Done This Week

They finally finished processing the death certificate, which meant they were clear to cremate my dad. We picked his ashes up on Friday. It’s a wooden box, a OOAK by a local woodworker, sized for a couple. So I guess when mum dies, that’s one less thing I’ll have to figure out. She’s really happy with how it looks, which is good enough for me.

At work, it’s hard to juggle the demands of my old department, which still needs support, and my new responsibilities, and my training opportunities. Also, I got assigned a work phone, but IT for some reason opted not to do any of the setup on it. So I had to work my way through a guide for that, but all the back-end steps they should have taken weren’t done. So I would get to a step, have it fail, contact them, wait for them to unlock something or assign me somewhere, get through that step, then run into the next stumbling block. It was great. Really good use of my time.

Oh, and there was apparently a dead mouse in my room (why???). I discovered this because of the resultant ant infestation. I guess they came up through the floorboards, because they spontaneously manifested in the middle of the room, with no trail in or out. It took two days to banish them all. Really restful. Very cool. (╯▔皿▔)╯

We picked up some Halloween decoration supplies. We’re going for very cute stuff. Nothing really scary, nothing dark. Halloween meant for the 6 and under set. That’s about as much as mum and I can stomach right now.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written and the October posts all queued up

Day job: 42.75 hours

Crafting: made a little more progress on the dragon scale dice bag

Listening: Firewatch Original Soundtrack by Chris Remo (so, real talk: I’m obsessively watching through Jacob Geller’s video essays, which frequently involve excellent music, and I’ve picked up a few albums and singles pulled from those, including this one)

Other: unloaded hay, donated blood

The Friday Five

1. What are your 5 favorite flowers?
Hm, let's see... Lupine, sunflower, foxglove, chaparral currant, and dandelion. This will almost certainly change the next time I'm asked, because I really love all sorts of flowers.

2. What do you like to do with flowers?
I like to leave sunflowers up for the birds to eat as they dry. I like to cut flowers and put them around the house in little jars. And I love to press flowers and save them to use in crafts.

3. Do you like native flowers, domestic flowers, or a mix of both?
I like both. I've got a 1/4 acre field in which I focus on planting native flowers and shrubs. Other areas are dedicated to more traditional cottage garden plants.

4. Do you grow flowers yourself, or just look at what grows elsewhere?
I try to grow all sorts of things. I don't have much shade here, though, so a lot of shade-loving plants are out of the question. I like going to botanical gardens to see the things I just can't grow for myself.

5. Do you know (any version of) the Language of Flowers?
Not from memory alone, but it's fun to look up. I like seeing when people translate elaborate messages into flower language. While not truly flower language, this tumblr post about the Death Bouquet uses flowers to convey "fuck you."