Fucking Tuesday, amiright?

We’ve got ourselves another Tuesday on our hands. I woke up to some fog outside, but that moved out a little while ago. Mom‘s second smoke of her morning is fog-free. Things are supposed to be nice today, I think. I might go outside and paint for a little while. Yesterday, I tried to paint. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing a bit too much. I wasn’t feeling it anyway.

I heard Mom puttering around while I was finishing up my makeup yesterday morning. She was doing all the “impending departure” motions: locking doors, putting the bar down in the sliding patio door, etc. When I came out, she said we were going out to buy the new stove we’d looked at on Sunday. All my bragging about the sandals not requiring a blood sacrifice when I first wore them on Sunday was for naught. I spoke too soon. They scraped a chunk out of my foot before I even made it into the truck yesterday. Mom had a band-aid in her purse.

Because of course she did.

The terrariums are doing awesome this week. I daresay they are fucking thriving. Roots everywhere, goodly amounts of condensation in the jars. Most of the ivy and all of the ferns are alive, the pennywort is still hit or miss. Terra 3 is still way too wet inside. That’s probably a side effect of adding the springtails. They came in their own moist substrate, which I mixed simply plopped into the jar. I plan to do some maintenance this afternoon, once a bit of the jars’ internal fog dissipates and rolls down the glass.

Ten days later, and the springtails are living their best life inside their little ecosystems. I look for them a few times a day – they definitely have preferred times to come out. I don’t see the nematodes nearly as often, but they come out and make their way around on the damp glass. I’m pretty sure one of the Apothecary’s snails died over the weekend. The shell seems to be attracting a fair amount of the critters.

I’d have better pictures if I bought the damned $20 microscope, but I fucking refuse to do more than add it to my wishlist. Some day, I’ll have a meltdown, and it will be there for me…

Waiting….

Teensycola also has a small colony of about 10+ ants inside. The colony disappeared for a while, but returned to the surface a week ago after some jar maintenance. They were all congregated by one of the white stones for most of last week (see photo 3 below – several of those crumpled brown bits between the glass and the stone are ants). I think most of the colony has retreated back into the soil right now. The springtails are cleaning that area.

They’ll deliver the new stove at some point today. Mom is eagerly awaiting 10AM, when the store opens, so she can call them and ask what time they might show up, or if it’s an all day affair.

I’ll be kicking around the house all day. I don’t expect I’ll need to go out anywhere. Lord knows no company I’m applying to wants to talk to me, let alone fucking hire me.