00goddess

I think I mentioned that fall 2020-spring 2021 has been the best phalaenopsis season I have ever had.  I bought my first orchid in April 2017. This year a lot of my phals bloomed.

The first one to bloom last fall was either #37, Phal OX Happy Girl '1592' or #65, a NOID. I think it was #65; at the time I was so depressed that I didn't even take a picture of it. I think it started opening in November, then #37 opened soon after. It was the first one that I photographed. Anyway, the cool thing is that both of those orchids are in spike again! Very exciting. #37 still has last fall's spike on; originally it only had 3 blooms, then a month or so after blooming it started growing again and added more. It's not a huge spike but it's hanging in there. The new spike is already very thick, so I am hoping that means a really impressive display this time. The flush of hormones might make the other spike start blooming again.

#65's spike died sometime in January after the bloom was over. It had been repotted into moss shortly before blooming and all the roots had died, plus I wasn't too crazy about how it looked when it bloomed in my house (in the store it was darker in color and prettier) and so I decided to repot it in LECA and seramis, to see how it would do. I figured if it died I wouldn't be too upset, it was a very inexpensive mini. Well, it seems to be thriving in the new medium and it has a spike! So I am pleased. 

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Opal passed peacefully from this life at 7:07 pm. She was at home, in her favorite place, with her favorite people. She was not in pain. She was, and is, loved. Opal was the most amazing little cat and if you knew her, you know how special she was.

She is gone but she will always be with us.

When Dr. P. gave her the sedative, all the pain disappeared from her eyes and I could see the old, happy Opal again, from before she got sick. She was free. I know I made the right choice. She had a wonderful last weekend with her family, and she knew she was loved.

I might write more later but for now I am crying and hurting. I miss my little cat.

"It is not your job to develop your spouse into a person of integrity." - Dr. Joe Beam

So a downside to the floor desk is that I don't move around enough. I bought it so I would change position, but I get engrossed in work and end up in the same position (usually criss-cross or with my legs straight in front of me) and don't notice until it's time to get up, then I am all stiff. I need to set up some app on my PC to remind me to change position.

Because otherwise it's really comfortable and I like it much better than my old desk and chair combo. I added a small lumbar support pillow which was the final comfort piece. B also got me a nice webcam for my PC so now I can do zoom and etc at my desk easily; before I always used my laptop for zoom.

Last week my ears were hurting really bad, and they've really been getting worse for months, so I reluctantly went to the ENT. It turns out I did not have an infection at that time. But my ENT did discover that:

I have conductive hearing loss
I have hypermobile eardrums.

Either of these, combined with my TMJD, could cause my ears to drain poorly or to feel full AND do you know what causes conductive hearing loss and hypermobile eardrums? EDS does. Apparently the conductive hearing loss is caused by the bones becoming hypermobile.

Ugh. If the hearing loss gets worse I will end up needing hearing aids.

Anyway, I have been wearing my poorly-fitting mouth guard since the appt and though it is uncomfortable, I sleep better and wake up without pain. I'm trying to get a new guard made, but my jaw was too small for the trays so I had to ask them to send me a small one. My new guard will be thin so I can wear it all day when I am not with a client.

I did a lot of repots over the weekend. On friday I repotted my Mps Lennart Karl Gottling 'Red Rim,' into a DIY self-watering pot with seramis. Oddly the pot is staying much wetter with the plant in, than the test pot did with only seramis. Oh well, we will see if it dies or thrives. If it dies I will try again with some pumice or LECA in the mix.

Saturday I repotted 4 phals, 3 of them were mini phals I bought last summer or fall that were still in the original pots. I put them all in fresh moss. One was my little stinker; I last repotted it in Jan of 2019, and though it was a little cramped, it could have stayed in that pot. But, it is a heavy drinker and a bigger pot will hold more water and mean I can water it less often. Since the moss was still in good shape, I just dropped it into a bigger pot and added more moss.

Sunday I potted 3 more; one was another mini that I bought last year, still in its original pot. Most of the roots in the pot were dead and it's very dehydrated, but it has new roots and leaves coming so I think it will be fine.  The last two were big phals I bought last fall, that were potted in a bark mix. It was pretty broken down and they were having some root distress, and I have waited almost a year for them to grow some new roots so I could repot. I put them both in moss, I expect that most of the older roots will die but they will grow new ones and be fine.

The only orchids still needing repots are my M. tenuifolias and Oip Bartley Schwarz. I will get to them eventually, i want to put them in self-watering pots if the Mps makes it okay.

I have a bit of an itch for a new orchid. But I don't really have the space right now. Once our living room shelves are built I will be able to get more, I hope B gets that done this fall.

When I started buying orchids, B and I articulated a goal: to have a collection such that something is in bloom all year round. He pointed out yesterday that this year, we accomplished that! This year we've had something in bloom all year. First a NOID phal, then a Gomesa, then an Onc (same one, Sharry Baby, bloomed twice) and right now a Brsdm is in bloom, and a phal and Sharry Baby are in spike. It's nice.

Well that was weird.

I used to have a friend named Kim, I knew her through R's participation in the TOS. She was really nice. But she refuses to text or use social media, so we lost touch around 2016. I've been thinking about her a lot this year though, so I tried to call her, only to find that the number that was hers for decades wasn't anymore. So I reached out to a former mutual friend, who said he hadn't heard from her in years.

I did some snooping around online and found her dad's band (her father apparently died recently) and then her mom on FB. First I wrote to the band and asked them to pass my contact info on, and they said they would pass it to her mom. I thanked them profusely.  I also found who I thought was her mom and sent her the same message: "Hi, I am an old friend of Kim L*** W*** and I am writing to ask if you could pass my contact info on to her. My name is Priscilla and my number is *****. Thank you very much for your help."

That was June 23 and today she replied with one word: "No." I was kind of surprised by that, but I just responded "Ok, thanks anyway!"

I am guessing maybe this isn't her mom but a SIL or something? But what a weird and abrupt response.

Kim if you read this hit me up :)

I dreamed today that the government was randomly bombing the US. I don't know if it was police or military. But it was clearly meant to intimidate, punish, and suppress the people. To terrorize us.

At the beginning of the dream I was grocery shopping, and we heard the jets coming. We ran into rooms without windows to hide.

There was a school building with basement rooms that had been converted into bomb shelters. When we heard jets coming, we would run into the building and into a basement room. Sometimes the rooms were really packed and there was always a fear that there wouldn't be room or the people inside wouldn't let us in. At first we (and other people) felt secure just being in the school building, because we thought they wouldn't bomb a school. But as things got worse we started always going into a basement. Once we heard jets and we were in our home, and we went running to the school to get into the shelters. All the basement doors were closed and B freaked out and jumped down the laundry or garbage chute. I opened the door and there was room for us in the basement room so I went in there.

On bad bombing days, the jets bombed us off and on all day, so we (and all the other people) just spent entire days in the school building, so we could rush into the basements when we heard the jets coming.

Later on in the dream we were outside, sitting in some kind of vacant lot having a picnic or something. Our friend Steve was there too. We saw a helicopter flying toward us but we thought "They can see that we are just people sitting here having a picnic, so they won't bomb us," and then they bombed an empty storage shed right next to us. We had nowhere to run. They shot again at a building in the next lot, but close by on the fence. Then they started buzzing us really low, with the wind from the propellers blowing us around dangerously.

In the next lot behind us there were large dogs, maybe Rottweilers, trying to get over the fence. I don't know if that was significant. But I noticed them before the helicopter came in and was kind of nervous because they were very close to getting over and they looked aggressive.

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This dream made me revisit whether or not we should leave the US. It doesn't feel otherworldly, but there's something there. God moving to another country sounds so exhausting.

It's just so hard for me to believe that the US military would actually attack the US citizenry on a grand scale. Police don't surprise me, but the military is so big and has been trained to see the enemy as people outside the USA. I also think that the USA and its military are so big that it wouldn't be possible for a Nazi Germany scenario to happen here. But maybe I am wrong. I have always underestimated how awful and depraved people can be.

ETA  I told B about this dream and he said it sounded like something happening in Palestine. I think it's highly possiblethat I was seeing something happening somewhere else.

I think I posted here about transitioning my office from a normal desk and chair to a floor-seating desk and a meditation chair? My chair came a few months ago and is very comfortable. I've been sitting on the floor during zoom calls and etc and honestly, it's so comfortable. I love being able to straighten my legs, fold them, bend my knees up in front of me, etc.

But I needed a desk! I finally settled on a plain desk with no keyboard tray or anything. At my typical desk, when I want to write by hand, I have to push in my keyboard tray and roll my chair forward, then to keyboard I roll backward and pull our the tray. it's awkward and breaks my flow. The floor chair has no wheels so I decided on flat desktop; my keyboard is wireless so I can just move it out of the way when I need to hand-write.

So then I needed to look for the desk. I thought I was going to have to use a coffee able and cut the legs. But then I found a Japanese desk with foldaway legs that was the same size as the coffee table but only ~14" high, so I wouldn't need to cut it. Amazon was out of it, but I found it on eBay for a little less than the coffee table, and ordered it last night. It is supposed to be here by next Tuesday and I am so looking forward to getting set up and getting rid of my old chair and desk. I think we're going to take both to the workshop and B can use them over there. The upholstery on my formerly-beautiful chair was ruined by the humidity after Harvey, it's been peeling off ever since, so there's no reason to keep it in the house.

Once I have my new setup, I think I am going to start using a tablet instead of a mouse to navigate, that will get me more used to the tablet and more precise with it, and probably be better ergonomically.

I'm really looking forward to this it's a more comfortable way to work, will make me move more, and will free up space in my room, be more flexible, etc.

This pattern has been going on for months, maybe a year? Saturday I rest, Sunday I get ready for the week (but also try not to do too much). Monday and Tuesday I have a lot of energy and get a lot done. Wednesday, I am tired and start dragging, and don't get as much done as I want. Thursday, I feel exhausted and brain-dead and get very little done, then I feel behind. Friday isn't much better. By Saturday I am tired AF and need that day of rest. After several weeks of this, I feel extremely depleted and end up doing a LOT less for a week or more.

I told myself months ago that I would start taking Wednesday off as a day of rest, but of course I haven't actually done that. I don't want to rest, I want to get shit done. I don't even know what I should do with myself. Read? Crochet? I don't have any project I feel really passionate about (I should be making a blanket for my youngest nephew.) It's ridiculous that I still, even after all these years dealing with fatigue, feel bad about taking a day off.

 Next  week: Wednesday is my enforced day off. I just have to do this.