Gardening at my Family's House

Well, my parents' house is overgrown. Since Mom got sick, nobody has been gardening. Now that I'm living nearby I decided to clean up the property. This weekend I focused on the front. I cleaned out the leaves and debris, added a bird feeder, planted things, added solar lights, and stuck in a couple of flower pots for good measure. I'm posting some before and after photos so you can see it.

Before

The ramp area before was just a leafy mess:

Ramp before.

You can see from this front view that it just looks kind of boring and brown:

General front view before.

Here's a closer-up view of the front garden area before:

Closeup of garden area before.

After

The ramp area looks much better with a couple of big flower pots:

Ramp with big flower pots.

 Here's a shot of the whole thing so you can see the birdbath and cleared out garden. I unearthed a fair amount of rocks and am not entirely sure what to do with them so for now there's a mini rock pile. Maybe it can be a design feature?

Broader area.

And here are the solar lights along the walkway. I'm hoping the ground cover will fill in a bit now that I've trimmed away the dead branches. If that doesn't happen I may just rip it out next year and sow a different ground cover since I'm not 100% sold on this one in the first place.

Solar lights along the path.

I think it looks much better than it did! Next stop: right side of the house!

Seed Starting

It's that time of year again! I've ordered seeds online and today I spent some time starting seeds and re-potting plants with Waldo's Nonna, who I will refer to as Surrogate Nonna from now on. She gave me a heaps of instructions and seeds to take home with me so with any luck I'll have some heirloom cucumbers and tomatoes this year.

Surrogate Nonna re-potting tomato plants.

New Job!!!

Today I had a job interview for a CNA job in pediatrics. Why? Because I'm broke and also I'd like some fancier CNA experience to put on my resume for nursing school.

Interviewer and interviewee. The interviewer asks "So why do you want this job?" and interviewee answers
"Well, I've always been really passionate about not starving to death."

But really. I actually am super excited about this job. The organization has a great reputation, I'm really interested in pediatrics, and this job is the most currently attainable version of my dream nursing job.

Meme of an interviewer and interviewee. The text says,
"Interviewer: describe yourself in one word. Me: hired. Interviewer: (under breath) holy shit can he do that?"

I'm feeling proud of myself because I went out on a limb and applied despite not having the amount of experience they were looking for, I got past the phone interview to an in-person interview, and they hired me! I will now have no life on the weekends, but I'll be gaining valuable experience and I might actually kill off my student loans before I have to take out more of them for nursing school. Huzzah!

Muscles!

Well, today is my Anatomy and Physiology lab practical - about MUSCLES! I've studied my butt of and now know the names of every. single. muscle. in the human body. Bring it!

Anatomical diagram highlighting the trapezius muscle with the words "It's a trap!" overlayed on the diagram.

Brunch, Sewing, and Work - Oh My!

Well, today I went out to vegan brunch (no pictures). I had agreed to pick up a shift with Morning that night so I decided to use it as an excuse to head to Boston early so I could hang out with Tea. We spent the day couponing, sewing, and organizing all of my mother's sewing things that are mine now because she can no longer use them. I can't post photos of the finished projects yet because they're presents, so I'll give you a photo of Tea with her cute new haircut. In this photo, she's surrounded by piles of coupons and mending:

Tea, coupons, and things that need mending.

Aquarium Day

Today I met up with Waldo early so we could go to the Aquarium! Huzzah! Here are some pictures:

Me with a penguin statue outside of the aquarium.

Waldo at the shark and ray touch tank. 

Diver in the main tank.

Sea dragon.

Another type of sea dragon.

Can you spot this fish? 

Seahorses.

Miniature seahorses.

Jellyfish.

Another kind of jellyfish.

I found nemo!

I don't even know what these weird little eels are.

Turtle at the top of the big tank.

Seal training!

Staff member feeding the penguins.

I decided to try on a ridiculous squid hat at the gift shop.

The Aquarium is an easy walk from Faneuil Hall so we went there for dinner and shopping. On our way we stopped to ride a merry-go-round:

The merry-go-round.

Waldo and I on the merry-go-round.

Waldo's favorite movies are Jaws, Halloween, and It. So he was psyched to find this creepy little It doll:

Waldo and the creepy doll.

Friends

My friend Bruno is visiting from Colombia! Huzzah! He came over for dinner and board games and we actually remembered to take a photo of us with Audrey II:

Me, Bruno, and Audrey II.

Free Cone Day!

Today is Free Cone Day at Ben and Jerry's! Follow the good example set by Waldo and me and go get yourself some free ice cream!

Waldo and I eating our free ice cream cones.

Weekend

This weekend was a good one. I kicked off my Saturday by dragging myself out of the house to do laundry in this ridiculous outfit:

Photo looking down at my outfit and my cat looking up at me.
I'm wearing blue and teal booties with tassels, an African print pajama dress, and a gigantic black shawl.

As you can see, even my cat was judging my outfit. After that I hung out with my brother for a bit, then went home and discovered that my cats had once again removed their collars. I don't understand how people keep collars on their cats! I spent the rest of the day catching up on housework and homework.

Sunday was a more interesting day. I started the day off with church, then went over to a friends' house. We burned some brush in the backyard, which made me happy because I love bonfires.

Fire.

After that we went to a Railers' game. The Railers are my city's local hockey team and this is their first season. I was super excited about it because I have good memories of my dad and I going to watch hockey games together when I was a kid (this is back when the Ice Cats were still Worcester's hockey team).

Ready to watch the game and wave about my Railer's foam finger. 

Picture of the hockey game in progress.

As you can see, local hockey isn't that popular. But it does mean the seats are cheap! Related to hockey but not directly to the game, there's a local ice skating rink that has pickup hockey games and I keep thinking I should check them out. Unfortunately I'd have to buy equipment first. It's frustrating that money is so often a barrier to doing cool things.

I Got A Present!

Me in a tank top that says "I just can't believe how chubby, queer, and tired I am."

Sometimes opening the mail is exciting because my awesome friends make me shirts. Thanks Birthday Twin!

Easter Fools

Photo of a Jesus statue winking, pointing, and giving the thumbs up sign.
The text over the statue says "... and you guys though I was gonna stay dead - April fools!"

It's another weird holiday confluence today. This time with Easter Sunday and April Fools. Unlike Ash Wednesday and Valentine's day, this time I was able to do both. I started my day off by going to church and then hosted the second annual Fool's Feast with Aquafabulous. But this post is going to focus on the Fool's Feast!

Aquafabulous' kid with her sidewalk chalk sign that says "Welcome to the Fool's Feast."

For the Fool's Feast I decided to make a chocolate and lemon flavored kitty litter cake. The chocolate layer is on the bottom. The lemon layer is crumbled up lemon cake and lemon-flavored oreos which look like cat litter (I died some green and scattered it on top to add to the effect). The "cat poop" is made out of tootsie rolls that I melted in a microwave and rolled into fecal shapes. And of course the cat box and scoop are brand new and I washed them first:

Disturbingly realistic kitty litter cake.

Other people made a ton of interesting things:

Photograph of the table loaded with food. More guests came with more food after this photograph was taken.

We had vegan deviled eggs, vegan steak, vegan hot dogs, fake mashed potatoes and gravy, worms and dirt, and a few things I liked enough that I took individual photographs:

My cohost made cute little birds' nests which I liked because they were Easter-themed:

Candy birds' nests.

Another guest used her (mother's? grandmother's?) family recipe to make penguins out of eggs, olives, carrots, and cloves. This was healthier than most of the food we had at this party and it would work well for a winter party too:

Penguin parade with salt ice.

My co-host's kid made dessert burgers with cupcake buns, brownie patties, fondant cheese and lettuce, and frosting ketchup. Tasty and a bit of a head-scratcher because they looked like real burgers but tasted sweet.

Friend's kid eating a dessert burger.

Closeup of the dessert burgers.

And another friend made fake cigarettes out of pretzels and melted chocolate. These were my absolute favorite because they tasted great and looked surprisingly realistic!

Fake cigarettes.

Me and my fake cigarette.

Doesn't it look like he's actually smoking?

After the party I took some leftover cake to Karaoqueen's house so she could have some. Her grossed out reaction was hilarious, but she liked the cake:

Karaoqueen laughing and scooping her cake.

Karaoqueen looks horrified.

Tomorrow I will take the rest to Belle's house so she and her family can finish it off.