Seismic Twitch

Let’s see. The highlight of my week was getting my fingers caught in the car door. Again. This time it was my forefinger and middle fingers to get the brunt of the damage. Bran rolled his eyes and Boy was underwhelmed (it was he who closed the door on them, again). My forefinger isn’t very happy with bruising across the nail and a nasty scraping of skin off just below it. The middle finger just has a bit of bruising under my fingernail. Nothing was broken and everything is healing nicely. My boss is threatening to get me a helmet to wear because he’s convinced that someday I’m going to decapitate myself. Bran and I figure that something like lacrosse gloves or hockey gloves would be of more use. The residents just wince and then laugh at me.

My piercings are healing up nicely and look marvellous. I love them! I’m already thinking about getting more. The next one I want to get is tragus done next. I just can’t decide if I want to get both ears done or just one, and if one, which one. I might not though, I just read about how it might interfere with the use of ear buds. Hmmm…I’ll have to think some more. It’s a good thing I don’t get holes punched in my ears more often than once a year or longer.

I got some of my beading orders. I have the display racks for bracelets and earrings and the earring cards. They’re set aside and will go into a plastic box when I get one. I have more beads and tools. Alas, I ordered the wrong wire. I ordered 1/2 round. I should’ve ordered round. 1/2 round is shaped like it says. It works well for wire wrapping but not for other things. I’ve been playing with it regardless and done a few nice things. I ordered the round wire last night. I should arrive sometime next week. I got a new, metal jig. It’ll come in handy when I made chandelier earrings. I can also make my own hooks an closers with it.

I have a tool that I call the clapper. It’s two pieces of thick plastic, similar to what cutting boards are made of but somewhat harder. You put the metal work in between them and either use a hammer or hand, pound on the top piece. It helps to make the metal harder without damaging it.

I also have a neat tool that will allow me to make my own jump rings of various sizes as well as other round shapes with wire. I also have a pair of nylon tip pliers that will help me make scrolls without damaging the wire at all. Before I got this tool the pliers I used marred the wire. That makes oxidizing more likely. Of course, the wire I’ll be working with won’t oxidize as it will be surgical grade stainless steel.

I got some leopard skin jasper and aquamarine beads. They’re all quite lovely.

I’ve been looking at real estate in town for the past couple of weeks as well. It’s good to see that there are houses available that we’ll be able to afford once the will is settled and dispersed. We probably won’t end up in the area that Bran most desires. That tends to be an expensive area anyway, but prices are still coming down. It’s possible that by the time everything is ready (including us) we’ll be able to afford to buy in that area. There is one loft condo in an old warehouse that would be nice. 1800 square feet of living area. It’s out of our affordable range, but who knows? Maybe we’ll win the lottery, right?

I’m surprised at the number of new houses being built that don’t have things like closets at the front and back door. I mean, if you’re coming inside after gardening or even taking the trash out on a rainy day, don’t you want to have a place to put your shoes that isn’t in front of the fridge? If you have company come over, don’t you want a place to hang their coats? I just don’t understand that. So it’s a requirement for me, to have that.

Another annoyance to me is a fireplace. I mean, sure, they look good, but they interfere with furniture arrangement. I wouldn’t use a fireplace. When we had one at the last place we rented we only used it a couple of times. It was never used for heating. We finally put the couch in front of it because that’s where I wanted seating. That goes for those wood stoves too.

I like the idea of a galley kitchen. There are lots of houses that have that and then the eating area to the side. It’s similar to what many apartments have in terms of cooking/eating arrangement. It’s compact. The weird ones have the fridge or stove sitting all by themselves off to the side like little orphans. I want a surface next to the stove to put stuff if needs must.

You’ll get to see photos of the place we move into and of the yard. Chances are the yard will change because I’m not keen on grass. It’s a large monoculture space that lacks colour variety. Though I won’t take up the entire lawn immediately, I’ll work on making flower, vegetable and herb gardens larger and larger until there is little or no grass left. Perennials take less care than grass and are definitely prettier. Flowers encourage the population of pollinators like bees and butterflies. We need more of them in the world.

A friend is in town visiting. Right now she’s staying at other friends’ places but on Sunday she comes here. So I’ll be helping finish up the cleaning (the bathroom is long overdue) and getting laundry done. Laundry needs to be done anyway. We’re all kind of short on clothes.

That’s about it. I think I’m going to take apart some bracelets.

Let’s see. The Fringe Festival was a bust so far as selling my jewelry goes. I sold only about 10 pairs of earrings and no bracelets. There were other people there selling earrings made of feathers, glass and plastic who had better sales. Of course their prices were like, $2 a pair and such. I can’t go that low. I can spend upwards of 1/2 hour putting together a single pair of earrings (some of the more complex chandelier earrings take even longer) and use supplies that cost more than a plastic bead would cost. The shoppers wanted cheap stuff. I’m sure they got that. I hope the people who bought my stuff are happy and remain happy for a long while.

Bran was steady in his dedication to selling my stuff. He was out there every day, chatting to people, being all friendly and shit. Definitely stuff I have little tolerance for. Boy would go out and help him set up at times when our friend had to be at work. I’m extremely grateful to both of them for that.

Now I have to rethink my jewelry. People keep telling me my stuff is good and that they like it but it just doesn’t sell. That’s really discouraging. Even when the prices were cut to $10 a pair, $15 for 2 pair and $19 for 3 pair and the bracelets prices were cut from $20 to $10, nothing sold. Even people who wore dangly earrings didn’t even glance at my stuff. I just don’t get it.

One thing I thought of, judging from some of the stuff I heard, is for show sales in person, I’m going to concentrate on making simple birthstone earrings. maybe a few fancy chandeliers but nothing epic. People seemed to like the idea of having their birthstones. I heard this from people looking at the wrapped stone necklaces made by the woman we were sharing a table with. She made out fairly well and people were always more interested in her stuff than mine.

After that, I just don’t know what to do. I know I overpriced my stuff for what people were willing to pay on Etsy. That makes me sad because then my work is undervalued, if that makes sense. Plus I have to pay a shit pile to ship stuff and people don’t want to pay that either. I don’t want to lose money making jewelry. I mean, I love doing it, but I don’t want to be giving it away.

I’m feeling rather discouraged about it right now.

On a brighter, if more painful note, I got two more piercings in my left ear. I now have holes from my lobe nearly to the top of my helix. There are seven holes in total. I might get two more in the helix, I’m not sure. These last two hurt like the dickens!

Today, doing as I’m supposed to do, I went to the drug store to pick up some saline to clean the piercings. Unfortunately I picked up lens solution, not saline solution. I have to return it and get the saline. I feel somewhat stupid about picking that.

The landlords are coming into town on Tuesday so we’ve started trying to get the house less messy. We’re still going through stuff and getting rid of things we don’t want. That always creates mess. I swept up my area and the small foyer of the bedrooms and bathroom. Now to sweep the rest of the house. My back doesn’t like doing that but it has to be done. I’ll continue on and sweep up the kitchen and get the floor washed (at least where there’s obvious stuff on the floor so it looks clean).

I’ve been looking at houses around town. When Dad’s will is completed with probate and the taxes are all filed, his estate will be distributed. Probate shouldn’t take too long as he only had the house for property. When that comes through then Bran and I are going to be looking for a house, probably come next summer. I know it’s pointless to look right now if we won’t actually be looking to buy until next year, but I can’t help it. I want to stop being a tenant so very much. I’m tired of the limited space we have. I’m tired of our stupid kitchen (who puts a 4′ X 5′ island in a kitchen that’s hardly 10′ square?) and not being able to get around in it conveniently. I’m tired of having not storage space and having shit in the bedrooms that should be in a pantry or basement. I’m tired of not being able to do what I want in my own space.

Yeah. I’m a sad and pathetic case.

Well, I’m off to sweep up the kitchen.

I’ve sunk down a lot with my feelings about Dad dying. I’ve preferred quiet to talking. Boy and Bran went out to Shell Lake to be with friends today. I opted to stay at home. I didn’t feel up to being with people and welcomed the time in solitude.

I got most of my order from Panda Hall. They left out one of the spacer bead orders though. I contacted them that day, and of course, made a typo in the email. It should be straightened out soon, I hope. I didn’t pay much for them, but I’m missing out 2000 pieces of stuff I paid for.

Since the order arrival, and after I checked it, I started to experiment with what I could create. I’ve made several bracelets and some earrings. I’d make more earrings but I don’t have many earring backs (I use rubber backs) left. Getting more will have to wait for a bit. For the time being I’ve deleted my Esty inventory. I’ll let you know when I put anything up for sale there again.

One of the bracelets I made uses up some of the sandalwood beads from a necklace that Boy finally gave me. I love the scent of sandalwood and having a bracelet made of it pleases me no end. I’ll have to get a picture of it for you to see. I’ve not made another like it thus far.

The best part of the items I ordered is that they’re nickel free. Nickel is usually what people react to in metals. There’s no (or little) nickel in surgical steel and that’s what the earring hooks are made of. The eyepins, chain, bead caps and spacer beads I bought are all nickel free. That can be a selling point of my product. I haven’t found any nickel free wire though. I want some half-hard silver wire that is nickel free, but can’t find any.

Because I’m doing something with my hands, my mind needs to be occupied with other things. I’ve always found it difficult to do only one thing at a time, except for reading. I still prefer to have no noise or distraction when I’m reading. But I bead, do crosswords, crochet, knit, etc. to the television. This means that I’ve been watching movies again. Not new ones, that would be far to radical of me. I’d been watching Scooby Doo DVDs (8 of them), Scooby Doo the movie (the first one), The Avengers, Emperor’s New Groove, Kill Bill (Part 1 and Part 2), and now the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tomorrow I’ll be watching more movies, I don’t know which ones, but I’ll be watching more.

One thing about LOTR I’ve been wondering about. The narrator says at the beginning that the elves are immortal folk. If this is the case, why is it that Arwen’s father is middle aged? Shouldn’t he appear to be in his 20s? I mean, sure, he doesn’t look like suffering from old age, but still, he has wrinkles and looks to be of about the right age to have a daughter the age Arwen is.

Dutchess hunted tonight. There was a rather large moth flying about the living room and she was in very close attendance to it. Alas, being an inside cat has caused her hunting skills to rust and she lost track of the prey as it flew toward my light. More to the point, it was my getting up to get out of the moth’s way (vicious things they are!) that caused her to lose the trail. Hopefully the moth won’t creep up and pounce on me when I’m least expecting it.

I got an email from my thesis supervisor yesterday. She wants to see what I’ve done. Of course, I’ve not done a damned thing since I saw her last. I asked her if I could take a year off the program. By the time a year is up I should be able to get back into doing stuff as I should. By that time Dad will probably have died and things will have settled out emotionally speaking. Either that or I’ll need to step away and not get my Masters degree. Regardless, I can’t do anything right now. It stretches my abilities to deal just going from one day to the next. Working is going to further stress that. It’s hard fighting the inertia I’m feeling. Adding stress to that isn’t going to help me any.

That’s about it for now.

We were down to see Dad on Monday and Tuesday. Things haven’t changed any since I wrote last. Dad is not eating though he did take a few spoons of porridge on Monday morning and ice cream on Monday and Tuesday evening. They are still using Seroquel to sedate him when they are able to get him to swallow anything. If they don’t sedate him then they’d have to restrain him. For most of the visit Dad was non-responsive. He was responsive for very short time periods (two to three minutes) in a day. When he became agitated he’d strip himself of bedding, bed clothes, endanger the IV by pulling it (the entire pole and mechanics) down and out of his arm.

He would point at things that weren’t there and try to talk. However, because he has been breathing through his mouth it was impossible to understand much of what he was saying. He did tell me he loved me after I said I loved him, asked me “where is she” and when I asked who the she was, he looked confused and said he didn’t know. Then after a couple of spoons of ice cream he said “that’s enough”. I know he was trying to say things, he would repeat sound patterns when I said I couldn’t understand. This was quite frustrating.

This was only for a short time last night. Monday evening he was non-responsive and unconscious. Now we just wait while his body slowly poisons itself because of his kidneys not working properly. They work some as he has some urine passing through his body (the catheter bag had urine in it), but not enough to properly detox his body. He’s also slowly starving to death since he refuses to eat except for a few spoons of food in a day.

I emailed work while I was out of town and updated them as to what was going on. This way when Dad does die, they’ll be semi-prepared. I’ll need to be gone somewhat longer because, as with the power of attorney, both my sister and I are named as executors of Dad’s estate. There will be business I’ll have to be out of town for.

The stay at home was painful and awkward. I don’t want to be around my older brother and wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Dad dying. Bran was having difficulty with this as well since what affects me, tends to affect him as well, especially with family stuff. The entire house reeked of cigarette smoke. It probably wouldn’t have repulsed me so much but for my distaste for being around that particular person.

Bran went through the house and looked at things that needed to be done in order to get it fixed up for sale. Most of the work is cosmetic (paint, new flooring, cleaning carpets) with the exception of needing to gut the main bathroom and update the master 1/2 bath.

I went through some of the stuff in the basement. You can tell that Mom and Dad were children of the 1930s and lived on a very limited budget for many years of their marriage. I found an amazing number of things that most everyone now-a-days would have thrown out. Mom saved things like aluminum take out containers and styrofoam plates from under meat (she washed them up and saved them for who knows what). There were also various plastic containers for condiments, peanut butter and other things saved. I don’t know how we’re going to work out things around the work needing to be done around the house. I know my brother can’t be there for much of it since a) it needs to have the house cleared and b) he smokes. Any renovations need to make the house smell fresh to make the house more saleable.

I’m glad to be home. II missed Boy a lot while we were gone. We left Dad’s at about 9:30 this morning and arrived home around noon. While we were gone Boy did a lot of work to have the kitchen mostly clean. When we got home he made us Lipton’s chicken noodle soup for lunch (he forgot to take bread out so couldn’t make us sandwiches) and then he washed up all the dishes he used to create and serve lunch. He’s a darling boy. I’m glad I’m home and he’s around me again.

I got home to the happy news of receiving my mail package from China. After lunch we all piled into the car (I let Boy sit in the front since Bran had also greatly missed Boy) and off we went to the Shoppers Drug Mart where the package depot is. I now have a couple of different styles and sizes of nickel free silver spacer beads (Tibetan style), a couple different styles and sizes of nickel free bead caps (Tibetan style), two different lengths (2 cm and 3 cm) eye pins, and 200 metres of nickel free jewelry chain. Yes, it was a heavy package. They didn’t send me one item that I ordered 2000 pieces of. So I sent them an email telling them.

Everything I got has been repackaged into labelled plastic containers from the zippered plastic bags except for the chain. I want to spool that onto dowels to keep it from getting all tangled. Right now that’s also in a plastic bag. I didn’t expect that. I expected it to come spooled.

Anyway, I’ll be looking at my beading stuff and seeing what needs to be redone. I want to make sure it’s all quite durable. I used super glue on some of the pieces and those ones need to be redone because of it. The super glue makes two weak spots in the wire at each side of the glue site. The closer is also a weak spot because the crimp bead might slip (for things like bracelets and necklaces). This is especially important for the bracelets since more people tend to wear bracelets more long term (days at a time) than they do necklaces.

So, guess what I’ll be doing for the next few days. Yeah, knitting. HAH!

I’m on days this week and won’t be taking my computer to work today as I have to do the weekly reports. Besides, it’s raining (has been since Friday evening).

I was smart enough to check my spam bin on my Wicked Witch gmail and lo and behold there was the notice of my very hefty order being shipped from China on the 21st. It’ll take 6-8 weeks to get here as I requested the cheapest delivery…surface. And I do mean hefty. In that order is 200 metres of nickel free jewelry chain.

Now the anticipation becomes more acute each day, much like Calvin waiting with Hobbes for his whirrly gig hat.

It’s been uneventful and yet busy all the same time, this past while.

Tonight was a fundraising dinner for my co-worker whose husband is in an Edmonton hospital trying to survive a surgery (three surgeries now). Since his heart surgery he’s had his stomach removed because of heavy bleeding as well as another to close up more bleeds in his chest. He’s been there nearly a month, in critical care in ICU. He’s still on life support though they’re weaning him slowly off of it. He now has a trach because the tubes down his throat were making him bleed more. He’s greatly distressed at the amount of time he’s been in hospital.

So tonight a fundraiser was held in his name to raise funds to help pay bills, pay for his wife’s (my co-worker) transportation to and from Edmonton (at $1.07 a litre for gas that’s not cheap) and her accommodations and meals there. At the last count, before I left to come home, we raised over $500 from the 50/50 draw and the dessert auction.

The dessert auction was funny and awesome all at the same time. The most popular desserts were a turtle cluster cheese cake and a deluxe chocolate layer cake. The former sold for $65 (or there abouts) and the latter for $75. It was lively and hilarious bidding.

The earrings and necklace/bracelet and earring set I donated to the sale raised around $80 or so. Anyway, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what the final tally will be as the silent auction hadn’t been added into my total, nor had the share from the dinner (about $7.50 per person going to the kitty).

I have blisters between my big and next toes. Why, you ask? Well, today I was wearing a pair of fuchsia thongs. No, they’re not “flip-flops” they’re thongs, damn it! I bought them at Michaels for around $3 or so. I got that colour because it’s to start out my Halloween costume as a ninja school drop-out. I’ll have my ninja outfit all in pink with my pink thongs (the foot wear! Get your minds out of the gutter!). I want to get a pink hilted plastic katana sword too. That way I’ll be able to have epic, pitched battles against my boss, whose planning on coming as a pirate.

Anyway, back to the blisters. They hurt. They’re between my toes just at the sole of my foot. This means that the thongs won’t be worn for the next few days as the blisters get resorbed and some callusing is created. I won’t be wearing them much at work though. I discovered that they’re too soft and squishy for any amount of walking and that’s hard on my back and legs.

I’ll be going to Edmonton in June. I don’t know for how long, probably just for an overnight trip. That’s when the Half-Way House Association AGM is being held. It should be interesting if last year’s AGM is any indication. I got some excellent information at that one.

I ordered some beading supplies from Panda Hall. They are wholesale beading supply sellers and I got around $60 worth of materials with around $33 in shipping. I ordered 200 metres (yes, metres – a metre is about 39 inches) of nickel free iron chain, two different sizes of eyepins (500 grams each – a pound weighs about 554 grams), some spacer beads (around 2000 each) and bead caps (around 2000 each). It’s all nickel free so I should be able to sell to those people who are sensitive to most metals other than gold. I’ll be getting them in a couple of months as I requested surface mail delivery. I can’t afford anything else and at those weights it would’ve cost me more than the total price of the items I bought to ship it here. I love that the Canadian dollar is so competitive with the American dollar. It’s saving me a bundle.

Did I say I was thinking of taking a year off of school? I’m not sure that the Master’s degree is something I want anymore. I just don’t know.

I need to go to bed. I didn’t get much sleep last night as is usual for the Sunday before I work days. I’m desperately tired.

Ta-Ra

Since we don’t think the computer was never registered the warranty is nonexistent. We can have the store we bought it at fix it though. For now it’s quiet. Bran opened up the beastie and put a little lube in. it’s quieter than it was but I still have to whack it (like kicking an old tv, only not quite as vehement) to get the fan to be quieter). It’s way better than the jet engine that was on the go before.

Not a whole lot has happened since I last posted. I’ve started making jewelry again. My objective is to get photos taken this week and edit them to get the stuff for sale soon. I know I’ve been saying that for some time, but I want to get things going. The major drag right now is ensuring I have money to ship things. I want to make sure that people get their stuff sooner rather than later.

I made an awesome pasta sauce last night. Tons of onion, a full head of garlic, 4 large tins of diced tomato, spices galore, a ton of mushrooms and 4 green peppers and soy burger all merged together to make a very tasty vegan sauce.

My knees hurt. I’m still working alone because a co-worker is away. I’m rather pleased though. Tonight I went all the way to the 3rd floor and didn’t get winded. I guess that’s a good thing.

Dutchess if having a kitty fit, well, a mini-fit at any rate. The DVD recorder is recording a Midsomer Murders episode that I don’t have. The oven is heating up for me to bake a Dr. Ortker’s (at least that’s how I think it’s spelled) three cheese pizza. My favourite snack. I’ve also decided to take another week off of school. If I get to feeling guilty I have a few books here to read if needs must.

Darn. The computer’s noisy again. Sucks to be me.

Today I woke up at 9 am so that I could phone the doctor’s office and find out when my appointment was. Yesterday, about 10 minutes after I made the appointment and no writing it down, I couldn’t remember when it was for. I thought 10:45, Bran thought 10:15. He was right. I reset the alarm to 9:30 and went back to snoozing.

At the doctor’s office I got a script for Celexa (older version of Cypralex). We changed to Celexa because it’s covered under the drug plan and the newer version isn’t and I wouldn’t be able to get exceptional drug coverage for it. I will be on the same dose of Celexa as the Cypralex but might have to increase.

Also, because of the constant heartburn and that it’s been waking me up. If it’s that bad then it should be taken care of. So now I’ll be taking Ranitidine twice a day.

After that I got the note to request that professors cut me breaks on deadlines for assignments “because of her medical condition”. So hopefully this will relieve the pressure I’m feeling and allow me to get things done at the pace I’m able to push myself and catch up.

My knee doesn’t show any arthritic accumulation on the x-ray, just some fluid build-up. So I’ll be going for physio-therapy and have a requisition for that.

After we finished at the doctor’s office we went to Charlie’s fish market and I got some sushi for being a good girl. Well, ok, it wasn’t for that. It was because a) I wanted sushi, b) we were at the same mall already, c) they make sushi, and d) I’d never been there and wanted to see what they had. The sushi selection was lovely. Only two had raw fish, the rest were either veggie or cooked fish. I got oyster (meh), lobster (sadly, meh), shrimp, a seaweed one I’d never had before (it was good), sea urchen (delicious!), and avocado (delicious!). I was content. They use undyed pickled ginger, so it wasn’t as colourful as it could have been, but it was still yummy. But I’m ahead of myself. We didn’t eat until we got home. I also picked up some instant Miso soup packets. I can take them to work and get a nice quick, low calorie, astronomically high sodium snack.

After the excursion to the fish store (not much in the way of fresh fish, sadly, but tons of frozen fish and more salmon of various types and such than you can shake a kodiak bear at. Anyway, we drove by Divine, which didn’t have a piercing sale advertised in their window and didn’t open for another 5 minutes. Instead we went down to Schmatta downtown. We found a parking spot and went in. I now sport two new piercings in my ear helix. I thought that getting two at the same time would be ok, but next time I’m going to only get one at a time. The first piercing hurt a lot and because everything was all swollen and irritated the second piercing hurt even more. Interestingly my ear doesn’t hurt much at all unless I try to lay on it (as I discovered when I rolled over in bed). They look totally fabulous. Here are a couple of shots I took. They’re a bit fuzzy, but it’s hard to get a good shot when you can’t look through the viewfinder. click to make them bigger:

and

After that we headed to the drug store for the scripts. They didn’t have them ready so I picked up a few other things and Bran got one, a personal groomer to trim his nose and ear hair. I also picked up some Kleenex wet wipe things to have at school, contact lens saline and some cotton balls to use for cleaning the piercings. I know have enough Shoppers points built up to buy $25 worth of stuff.

Oh, the piercing place has the hair dye we talked about, DarkDaughta. All kinds of colour! That totally rocked my boat.

After we were done at the drug store we headed to Wendy’s for Bran’s and Boy’s lunch (and some chicken nuggets for me to augment the sushi lunch) we came home and ate. Then I laid down for a nap. I work graveyards this weekend and have to be at work in an hour. I also have to find something to eat before going but it doesn’t look like I’m going to think of anything. Boy is has Hot Shots Part Deux in the DVD player and they’re busy making fun of every single possible movie made that could be snuck into a movie script (and a few advertisements)…now is the chicken shot ala Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

I have a package waiting at the Co-Op mail depot. That will be the Camelbak Better Bottles and straws that I ordered. They stalled the order because the straws were on back order. I think that’s what is there. It’s way too early for any of the t-shirts I ordered to be in yet.

That’s been my day. I’ll take my reading to work and hope to get more done including beginning the beginnings of my literature review and changing my methods pre-proposal. I also want to get a head start on my monthly report so that I all I have to do later in the week is record the final stats.

Ta-Ra

Today, while Bran and I were running a few late afternoon errands I noticed something that I’d never seen before.

You see, up here in the great white north, we get temperature extremes. The extreme of cold causes ice crystals to form in the atmosphere and create rainbow arcs in the sky surrounding the sun. We call them “sun dogs”. To the best of my knowledge they only happen when the temperatures are very low.

Today the temperature is not -40. Today the temperature is a balmy -5 (23F). However, there were two sun dogs around the sun. It was the weirdest thing. I’d never seen them around the sun at this warm a temperature. That must mean that it’s mighty cold in the upper atmosphere.

We then had a rousing conversation about why neither of us had our cameras on us. I had a good excuse. I’d taken my little camera out of my bag so that I could have it at the ready to take videos of Duchess when she played. Bran had no such good excuse. Ha!

I shall be training a new person on Sunday. I get to pass on my bad habits on to someone new.

I made myself a couple of earrings to match the bracelet I made the other night (in lieu of doing my homework). It’s made of garnet and Botswana agate. The earrings are also made of that with the stones in opposite position to each other (one with garnet/agate, the other with agate/garnet) since they’re in the same ear (I have three holes in that one). Hmm…that’s hard to describe. Maybe I’ll get Bran to take a photo someday.

The kitty has discovered that people’s shoulders make good launching pads. She was sitting on Boy’s shoulder earlier today. As he was walking by the freezer (it’s a stand-up freezer, like a fridge) she leaped off his shoulder and then after knocking a picture frame off the top, leaped back on his shoulder. She’s a very clever kitty and we’re merely carriers to her take offs and landings.

That’s about it.

Ta-Ra

I got another shipment of beads and stuff. I got a little display thing for earrings that I’ll be using in the photos, several kinds of larger beads, some new beads, a wire jig, earring hooks and pins, a knot tying tool and 100 jewelry boxes. Things are moving along nicely. I’m working on my Esty site trying to get things ready for selling things. I realized that I have a few dots to i and crosses to t before I can get to selling stuff. Sorry it’s taking so long, but I really do need to make sure that everything is covered so that the conditions of sale, questions are answered, shipping costs are figured out and so on. In the nonce, I’m still making jewelry and learning new stuff.

The copy of Sweeny Todd arrived today in the mail. It’s not the recent movie, but is a taping of the stage production with Angela Lansbury. I’m sure I’ll also get the one with Johnny Depp, but I needed to have the “original” before his version. Now all we need is Sunday in the Park with George with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters (she’s so damned cute!!).

I managed to get out of bed before 4 pm. In fact, it was just prior to noon when I woke up so technically I was out of bed before noon. I then went off to the post depot to pick up the package that the Canada Post delivery person pretended to try to deliver. The closest the person got to that was to fill out the form saying he/she tried and no one was home. The problem with that was that Bran was sitting in the living room, Boy was in his bedroom and I was sleeping in our bedroom. There was no ringing of the doorbell, no knocking on the door. Rat faced liar of a Canada Post person.

Bran’s had a few days of having a constant headache. He’s finally found relief but it’s exhausted him. Poor guy. I don’t like it that he hurts. There’s not a whole lot I can do for him either. The only thing I can do is make sure that he’s got his meds and do things to take care of myself (which sucks because I’m spoilt and used to him taking care of me.

My fingernails are interfering with my ability to type. I could cut them, but they’re so handy when working with beads. Picking up earring hooks, pins, small beads, needles, and so on, is much more difficult when I don’t have longish nails. However, when my nails get longish my typing sucks. I miss keys, mistype keys because the nail hits the wrong key, or slides off the key without completing the stroke.

Last entry, Mrs. 4444 suggested a couple of memes for me to do. One was 7 things I’d never do or a 10 item bucket list. I’m not sure which I’d do. I’ve learnt through experience that saying that I’d never do something is a sure fire way of ending up in a situation where I would do that very thing. I’m not sure I’m old enough for a bucket list yet, but then again, I might kack it tomorrow. I guess I’ll pick that one.

Let’s see…what are the top 10 things I want to do before I die?

1. Get my Master’s degree.
2. Have a successful jewelry business.
3. Have enough money to retire on.
4. Meet at least 4 of the internet people I’ve “known” for years.
5. See all three of the oceans that surround Canada.
6. See Jan Arden in concert.

This is harder than I thought it would be.

7. Own a never before owned car.
8. See Boy graduate and move into an adulthood where he’s secure and happy.
9. Own my own home, preferably an acreage.
10. Travel to a land across the ocean…England, Japan, Australia, Ireland…they’d be good places to go.

There. That was actually fairly hard. I have no real need to do daring, dangerous things anymore. I’ve already gone sky diving, though thrilling I feel no need to repeat it. Let’s face it, anything that requires any amount of athleticism isn’t going to be on my top 100 list. I’m pretty laid back when it comes to a bucket list. Interestingly enough, I’m fairly content with how my life is, what I’ve done and where I’m headed to at the moment. What an interesting thing to learn.

I guess my bucket list boils down to one thing, being as content as I am…with my own house. What would you have on your bucket list? Would you have lots of daring-do, travel, accomplishments? What do you want to make sure you do before you die.

Dang, it’s one of the two murder and mayhem nights (the only one I’m home for) and I’m getting sleepy and want to nap. Nertz.

Ta-Ra