Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

The weekend was brutal, suicidally difficult waking up at three in the morning in agony. In those moments I’m very happy for the wonderful life I’ve had, but I really feel like I’ve had enough of it and I would be thankful for the pain to end with the last beat of my heart and my last breath. If that ever does happen, please don’t think of it as anything other than succumbing to the illness. Having been down that self-inflicted road in my youth, it’s a road that would bring me shame to travel. Anyway, after predictably unsatisfactory doctor visits and discussions at the start of the week, things got better though and the glass is feeling half full again. Tomorrow begins at the hospital, I think because my latest blood-work has caused some alarm that I’m still waiting to have explained to me. At least my appointment is first thing in the morning, which I’m keeping my fingers crossed means I’m first in line and will also be first out the door. Oh and because I haven’t been feeling too hot I haven’t been answering my phone (let alone emails or facebooks), so if it feels like I’m ignoring you, please accept my apologies and I promise it’s nothing personal!

But I’m rambling now, and not about anything that I or you should waste your time on.

Anyway, I do have lots of fun stuff too, but I’m going to write it quick and sloppy so I hope it makes sense. Let me begin with a duct tape and toilet paper roll elephant that Nefarious and I made. She did most of it and then I touched it up a little as she worked on the next one, a giraffe. So I’m going to blog all this while watching a couple episodes of Jersey Shore and muttering “what a piece of shit”, usually at Mike (“the Situation”), over and over. Click through to continue with the whole mess.

Here’s another view of the elephant. I like how it turned out.

After starting with a little eruption of whining, here’s one of the good things about having a cane thanks to my slow decay into decripitude and criplledom or whatever. Nefarious and a park friend had lots of fun using it to swing around on the little zip-line-esque thing. This was much easier (and a better game) than climbing up on a wobbly and diagonally cut log fragment.

On the way to getting her at school that day I snapped a picture of what I see multiple times every single day, someone texting while driving. I took the snap at the [red] traffic lights but watched as she continued doing it as the light changed green. To make matters worse, school had just gotten out, and there was construction, and traffic was slow and heavy with plenty of jaywalkers dashing between cars. It really bothers me, and I really do see it every single day.

I got some nice mail this week as well, including a set of $5 random shirts from TeeFury (since they’re one of these “shirt of the day” sites that never sells shirts after the first 24 hours, this is the easiest way for them to get rid of old stock without breaking their own rules too overtly) and I think I scored with what they picked for me. I also got a cool present that I pre-ordered for my friend Saira’s baby something like six months ago, a Cthulhu plush. The quality isn’t the greatest but it’s pretty cool nonetheless. Speaking of soft stuff, I saw an Olivia (the pig) doll today at the mall and instantly thought of Caitlin because, if I remember right anyway, the first book that Caitlin got Nefarious was Olivia [Saves the Circus]. It’s super cute, and right now she’s knitting all sorts of awesome little costumes for it.

I couldn’t get through this illness without Caitlin and Nefarious. They both make me so happy.

Speaking of mail, the smell of a small mountain of soap filling a quarter of our dining table was driving Caitlin bonkers, so yesterday I vacuum bagged it all both to stifle the smell, and to protect and prepare it for shipping. The embarrassing thing is that I can’t really remember what all the mixes were so my labels are general and possibly not entirely accurate. I’m not sure how I’m going to get rid of them. “Make me an offer”? It’s not really fair to charge much for these so I think I’ll just give this set to friends.

I’m working on a master for a new soap as well, and it will be my first 3D soap (so a two part mold) and I’ve been spending a lot of time sculpting and carving it. I’ve been experimenting a lot with different techniques, mixing different glazes, using different glues, carving and machining it after curing it, and so on. Some of the experiments have been successful, and some have set me back quite a bit, but as I need to emphasize, I’m a total new-comer and totally don’t know what I’m doing, so all this is a learning venture!

I’ve actually been doing lots of [mostly craft] experiments, including attempting to make a mold out of Goop (a general automotive glue that’s sort of a hard rubber cement, in the first two photos) and casting toys in my molds out of silicone caulking agent left over from when we fixed up our kitchen (the last two pictures). I’m not sure yet how well either of these experiments are going to work let alone how long they’ll take to cure (a few days at least I’m guessing), but my money is on “success”. If it works, I’ll post about that shortly, but if this is the last you hear of it, probably not. I had a failed experiment today in an attempt to make sugar-based hard candy lollipops, and I’m also curing a different glue-in-the-mold experiment that I’m pretty sure won’t work.

(As I said, above is Goop, below is caulk.)

Anyway, this terrible reality show is over so I think we’re going to go watch something more worthwhile, and maybe have a late night snack of my current favorite yummies, grated carrots.

Night, all.