does not stay still.


*a generalized term for either ticks (shudder), or events that lead to seeking medical attention.

11:27 pm: boo hoo.

That is all.

12:22 am: Arbitrary and random
Hugs to the world.

Because giving 'tis better than receiving.

I am completely behind on everything I'm not supposed to be.

Three extremities out of four are twinging.

I had three blue streaks on my nose post-nightscape oil-stick mosquito nibbling evening class.

The cherry blossoms are shedding their petals to mingle with the crabapple tree next to it.

Here's to competent, helpful doctors and cancellations that let them be seen sooner instead of a month + later.

Here's to me not making a complete ninny of myself sometime in the next two + weeks.

I'm really looking forward to not staggering under the weight of supplies  and my portfolio.

I'm a terrible non-renderable model.  Sitting still while drawing is rather oxymoronic.

Sleep.  I should do that.

11:39 pm: by the grace of my wrists--
I am edging towards not twinge-sore, but I keep dealing with mild reversals like when I was inspecting shoots from the bulbs and thought I could just casually tug a mini-baby-weed which had more root-grip than is reasonable for a leaf span smaller than my palm in recently-rained upon soil...  (Apologies for being a bit rambly).

The ankle is back to being less-than grumpy, so that's good too.

Will be keeping things (relatively speaking) short and sweet typing-wise for a bit longer though.

I hope you are all enjoying spring.

10:31 pm: I really envy Luke Skywalker
Not the scary daddy, the personal training session with Yoda, or even the light saber.

I want bionic hands.