journaling like it's 2005

Blue Field Entopic Phenomenon. Google says this about it: "The blue field entoptic phenomenon (or Scheerer’s phenomenon) is the normal, harmless perception of white blood cells moving as tiny, bright, rapidly moving dots or "sprites" in the retinal capillaries, particularly when viewing bright blue light."  Sometimes I enjoy looking at something bright like the sky so I can try to keep my eye on them. It's hard to keep them in the center of your vision. I didn't know what it was till today when I just now looked it up. I thought it was something related to floaters but it's something different.

Jan and I were supposed to hike today but I canceled. I think she was glad I did. It's cold. 17F but with windchill it's only 7. Looking forward to a pleasant day inside with crochet and netflix. 

The Entity this morning. I got out the z5 camera for a change. I can't remember the name of the weird lens that is on it. It's meant for an old style 35 mm camera. I might remember the name later. It's not on the lens.

Hazel didn't end up coming up yesterday so I have lots of free time until Sebastian's birthday dinner tonight. We're eating at the chinese buffet so that makes it easy for me - no cooking.


Bluetit that I finished yesterday. We don't have bluetits in america and I've never seen one in person but the pattern was in the book and it's pretty cute. Next I'd like to somehow change the pattern and make the bird be colored as a nuthatch or tree sparrow for Dave. Those are his favorite birds. He seems to be taking more of a delight in these little amigurumi things than I would have ever imagined. Usually he's not that interested in my artwork or the crochet things that I make. Oh, he's supportive for sure of everything I do but he is much more animated about liking the little crocheted creatures for some reason.


Snow. Almost all the snow had melted in the last couple days and then this morning when I woke up there was snow again. About 2 to 3". I actually gasped aloud when I saw it. I was all ready for Spring to be here.

I finished a gnome yesterday. I think I'll give this one to Leon. I can imagine some changes to this: flowers (instead of just white spots) on the hat, white beard instead of gray, blue clothes, green hat. I think Candy would like one like that to remember Bill by.

Jules and I are heading to Pittsburgh to pick up Hazel this afternoon. A few weeks ago I didn't imagine that Skye would last till now. I'm glad she did and she's doing fairly well. She was Hazel's cat in the start and they'll get to see each other one more time.

Waves.

When I got home from group I took the dogs for a walk down to the creek. The creek water is high from all the melting snow but not up over the bank. The ground feels mushy. I came home from that and it was such a nice day I went over and spent some time in the goat shed writing in my journal and catching up on that. I hadn't written anything since September. A few pictures: ( Read more... )

We are living in a very misty, foggy world right now. The air is warm (43F). This picture is from a walk down back we took yesterday afternoon. Rainy is wearing her red sweater because she just had her haircut on Tuesday and she needed a little protection. 

Dave went ice fishing - there is still thick ice on the lakes. I'm leaving for women's group soon. Need to get ready and get going...

A picture of Skye last evening. From this angle you can't see how grotesquely she is swollen in the middle because of the mass on her liver. She looks like herself here - pretty kitty - not the skeleton she's become. The closet bed where she spends most her time is to the left. She's doing pretty well with the new way of feeding I'm doing now. I had been mixing water into her pate food thinking that more fluids would be good. But now I'm thinking that having all that fluid sloshing around in her stomach made her throw up more. She has basically quit throwing up now (I hope I didn't jinx it). Throwing up was one of the things that the vet tech warned me was an end-stage sign of suffering and that made me very concerned. Now I'm feeding her teaspoonfuls of pate at multiple feedings during the day and that seems to work. She still is constipated but she was constipated when I was giving her water in her food so I'm guessing that wasn't the reason she was constipated - it's because of the mass pressing on her intestines. I would say that the thing she is "suffering" from the most is constipation. She cries out when she's trying to go. But as long as she's loving eating, and she's peeing everyday then I'm thinking she's still doing okay.


A little blue lobster for Sebastian.


This is the piece of fancy paper that is next up in my everything book. I plan to use it as a substrate for today's art a day. But it seems wonderful just as it is. I feel like I'd hate to ruin it by redirecting attention/drawing over the wonderful texture that's there already. I'm having serious blank canvas syndrome. Could I possibly put today's date and nothing else on it?


A small section photo-processed for contrast. 

From a walk we took yesterday. The creek, looking downstream. A blanket of snow was on the ice at the edges so it made the creek look more narrow than it really is. This is where the creek flows on our side of the island.


Lake. A little flock of Canada geese. The snow crust was firm enough yesterday that Rainy could walk on it without going through so that was nice for her. This is the first time Rainy and I have been to the lake for a while because it was too difficult for her in the deep snow and it's been too cold too.


Dad's chair and Dave at the top of cemetery hill.

It's relatively warm weather right now. 35F at the moment. The snow feels grainy with a thin crust on top. If I was an eskimo I'd have a special name for that kind of snow. Perhaps this is it: Pukak - crystalline, salt-like snow?

Here's an amusing list of eskimo snow names. I think most of them were made up.

I made a dozen cranberry orange muffins last night. They were good! I rarely make muffins. Seems like too much trouble to spoon batter into 12 individual cups (I'm a very lazy cook) when I could make one cake instead, but it was nice to have muffins for once. I'm supposed to make a vegan chocolate cake for Sebby's upcoming birthday and for that I was thinking individual cupcakes would be nice for a change. That's why I got out the muffin tins in the first place.

The day is going slowly. I may take an extra nap. I drove Roswell to work at 8. I may or may not need to pick him up later. Depends on if his car is finished being fixed today.