Stupid frost. Pretty much everything is gone now, but I did find an escapee calendula.
I was wrangling the compost pile and found this in the pile of Mexican sunflowers I dug up weeks ago. That’s tenacity!
We haven’t been here a year yet, not until Thanksgiving, but one year ago today we closed on Parview!
2014:
2013:
I also remembered the clamps to do my table. The corners were…fun, and the board wasn’t perfectly flat, but I think it’ll work out in the end. It wasn’t very bright when I was gluing, so I took pictures with and without the flash.
Still work left to do, but I’m making progress!
I was still in pyjamas and couldn’t go get a flower. She refused the plate with paper towel, but was content to have breakfast on my hand.
I just happened to poke a banner on Amazon that promised over $100 worth of apps for free. I downloaded a few; deleted the trivia game once I realised the questions were kind of stupid, and it kept popping up in-app purchases in my face. It had also required me to create an account, so it hit the piss me off tipping point, and I uninstalled it. I got a couple of photo editors, but probably won’t keep either one because the effects they offer aren’t of enough interest to me to warrant the space they consume. I also got an anatomy app (dunno why…mostly because it sold for 30 bucks), but couldn’t get it to install. I’ll guess that’s because it’s over a gig. Anyway, I have the receipt for my “purchase” in my email, so I’ll get it later. Maybe. Dunno. Most importantly, though, I didn’t have to cough up the $4.99 for Plex on my phone. I have the server on my computer, and I have the app on my Roku, but I wasn’t sure I’d use the phone app at all, so I wouldn’t pay for it. It was on Amazon for free, though, so I’m giving it a shot. I like free (apps that are ad-supported are not free).
Also, so I can at least search when I can’t remember, I started the castor oil eyelash conditioner on the 15th of October. It seems like it’s working, but it’s still too early to tell. So… castor oil, eyelash conditioner, eyelashes. There. That oughta help when I’m searching because it’s been six weeks and I can’t recall the actual start date. Anyway, even if it half-works, I’ll be satisfied; I was looking at lash conditioners on Amazon this morning, and that shit is expensive! The cheapest one was $15 for a lip gloss tube-sized container, but $11 is what I paid for almost a litre (960 ml) of castor oil, which is the main ingredient in many lash conditioners. They throw in sweet almond oil, coconut oil, whatever, but there’s no real science behind it. It’s the oil that does the conditioning. I cleaned out a Maybelline clear mascara container and (slowly–it took forever) filled it with castor oil, which barely made a dent in the bottle. The $11 bottle of hexane-free cold-pressed castor oil should last me approximately the rest of my life.
I looked a bit more at lash conditioners. This is the one I’d seen earlier.
Ingredients
It’s oil (WTF is “aloe oil”?) with “growth peptide”. K. I looked up the growth peptide; it’s expensive at $56/oz, and if it’s used, it’s supposed to be at 10%. I don’t know whether it would make enough of a difference because I have to research how (or even if) it works as a topical application.
This one is cheaper.
Ingredients
Looks like the ingredients in cheap hair conditioner. Castor oil is far down the list. Hm.
I’ll look into the growth peptide, but I suspect it’ll be a gimmick like all the crap they supposedly put in shampoos and conditioners. We’ll see.
She ate (well, drank) with more enthusiasm this time.
After supper, she watched Criminal Minds on Netflix.
A little, at least. She’s also quite fluttery and harder to wrangle.
Supposed to freeze tonight, but I put sugar water on this flower to get her to drink, and I guess she can learn to use a fake flower, or even a sponge. I dunno. I don’t want to euthanize her as long as she’s taking food.
Soooo, I finally broke down and got Troopa in dark green. The colour, I adore. The shape is pretty good. I got them from Amazon, and they were on sale, but still more than I wanted to pay, so I’m sending them back. Since I know they fit, I found them for $30 less on eBay. Which…allowed me to buy another pair of tan combat boots. Why? Because I finally found out the name of the MIA combat boots that I got in black and tan last year, and that I looooooove. The style is from the same time as Buckley (I guessed that), and it’s called Bedford. I have black and tan, and although they’ve been sold out everywhere for ages, I know they came in a distressed brown (probably the same colour as my brown Buckley), and I think they may also have come in a sort of ivory that I’d really never wear. Anyway, I found a tan pair on eBay, and they’ve got a couple of little scuffs, so I’m going to try dyeing them brown. I was going to buy Troopa in brown, now that I know they don’t run small like my SM clogs (if anything, Troopa runs a little large), but I like the shape of Bedford waaaay better than Troopa, and I think the tan will dye nicely to a medium-dark brown. Anyway, since they’ve apparently disappeared off the face of the earth with the exception of a couple of pairs on ebay…
MIA Bedford:
SM Troopa in green (this is pretty accurate as far as the actual colour). I like them, but I don’t like them worth what I paid for them from Amazon. I like them worth what they cost on eBay…though they’d damned straight better be the real thing and not some crappy knock-off with nylon zippers.
Sarah Jane didn’t seem to want to move around much, and I’m not sure whether she actually drank any sugar water or nectar, but she did make a lovely brooch!
The only time she did get flutter-y was when we went outside. I felt kind of bad taking her indoors when I know her instinct must be telling her to head for Mexico, but I don’t know what else to do with her.
The cool thing is a launcher that I decided to try on my phone. I don’t hate TouchWiz or anything, but I certainly don’t love it. Nova is fast and responsive, doesn’t seem to suck battery, and not only can I have custom icons (like for my shortcut to this blog), I can have them without labels! I haven’t been able to do that since the days of Winterboard on my iPhone 3G. Anyway, so far I like this.
I thought all the Monarchs had eclosed, but found this poor little girl in the small potted fuchsia on the corner of the patio. I thought at first that her wing was just rumpled, but it’s not; it’s deformed, and one of her legs doesn’t work. She can flutter, but not fly.
Even if I had a wing to put on her, I’m not sure it would work because her wing is atrophied so close to her body. I can’t kill her, and I couldn’t just leave her out there to starve to death, so I brought her in and made her a house. I gave her a potted philodendron and a rough stick to climb. I can give her fresh cut flowers as long as they last, and then she can drink the same kind of nectar that MLBs get. I can make her Mean and Pinchy’s Old Tyme Old No. 7 Butterfly Booze, too. Assuming she lives. I’ve never tried to keep a pet butterfly before. I think it’s wrong to cage a flying thing, but she can’t survive on her own, so I’m going to try. Her name is Sarah Jane.
