Future Worms!

Friday

I was up early--very early, too early, 2:30 in the morning kind of early--to take my medication and pack Dave's lunch. He took his leftover cheese and no-green-chile pizza, Greek yogurt and berries (straw-, rasp- and blue-), a small bag of vegetables (baby carrots, sliced English cucumber, and grape tomatoes), and an apple.  I also prepped yogurt and berries for myself, as well as vegetables to have later.  Of course for breakfast, I finished up my buffalo wings and ranch dressing from the night before. I also had the last two slices of garlic toast dipped in the last bit of marinara sauce.

I had gotten up ridiculously early and was yawning and ready to go back to bed to catch another forty winks. So I did. I put a documentary on Netflix (lately I've been listening to the "Wildest" series from the BBC, Wildest Indochina, Wildest Islands, etc.), put a pillow over my eyes to block out the light and promptly fell asleep.

I woke up a few hours later to a beeping text reminder. My aunt had sent me a text. She and my mother were having dinner and then going swimming later. Did I want to join them? I did, but Dave and I had made plans to go out to dinner and then over to the studio. I have a sculpture there that is missing arms and a head and it wasn't going to be possible to let it sit another day and still be able to attach them. So I sadly declined the offer of dinner and swimming. Hopefully I'll get to go next week when they get together.

After I woke up, I had my lunch: The yogurt and veggies from earlier as well as two slices of Dave's pizza. I was feeling dehydrated, so I drank a couple of huge glasses of water--and then immediately undid that by drinking two cups of coffee.

I had a shower and my skin was so dry after that I broke out my bag of samples from Sephora to see if there was anything in there to try. I ended up trying two things: FRESH's rose eye cream (which was a little too light and sticky to really help with my dry, scaly skin) and a glycerine-based cream from Japan called YuBe (which worked well enough and miraculously didn't produce an allergic reaction). I will try the YuBe cream more extensively today and, if it still doesn't cause me to react, I'm going to invest in a larger tube.  I don't like the initial smell much; it's got camphor in it, which reminds me of Vicks VapoRub, but it dissipates fairly quickly.

In the afternoon, I read, watched a few TED talks online. I saw one that I really liked, a game designer was explaining how she came to invent a game called SuperBetter that has had a lot of success alleviating symptoms of anxiety and depression in people. It's interesting. I went online and checked it out.

Miracle of miracles, Dave got off work a little early! We sat for a bit chatting and shredding some old bank statements. That sounds weird, doesn't it? We separated out old banks things quite awhile ago, but we didn't have a paper shredder, so they just sat there. We picked up the world's tiniest shredder weeks and weeks ago at Costco, but just never got around to using it. So yesterday, as we were talking, I pulled out the bank statements and the shredder and we sat and shredding things. There was so much to shred that we ended up overheating the motor on the shredder and it quit on us before we were finished.  We put it aside and went out and had an early dinner at Thai Vegan.

We went to the Thai Vegan up near the studio and had a little mini-feast. We started with ginger drinks, iced, and "freshy rolls," which are rice paper rolls filled with tofu, greens, and so on. Then we shared an order of orange "chicken" (soy chicken, breaded and fried and coated in a sugary orange sauce) and an order of Chinese broccoli with tofu. Both came with rice. 

After dinner, we went to the studio for several hours. I added arms to my sculpture, then a head. That took about two hours. I should have gotten pictures, but by the time I thought to do it, I had already wrapped the thing back up to try to get the moisture to equalize over the piece so the new additions don't just pop off. After that, I started to work on some of the bisque that came out of the last firing. I underglazed a few things, broke off a piece of the sculpture that I repaired last time (sigh) and repaired it again. I'm not touching it again until after I re-bisque it.

We came home via the co-op, where we picked up some protein-based things to add to all the vegetables we have in the house. We bought two packs of tofu (one of which I stuck immediately in the freezer), meatless meatballs, Quorn nuggets, and eggs. We also picked up tortillas, cat food, and two loaves of the low-sodium bread I eat. It was on sale, about a dollar-fifty off the usual price. I also looked over the moisturizers there. Most things, even the uber-expensive "all-natural" and organic creams, have something in them--fragrances, essential oils, etc--that I have had some reaction to in the past. The only thing that seemed promising was a very simple cream made of olive oil and beeswax. I put a bit of the tester on my inner arm to see if it would cause a reaction. It didn't seem to, so I may go back and buy some today just to try it out.

At home, we put everything away and then I shredded the rest of the bank statements. I was so inspired by the shredded paper that I sat down to read the instruction manual for the worm composter that Kelly and Kevin gave us for Christmas. (It uses shredded paper as part of its "brown" material, and now we have lots of shredded paper!) I think it's warm enough out that we can start to use it. I'm going to set it up today and see if we can get some worms next week. Yay, future worms!