Earwigs

What's different? What's missing?



I dug these out last week. Yes, I am tired. They were going to be in the way of the porch renovation. And give me a shovel and a place to dig, I'm pretty happy.


"FIRST!"


One sunflower a'bloomin'. More to come. Bergamot lovely. New rose has a few wee buds. Tomato plants mostly thriving. Set out oil trap for earwigs, and caught an impressive number. They are flourishing, so I need to reduce their numbers. Also the nasty spike grass, that I didn't recognize as such, has taken over. Too dry to dig up now, so I laid cardboard over it, weighted with pavers. In the fall, more digging, and more wheat and rye, maybe clover. Every June, I find out what I did wrong this year, and plan to correct.

Vestige

Took care of a child this past week. As he was going under, he apparently lost bladder control. I don't know how usual this is with children, since I take care of so few. But a lot of young boys have bedwetting issues, so I assume it's pretty common.

Which made me wonder if this is not a bug, but a feature. That it has some evolutionary advantage. When the hunters go out with a young boy, does his involuntary urine odor in the night perhaps repel predators? Maybe something specific in the chemical makeup that is effective? Or just that it's fresh in the wee (ha!) hours? That it's sensed by the grown men as a lucky thing to have an annoying young boy along?

In the modern world, it's rather a problem. But it may have provided enough advantage throughout our long evolutionary past to be retained in our bodies.

We are junkshops, never know when that might be needed, no throwing anything away completely.

Just as we have the ability to deal with cruel leadership. Probably as common as egalitarian governance in our species' histories. We have so many ways to react, adapt, endure. We are all about survival, at the expense of comfort. Time circles round.

Placebo

I got a daith piercing today. Hoping for migraine relief, since I already know acupuncture works for me. If it's a placebo, doesn't mean it won't work. Falls under can't hurt to try. It's rather pretty, too. Well, it can, but the risk benefit ratio is benign.

Piercer was covered in tattoos and piercings, but a smile, and his clear kind eyes told me he saw me. Which was worth it all alone. I've found this before, that people with a hostile presentation are often the sweetest people ever. Learned this most deeply in the army, everyone wore the same uniform, so the real personality shone through. Scales fell from my eyes in those years, I became far less distracted by surfaces. I could tell this man also saw past surfaces, even in the business of altering them. He saw through my drabness as well. We cultivate our camouflage, we who are not, and have no wish to be, mainstream normal.

The process was only momentarily painful. A dull ache. And within a few minutes, the same sense of easing as after an acupuncture moment. The headache that had been building was gone. Possibly just by suggestion, but I've always been open to suggestion.

This is a long healing process, cartilage being avascular. A puncture. The little ring is blue, pleases me in itself.



Taking what comforts I may.

Dug

This is Coco. Coco came in with a young human friend, so he got a hat (from a hospital sock) and a bandage on his elbow (purple coban so as not to pull on his fur) and a sling (from a mask). A new, but patient and faithful friend.

Doing a bit better these days, focus is still on the elephant rampaging. Dug in, no panic, just that steady stream to get through.

Spending time every day watering tomatoes and establishing plants. Fennel coming up in the back. Planning for fall, wheat around the edges, sunflowers along the fence in back, moving the black iris bulbs.