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oldmanbayou · 3 months

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#old illustrations #weird and wonderful #oddities #curiosities #natural history #old books #public domain

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oldmanbayou · 3 months

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#gardening #plants #botany #illustrations #old books #curiosities #natural history #public domain #botanical #botanical art #flowers #seeds

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oldmanbayou · 4 months

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Grimey is picking on me because I've only just discovered you don't need to include html in your post on tumblr anymore, if you don't want to.

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oldmanbayou · 4 months

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oldmanbayou · 4 months

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2023 Year End Survey

1. How did you ring in the new year for 2023? caught covid for the third time

2. Who did you kiss at midnight/your first kiss in 2023? Ames

3. What did you do in 2023 that you’d never done before?: drove a standard, lived alone, grew carrots

4. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? It looks like my new years resolution last year was to opt out of sibling birthdays, which yes, I absolutely succeeded at. Didn't shop for any of them, didn't worry or think about their birthdays coming up, I don't think I even bothered wishing them a happy birthday!

I can't imagine I'll be making any new years resolutions for 2024--I need a break from failure.

5. Did anyone close to you give birth?: God I hope not.

6. Did anyone close to you die?: My sister's cat Snickers was such a love.

7. What places did you visit?: Disneyland and Baltimore

8. What would you like to have in 2024 that you lacked in 2023?: joy

9. What dates from 2023 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?: January 13 - Nermal Day March 14 - The day the sky fell September 11 - Grimey left Day December 12 - Grimey return day

10. What was your biggest achievement of the year?: Making it to the end.

11. What was your biggest failure?: Taking out the trash while Grimey was away. Giving Nermal a better life. Keeping the chickens safe from each other. Keeping the truck alive. Get a passport. Not panicking on a work trip where I had to god forbid, travel alone. Not panicking in the middle of the bread aisle. Not panicking every time I leave the house. Not dissociating for 3 months. Not just living off of goldfish crackers and popcorn for 3 months. Among a million other things.

12. Did you suffer illness or injury?: crippling depression

13. What was the best thing you bought?: an awl

14. Whose events required celebration?: Grimey fulfilled his life dream of wrestling in Japan.

15. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?: It's hard to be furious at others when I've paid no attention whatsoever to the world outside my own head.

16. Where did most of your money go?: Besides the boring american adult stuff like property tax and health insurance premiums -- My immune system seems to behave like a 90-year-old, so my doctor ordered a bunch of lab tests to rule things out. Since everything came back negative, my insurance company disagreed that the tests were medically necessary. I am severely phobic of needles--I don't just take blood tests for funsies, you chumps.

17. What did you get really, really, really excited about?: Grimey coming home

18. What song will always remind you of 2023?: probably David Teie's Music for Cats

Compared to this time last year, are you: a) Happier or sadder?: sadder

b) Thinner or fatter?: thinner

c) Richer or poorer?: poorer

19. What do you wish you’d done more of?: die

20. What do you wish you’d done less of?: exist

21. Did you fall in love in 2023?: no

22. How many one-night stands?: No.

23. How many people did you kiss? No.

24. What was your favourite TV program?: I think I've only tried watching one thing this year -- the Haunting of Hill House. I can't follow anything anymore but it was helping me sleep for a while until the characters seem to have gotten trapped in some funeral home for what felt like an eternity. I had to give up.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?: It's hard to hate anyone when you're not really existing in the physical world.

26. What was the best book you read?: I haven't read a thing this year

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?: I haven't really had time or energy to discover

28. What did you want and get?: Three things in no particular order - #1 I've been tearing my house apart periodically for YEARS searching for a copy of an old family home movie of peak sentimental value that everyone has thought was lost for good, causing some pretty serious grief in the Viola family. I remembered my dad had digitized it before the video was lost, but I seemed to be the only one with this memory and I was starting to wonder if I made it up and was merely clinging to false hope. Well, my sister's husband/my brother-on-law has achieved sainthood. He recently stumbled on, buried in the wrong case in their basement, the digital copy my dad had made years ago. So I am NOT crazy - not this time - and the Viola family can feel whole once again! #2 - New Zelda game #3 - Grimey came home

29. What did you want and not get?: a frickin break

30. What was your favorite film of this year?: I haven't seen anything this year that really managed to captivate me but I'm going to vote for Asteroid City.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?: I turned 39. It feels like an era ago and I can't remember a thing about it. Grimey says we went to the Brimfield Antiques Faire.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?: If our fence hadn't collapsed in March. I feel I need to explain because I'm NOT upset about the fence collapsing in a storm--it was due to collapse and before it even collapsed, "fix sketchy looking fence when the ground thaws" was high on our house project list for the year. But it is the timing of the collapse and the domino effect it caused that set off neverending chaos that I am STILL battling.

Cleaning up the damage took my time and attention away from Nermal, and completely destroyed a critical period of acclimating him to the other cats and the rest of the house. Now I'm left with a choice of either imprisoning Nermal in the office, where he quickly goes feral and creates a toxic work environment where I get hissed at if I need to move and feel like I'm encroaching on his privacy every time I enter the room. He also gets depressed and grieves because of course he has to be besties with Huffy, and with Huffy also besties with Tews, I can't like, imprison Huffy too so Nermal is kept happy because then I'd have Tews who's grieving and Huffy who is annoying and scratching at the door all day. OR I can constantly supervise two cats who literally try to murder each other and get blood all over the floor if I dare turn my back on them for two seconds because god forbid I might want to pee or get something to eat or check to see what the chickens are alarming at. I've had better luck introducing cats by NOT introducing them than I have had with these two--y'know the anti-Jackson Galaxy, "just let them have at it" reckless baby boomer method. They'd have been better off if I just did that than if I had tried. THIS is Kitty Hell.

The collapsed fence cooped the chickens up while their spring hormones were out of wack and set off a Great Hen War. I had to watch Redd get her comb torn off under my watch and Mini-Redd get most of her beak torn off. I'm not going to lie -- I'm traumatized by it.

The garden had a rough start because the fence collapsing caused the hawk net over the chicken yard to collapsed and crush everything underneath. I had to rebuild everything at the beginning of spring and lost March and April. Many of my seedlings died from neglect because I didn't have time to care for them, and a lot of things I planned to plant I never actually got around to planting. Meanwhile, Grimey got signed to a year-long contract in Japan and with both of our heads in completely different places, I don't feel like either of us were really emotionally available to each other for most of the year. With so much nonstop chaos to deal with through the whole year, I also didn't have room in my head to emotionally prepare for being on my own.

I wasn't just dealing with the fence dominoes -- it's truly been one thing after another this year starting from the very beginning, but without the fence dominoes, I could have better coped with the other shit and ended the year feeling like it was a more average year of shit rather than like....a year completely engulfed in flames.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2023?: flannel

34. What kept you sane?: wandering around Hyrule naked

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?: Mr Trash Wheel and his family

36. What political issue stirred you the most?: I honestly don't even know what's happened this year outside of my own home. Is Biden still president?

37. Who do you miss?: Matthew Perry

38. Who was the best new person you met?: I have a new coworker, Wendy who is lovely.

39. Who were your closest friends in 2023? Ames

40. What are you doing to ring in 2024? taking this fine survey

41. Who do you plan on kissing to ring in 2024? Ames

42. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2023: No

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oldmanbayou · 9 months

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Episode 10 of Gardening with H: Introducing Fizzgig II, a milkweed tussock moth caterpillar.