Yeah, it's pretty fun, but challenging. I've grown flytraps on a windowsill for over a decade, but last year started adding to my collection. Still learning. One box of sundews is dedicated to cheese making experiments, but I keep having setbacks like the week we were without water when the pipes burst in Dec.

My paranoid brother in law, who is very much an example of how blaming others for your environment can grow into criminal thinking, will be catching me in the middle of a journaling project titled "How to be Happier" focusing on nurturing an internal locus of control (the polar opposite), and I will be working the project into conversation, fingers crossed he might listen, if even just a little, and I can press him about it next time I see him.

Sigh. The water heater is broken, and the only way we can afford to fix it is to let Joe's Trump supporting, conspiracy theory filled, misogynist brother to come fix it. Last night he barely glanced at it, and spent the rest of the time chasing me around the house trying to get me to watch videos that rant about the cops plotting against him. He's supposed to come by with a part today. With this man, I might be dealing with him all week over this. I just want a bath. 😭

Awwwe, Joe remembered our AC broke last summer and we had to use a window unit that was removed when winter hit. He just said something that indicated he's been keeping an eye on our local weather waiting for it to warm up and contacting his brother who lives locally to arrange if someone needs to move it for us when it looked like it would be about to reach 70. Just quietly watching out for us as best he can from a distance ❤️.

I guess it's a nostalgia day. I thought middle age was going to be a time of sifting through life's lessons, I didn't realize I would be relating all of the lessons to survival quite this much. How to calm people down, guide them through trauma, because if they don't realize they are stuck in a trauma cycle we will all set the world on fire. The oddest part of it is when I recognize the sentiments I want to say came from calm middle aged people, and I realize how many of them felt fire inside.

I swear I just told this dog he couldn't have something and he shook his head no at me. The cheek.

Every now and then I despair of the wide swaths of concrete in our world, then I remember how delighted I was when I first visited Joe in NYC and learned the biggest city in America is actually rather lush where there is a spot to grow in, and full of lovely surprises like that entire house that was lost to ivy. All camera angles just looked like a lump of ivy, then there was this:
(check out the lichens on the bumper)
#nature