2004-03-23 - 11:15 a.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Mister Webster", The Monkees

One more note about the St. Patty's shamrocks: When I met Poindexter, I offered to give him one of my shamrocks. He declined, as I had somewhat expected. That evening, the topic of the shamrocks came up, and I mentioned that I didn't mind having to wear both. He said, "I know. I could tell you wanted to wear both. Otherwise you would have pestered and pestered me to wear one." He's got me pegged.

The comical tragedy that is my gardening career continues. In the garage, my three pots of bulbs had begun to sprout, so I put them out in the backyard about a month ago to get some sun. I purchased a plastic owl at Home Depot to keep the squirrels from digging in the pots. I moved the owl to a different location every day. What happens? Squirrels NIBBLED AWAY AT THE TIPS OF THE EMERGING BULBS!

I guess city squirrels ain't scared o' no owl. Sigh.

I don't know if the nibbled bulbs will still grow or not. There are some new bulbs poking through now. I have managed to keep the squirrels away from the new ones, but I don't know if it's because the squirrels decided the tulips don't taste good, if it's the cold weather, or if it's the ammonia I'm keeping around in plastic containers. I actually put the plastic containers onto the soil between the bulbs, and I refill it every few days to keep the smell as annoying as possible to the little fuckers.

Last weekend, through the glass, I saw one sitting on my wall nibbling something. I shrieked, ran to the door and slid it open and jumped at him. Honestly, he didn't even look scared -- he left hesitantly, looking over his shoulder, as though he were waiting to see if I was just kidding. FUCKER!

Poindexter wants to shoot them and put their heads on toothpicks to scare them away. Think it'll work?

In other garden news:

- This weekend I intend to plant seeds in the little greenhouses I got from my mom and step-MIL for Christmas. I can feel myself getting emotionally involved already and am trying to resist.

- Speaking of emotional involvement, I tried to root a bunch of cuttings under 2-liter Coke bottle greenhouses in the fall, including double impatiens, the fuchsia, and the sage that Nikolai gave me at CineKit. All of them looked happy for a while and then they all died, except ONE of the double impatiens. I am now trying to harden it off to be outside the greenhouse (it does not like the arid outside air much). When it gets warm enough, I'll harden it outside, and with any luck, I'll have ONE FREAKING PLANT that I was able to carry over from last year.

- I brought in my parsley plant from the backyard around Christmas (it was still green) and put it in the guest room window, which gets the most sun. About a month ago, I went too long without watering it and found it fried to a crisp. I just left it there and watered it, just in case, and sure enough, it's starting to sprout new parsley. Too cool!

So, I was supposed to take a "before" picture of my pimply face but I never did. However, I'm pleased to report that, after three weeks of use, the Duac is working beautifully. It's pretty amazing. Within a week, I'd say, it had pretty well cleared up my face. In addition those annoying crops of zits, my face used to be covered with tiny colorless clogged pores. Now those are all cleared up, and my skin is SMOOTH, which it has not been in YEARS, if ever. It cleared up a few blackheads on my nose literally overnight. I still get the occasional pimple due to hormones, but this is a huge difference from the little groupings I used to get, and they can be easily covered with a single dab of concealer.

My skin is a little dry and in some spots peels a little, but it's easily fixable with some moisturizer. I use only a teeny tiny bit -- an amount the size of a black bean takes care of my whole face, basically (concentrated on the cheeks).

I still have a bunch of small scars from the areas where it was the worst. Those are also easily covered with concealer for now. My MIL and SIL have gotten laser treatment for scars in the past, so I suppose I could do that at some point, since I'd like to not have to wear any makeup at all. Although in general I don't really care about the scars and don't bother with makeup unless I'm getting all primped up.

As part of the experiment, I stopped wearing facial makeup and stopped using hair styling products (I'm suspicious that the "curl booster" I was using is partly responsible). After watching my face for a month (noting when hormones give me the occasional pimple), I'll add back the makeup and see what happens. Then if that's OK, maybe the hair products, although I seem to have happened upon a method of productless styling that I'm OK with.

Gratuitous photo of the day is a photo of me bundled up watching "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas". I got a bunch of photos from the MIL during our February thaw and finally got around to scanning a few. I don't think it looks quite like me, but I like it nonetheless.

Earlier, I mentioned "scars" on my face. I did a little reading and found out that since they are flat (flush with the surface of my skin), they are not actually not scars, but "macules" or possibly "hyperpigmentation", and in any case will go away on their own within a year. That's good to know. I really didn't want to get into lasers, and the idea of going concealer/foundation-less is always a happy one. I feel fake with foundation on unless I'm really dressed up.

Also, as a result of my research, I am feeling very fortunate that my acne is merely a nuisance. Some people have a really rough time with it. Never mind the cosmetic angle, which is upsetting enough, but some of these cases look seriously painful.

WHAT DID PEOPLE DO BEFORE THE INTERNET!? Just about every piece of information I could possibly want to know is just out there, waiting for me. It's incredible. I don't even know how people live with dial-up connections, where they can't just go to the computer and look something up the very moment the question arises.

The internet is CRACK for an information junkie like me.

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