Actual conversation in our house tonight:

"I'm not ugly, but I'm not pretty. Like, you can be lawful or chaotic pretty, or lawful or chaotic ugly. I'm true neutral."

"I think you're chaotic pretty."

My Aqua Dragons are already hatching, AND...a baby Sea Monkey hatched! That one is from an egg layed by the ones I've been raising since March.

We have to find joy where we can. I'm finding it swimming around with brine shrimp.

#snake - I actually got to see Shai-Hulud at his water bowl today! In almost 4 years I've seen him in positions I recognized as "on the way to water" and "on the way back from water", but never "at the water".

I set up the Aqua Dragons (Artemia salina) tank and added the eggs. Now I have to keep track of two different numbers for days. Day 138 for the Sea Monkeys (Artemia NYOS) is Day 1 for the Aqua Dragons. I'm glad I'm writing this down! 😄

https://youtube.com/shorts/8Vi4GEy77BU?si=YMtXPddTSPTCypHy

Why do I always think an arthritis flare-up that is preventing me from playing instruments is a good time to change my strings?

I've been doing this 20+ years. It's not like I just haven't had time to learn yet.

I'm still awake at Should-Be-Asleep o'clock. It's been a physically rough week. Decided to play with the digital collage thing again and do a Lake Monster one.

There have been days when I got out of bed because I needed to pump air for them and add to the video diary. Then I might as well start the day since I'm up.

Many things bring me joy, but they do it even on days when nothing else does. I never expected to be raising brine shrimp for mental health, but it seems to work for me.

I'm getting more Sea Monkey supplies because the second on died today. I started them 130+ days ago. These aren't going back to cyst to hatch in better conditions. They just don't last forever. I'm afraid the rest might go over the next month, so I'll need to start new ones. Also going to try Aqua Dragons, which are a varient of the same species of brine shrimp.

This is like how I've seen people argue that if they don't have children in school - homeschooling, or kids have already gratuate, etc - then it's not fair for them to still have to pay taxes for funding public schools.

Those kids in school are going to be your emergency responders, store clerks, and a lot of other roles in your community one day. Just because they aren't your kids doesn't mean this has nothing to do with you.

#politics The very idea that one does not have a "direct stake" in the future of the US unless one has biological children...wtf??? I can only make sense of that as a lack of empathy. You shouldn't only be able to love your biological child like that. You can want the best for anybody's children. You can want the best for people you don't even know just because you know they exist.

Okay...he hunted, caught, and prepared his meal. Still waiting on the "eating" part. He seemed to forget it was there for a few minutes, came across it again, and acted like it's suspicious because it's dead.

Sir, YOU did that!

After 9 weeks, Shai-Hulud is eating again! And he did shed, so that explains why he wasn't eating. The snake is healthy.

It took me over an hour to do this, and I changed the background four or five times. This would have been a huge mess with magazine cut-outs and glue.

It seems...I don't know, scattered? Sparse? But I'm not experienced with this. I'll be patient with myself.

I just found out about Pinterest Shuffles. Collaging has never been my thing, and I'm now thinking that's because I don't want to deal with the mess. It seems I am willing to do digital collage.

I don't usually do divination on politics, but my dice are not warning about the downfall of the human species. So I guess the dice still have hope!

https://open.substack.com/pub/diydiv/p/dice-reading-on-us-presidential-election

The past few months have been too busy for me to make much time for art. And I don't have the mental energy for details when I'm worn out. I decided tonight that I don't care and just needed to draw something. The lack of caring shows in the poor shading. I'm glad I gave myself some time to do something I enjoy, though.

I'm going to take all my well-intentioned opinions and get them away from the Internet for today. I fear I would start arguing with the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Maybe I'll just go get my opinions some ice cream and keep them distracted.

#snake - Taking pictures is allowed today. It isn't always. He'll come out for me, but can quickly go into the sand when my phone comes out.

You know the part in the Charlie Brown Christmas special where he has just had it and starts screaming, "Can anybody here tell me what Christmas is all about?!?!?!"

It's July, the situation is different, but I'd really appreciate it if Linus would show up and make everything okay for me. Maybe let me hold the blanket. We could write letters to the Great Pumpkin.