Buttons mania

As per always, watching/reading Hobbit, I am these days completely obsessed with buttons. This is an ongoing fascination of mine, originating in some deep seeded desire to be a traveling button-sales-girl... Which in my mind is like a bard, minus the singing and playing instruments. I have turned the house upside down, looking for any old boxes or jars with buttons, but still I am not satisfied... I want this, I need this, I yearn for this... It is not going away fast enough. I'm ready to rob a bank, just so that I could go into a hobby store and buy them all... O.o

... Because of course if I ask General for money to buy some, he drags me to our storage room and points out other things I have been obsessing about, exactly up until the point when i acquired them.. Say - the street lamp bulb. Or a bike. 

Cage

Thanks to Nea, the little shitter now has a majesty cage. Now she thinks she's a canary and won't shut up. I stretched some ribbons across the cage and put a stick in it, so she has to learn how to balance and walk and stretch her wings and tail and do all kinds of exercises, starting with walking towards me when I am giving her food through the bars. This was a success in half an hour's training and then not so much, when she calculated that if all the best food comes from outside, maybe trying to get through the bars is a good idea. But now mostly she's just singing and when we walk by, giving us the "give me another one!" look. 

Not that I have a fat bird or anything..

Some pickies from last night's concerts...

The quality will blow, I know, because the Blogger really fucks them up for some reason, even worse than FB. In reality, they are much more of a praise to their mother camera...
Funk Express opened...

Katalena headlined..
(haven't done all the pickies yet. Will do.)

So sleepy I'm dizzy, but so much niceness going on. I mean, it wasn't a day special in any regard what so ever, just very nice. I helped stack hay at the G's parents' farm, which is ridiculous amount of menial labor, in combo with ugly patches of sunburn on my neck and arms and calves. I got stung with TWO bees, i think for the first in time in either ever or the last 30 years - once in the shoulder and instantly in the ankle.. But I put onion slices to it, so the poison was sucked out instantly and there's no mark at all left to prove it. We had a nice break with the other farm ladies, chatting about old hay-stacking customs and bell-ringing and going around the village with a basket to collect material donation for the winter... Which put me right back in my button-salesgirl mood again... 

Nea lent me a vintage birdcage, awesome in appearances and loads better in practicality than cardboard boxes, although I am not sure how much Karma will appreciate it, considering she is more of a fan of enclosed spaces... I made her a nest of tissue paper and wrapped a scarf around the cage, so she doesn't make the poor judgment of putting her head through the bars, choking herself now... Unintentionally, I also found a good way to practice her balancing skills and wing usage - by stretching a ribbon across the cage, so she has to try and sit on it, while it wiggles. I'm thinking another day or two or three and she'll be able to eat on her own, we'll buy her vitamins and take her out to try and fly on her own. We'll start slow, not as Azog in my sexy story would put it: "Building kites is like building character - at some point you simply need to push that bitch off a cliff." :D

Drawing now, dozing off, happy and in love.

My elder brother's birthday is tomorrow, I think. I know Niko's is today. And Frida Kahlo's.

Things I try to no longer eat

The worst thing about starting to live and eat healthy is - it's really hard to go back to your old lifestyle. I "sinned" with a piece of chocolate the other day and it was so damn disgustingly sweet my tongue got numb. I used to eat those by buckets. Suddenly certain things no longer hold any appeal at all..

This is what I've stopped eating. Not strictly, simply gradually. Probably more will follow.

- White bread. Or most of bread altogether. I eat some, sometimes, but never as food. As side-dish.
- Meat. Though I force myself sometimes to eat it, I don't miss it at all. I blame this on Loving Hut. 80% of the meat I do eat is chicken or turkey.
- Processed meat, like hot dogs. I used to love them. Now they kind of freak me out. (It's not the shape). I love sausages, but they have to come from pigs I've personally met.
- Salt. Since I stopped salting my food, everything tastes amazing. Of course there's lots of salt in food regardless.
- Lard - it actually makes me use the potty, if I eat lard fried stuff. So I don't. Nor oil, if I can help it.
- Sugar. This is only recently, but oh gods how oddly untasty overly sweetened things have suddenly gotten!
- Potatoes. I eat them sometimes, but usually only when others prepare food for us.
- Zero alcohol, as I have never drank it. Or cigarettes or drugs. One coffee a day.
- Pastry made with white flour. I blame this on you, Tinka. Damn your fresh cakes. !! Every other cake now just seems like a forced mess of margarine, sugar and carbs!
- Far less milk from actual cows. I used to drink A LOT of milk.
- Less rice. Less fruit.
- No soda drinks.
- And keeping it really, really low on the carbon footprint.

It anyone told me 10 years ago I'll become a healthy food freak, I'd mock them. That's mostly because I grew up in a household where everything was 100% naturally produced and I didn't realize sugar is actually a conspiracy. I KNOW some day I will die very healthy from some really stupid accident, but if I can help it, my poor little General will live because of my strict food regime for a long time afterwards :D

So, Karma...

The teeny swallow I found in the street three days ago is still kicking. For two days it seemed like it was going to suck, although she sang a lot and wasn't visibly ailing.. But she also wasn't eating or, to my knowledge, drinking. I couldn't get her (or his, really) beak to open and she wouldn't pick stuff off the floor of her box. When left alone, she would make a mess of the water and seed I left for her, but I think she was just walking in it. 

Finally, frustrated with failing to crack this one - and almost all forums saying I should seek out someone who knows better (I don't think in this country anyone knows anything about swallows, who was willing to help or pretend to help in exchange of fee) - and I don't like being told there is something I can't do - I saw this really cool very short video about a swallow baby just like mine, eating a maggot almost as big as it was. This made me think the stupid little chicken doesn't recognize food unless it's wiggling. And the way she opens that beak, man! That tiny beak, able to swallow - no pun intended - an insect almost a third it's own size! So, I sent the kid out to dig up some maggots or find some ants or grasshoppers.. The damn chick ate EVERYTHING! No fuss, no having to pry her beak open - it nigh ate the tweezers! ... Rockstar as my sidekick and I thus gathered what coins we had and set off across town to the pet shop to purchase some crickets and some larvae. This, needless to say, is beyond disgusting and it will probably give me nightmares. But now she gets to feed every two hours, as recommended and I have no problem tricking her into opening her beak for water dropper - which also she tries to eat. It is said that when she is full, well, fed, her chest swells oddly - and it actually swells grotesquely, with the insects still alive inside. The crickets were too big, she spat one our after it tickled her on the inside, so we just set them all free. Once she learns to eat on her own, we'll have to supplement her diet with vitamins and something other than protein. Or she'll just get so fat she won't be useful for much else than playing live action Angry Birds. Stupid little tennis ball with a beak.

Road trip :D ... well, trek :D

 

Overshot this ever so slightly, but my ambition to go check out where that pretty road from the Roman Spa leads to finally came to conclusion today: Rok, Lyra and I trekked it from the train station and over several hill tops - until finally we were unable to move 28 clicks later and General had to come rescue us :D Which was always plan B. We were somewhat ill prepared for a trek of that magnitude (the total would have been about 40 kilometers), having brought no food, so naturally our energy ran out, and having not the best footwear for lengthily walks. Five miles, sure. Twenty, not so much.  Towards the end, we got lost and had to backtrack, which drained us, physically and morally. It was three PM. Time to call Mordor to come to us, not the other way around. But our tiny flask of water kept being re-filled by the nice people on farms we met, Lyra behaved amazingly well, we enjoyed ourselves immensely and I am not sure what happened afterwards, because I fell asleep in the car. I did cheat on my no-sugar-Ramadan, very sorry, but the only food we did have contained it. I took lots of pickies, we found schroomies, we found several really nice villages... I'm posting some stuff, will post some later. Passing out again in the meanwhile. 

:p