From The Mommybot

Drat.  The blue flowered 'not oregano' is brightblue speedwell.  A very invasive weed.  It has a few herbal uses, but not a lot in contemporary times.  I cut down the flowering stalks and tossed them...before finding out those are the edible parts.  Oh well.  I was just hoping it would be more useful than that.

At least it's pretty! :D  I do wish the pineapple weed in the same pot had spread like that, but seems pineapple weed is not a fast growing plant.

--Moony

The second from the right is now deliciously in my tummy!  Om nom nom! :D  Uncovered a handful of echinacea 'children' beneath.

Nice and warm and sunny, and I'm giving myself a bit to rest and recover from the weekend...but those potatoes needed burying.  Most of them were already about a foot, some shorter, and I finally got my dad to drill the holes in the plastic bucket for the vermicomposting part of the VermiTato container.

( What you can't see are the two worms in residence... )

--Moony

My dad dropped off the batteries today, and I explained a bit about the BP meds and side effects, which he totally had the same problems with...and that I was saving my energy to go to the Avengers today so wouldn't be coming over for Game of Thrones, which I'll just have to catch some time during the week.

The family is coming up for Mother's Day next week (not that they'll celebrate ME as a mother, too), and I've been asked to make some baked beans from my grandmother's recipe which I don't have but my mother does.

Yes, Avengers was awesome, and the gc's think so, too!  One thinks Hawkeye is 'awesome'...and 'really a girl', 'cause 'girls are awesome!'  Gotta love kid logic sometimes! XD

Dang, there went that energy...

Oh, btw, success with the second new bed, after I put her squeaky mouse on it and she discovered how nice and plush and non-sudden-foot-sweeping-one-off-the-bed it was.  I did also discover the possible reason she's recently changed her mind about canned food - the tap water I mix her Prowl with sometimes has an odd smell.  As my sense of taste and probably smell has been a bit wonky off and on lately, I'm not sure if this comes and goes or is constant.  Might ask maintenance if they can test it.

--Moony

A good thing about short, solid walls as balcony railings - nobody can tell if you're just wearing a pajama top when you step outside. :D

I thought I had bug bites (even tho I never saw the critters) on my stomach, but no, they're hives from the damn medication, right over my liver.  And they stab me every hour or so.  Drug/MD sites vary from 'common' to 'see the doctor now' on this, but since I'm otherwise feeling SO MUCH BETTER without the medication I'm waiting the detoxing period out.  I'm trying the toothpaste method for dealing with them, since I use Healthy Mouth from Jason which has no flouride (which can cause them itself) but does have CoQ10 and Ester-C which should be good for healing my poor skin.

--Moony

As of today, I'm not taking the verapamil anymore.  Replacing it with astaxanthin and hawthorn berries, tho today I'm not taking anything at all.  And my BP is still only slightly elevated...but I feel so much better already.  Just having some crackers and OJ for now, too.  Hope my Vitacost order gets here quick with my massive dose Vit C.

The lower dose of verapamil was starting to spike my BP again, and really made me feel like crap to boot: lightheaded, dizzy, weak, MIGRAINES (A week of them!  I'm surprised that the shingles and Bell's Palsy didn't get reactivated AGAIN!), flushing, nausea, and an occasional sudden cough that didn't have any readily apparent cause and I didn't even know is an actual verapamil side effect, being as verapamil ALSO has as side effects lowered resistance to respiratory infection, lung infection, and fluid in the lungs.  Of course I had to find this out on my own.  Fucking side effects are worse than the thing it's supposed to 'cure', and prevented me from exercising the last few days.  Verapamil wasn't even effective without the vitamins and supplements, which leads to the logical question "Was it doing any good AT ALL, or was all the work being done by the supplements?"  I still have $70 some dollars to pay for the stupid drugs they've given me since January that I'm not using.

Not telling the doc for a few days, no...

--Moony

Warm today, so the seedlings and succulents are outside to get some sun.  I'm going to have to try to transplant the tomatoes long before they're actually ready for it, as I don't want to risk Madeline eating them.  I could put them in the window in the storage bedroom, but that only gets a bit of morning light, and I could also put the light I've used the last several years in there, but while that would be safe for Madeline vs. the plants, I'm uncomfortable with leaving such a hot light where I am not able to keep an eye on it the entire time it's on.  Yeah, I could use it in the living room instead, but same problem with Madeline having access to the plants.  Tomatoes are poisonous to cats.

Speaking of plants she's murdered, the remaining pepper hasn't grown AT ALL since the day she ate it's buddy.  And weirdly enough, the stem from the eaten one that I cut and left in the pot...is still green.  I'm pondering maybe burying most of it and seeing what happens, perhaps when I transplant the still live one, which I may do some time this week since it's not growing anymore where it is.  *sigh* I seem to have such trouble with picky peppers...

Madeline just...leaked some white liquid.  I say leaked 'cause I didn't hear her throw up even tho she was only 6 feet behind me, and really can't confirm which end it came out of...and it's definitely not a hairball, tho might have had some hair in it.  She chomped on something else I really didn't want her chomping on (the wrapper around my printer paper) so I gave her some Zantac and put her in the bathroom for the third time today.  *sigh*  I have like $40 left until the 1st, not even enough to get her an exam at the vet since I also have only 1/8th of a tank of gas which is not enough to get there and back.  She's only eaten treats so far today, too, and hasn't pooped since the day before yesterday.  *sigh*  Don't really know what else to do.

--Moony

Making some things in your fitness game only available at night, for which yes, a player can change the game time during the real day...but only if they have collected all the Magical Clock pieces for that particular hour...and know what hour they need in the first place and how to change it.  Which you kiiiiind of forgot to mention in your player's guide.

 'Cause otherwise they have to do what I did which was get up in the morning and walk around to collect points to construct the not-available-for-construction-at-night path to where the Pisces piece was the night before, then return in the evening to be bitterly disappointed that the piece wasn't there, and then wait until 1 am to see IF the piece would show up at THAT time.  Which it did and now I finally have my constellation in the night skies of a video game.  Yay! I deserve to celebrate my digital accomplishment, dammit, since I put 3 hours and 9.3 miles today into the effort! :D

And when I took a break from it I poured compost in the half-barrel planter, then lettuce seeds, and went ahead and planted the marigold seedlings in the middle since they weren't really thriving on the windowsill and I figured what the hey, it's about as warm outside as it is in.  I guess this year I just don't have a good windowsill for sprouting like I have the last few years.  I also discovered that the one bag of local organic compost seems to have a lot of little pieces of plastic in it (hopefully it's just the one bag), but since sifting them out and attempting to put the compost back in the bag and return it would be a waste of time, I'm not worrying about it.  And there was an earthworm in it, who is now in my vermitato bin, so it can't be that bad.

--Moony

It's getting harder and harder to keep Madeline eating sufficient amounts of food.  The only things she's eating regularly without encouragement are the Trader Joes treats and her vitamin treat.  It seems like I have to keep changing the strategy with the Prowl and the small amount of Wellness kibble I have left until next month, and whatever else I can get her to eat or to mix in to get her to eat her regular food.  Canned tuna water and salmon oil don't work as well as they did just a few weeks ago.  Pepcid doesn't seem to make a lot of difference.  Locking her in the bathroom for 10-15 minutes or so each meal like I used to do the year I took her in also seems to help.

Today, we're trying several small meals instead of two big ones and one small one in between.  Maybe I should just carry a few kibbles along every time I go to the bathroom.  Sigh.

On another note, I looked up some hints for Walk It Out last night after spending half an hour just trying to get to one Pisces piece that was on a part of the island that didn't apparently exist.  And I found out that some things aren't available except at certain times of day, and that's what the 'Magical Clock' bits are for - so you change game time when needed (too bad Konami took down their list of what is available when).  I just played that particular character after I woke up, and magically there was a pier for building so I can go get my darned piece tonight and have my very own Zodiac sign in the sky. :D  I also read that you can play it by not actually walking on the balance board but just shifting weight back and forth while you stand on it.  It didn't sound like it would be as good of an exercise as walking on the board, but this morning when my feet started to get kind of numb I decided to give it a try.  At first it felt kind of silly moving my hips back and forth to the music but then I discovered...BOY WAS I WRONG!  Sure, it's easier on the feet, but not on the torso!  My back isn't stiff now, either, which is nice.  Unfortunately the board has more trouble detecting your 'steps', so the game itself is harder, too.  Prior to getting it I'd read that a lot of people don't like the music because they claimed it was 'all current popular music'...which isn't actually true.  Outside of several licensed songs (from the 80's on up)  lot of it apparently is from Konami's unused original music library from their dance games.  I unlocked one yesterday that even sounded like a Vocaloid song.

--Moony

In my email this morning:

 Do not swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from
evil. 
    -- Proverbs 4:27

--Moony