Dandelyon's Worlds

I went by the animal control center to check for my kitten; as expected, he wasn't there. I've been checking their website every day to look at the photos, but there were a couple with no photo in the last couple of days. I figured it was a long shot at that point, but checked anyway.

Then I drove by the vet's place to drive around the neighborhood a little. When I stopped to ask, the guys in the tiny auto repair garage near the vets said they saw my kitten today, a few blocks from there. They even showed me where, though he wasn't around this evening. I gave them one of the pictures I'd printed with my phone number on it. At least they said he looked healthy and energetic. I'll go back tomorrow and try again.

The fish store had just sold their last tube of silicone; I could get some at the hardware store, but I want to be sure to get a fish-safe brand. And supporting the store is a good idea too.

Once shrunk to ion size, the lettering on my first attempt at this donor-appreciation icon was too small, so I fiddled with that today.  You can see the revision here.

Edit:  Well, no wonder no one could read it at "ion" size!

And I got news that one of the stories I'd recently submitted was rejected. The e-mail starts, "it's a really good try, and we like the world you have established, but..." the rest, though short, was great feedback and probably exactly what I'd have decided if I'd had time to ignore the story for a month and re-read it fresh. I'll do a little more research and rewrite it.

Then, when I got to Walgreens, which doesn't normally sell the Red Mtn. Dew, they had a sale on Pepsi products with a huge new display that used the Code Red boxes to spell NFL. So I bought most of the L, to the consternation of the staff, who really hadn't planned on deconstructing the display (as I left, they were filling in the hole, so the display wouldn't collapse on anybody).

And the pharmacy was busy, so I can call in my prescriptions and go back again tomorrow. And get more soda. They're making money off of me, so I don't feel too sorry for them!

Oh, and I have a job interview scheduled for Monday.

So here's hoping that scoring the soda at Walgreens is the beginning of a trend.

So, it’s that time of the year when the bright green chlorophyll leaves the leaves, showing off their hidden colors for a brief glorious few days.  That means part of my days is gathering the resultant litter to use as mulch for the roses, so they will survive the winter.  Leaves make good mulch for many reasons.  They’re free, so they fit my budget.  They get blended with grass clippings, weeds, & kitchen waste throughout the summer to make compost, which makes fertilizer for roses and other plants, which means said fertilizer fits my budget.  No one tries to steal them, well, except for windstorms.  So I go out into the brisk fall weather and gather them up, brown and gold and orange and, my favorite, the red, red maple leaves.  I’m glad that, in my neighborhood, the red maples are close to the last leaves to fall.  For a few days, I have bright, festive mounds of leaves over the roses, adding a top layer after other leaves settle, and filling in where settling or wind has bared too much of a rose.  The red leaves look good under the suddenly-ripening rose hips, which seem to ripen best when we have a few days of very light frost. 

 

And it’s the time of year when herbs and fruit need to be gathered before the first hard frost.  The tomato plants were just starting to get going; got to try to start them earlier next year.  The thyme plant accidentally got pulled out of the ground, so now it’s in a pot in the kitchen; the chocolate mint did well this year, so I finally found a place it would establish and do well.  Ditto with the sage.  Spearmint, Wintergreen, Peppermint, Oregano, and Lemon Balm are fine, though the lemon balm is much sparser than in past years—definitely an oddity.  Coneflowers are spreading. 

 

Inside, the mollies still keep breeding; my tiny tank always has babies and selling the adolescents and young adults is helping to keep us in fish food; I’m not making a profit, but still, it’s good to have something that comes close to paying for itself.  And having visited relatives and then returned, I realized that the tanks definitely are humidifying the house, much more than I would have guessed.  Enough to take the edge off for my dry-air sensitive lungs and sinuses.  And the long-fin bristlenose plecos are getting to an age where they might start breeding too, which would be very nice.

 

Time to go buy groceries, so when it’s warmer out later in the week, I can go home and grab a rake…

Like (mdlbear), my life has been much out of balance for far too long.  A lot of this is finances.  When the Weed took office in the white house, my finances were comfortable.  Barely, there were too many times I had to choose between things that really mattered to me, but I didn't feel as if my life were precarious.  I was able to put more into my 401K than the minimum needed to get the company's half-matching contribution to it.  I believed I would be able to pay for materials, and, when needed, expert manpower, for renovating my house.  And I was looking at trying to get to more cons & fests.  Now is quite a different story.  I really wish I could go to Minicon, but the gas money isn't doable.  Never mind hotel and membership and eating out.  Sigh.

Kathy Mar said it best, one time when I started to say, "I know money doesn't make you happy" and stopped, at a loss for words.  She said, "but not having enough money can make you miserable".  Too, too true.

Or maybe Julia Ecklar "how can I find balance with no ground beneath my feet"?

In other areas, some of them, anyway, balance is a bit better than in recent  years.  I've been doing a little songwriting; and having fish in bright tanks, proving both light and "wild" natural behavior to stare at (and fish fry swimming happily by the bed) seems to help the winter-induced lethargy significantly.  It's amazing how much babies can cheer a person, even if they're tiny and cold-blooded and not the least bit cuddly.  (Though upon turning the light in the tank on late one night, I saw that baby fish do, at least sometimes, sleep in a "puppy pile".  Maybe it's just the huge, warm-blooded hairy monster that doesn't inspire them to cuddle.)

But I keep on wishing for more money or more time, or better yet, both. 

There's people going past our offices, chanting something, like a protest march I can't hear through the windows.  Wonder what's up?  (I went to look, but all that I can see now is multiple squad cars hanging out.  All my co-workers could tell me is that the protesters, if that's what they were, were on bicycles.) 

Oh, well, off to my tax appointment.  Didn't realize I was making it for Equinox when I made it...