Busy, first time in a long time, and friend and family problems.

There were so many pine needles! I raked the crap out of them for spring clean up... and then deeply regretted it that evening and for the next few days. Amanda helped, but she did most of the stone laying and some of the mulch work. Her mom did some too. 

After an unintended hiatus, I think I am back, at least for the foreseeable future. Today is the first day in over a month that I have actually opened my laptop and did anything on it. I've had it in my bedroom, the living room, and in the office with the intent of getting online to read blogs, check e-mail, and look up supplies for home improvement and decoration projects. Only I never did and for a number of reasons. 

The chief reason was that we were intermittently busy. On weekends we had shopping days, food prep hours, and had some company. We also had a couple of events. During the week, when I felt up to it, I was cleaning and watching anime and or TV shows on Hulu. 

The second reason was that my depression monster had been raging almost with a vengeance. With the drop in pain management from the one medication made the pain from flare ups higher and more intense, and more debilitating, which in turn made things harder emotionally and mentally. To top it off my Mom threw some stuff at me one day that was upsetting and then a couple of days later, before I'd had a chance to really explain my concerns and feelings about it to her, she called for a third time to let me know that her identical twin, my Aunt Laura, was in the hospital with renal failure. She wanted to let me know that if it came to it, that she would donate a kidney to her sister and wanted to know my opinion on the matter. As much as I don't like this Aunt most of the time, I don't want her to die. Further, I told my Mom that it doesn't matter what my opinion on her donating is, its her body and her sister, and I would never tell her what she could/should or couldn't/shouldn't do. That is her decision. Well, after getting off the phone with her and then processing everything, I got a little pissed and very worried. And then with those two matters plus the pain, some other things, and already raging depression, I fell into a horrible downward spiral. Things were so bad that Amanda literally said "you're drowning in this and I don't know what to do". 

But then, they got even worse. I had a horrible day one day, called Amanda at work, broke down and took a whole nerve pill at her insistence. I have been avoiding taking that med because I know it is addictive and I don't want it to become a crutch. I wanted to learn to work through and deal with stuff on my own. She also wanted to me to call a friend and see if someone could come over or if I could ask her parents to come up and sit with me. That's so much easier said than done. I have such a hard time asking for help. It takes so much to for me to tell people certain things. Surface stuff is easy. Occasionally I vent here and sometimes I vent a little to friends, but I know that people have their own problems and while I know my friends might want to help, I feel so guilty about adding to their stress. Even when I am internally screaming and hurting while giving a friend a hug, the guilt is so stifling, I just say, I'm fine or okay.

  Anyway, the medicine evened me out. For a few hours but then by the time we'd returned home from out D&D game, I was exhausted and the medicine had worn off and I was quite frankly just done. I told Amanda I was tried of fighting the fibro, the depression, the low back pain, my weight, my family, sometimes my friends, and just everything. She wanted to know if she should take me to the hospital and I told her I didn't know. Instead, she cuddled me and helped me get ready for bed. 

A day or so later, I can't really remember, we went to a friend's. I wasn't feeling that great, but I was trying and had decided to leave all my upsets at home and try to enjoy the day. Things were going well and then a friend asked me a couple of hours in, how I was doing. The moment I opened my mouth to reply said friend turned their head away and began talking to someone else. Amanda was just as surprised and almost as upset as I was and she took my hand. I think if she hadn't been there and we hadn't car pooled, I would have left. That is the very thing that reinforces and cements the core belief that I'm not worth anything and don't matter. Somehow, I shoved all that down and made it through the rest of the night. But it is still bothering me. A lot of things are. 

However, I have since seen my therapist. She gave me a back up person in her office to call if I can't get a hold of her and we talked about some other things. Its a work in progress.  I also called and spoke to my Dad for a couple of hours. We talked about a lot of things and after I felt loads better. He also was a bit frustrated with my Mom and assured me that no doctor would consent to my mom donating a kidney with her health the way it is (which I figured and others thought also) but that Aunt Laura isn't even eligible because she has M.S. So while that's upsetting in and of itself, the somewhat selfish silver lining is that I won't have the possibility of losing my Mom due to this instance. 

On to cooler stuff!

Meet Yukiko, our Japanese Snowblossom tree. We've been working on our front and back yards as well as the inside of the house. I will share the inside of the house when it is more cohesive, we're almost there but not quite. So back to the front and back yards. 

This is our strawberry patch. Amanda built the raised garden bed herself and planted the marigolds n the corners. She has since added a pot in the middle with a lily. She's also going to build one or two more of the raised bed for our veggies and I am going to take one of the house doors we found in the garage and make an herb wall. 

This is the majority view of the back yard. I'm not sure what we're doing with the large metal beds, that part of the yard doesn't get sun. So shady place flowers until I can make my meditation spot? Along the fence we're planting some flowers and some vegetables. The gravel part will be raked clean, weeds killed, and will eventually have flagstone or concrete pavers laid to make a patio. 

This is the other part of the back yard. You can't see the drive way and raised garden bed, they were behind me. What you can see is the garage and the small gated section behind it. We are thinking about clearing out that area behind the garage for pumpkins. We don't know if the small deck was supposed to become part of a larger project, but we might break that apart to and use the wood to build something else. I've decorated the side of the garage with wind chimes, and couple of bird feeders, and some yard decor from the Dollar Tree and what we had left over from our apartment. 

Amanda bought me this fairy solar light and I picked up the Peter Rabbit watering can from a Thrift store. I planted some daisy seeds in it. I have a couple of other pots I've planted some pansies in, but I need to get more pots or take some more of the yard for flowers. 

Lastly, I leave you with the kitties. Miss Narcisa took over my spot in the bed one night and presided over it like the head of the Black Cat Yakuza she is.

And here is Thorin, lazing atop the cat tree in the sunlight, leaning against the window frame. This is also a tiny teaser for my living room. Amanda calls my design scheme for the room "elegant nightmare". I just hope the end result lives up to it. So far there's a little elegance and a few somewhat creepy yet beautiful pictures. 

Coming soon... Craft projects.

Saved a Moth, the spider chased me, that explains some things, and pretty pictures

I need pretty things today. I feel worse than I did yesterday, in fact, I have a migraine today. I'm so used to them, and this one is what I would call mild, that I can still function a little. My period slowed down and tapered off enough that I just had some light spotting. You know enough that I still had to wear a pad. Well, today we are back to bleeding so bad my bathroom looks like a crime scene and I am passing big cloths again. I've got most of the bathroom cleaned up, I just need to mop the floor but simply don't have the energy. I took a picture, but I am not going to share it, I'm saving it for the GYN. So for now, it's back to sitting on towels just in case, being generally weak and miserable, and I am taking today off from homework. I'm just going to watch NetFlix. 

I managed to make myself breakfast. Biscuits and Gravy. Only the biscuit was two hamburger buns. It's what we had. I didn't buy bread when I was at the store and haven't felt up to making any. One of these days I will.

I saved the moth I asked Amanda to put outside last night. It had migrated from the lamp shade to the kitchen and since I have had a bad experience with a moth flying into my mouth, I decided to set free into the wilds again. Then, while I was eating my breakfast, I noticed something moving to my left and of course looked. Lo and behold there was a nickle sized tanish-whiteish-ugly mother fucking spider running toward at full spider speed. It freaking chased me while I grabbed a shoe to smack it dead dead dead! I left my shoe sitting atop the squished remains and moved my laptop table and my laptop down the sofa.*shudder* I do not do spiders. It must have gotten in when we had the door open yesterday. I don't know why it thought my house was a good place to hang out when there is a perfectly good ant colony outside along with all the other bugs that fly around my plants. 

Needless to say I lost my appetite. So with that said, I am going to share the rest of the pretty flower pictures that I took from my garden the other day. 

We'll start with the actual flowers, my pot of Pansies. I posted the purple one last night.

For as much as I don't really like orange and yellow, I really like these flowers.

Love the bluish-purple on these.

I like the dark red on this one. 

Blood red? Or blood red velvet?

I don't have a lot of purple pansies, but maybe next year I will. Besides, to go with the Midsummer Solstice theme, we'll call these fire pansies- well the color anyway. 

Here we have our dill and cosmos flowers. 

Some catnip that Narcisa has been enjoying.

In the rectangle tub we have two tomato plants, one is a blueberry tomato plan then other is a lemon boy? I will have to double check with Amanda since I didn't buy them. Beside it in the round tub is our lone pumpkin plant. I would really like to clear out all of the stupid wood chip crap. Apparently spiders like to hang out in that shit. 

Lastly, one of parsley plants. Amanda thinks we are going to need to grow more since I pretty much put it in everything. I love it! I am planning to get a food dehydrator and bring in some of these herbs. I also admit to wanting to get a food dehydrator so I can make beef jerky. 

Lastly, my obligatory kitty pic. Narcisa is enjoying her live cat tv. We have lots of birds, squirrels, other cats, and even a few marmots.  

This fish is disgusted, her Majesty is happy, house cleaning and the damn dill

Aveline by myworld1

Let's get the nitty gritty out of the way first. My period finally, finally stopped. I can't really celebrate because my body is a bitch and likes to play that "I'll give you 2 or 3 days every few months" game then slam you extra hard to make up for it. But, I did take advantage of this small reprieve and actually went swimming last night with Amanda, Aine, and Rachael. (Some of you may be asking why I don't just use tampons- I do, but mostly there are 3 very good reasons why I don't.) 

Anyway, so I left my glasses at home and I can't decide if that was a good thing or not. When we got to the pool- it is an indoor pool- it smelled weird. At first, I thought maybe it was because someone was smoking outside and one of the windows was open. Then I thought there was a strange kind of paint smell but that wasn't really it either. We decided that it was like an algae smell. I think the paintish smell I was getting was from the chlorine. The hot tub smelled worse, so we went back to the pool and that's when we noticed the hair. There was a big floating clump and when I got out and looked back into the pool, I noticed there was not one but two. *shudder* I know it is just hair, but bleh! Needless to say we rinsed off and came home. Amanda is so sad because she knows how squiked out I get and this was the first time I have been able to really go swimming in months and that was the condition of our pool and hot tub. We pay for that in our rent. Lovely. I think when the office opens, I am going to get dressed and head down there to talk with the manager because that was disgusting and this fish isn't happy.

Her Majesty, Narcisa A. Frog, is a very happy kitty. Her Mommies cleaned a majority of the house this weekend, moved some furniture to vacuum, and found all the toys she'd lost. Of course all those that were found are already hidden and or lost under furniture again, but whatever. We also moved her bed to sit in front of the patio window. I told Amanda that I think Chris doesn't think we spoil her enough because Chris bought her a bag of treats despite the fact that I have two bags in the pantry and some wet food. Amanda was inclined to agree. 

We painted the baker's rack Birdy gave us black to go with everything else in the living room. We also reorganized where we put the craft stuff on it. Everything is easily accessible to me now, Yay! I am tearing apart an old set of black curtains to make a cover for our mantle, a runner for the entertainment center, and two side table runners. I am also going to finally make the damn dining room curtains I've been talking about. I just have to work up the energy and motivation to do it today. Maybe after I take a nap, I got up with Amanda this morning because she made coffee and breakfast and because I wanted to spend some time with her before she went to work.

We have discovered that dill is whimpy, which is strange because for all the years we grew it when I was a kid, I don't remember it ever being so. Then again, I may not have paid too much attention to it in favor of growing my flowers and tending to the various beans, tomato, and other various vegetable plants we had. Anyway, our dill plan can't seem to handle the sun beating down on it. I feel bad for it, I wouldn't be able to withstand the dreaded day star all day long either. So, since it is going to be 97 degrees F, today, I am going to keep an eye on our little garden and keep our stuff watered. I need to be careful though, I don't want to accidentally steam them.  Oh and I need to do some research into what the hell is eating the pumpkin leaves and the sage. I can spray the pumpkin leaves with peppermint oil water but not the sage. So, I need to figure out what I can use on the sage that isn't a pesticide and won't alter the flavor of the sage later on.  

It's story time, Heartless, and our patio.

That's my wallpaper, isn't it pretty! 

I am having trouble deciding what I want to work on for my Advanced Creative writing class. I'm hoping that by writing a blog and getting my fingers moving over the keys, that will make my brain move too. Or, it could just be that I am lying to myself and stalling because I don't have an idea and my instructor's announcement of wanting 2nd and 3rd drafts turned in this week, instead of 1st drafts like the module dictates, really threw me into a bit of a panic. 

I thought about rewriting and extending a story for a previous class and even asked my instructor if that would be all right. She said that the school's policy for self plagiarism means that I would have to completely make it something different. Um, no, I don't want to, that wasn't the point. So I am trying to think of something new. I did break out the portable hard drive that has stuff I've been working on for years to look at for ideas. No luck there, at least I wasn't feeling drawn to anything in particular except for a story called Unsaber Boden "Black Land", but that was a fanfic and it, just, no. I do like the title, although I'm not quite sure where I was going with it.

Amanda suggested that I look at a book we have for generating story ideas. Well, I went into the spare room that's neither finished nor organized, and I couldn't find it nor could I get to the area that seems to have a lot of our writing books. So I grabbed the Tarot for Writer's by Corrine Kenner, except that I don't think I am going to use it, because I just got a really interesting idea!!! I'm going to peruse all the pictures on my computer, examine it, and pull from that! See, I'm not really stalling, lol. I swear some times I just have to talk shit out. 

Last night Amanda surprised me by wanting to watch a TV show with me. She doesn't really like TV (unless it is something she really wants to watch, like My Little Pony) and stopped watching Supernatural when they killed her favorite character off. I don't really watch a lot of TV but there are some shows that I will watch on Netflix when I am in the mood for them. I don't like being tied to a tv schedule. I did that growing up because my Mom was big on recording stuff on VHS. Anyway, the point is it kind of took me by surprise that Amanda not only wanted to watch this but suggested we watch it. So we did. The whole 8 episodes in one night.

Heartless is a Danish series about twins who suck the life out of people to survive and go in search of their mother and or who and what they are. It was really good. I pretty much feel that the boy twin is a piece of shit and I adore the girl twin. Bonus, I love that there is a lesbian relationship in the show. It also ended well, okay, it ended on a cliffhanger which sets it up for the next season. Amanda isn't sure that she wants to see the next season because she is afraid that the lesbian couple won't last and she'd rather not see that. In so much of the media these days any homosexual relationship never lasts because one or both of them die or they just don't stay together which isn't indicative of real life, more like society trying to push their agenda. In fact almost every homosexual movie or show with homosexual couples in it ends with death or a break up. Sense 8 has a strong lesbian couple that I adore and that was one of the few I have seen.

 Anyway, I will probably watch the second season and if the lesbians get to stay together, then I'll let Amanda know, if not, then I just won't tell her. 

Okay, so really quick, the patio pictures I promised of our half finished garden (we still have some plants to get). I apologize for the darkness of the pictures, its been awhile since I picked p that camera and fiddled with it... Last time I did was my photography class. 

One of the wind chimes we found at Grocery Outlet. I love that it is also a sun catcher! 

This one has a bell on it and you can't see the Moons, but there are moons on it!

Some brass Chinese characters Amanda's Mom gave us a couple of years ago. 

A friend gave us this table for our patio when she was taking stuff to the thrift store. Another friend found the cute pagoda lantern at another thrift store and gave it to me. Amanda and I have yet to have dinner or even breakfast and coffee outside yet, but soon!

Okay so this is what it looks like at the moment. Amanda put our blue lights up and hung all the sun catchers and wind chimes.  Amanda took a shoe holder, cut it and staple-gunned it the balcony supports. We've got herbs in those. I have several little black pots, some you can't see because they are hidden behind a pole, filled with flowers and some herbs. The grayish white planter has bachelor buttons and the bigger black planter has pansies for my Great Grandma Ireland. Eventually we will get Amanda;s Blue Spruce over here from her parents house and I will have my Japanese red maple (I'm going to do that one bonsai style). We're going to get some rose bushes, tomato plants, and start the bell pepper plants soon. 

Okay, off to find a picture and get a story started!

All natural Ant death, gardening, sun burn, and Unafraid High School Hannah Came out to Play

Amanda and I have been working on getting the house cleaned, it's not like it was a total disaster, but it needed the usual picking up, sweeping, mopping, that sort of thing. I started in the kitchen yesterday since from friends were bringing over their old kitchen table for us. Our other table had a glass top which was great, except Narcisa used it as a landing platform from her cat tree, and I was afraid that one day she's go through it. So they hauled off our old table and gave us their previous kitchen table along with another small table to put on our patio. Well, Amanda moved Narcisa's food two feet closer to the wall with the window on it and by the time we came home from doing the majority of our grocery shopping (around midnight) I noticed several unwelcome trespassers. Little black ants were crawling all over Narcs'a food dish, all over the bottom of the cat tree where the dish was sitting and were taking their loot to the wall. 

I don't do bugs. Period. I tell Amanda that if she wants to save them, then she had better take care of them otherwise I will kill them. This is my house, not theirs. Well, as it happens, Amanda doesn't like ants either so we looked up natural ways to get rid of them. I found a recipe that calls for peppermint oil, vinegar, and water. They don't like it very much. But as it turns out peppermint really isn't good for cats. So I had to look for other alternatives. Apparently baking soda kills them. So I put down a layer of baking soda to get rid of the ones already in the house. When that issue is taken care of, I will put down something else as a barrier so they don't get the idea that they can just come back. I am also going to have the apartment managers spray outside the house. I don't normally like pesticides, but like I said, I do not do bugs.

We did some gardening today. We don't have the bell pepper and tomato seeds planted yet, but we'll do that soon. So far we have parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme planted. There's catnip, marigolds, bachelor buttons, pansies, and Chinese forget me nots. Amanda is putting up the holders for more sage and some lavender as I write this. I don't know whether or not she will put the lights up today or not, we are both pretty tired and sun burnt. I haven't been out as long as she has in the sun, but I did get a little burnt. It really didn't take too long either. Actually it almost seemed like the moment I stepped outside today the sun had it in for me. The good news is that I didn't break out in hives. I am itchy, but I am okay so far. I would actually like to speak with a dermatologist about this problem. Then I can send the information, if there is any, back to my Mom and my cousin Shi-Chan. 

That said last night was a bitch! 

WinCo is generally our first stop- we grocery store hop, it's like bar hopping only less fun. Amanda and I were both hurting, my back and one of her feet, by the time we were done. We didn't really have spoons when we went into the store, and certainly didn't but maybe one if that when it was checkout time. So we get in line and the line moves and some ass-hat slips in and cuts me off. The old Hannah, the Hannah who wasn't afraid to chew out wannbe gangsters in high school because she could see their underwear in the hall way, came out to play. I said "Seriously?!" loud enough for him to hear and then called him a fucking asshole. Before he could say anything, another checker opened up and called us down. So even with Amanda leaving her wallet in the car and me having to go fetch it, we got out of there before he did. (When I told my Mom about it, she said she always thought I was a cool kid. In other words, my Mom wants me to stop taking so much shit and growl at people more.)

We went to Ross next, to get a hanging shoe holder to start our herb garden with. And then we went to Walmart. Walmart didn't take too long, thankfully. We went to the gardening section and picked up some small planters, seeds, and potting soil. I found a pretty scarf with red embroidery roughly similar to what I have had an idea for, for a long time. I basically want to make a gauzy white shirt with red embroidery like Kate Beckensale's in Van Helsing. I will have to post a pic of the scarf later. 

  

But best yet, we when we went to check out, we had all these seeds and in the gardening center they had flyers posted saying that all seeds were 50% off. So they had to honor it. Of course we were at the self checkout and someone had to come help. I guess that 50% off wasn't in the system yet s they had to key everything in manually. The manager ended up just tossing 5 or 6 seed packets into our bag and telling us to continue. I was a bit surprised but I certainly wasn't going to complain considering that Amanda has left about 20 dollars worth of groceries there by accident and because she couldn't find the receipts they wouldn't give the stuff to her. So that as cool.

By the time we got home, we ate dinner, put groceries away, and then crashed on the sofa- well after we sprayed the ants. I had planned to cut up the veggies to do some meal prep for the week but I was in so much pain and my back was seizing up that I just said screw it. It looks like we might be just making dinner tonight and doing the same. We are beat!