The Realm

I hope everyone's having a merry Christmas. I see I haven't posted since mid July. It's not that stuff hasn't happened. A lot has happened and mostly annoying stuff with jerk neighbors. Not sure if I'll talk about that in this post or not. I still have to do the year in review for 2022 which was a bad year for sure though it's becoming a faint memory now. This one was like 2022's little bad brother. I'll have to do a back dated post for 2022 as it was a turning point year despite all the bad. I have also been dealing with the stress of getting rid of clutter in my life still. It was this year or the end of last year that I came to the realization that other than photos and letters I actually FINISHED with my mother's junk. I don't know when that happened but I found that I was blaming her for the mess when I really couldn't anymore. And the focus turned on getting rid of stuff that was ours now. Mostly mine. I don't' mess with Chris's things but I'll be happy to help him when he asks as I think after more than 7 years I am now a "master" level organizer. You know what they say about 10,000 hours doing anything and you're a master. Well if ten thousand hours is 1.14 years and I've been doing this rounding on 8 years yeah. Of course it's easier if you don't have stupid sentimental value getting in the way making things hard to let go of. I'm an INTJ but we put the few emotions we have into objects and possessions. But this year I'm finally seeing space in our house. The garage seems to be the main hub of the house. If it's in order the rest of the house mostly is. If it's a mess then everything's a mess. There is some shelf space in the garage finally. And there is floor space in the livingroom finally. I'm hoping once I reach my goal of what I consider finished I can show before and after. But I have finally cleared the big couch and a space on the small couch in the master bedroom. So that has been the other big stress factor in my life this year.

The dog has actually gotten better. She's currently 1 year and 10 months old. We're rounding on her second birthday fast which is also on our anniversary of Feb 4th. I love February for that and for Valentine's Day. Also Valentine's is the start of Spring for us. Chris got me two new budgies this year that I have yet to name. A regular olive green male and an English cobalt male. I'm hoping I can breed one of them to Emma 3 which is the last of my line. My line is majorly endangered. I NEED to get babies out of her. Does not matter the color of the dad or the babies right now. I can breed color mutations back into the line. Right now it just needs to be saved. Please pray about that. I have her with the blue English male. She doesn't seem interested.

I'm going to have to get into a flamewar soon probably on youtube. A guy I'm subscribed to has stolen my ending phrase that I always use for my videos. I should have confronted sooner but well all of the above was happening. Three times I've brought it up and for the first time he's given me the silent treatment. Ok, this means war, once I have time to make a post here and on youtube with all my evidence. So that should be forth coming. You guys know how I operate. Sit back and watch the fun.

The chickens are doing well. I had so much drama this year because I hatched my own birds for the first time. Incubating and using a mother hen was a new experience for me. Seems all these things need posts of their own.

And spiritually because things have been so bad with how evil the world is becoming Chris and I have dove even deeper into God's Word. We're studying a lot more. Our three main pastors are Pastor Gene Kim, Robert Breaker and the late Dr Ruckman. I wish I could have met Ruckman. Watching him kind of reminds me of when I used to go to Christian school. I got the basic milk foundation that kept me out of trouble when I went out into the real world and to university and work. But we didn't start to learn meat studies until 2018. So thankful for that. Things like prophecy, the King James Bible, history of Bible believers and other things that make sense in current events. The more I grow in truth the less and less tolerance I have for wickedness and the stupidity of this world.

Ok so that's it for now. Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.
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Hey guys I'm still here. I think about LJ and posting everyday. I wish I could keep up with it like I used to. I used to post pretty much on a daily basis. Even youtube is hard for me to keep up with. This is one of those good news bad news posts though. I think I said in my previous entry that things were slowly starting to look better and I hoped I was out of the storm. Things got better in September. Nope, I guess I was passing through the eye. I also said in July this year needed something amazing in the last half to get a passing grade of so so. That didn't happen either. The hardest things have been the stupid dog first and then the slow going on the chicken coop. Close runners up are the cross bill chicken that is going to be a baby bird for 10 years if I can keep up with the feedings. I don't know if I can keep her alive for her full life span. All that food, time and materials are so hard on me. I have to tube feed her. And then is the accidental rooster. All of this is tons of extra work and stress I did not need.

Ok here's some good news. I've been dreading Olive turning 9 months. That's when dogs are supposed to be at their worst. It's the time people get rid of dogs. But Olive has always been a month a head of schedule it seems. Perhaps I've gone through the worst already. It sure has sucked. The aggression to other dogs and animals is the worst thing you can have and not fair to a first time dog owner. I think the only thing worse is aggression towards people. Thank goodness she loves people. But I'm still always nervous of taking her out because she could go after someone's dog while walking. But anyway she's a people dog for sure. I'm so glad.

So we took her to Thanksgiving at Chris's parents. We were a bit worried about her jumping on them out of happy stupid puppy energy though. I do not want her knocking down seniors. But thankfully I think she knows this now. I told them that if she did try to jump on them to just give her a good solid knee to the chest. This doesn't hurt her but she'll get the message. Luckily that was never the case. I put a cute turkey bandana on her so she was all nicely "dressed" for the holiday. Mom fed her tons of food even though we brought a meal for Olive. Dad played ball with her in the backyard and then after dinner we all had a nice chat in the living room. Olive became the 50lbs lap dog trying to get into the arm chairs with everyone where she did not fit. It was funny. She loved the couch because it was under a window and she could "guard" the house that way. We don't let her on our couches often so she was so happy there. She's also great in the car. We just put her in the back of the jeep and clip her to the roll bar.



In fact here's the photo I took of her on the way there. Also she's finally house broken now other than one weird thing. She will pee or poop on concrete. So she will pee on a patio or a garage. It recently happened to me but I was there to get on her case. I think this is because she was badly raised by the breeders in a shed and she grew up on concrete. She had the bad elbows when we got her and missing hair. It's all grown back now thank goodness. She also doesn't understand that you don't rip up beds and sometimes prefers to sleep on a hard ground. That can't be good. I wish I could give her a nice cooshy bed and pillows. She also rips her blankets which bugs me so much as I want to buy her nice things. It's been hard teaching her to be a house dog. Anyway she was almost a perfect dog at mom and dad's. At our house she puts her mouth on everything and we have to stop and chase her from grabbing paper and tissues. So glad she didn't do that there. Because of that I've been giving her more out of pen time which is what I want. I want a normal dog that will be with me in the house but I don't have to worry about constantly when they are out of sight. IF they are gone there's a 90% chance they're doing something wrong. And we're far from trusting her alone loose in our house. Of course our house is full of temptations that can't be gotten rid of. Mostly birds dropping food on the floor constantly, feathers, and just stuff everywhere that's ours.

I also hate how much I talk about her now. I tell Chris she's actually the lowest ranking pet as far as I'm concerned. Even the frogs out rank her. She can move up the ranks by obeying and behaving for me. But this is a testament of how much time she steals from me and my other pets. I miss Minion the budgie so much. And Emma 3.0.

Ok so the other bad thing that happened two days ago. First let me post another photo.



Our chicken coop is really coming along. In this photo we have the first wall of the run up. Notice the pink thing. That's Olive's tongue. I had not idea she was liking the new wall til I looked at this pic. HA ha. Notice she only has one ear. That's another stress factor for me and her. I have been posting the ear and it just won't stand. It stands for a little (four days was the most) then falls over. I HATE that. Dobermans should have floppy ears. They look terrible. They look like hounds. I know it's hard to get her ears to stand since they aren't cropped but I think it's possible. The right one is perfect so the left one needs to follow suit. I think it can because it has been standing. I've been feeding her shark cartilage and bully sticks to try to get the ear to harden up. As well as to continue to post which is a literal wrestling match every three days. I always win. "Pinned ja again!"

Ok so in the photo notice the long 20 foot purple leash she wears. We put that on her because her recall or her COME command sucks. She comes when she feels like it. That does not fly with me. If she doesn't come I go get her every time no matter how long it takes until she realizes resistance if futile. Look up Beckmans Dog Training video called The Go Get Method. So the leash is there for that and also for playing fetch because she's great at chasing and catching but won't return the ball. So we step on the leash and reel her in like a fish. Well two days ago we were outside and she ran past me. I was wearing long boots. I usually do for protection in the yard from the leash. My dog can run 30 mph. But some how this time the leash got wrapped around the back part of my knee and she gave me a terrible rope burn. It's been super painful. Just cleaning it with water caused a lot of very loud screaming on my part. Stupid dog! I lost a big patch of skin and have a big gash along the back of the left knee. I definitely need prayers for recovery. Despite all these things after Thanksgiving Olive does seem like a better dog. A slight improvement. Mostly not so energetic in the house.

Now something other than dogs though a lot of this is indirectly dog influenced. Ok so earlier in the year when I got sick for like two months because we did not know I had kidney stones, a lot of my plants and pets suffered. Chris was great taking care of everything for me. Unfortunately I lost my whole collection of isopods and springtails. I think I had like six species. I've been in the process of trying to recoup my losses. I placed three orders with different sellers on Ebay. I think Ebay is the way to go for the more common types. This way you aren't paying tons of money on shipping like you would from websites. I wish I could order from the sites as they have some unique stuff but for only a few or if I want a cheap 12 dollar species it's not worth it that they want to ship it for 40 dollars. That does not benefit me at all. And they won't do normal priority mail shipping. They do 2 day or over night. I think that should be a choice not forced. If I chose to risk priority mail that's my choice and my fault if the bugs die or get lost. Well that's kinda what happened with my first two orders though. I ordered from a seller in Virginia and a seller in California. The tracking on neither order ever changed. It just said label created. The expected date came and went and no bugs. I at first though the item hadn't been scanned by the mail service. Sometimes track doesn't update til you get it and then all the cities it goes through show up at once. Annoying but that wasn't the case this time. So I wrote them.

Virginia guy was great. He said he didn't know there was a problem and went to his post office and asked what was wrong. That's customer service. Turns out the under paid postage for adding a heat pack. No bugs died. He rehydrated them and I got them. All were great. California guy was a bit more flippant. "Oh they probably got lost. I'll just send another batch." Well ok, but sucks he didn't even look into it as they are rare living things. I also wasn't too happy when I got those because even though I knew I was getting juveniles these were super teeny tiny. I might never see them til they get big months later. And then I will worry if they are even alive or escaped or what? I did get two extras but they could have been a bit bigger. I have NEVER bought juveniles this small. They were the Japanese line of magic potion isopods btw. Today I am waiting on an ispod I have been wanting forever. Porcellio spatulatus. They are a drab ugly grey color but it's not the colors that make these so cool. I think these guys look just like trilobites. It's crazy how they look. They are out for delivery today. These are the most difficult species I will have in my collection. Not sure if they are super hard but compared to other I've had I know these are harder as they are from dry environments I think from Spain. So wish me luck I can keep them alive and get them to breed.

Lastly my chickens have started to lay eggs. Another stress factor for me as I wanted them in the new coop before egg laying started. We still have a long way to go before the coop is ready.



Lastly enjoy this photo of our pretty lights on the fence. And I finally got a set of spiral trees. I have been wanting these for years. I LOVE them. On and the white dot and the green dot on the fence are my LED glass snowman and glass tree.
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It's Christmas Eve. I know some countries celebrate the 24th. I don't know why, makes no sense but yeah anyway.

I got a gift yesterday that surprised me. Someone sent a gift for my birds. Please tell me if it was you. There was no note from the sender. Just a thank you from the manufacturer Lafabers. I didn't order it so Minion and Co have secret admirerers or something. Here is a video I made.




https://youtu.be/YdFl7XbMjOg

Wingo, is feather biting and mutilating himself. Sigh, I thought we were making progress. I've never had a feather picking bird. But I've bought all my birds as babies or raised them myself so I've never had a used, abused bird. He chewed his tumor and it was bleeding. I'm mad at him. I'm going to have to find some type of bitter spray once it heals to help with this picking. I did order some protein powder called Feather Fast that has good reviews. It goes on the food and helps with molting.
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I made a lot of progress in the garage yesterday. I ended up working all day on it. Chris wants to try to take those shelves apart on his next day off. Good I want those out of there. I'm extremely tired from that and slept late today. I think today I will not work on it much. I need to just get the empty bins out of the way so I can at least get the jeep back in. But I need to focus on other things as I'm running out of time. I need to send out cards already so I may work on a bunch of those today. I need to wrap up the Bullet journal before the end of the year. And I need to finish some jeep grab handles before Christmas. Yeah so unfortunately I think the garage needs to be put on hold until after the 25th. Finances are tight this season unfortunately. I probably can't get everyone gifts like I usually do. I'm sorry about that but you all will get cards. And you'll probably get late gifts...and probably late cards. It's a shame because I really do enjoy giving no matter the time of year. I tend to do "just because gifts".

Going back to talking about shelves. I got the new white book shelves in a few days ago. But UPS damaged one of the boxes so the backing board at the top of the first one was ripped. Luckily that's all it was. I contacted the company and they'd said they'd send me a free replacement board. I told them I haven't opened the other box yet but don't think that one got damaged. Well that project is all on hold. I got the books out of the other shelf. They are now cluttering the bedroom. We can never keep our house uncluttered whether intentional or not. So for now I have an empty broken shelf and a mess. I hope that part gets here soon but with it being Christmas the mail is being stupid. Also these shelves are about 5 inches shorter in width. My last ones were 29 inches wide and these are 24 plus or minus. Ok that's a lot of space lost actually. 5 x 5 x 2 = 50. 50 inches lost is A LOT!! How am I getting 50 inches? well the five inches of the width, times five shelves times the two book shelves for each side of the room. That's like a loss of two shelves and now I am worried the books will not fit like they did before. I may have over flow which would suck. But they are so much better in white. I will still use them and get rid of the old black ones. I liked about the old ones is that I had space left over for other things.

By now you guys have probably seen my wish list here and on youtube. I've made an Amazon wishlist for Minion and Nautica too. I need to announce that one still. Well I'm hoping this year to stock up on Amazon cards for a new rear bumper for my jeep. And also hoping to stock maybe on Ebay cards as right now I have many plants I'm watching I really want. So hopefully Santa will deliver this year.

So I've officially gotten into cactus and succulents now. Cactus more than succulents. I'm very picky about succulents. My faves are agaves, members of the stapelia family like the starfish flowers. In fact that's where it all started really. And maybe some aloes. That's about it really. Chris brought me an aloe yesterday. He did a job at a mechanic and they had a small garden. He pointed out they were nice and they said they hated it and take what he wanted. So he took one big cutting for me. I'm waiting for it to callus over. I hope this one will do well for me. I've actually never had luck with aloe. I really need some nice greenhouses or poly tunnels. Three maybe would be nice to have for tropicals like nepenthes, cactuses, amorphophallus and veggies. Ok so four.

The birds are doing well. Minion is now up to 132 words. I've been teaching him the first part of Gilligan's Island. So he's learning
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship

"Tiny ship" is his favorite part. He says that a lot.
Oh new Fear Christmas icon.
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I hope everyone had a very good Christmas this year. Mine was great. On the 24th, I got to open one gift. I chose the gift from my half sis, S. She sent me these cool stencils for my Bullet Journal. I also got some clear stickers I can print on. These are for a project where I want to try to make a custom PS4 controller. Chris got his early gift too. He got a Patagonia jacket and shirt like the one I have from me and his mom. We went to his parents house and had a nice time there. We opened gifts from them and got some very nice things. I got lots of gift cards for Amazon. I really needed those this year. Chris brought his guitar and his dad pulled out his harmonica and they played Christmas music together. That was cool and I felt left out and wished I had brought my bass. Whenever there's is live music I always feel like joining in and not just listening. Bands are the few times I become very extroverted and want to be part of a group. Then we got a call from our friend Mike to go to his party on the 25th. We said yes because he's been awesome to us over the years helping us when we go on vacation. So the least we could do is go to his party. Anyone else and we'd have said no.

The next morning we had our own Christmas.



Here are the gifts we saved for actual Christmas day. We opened them in Chris's room.



This is my nativity set I have had for a very long time now. I pulled out that cute little tree since we didn't set up a tree this year. So we had that to open presents under.



And here's our haul picture. Almost everything is here, but I forgot a few things. Not pictured is the new clothes Chris got and my gifts from S. I guess because we opened them early and put them away we forgot. So let's see. From the top is my new Xbox 1 X. Though technically a Thanksgiving gift I threw it in there as "The Big One". Far left is a new head set stand for Chris's head sets. A sprayer from jokerforever for my plants. That was very cool. I DO need that to spray meds and fertilizers on them. It's the perfect size and shape for me. Not too small and not too big. Chris got a Jurassic Park shirt from his aunt. A different aunt not the one in Georgia. She knows I'm the major JP fan. I was a bit bugged that someone doesn't know how huge a fan I am when I have a jeep half decked out in JP stuff. Unfortunately the shirt is an XL so I can't steal it. I can do a L but not an XL. XL is too big even for Chris though. I am considering wearing it with a belt as a dress and leggings. 80s style. Next is Ian Malcolm Chris got me. I had no idea there was a Malcolm figure out. Now if only they'd make a Hammond and a Nedry it would be great. A Mosasaur for me. I had given up on getting one of those but Chris surprised me with that. I had not expected it. That's great. I look forward to putting him together once our house is more organized. It's a huge 26 inch figure. Jurassic World employee handbook from Joker. That's so cool. Hot sauce and dishes for Chris from hi mom. Cards. The black one is for me from Chris. I love on the envelope he posted it as "Scary wife" since I am Scary Fear and he knows how much I love and relate to him. The blue one is from Drafthorse trainer, and the owl is from actipton80. She also sent me an Amazon card. The Lord of the Rings Game was for me but I don't like those movies at all so I ended up giving it to Chris. It's like we got backwards gifts this year. Chris got a nasal spray thing. I also got him that charger for PS4 controllers. It can charge 2 controllers at once. It's pretty neat. he got some kind of little mini guitar too. More gift cards and the round things are for ear buds so they don't get tangled up in stuff. The purple one is his and the blue one is mine. I still have stuff coming in from Amazon so I will have to do a part 2 photo to this.

And here is a video I want to share with everyone.


https://youtu.be/YhQ_ovCd5NM

I am very tired from all this today. I want to drive out and pick up the cards but I may not. I'm in no condition to drive and I've had too much socialization the last two days. I feel bad about the cards being later and later but I am technically still sick with a stuffy nose, so I may just stay home as I have the house all to myself and it's quiet.

Happy birthday to samanthafalco
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Merry Christmas everyone. I had a very nice one. Chris and I celebrated yesterday at his parents. We had a nice time and I helped my mother inlaw set up her google home mini. That was a lot of fun and I showed her some fun things to do like find out what Santa is doing. I got gift cards to Amazon, Ebay and other places. I'll be using them to get some more nepenthes for sure. I just need to figure out what is the best way to go about spending them. I always enjoy the strategy of prioritizing what I want vs what I have. There's not going to be much of a haul pic this year because everything I asked for was digital and the stuff that I am getting will be slowly trickling in through the mail over the next few days. Poor Chris is still not well. I hope he gets over the mild cold or whatever it is soon. I've still got pain in my shoulder from a muscle I pulled. I think that's what happened. As far as art goes not much happening at the moment. Still reworking older pieces but I'm thinking of working on Triangulum Resistance again. I love that story.
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