Warhead On Legs

I am goddamned invincible. At least until Monday, when I have to start doing the part of this code project I'm less sure about.

But I spent... what was that, about two hours? Coding up the user interface portion of the project and even if I have to do a completely different project from a completely different site now I know it'll only take me a couple of hours to do that. It's not that hard! For me, of course, now that I'm familiar with the format it's a lot like the small cutesy programs my grandmother had us doing in computer class when I was in primary school. So that's done. I'm pretty happy with it, it could be neater/trimmer but that's a problem for another day. Now it's just dealing with APIs, which I have not done before and which I have considerable trepidation on. More videos over the next few days, or on Monday at the latest.

I'm also feeling pretty competent because I successfully made my computer stop going to black a lot. It started doing that earlier today, turned out that it was because the video card drivers were buggy and there was an update that fixed it, which I grabbed off the website and installed with somewhat bated breath. Nothing horrible has happened yet and I can watch videos without kicking up errors and blackscreens. A quick check of my notifications tells me that the only ones from the video card are do I want to open the menu and go to the website for updates. Excellent.

I've been doing a lot of cross-stitch to the exclusion of all else, which I need to make myself put it down somewhat and do some drawing and writing. I have so many projects I want to do! But cross-stitch is easiest to do while watching things, either watching Cadfael to relax (which is what I'm doing at the moment) or watching class videos and walkthroughs and tutorials on things. So... ergh. I'll start with it back tonight, I have so many projects I want to write and sketch for.

The boy is finally recovered, at the end of his vacation which definitely sucks but I'm glad he's recovered, and the last time we checked in at the vet Cassius was also doing well and we get to pick him up TOMORROW. I will be so freaking relieved to have both my cats where they belong. Or possibly in the house where they will belong. Still not sure about that and whether it would be a temporary or permanent solution. Cassius does now have his rabies vaccine anyway, which means Barton should get one too, and then... not sure.

So... things are going well, personally, which is still strange to think about when the country is such a shitshow. I do have feelings about the number of positive covid tests in the government, most of them being cackling and nasty, but ah well. I guess we'll see what happens.

I... I don't even know where to begin with yesterday's adventure. Two adventures. Three? Two adventures.

We'll start with the better stuff, albeit the terrifying stuff. I went to a study group on Thursday about WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) and wasn't sure what to expect except that people there were more experienced with it than I was, and I was right about that. But I also got to observe a lot of troubleshooting and learn a bit about what it looks like, what goes on in it, I get the feeling it's what I should be doing the labs in if I'm not doing them in the browser IDE (Integrated Development Environment) (where you put your code and sometimes also give commands to the computer) (I'm gonna keep up these parentheticals until I know them in and out and maybe even after for the non-coders) so all in all it wasn't a waste at all. I talked some with the guy leading the study group, we talked about the pandemic and how we were doing in it, and at one point the conversation led to one of the students he was troubleshooting was probably experiencing delayed response times from her computer because she had fifty frillion windows open and 8GB of RAM (random access memory/short term computer memory/the stuff that makes the programs go) and it was slowing her down.

I have 4GB of RAM.

I told him this. He said "Whoa, yeah, you want 16GB would be my recommendation." So on the one hand, I went to the site (Crucial.com) that he recommended and with one thing and another, bought a couple more sticks of RAM to upgrade my computer to 12GB. And then. Yesterday, Friday. AND THEN. No, wait, backing up, so I'm upgrading my computer and realizing, no, I probably can't get away with still using this one for much longer can I. Which makes me sad because it's a perfectly fine machine! For what I use it for now. Web development is a much different animal, it turns out. So okay fine, I tell the boy "I need a new machine, can you help me build one?" I don't know why. I was thinking of just getting a box off the shelf and then I decided, no, I'll build one instead, mainly because I still want a DVD drive. And the ones with Solid State Drives (faster, more durable than usual hard drives) are expensive. Which it turned out wasn't much better building my own box, which I did at one in the goddamn morning on Thursday night and Friday morning, but building my own box also means it's much more modular, I have room to expand, I have options, I know what each piece does and what I need it to do, and since I'm putting it together myself (with the boy watching over my shoulder) I'll have that experience when I need to upgrade.

So that was Friday morning, with me being exhausted enough to completely forget to make sure it has wireless ahahah oy. This is what happens when I get agitated and do things in a hurry, it has been that kind of agitating week. But I fixed that, got a wireless card for it and that's something I've even done before, installed a wireless card, so that's fine. And the parts for the new box should be on the way, here next week, I can build next Friday. I can probably upgrade this box sometime mid next week. It's fine.

Friday afternoon. Friday fucking afternoon. It may have started earlier than the afternoon, it was intermittent because the fucking rat would not stay away. Sometime in between building the box and realizing I'd forgotten wireless I noticed a rat in the kitchen. I forget what it was doing at first but it wasn't screaming. We chased it surprisingly easily into an empty Tidy Cats litter bucket and dumped it out in the backyard towards the wild field, went about our day. A couple hours later, go into the kitchen, Murdock is staring at the rat again and Little Bit is on the counter looking very offended by everything. This time the rat went under the fridge and we had to wait until Bat Cat stared at the fridge like a security guard to know where it was, move the fridge, get the rat out from behind the fridge and into the Tidy Cats bucket again, and turn it loose. And hope it wasn't a second rat.

(Side note: Bat Cat's eyes were wide and darting EVERYWHERE and suddenly I realize why people are freaked out when I do that. Okay then.)

It wasn't a second rat. I don't think. Because a couple hours later guess who the fuck was back. On the counter this time, behind the coffee maker. And then all over the counter. And then on the floor, and then behind the fridge again, and then over by one of the open lower drawers stuffed with washable freezer bags, and eventually the boy picked up the ridiculous thing with kitchen tongs and dropped it into the bucket. It was the same rat, it must have been, because this time it estimated it could get out of the bucket by jumping and did a couple of times. And eventually, finally, we got the lid down over the bucket, drilled a couple holes in it for air, and drove the goddamn rat to a field across fucking town so the stupid rat wouldn't come back. At least I hope it doesn't come back. If it comes back I'm keeping it and naming it Justin. Or Mrs. Frisby. Because clearly it's both brilliantly intelligent and really fucking dumb.

So that pretty much derailed me from getting as much reading as I wanted to do yesterday, oops. I may try and make it up tonight or tomorrow but most likely since most of it's class reading I'll put it off till Monday. Computer parts are incoming, including a wireless card. The new router works brilliantly for computers, less so for phones. I'm not sure if that's a thing or not. And it's been a nice relaxing day of cross-stitch and writing apart from cleaning 3/4 of the entire kitchens because RAT. WHY, rat. WHY are you in a house of seven cats, three of whom are known mousers? Honestly.

I still need tech icons, though. Need some kind of computer icons. Maybe I can make some from Hackers.

What a freaking day this has been, redux.

So I did miss something and it was in the same environment as the prep course, which was one thing I was going to try but I asked first and hoped for a quick answer. It was excruciatingly embarrassing. I did it. It was not uncommon nor a commentary on my intelligence, and it was good that I asked. I'm still convincing myself of these things, if you hadn't noticed. So then I spent the morning session (10-1) installing various things, reading over various introductory things, cramming so much information into my head that I got a physical headache and my eyes started doing the inflamed bulgy thing. (I don't know that they were physically bulging but it felt that way.)

Tangentially I have been informed that I display a lot of the characteristics of a Gifted Kid. To which I say I prefer the term overclocked because when I push myself the way I did this morning, that's exactly what I feel like. An overclocked computer about to melt and take the whole section of the desk with it.

Anyway. So then I had lunch and a nap and then I started in on some more lessons and... gah. I started reading the lessons and the very first lesson made reference to entering things into a terminal which I couldn't find for half an hour and after this morning's chaos I was 110% ready to both melt things and crawl into a ball of shame at my own ignorance. Neither of these things ended up happening, I was on the verge of asking someone for help (on the first lesson! THE SHAME! yeah today was full of shame) when someone else did it for me and it turns out... there is no terminal. What it looks like, given that piece of information and the next two readings' worth of context, is that someone took the in-class notes from one of the in-person campuses and just tossed it all online without proofreading or changing it at first. Which is deeply aggravating. Also, in hindsight, typical given the interface was a bit shit and kept throwing up unrelated errors and didn't allow for a reasonable amount of reading OR workspace, but. Argh.

But I got Atom installed on the desktop, I got the chromebox ready to install the Linux Beta that comes with it so I can put Atom on there, and Uncle Elf Lord is running ahead of me on that and giving me the play by play so I have something to go by. So that's going well. I'm pretty much blown for the rest of the day now, but I have hopes that it's not because it's always going to be like this, since coding lessons with code academy weren't like this. It's just going to be like this for the first while I get set up. Then it's going to be a fun game of Find The Curly Brace and What Semi-Colon Did I Miss and That Method Didn't Work What's Another Good One.

I hope, anyway. Because right now my brain is trying to piece itself back together after all the crap I crammed in it this morning and I'mma go to bed. Pretty happy with the day, although I could have done with fewer moments of wanting to scream. Plus side, I'm learning and hopefully eventually working remote. Once I step away from the keyboard the only one who can hear me scream is the boy.

... also now I need some computer coding icons.

Yesterday was better. Exhausted, but better. I did a bit of cross-stitch, I took it slow and easy, I went back on Twitter and said hi to my friends which was nice and cheerful even if Twitter itself, still a tire fire of horrible news. And I announced my career transition attempt to go to tech, which was met with cheers and encouragement from my friends in tech. So that's really lovely.

Today we went out and did a couple grocery runs at a couple stores since the first one had some empty shelves in weird places. Why was the tomato paste out but not the diced tomatoes, spiced tomatoes, or tomato sauce? Who even knows. We also stopped by the vet, which was deluged with people, and picked up Murdock's insulin refill. Murdock's still under his former weight and he's still having mobility issues, but they haven't gotten worse and he isn't losing any more weight, and his energy is pretty much back to normal, so I'm interpreting that as damage done slow to heal and he's fairly stable in general.

Iiiii stuff. Things. I'm continuing to cross-stitch, I'm currently working on the House Martell banner from Game of Thrones and I have patterns for shittons of the houses. Martell, Tully, Stark, Karstark, Bolton, Mormont, Lannister, Baratheon, um. Clegane. Tyrell. I'm going to put them all up on dowel rods and hang them from, uh, somewhere. And I've got my usual vulgar cross-stitch pattern going too, the current edition is Try Not To Murder Anyone Today. I finished an edition of Fresh out of Fucks.

I've been doing lessons in Python and JavaScript, which is also reassuring me that I can do a job in coding. Not that I expect it to stay this easy for that much longer but the first two lessons were pretty easy, and overall it seems more a matter of memorizing the vocabulary and syntax than anything else. The underlying concepts are the same as I learned decades a long time ago. I can do this, I keep telling myself, even as I start to worry about it getting harder the deeper I go into it. I can do this. No one's going to expect me to know everything at once. Or anything at all when I start, since it's a school. Plus one of my friends told me that my language skills will work synergystically (my word not his) to help.

It's a big change. It's a huge change, and that's terrifying. It's normal to be scared. Mom says she thinks I'd be the one in ten who can really do it though. ... actually what she said was that in her experience with her co-workers more people think they can do it than actually can, and I'm one of the ones who can. Practically, I'm not sure what that means, but it's sort of reassuring.

And in the meantime I have cross-stitch, lessons to keep me on that path, other projects, the garden. Which is coming through with lots of green tomatoes but they're not reddening. Go red, tomatoes! I want to make sauces! I think the elderberries are starting to berry, the cucumbers are trying to invade everyone else's pots, the parsley really needs to be harvested I may do that after dinner. Life continues to turn, no matter how terrified I am or am not of what's to come.

I may need a hashtag for my adventures in becoming a coder and I'm not sure what that might be. Except I kind of want it to be from either Hackers or Sneakers, because they were my role models when I was a wee bab teen coder. Hm.

Today was better. Not completely, but definitely there was less screaming over issues. I emailed back and forth with the one Aunt and it does sound like she was trying to avoid drama with the most dramatic Aunt, so that's good. I did not go digging for more details on the shitstorm of authors. I woke up after about 5.5 hours of sleep, which was less than ideal, but then I went back to sleep.

And promptly had a nightmare, which was also less than ideal, but then I got up. I sat my butt down in a comfy chair and I did a lot of cross-stitch. I watched some fun martial arts sequences from some movies. I finally remembered the name of the stuntman and martial artist I'd been trying to come up with yesterday! (Lateef Crowder. He's a capoeirista, because of course he is.) I went out and got less garden work than I'd meant to done, mainly because the boy was out mowing the lawn and chopping limbs (unbeknownst to me at the time) and then by the time he was done with all that he was exhausted, there were piles of tree limbs, so I had to move them. So I didn't have the energy to drag out the weed-whacker and carve out a walking path for myself around the second raised bed. C'est la vie. I got it half emptied, I can finish it hopefully tomorrow morning if I go to bed early enough and get up early enough.

I was asked if I was going to go to a capoeira event which, ahahah, participate in a group event dedicated to one-on-one sweaty panting martial arts where you get up close and personal with the other person, as in going between their legs and head-butting their ribs upwards kind of personal? No thank you. My friend said it was supposed to be socially distanced. I say I'll see you in a year if then.

But for the most part, yeah, it was a much calmer, quieter, less stress filled day, which I like. We'll see if I can repeat that feat tomorrow.

Having a hard time getting back into a routine where I get up, get ready, get into the office at a time and start working, which isn't really what I want to be doing given I want to work remotely from home. Still I've got a few months to work on it, assuming I don't end up going back to the store which... I don't even know. I'm trying not to think too hard about that, since I don't get a big say in that part and I do have an alternative plan. Assuming the school ever gets back to me about remote work. I guess I'm going to send a follow-up email tomorrow.

Note to self: that is a stressor. It's not a big stressor because there is kind of a plan. But it's a stressor.

The tomato plants are growing, they're putting out tomatoes. I have one cherry tomato that's ready to be eaten, sadly just one, and a handful more that are ripening which means it's time to break out that recipe I downloaded involving cherry tomatoes and chicken. I have a couple paste tomato plants that are getting towards 5' tall, which is. Wow. My tomato plants don't usually do that well. And fortunately it's the paste tomatoes, which I now know exactly what to do with. I just. WOW. We've also been getting daily rainstorms, which is nice as far as not having to really water all the outside plants.

Also I ate my first blueberry off one of my bushes. It doesn't have that many berries yet, but it wasn't one of the berries that was on it when I bought it, it was a new berry. So I am deeply, deeply happy.

I picked up kind of a new hobby? It's not much of a hobby and I have a bunch of leftover beading gear anyway. But of course instead of touching (most) of that I went on Fire Mountain Gems and got a whole bunch of new beads. See, I got these bracelets that are basically a bunch of round pumice beads on a length of elastic and I liked them so much I think I wore them for two or three weeks straight. I don't have them on as I type this but mainly because I was doing dishes. So I decided in my infinite wisdom to get materials to make more. I got the wrong (slightly too large) size of bead the first time but it's fine, it worked well enough, and I placed a second order to get the correct size of bead and now I know, plus this'll keep me amused for the next couple of years. Now I just have to find a place to put them. The bracelets, not the beads, I have a couple cases I never filled with minis. And find the damn superglue to seal the knot, I know it's around here somewhere.

(The boy was heading out the door to work yesterday while I was unstringing beads into one of the separated boxes. He asked what I was doing, I said resurrecting an old hobby, he sighed as he left. Today when he came home I was looking for the superglue and he was all "Oh, I thought I put it here, hang on." We didn't find it but it's nice to know he actually is supportive of my absurd hobbies even as he rolls his eyes fondly.)

Though speaking of resurrecting old hobbies I do need to get my ass moving on the various cross-stitches. I have patterns and thread and have assembled them into projects I want to do, I just haven't picked them up in a few days.

(It's still been a rough few weeks and I'm working on remembering that doing things I love to do, wear makeup, play guitar, etc, is a good way to make things less rough when I'm not being actively hammered by stressors. It's a work in progress.)



( To-do )

It turned out to be a relatively uneventful, restful day. With writing! And cross-stitch! And cleaning! Not as much of either of the latter two as I'd like but progress was made, and progress will be made tomorrow.

There was one thing that happened that was ... unnerving. Is that a guy was out front sitting on the edge of the lawn in front of our house, three or four feet from the sidewalk. Which, yes, I expect people to stop and sit at the edge of the lawn because there's a nice lip to the concrete barrier? Retaining wall? thing that's good for sitting on, but this guy was up on our lawn. It turned out he knew our across the street neighbors and, what, had been casing our house? Their house? Or just waiting to get up the courage to go talk to some people he apparently hadn't talked to in a long time, by the sound of their conversation and what the across the street fella said. (He's actually the son of the woman who lives there, but since shutdown started it's been a family party over there almost every day. I just hope they're in a family bubble, too.)

So, yeah. I made sure all the doors were locked and I am sleeping with both a boy and my knife just in case, but I don't think that will come back to bite me in the ass? Less because I trust the guy and more because he seemed like the kind of guy who would back down if I came at him with a cast iron fire poker.

Hopefully the boy got some sleep, too. He hasn't been sleeping well lately. But I got a satisfactory amount of work done with only one stressor that hopefully will stay the fuck gone now, so. Not a bad day, all in all.

( Tomorrow's to-do )

Okay. We'll use the tag Not Booyah At All for stressors, that's a good existing tag. Maybe if I have enough in one short period of time I can use something like "naming the wolves individually" or something because holy hell, it's been a pack of wolves kind of a past few months.

More positive things that I've been up to, starting with the garden. Holy shit. Apparently the only reasons my plants didn't do well is because I didn't have the energy around writing and my day job to pay proper attention in a leisurely fashion. I'm not doing too much different, except that I have more time to fit in the planting, the seed starting, etc. But in the day to day stuff once it's gotten started it's basically 15 minutes of watering once a day, and 20-30 minutes of weeding on Saturday and Sunday. And I have, um. The aforementioned endless tomatoes, including some new tomato plants my aunt left with me. I'm hoping to have tomatillos sprouding soon. The peppers I planted are, almost all of them, very healthy. My cabbages lettuce are dying a sad and painful death, I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I may try putting them out in the world and see how well that works since none of the animals that usually eat them have been coming up to the porch I think It's still a bit disheartening. But there's the tomatoes, the cucumber, the blueberry rootstock is putting up vigorous new green shoots, the existing blueberry plants are doing well, one elderberry plant looked like it was trying to die at which point that got moved further into the stoop where it gets sun for less time in the day and that and some blood for the blood got may have saved it? But just in case I got a third elderberry oops. The goji berries are doing good. The herbs are doing great. So many plants do I have, not many flowers, but lots of food. It's honestly a relief to know I don't kill things out of ... being me, just out of being me in that I overextend and forget I don't have infinite energy.

I forget also whether or not I said I'd picked up cross-stitch again so, I picked up cross-stitch! Mainly because a friend brought to my attention that the Mattis quote: "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet" was a cross-stitch pattern and I thought, you know. I should do that. So I did that. I messed up doing that! But I did that. And then ... actually no, I think I'm still on my second one. But I'm working on my second one (a little less quickly than my first, stuff has gotten out of control in a stuff on my desk sense but also in a stress sense) and it's almost down to the lettering, and I have the next six or so projects planned and materials purchased. So, yay!

I've been writing. In a fit of pique and relevant to recent discussions on how people writing very rough drafts of porn and just selling it on Amazon are making more money than people writing actual novels doing the actual novelist thing I've decided that instead of trying to make myself work through the pile-on of stress I'm going to write a PWP fanfic, file the serial numbers off, give it a quick once over and give it to A for a copy edit and just post the fucker on Amazon because who cares anymore anyway. (Yes, I still care, I just do not have the energy for anything the way I used to.) So that's happening. Although after I take today to do a thorough house cleaning and get that stressor/reminder of stress away, I may try and balance working on that with working on my original projects. We'll see, as always.

As a semi-solution to the unemployment thing, and because my family has been on the verge of retirement for years now (although now that they've had a taste of what retirement is like I'm not as convinced as my one aunt that they will) this might be the final nail in the store's coffin, my Mom suggested paying to send me to the same boot camp as my cousin went to. It's a tech camp, you get your tuition back if you don't find a job after, and since it's a tech camp there's a larger possibility that I can find remote work. I was going to email them yesterday and see if they had an idea what the chances were, but then shit blew up, so it's now to "at some point this week." But it's certainly a possibility. I can't say coding or scripting was ever my first choice of job but I like to think I'd be reasonably good at it and have an aptitude for it, and I wouldn't mind it so very much. And the starting salary in tech is more than I make at the store, so if I can find a remote position it'd be great. I don't know what my job odds are, though. So... that part is very, very nervous making.

Fff things. I feel like you can tell I haven't been feeling my usual self because I haven't been wearing makeup, I haven't been playing around with lipstick and things, I haven't been wearing my jewelry. But that said, I re-dyed my reds at the middle? End? Shortly after my birthday in May, I remember that because I remember being disappointed that it wouldn't be freshly red for the zoom family chat. And I have an assload now of hair dye, a proportional assload of bleach, I am set to do my own hair coloring for a year in the case of the hair color and probably two years in the case of the bleach. I have a pair of hair shears and clips to hold my hair back so I can bleach, dye, or trim it. I have a proper hair dryer if/when I remember to use it, I have hair products for curling my hair and for nourishing it and for taking product out of it. And my makeup is stocked up so I should remember that I feel good when I look like I'm about to take the stage at a punk concert.

Circling back to gardening briefly, I am in love with my hori hori knife. It's a Japanese gardening tool that's straight edge, serrated edge, and trowel all in one due to the curve of the knife and it is JOY. I've done so much hacking down of annoying pokeberries, quick weeding, transplanting. It is a joy.

Trying to think what else has been going on. Have I mentioned I got into the Untamed finally? Because I did. The last few weeks of fannishness have all been about the Untamed and the pretty boys within. Pretty boys with skills, too, predictably for me I found out one of them is also a ballet dancer and sadly only has one or two performances and a class video online, but hnngh. He is quite good. And then another is an arts school kid who was in Les Mis, so outside of watching the show repeatedly I've been digging up that content. It's fun. It's joyful, and I take what joys I can get these days.

... that was a bit maudlin for something that's supposed to be a joyful post. Um. Oh! I've discovered the joys of listening to history lectures while I cross-stitch. That's also fun. And I've picked up Turkish on Duolingo, which is to say actually that I put one language down and replaced it with Turkish, under the urging of one of my new proto-friends (I've been told by people who Know that I make friends very slowly, and it's true, so... proto-friend for people with whom it's only a matter of time most likely) who is also learning Turkish and keeps temping me with fun facts about Turkish. They're evil, and all yelling about too many languages should be directed at them. >.>

Right. That's as much updating as I think everyone can manage for now. I'll try to be more assiduous about logging things here. For posterity if for no other reason even though there are other very good reasons, self. Pls remember.

Even more yesterday
Yesterday (the day before, now?) at 4 in the morning I woke up with another splitting dagger through the front left side of the head type of headache and finally realized that what I might have was a migraine, not a headache. I wouldn't have guessed at first because when I woke up, sometimes if I haven't had enough water before going to bed I get dehydration headaches, so I assumed it was that. Then when I went out in the garden and chopped downed limbs and pulled weeds and dug around in the dirt for hours I assumed it was too much labor under an unusually long amount of sun, because that too sometimes gives me headaches. And then after I'd napped it was gone. But no, probably migraine. I hit it with a triptan and an aspirin and lay down whimpering.

So yesterday was mostly a day of head fog and not getting too much done. Which is fine, I'd rather have gotten some writing work done but it was pouring out and I did in the end get some writing done. A good chunk. That's fine. I watched some videos on nail painting techniques, I looked into some plant growing. All of my plant starts are in for pickup today so gardening will definitely happen towards the afternoon! I need to write first, though. Forreal.

Today

I am very bad about getting these out on time aren't I.

Okay, so I did do the gardening, I did do some writing beforehand, and now I have lettuce in pots inside, scallions and strawberries in pots on the porch, tomatoes all over the fucking bed, blueberries still in their gallon pots because I'm not sure what kind of ginormous pot to stick them into or if I should prep the beds now and aim to plant them in a couple weeks. Wildberries are in pots, they're definitely too small to survive the wildlife, they're in pots in the front. At some point I really will redo the side garden but that's weeks off and that's assuming I ever deal with the holly tree at the corner of the house. I think it's a holly tree. It's got red berries and it's very very pokey.

I also watched two! Two entire episodes (I think two. maybe three) of the Untamed! I'm slowly getting into the habit of sitting down and watching a couple-three episodes and doing so little that I can just read the subtitles and enjoy the foolish exorcists. I need to do more of that in my life, I think.

I'm working on getting back into consistent yoga and music practice. It's a work in progress. I'm also working on filling in my various plant notes in my notebook. It used to be in alphabetical order, now it's sort of in bursts of alphabets, I think. Some herbs and flowers in the beginning, vegetables after that, who knows what I'll remember to put in after that. But I'm managing, also, passable colored pencil drawings of the plants as I write in notes on growing them, so that's fun and relaxing and also useful for the future.

I have not yet managed to get things up on Gumroad more than I did the first day. I think I will try a couple more short stories again this weekend, and maybe some reformatting things to be a bit more Gumroad friendly. But I'm also a bit worried about how taking in freelancer income right now will affect my unemployment, because while I make ahahaha maybe $50 a year off of individual story sales these days if I'm lucky (I could make four times that amount if I advertised, ha ha), it's still the kind of thing the government could stare at me for. So... eugh. Set it up, and then if I do end up going back to work in a couple weeks which is entirely possible since our offices, still with our desks at a minimum ten feet apart and I do mail order so I come into minimal contact with three people. If I go back to work in a few weeks, then I can start pushing Buy My Stories On Gumroad.

And writing continues apace. As usual, not as well as I would like, but continuing well enough for me to feel reasonably confident about my discipline. To my semi-surprise I'm not getting as much writing as I wanted to done in this case because I'm mainly working in the garden. I think I was, memory is starting to blur from stress, before I started gardening. In which case it's likely that I will after everything's settled in the ground, so eh, I can take a couple weeks of light writing to get things in the ground, settled, established, and future beds prepped.

I'm semi-reconsidering my decision to put the berry bushes along the porch and wondering if I should do herbs instead. Or herbs in the railing boxes where the snapdragons used to be, and snapdragons in pots hanging from the roof of the sun porch. Decisions. I really don't know, but then I don't have to decide right now since all the herbs are doing fine where they are.

Apart from the debate over whether or not I should go back to work, things are pretty peaceful. I'm wary of going back to work because every time I think we're safe, the boy brings home a tale of a potential case at his work. But I think the stress of doing my job is getting to my aunt and I'm sure she won't listen to me if I tell her to shut down mail order, or only do it two days out of the week. Ah well.

The irony of the last 24+ hours is that filing for unemployment was actually the easy part. The hard part was dealing with my aunt who in many ways still thinks I'm 12 and can be reassured with a pat on the head and a "we'll take care of it" without actually telling me how they plan to take care of it beyond, you know, saying so and wishful thinking. Oh the extended multi phone call fight we had over that. I think she may have calmed down, but I also think she's calmed down to the tune of "she's just stressed and acting out it's fine if I keep treating her like she's 12."

When my Mom offers financial help of the kind she usually does, I know she can do it because I know roughly what her life and cost of living and all that amount to and I know she can afford to. The only thing I hear about the store's finances is "is this a reasonable order of supply to make" "can we afford to outlay this" "when can we afford to retire or do we just die" and that is not reassuring.

Anyway. All that aside, I got about three hours of sleep last night despite the drugs, so, yay. And then another hour of sleep between 6 and 7, and then I woke up and tried to fix something and that didn't work and then we decided I didn't need to anyway and then I just went the fuck back to sleep.

And then I woke up and spend a few hours saying "and now I will write words" only to spend the next hour and a half watching gardening videos and looking things up. So on the one hand I am now prepared to garden once I have all the tools and spend a couple weeks clearing everything out. On the other hand, I got maybe a few hundred words down today.

Whatever. I knew it was going to be a write-off as far as writing work went when I woke up after three hours sleep and didn't get back to sleep anyway. Tomorrow! Tomorrow I'll work up a schedule and mostly stick to it except for whatever shopping we end up doing. However since that'll probably be in the morning I'll schedule the afternoon for working, I think. Or the early morning before the boy's up and functional, because at this rate I'm going to bed early.