Plants I Need

I've decided I'm going to do an aquatic garden around the edges of the axolotl aquarium, using hanging baskets on the sides to hold the plants. Sam is the first plant that's going in, and he's going on the left hand side (if you're facing the front of the aquarium), and will probably take up that entire side, especially as I assume he's going to keep growing. I also have the cutting I took from him to propagate that I'm hoping will take and I can use that as well (it can take up to 10 days for roots to start to grow, though, so I have to be patient.)

I just ordered some pink princess philodendron cuttings that I'm hoping to get started properly to go in it as well, and I might propagate a couple of vines off of Isley to go in as well. I also need (want) another spider plant and I want a couple of different varieties of monstera to plant as well (not the giant kind, obviously.) I can probably get the spider plant in town somewhere (maybe metro?) but I might have to order the monstera. And I need some others to fill out the gaps, too. Still looking into houseplants that can be grown in an aquarium like this!

But that aside, I'll still need some actual aquatic plants for INSIDE the aquarium, which I will (probably) have to get from an actual aquarium STORE, which means they'll cost my first-born child. I guess I'll just have to suck it up and pay for them. I wish I could just use fake plants like I do with fish, but apparently Axolotls can injure themselves on fake plants (which I can see, since they wouldn't be "planted" in anything, just floating around a bare glass aquarium floor) and I don't want THAT, so aquatic plants it is!

Plotting and planning, plotting and planning! <3

EDIT: Okay, I am getting consistently inconsistent reports on what plants are and aren't safe to put in with axolotls. For example, Poe swears pothos are safe but monstera are toxic (okay?) but this really comprehensive website about the topic says it's the other way around (okay??), except that pothos, while toxic, are only dangerous before they're fully rooted. So I mean. idek. More research is obviously necessary. :|

EDIT #2: SAM IS SO IN THE WAY RIGHT NOW. The aquarium isn't ready for him yet so he's just kind of... sitting. On my work table, next to my computer table, but he's so BIG I have to like... edge and ease my way around him every time I want to go past in any direction. WHY YOU GOTTA BE THIS WAY, SAM? WHY. YOU ARE ALREADY LOVED, DON'T BE A
JERK.

EDIT #3: FORGET MY LAST EDIT! Mom just provided me a place for Sam to live in her room where he isn't in anyone's way and can live until the aquarium is ready for him! :D

Photoblogging Day #63: A Place For Grandma

Mom and I went to visit Grandma at the retirement home today.

Visiting Grandma

So yesterday when Mom and I attempted to visit Grandma and failed because the highway was shut down? We saw on the news last night that it was because someone parked an SUV in the middle of the highway, abandoned it there, and then ran off and called in a bomb threat for the vehicle. It turned out to be a hoax but they still had to treat it like the real thing. All that for a prank? Fucking asshole.

Anyway, today Mom and I DID go visit Grandma, and... yeah. It went about as well as I expected it to. She was thrilled with the chocolate covered raisins Mom brought her, but didn't even say thank you for the books I brought her for her birthday. That hurt more than I imagined it would. She talked in circles a lot. Talked about people in the past that I never knew and told stories I couldn't relate to. Told us she would rather be dead than be there-- apparently that's a common one when Mom goes to visit.

After a little over an hour I was DONE, I just couldn't take it anymore, and Mom could see that in my eyes I guess (she told me that later, that at about the hour mark I just started to shut down) and made our excuses so we could start to leave. "Start to" because, as is customary with all of our family, it took us another 20 minutes to actually get out the door.

And I feel HORRIBLE. I HATE how much I hate being around my Grandma right now, because she's my GRANDMA and I LOVE HER SO MUCH, but I just CAN'T. I cried on the way home and I'm on the verge of crying again just typing this. My own mental state isn't strong enough to deal with Grandma the way she is now and it just... it fucking SUCKS. That's what.

Isley's Fall

In the middle of the night last night, one of my philodendron plants, Isley, decided she didn't want to be a hanging plant anymore, she would MUCH rather be a FLOOR plant. Basically? The hook she was hanging from came out of the ceiling and Isley plummeted to the floor below. Lee found her on the ground at around 4am, so it happened some time between 1am and then.

Lee kindly picked her up and put her on the table, and swept up the dirt and leaves that were on the floor, and today after Mom and I got back from Grandma's, she and Lee found a proper stud in the ceiling and put the hook in PROPERLY this time, and hung her back up. She's looking a little rough, but she literally came out of the trash to begin with so she's tough. She'll rally.

The problem is that, in the fall, the bottom of Isley's pot got all smashed in. It's mostly holding together for now, but we can't water her because it would run right through and out the broken pot bottom. So I need a new pot for her (which sucks because I custom painted that one, it's really pretty), which I'm going to get tomorrow, and then we have to untwist all of Isley's vines so we can repot her.

This is going to be an arduous task. :|

But I guess that's the project for tomorrow, fixing Isley up and getting her into a pot that, yanno, has a bottom to it. Fun times.

Just The Current Roundup (Copied From My Writing Blog)

Horror High is currently at 406 hits, 7 bookmarks, 31 kudos and 17 comments (but two of those are me replying to comments someone else left.) But I just posted Chapter Four not even 24hrs ago so it could potentially go up a bit more in the next couple days. I've come to the conclusion that I shouldn't expect much feedback for HH, it's not a very mainstream fic and not many people seem to be going for it. But the feedback I HAVE gotten has been mostly positive, with just the one review that bitched because I mentioned possibly switching to bottom!Dean in the sequel. If you don't like it you don't have to read it, my dude, no one is forcing you.

Anyway. For having posted four chapters and 26,686 words so far the reception hasn't been great. I think I had my hopes up in the beginning but now I'm just posting chapters because literally the whole fic is already finished so I might as well, and if a few people like it that's great too. If I had been posting chapters as I finished them like I normally do, I probably would have dropped the project by now. I thrive on feedback and interaction from the community and not getting it kind of sucks, but oh well. Not much I can do about it. I'll probably still write Cheap Motel and Counting Scars, but I'm not sure if I'll get around to writing Storm Season after all, considering. I guess we'll see.

Right now I'm very into my Witcher SPN AU. It's two of my favorite series smushed together so I'm enjoying myself immensely. Way back almost three years ago I wrote the first five in the series (Crossroads, Technical Possession, Sugar, Call My Name and Familiarity) and then completely lost my ability to write ANYTHING so it got dropped for a while. Then the other day I wrote the sixth one in the series (What No One Knows) and it's actually gotten a decent response considering I haven't written Witcher SPN AU or Witcher ANYTHING in literally years. Also there's no porn, which is miraculous for Witcher SPN AU Lambden fic, but means it won't get as many hits as something smutty would.

So I currently have open in Word MANY other Witcher SPN AU fics (in no particular order: Falling In Love With You, No Matter What They Say, Don't You Forget About Me, Radiance, Touched By An Angel, Wayward Sons, The Road So Far, Points Of Origin, The Forest, Rewarding Heroism, The Land Of Sunshine and Beyond This Illusion) all of which are in some state of being worked on, but right now I'm specifically trying to finish Don't You Forget About Me because it's the next one in the series. Tinkering on others when I get stuck. Don't You Forget About Me has a big fight scene that I'm somewhat procrastinating over...

I used to write fight scenes all the time. I used to LIKE writing them. I was GOOD at writing them. But I guess you kind of lose things when you don't write for a long time. I'm really struggling with the fight scene in this one. But then, I really struggled with the smut in HH at first, too, before I finally got back into the grove of it. So I imagine it's the same with the violence, I just have to write until it comes back. If the beginning part of it turns out shitty I can always go back and re-write it once I get into it. So. *shrug*

Hopefully I'll have Don't You Forget About Me finished in the next day or two and can post it. Then I can try to figure out the order the rest of them go in. I THINK Rewarding Heroism comes next, but I could be wrong. And I'm going to start posting the Witcher SPN AU fics at Vanimadin, too, soon, I just have to get off my butt and actually DO IT. =/