 This is Sunny The Sunflower. It’s tall now, around 3 feet but still no sign of any flower and now it’s sickly-looking, wilted and dying. Maybe it’s defective? Asexual? Infertile? I always seem to get the brokem defective stuff. This poor wilted little flower reminds me of myself in life: never got a chance to blossom. Both of us will likely live our lives and then just wither up and die without ever blossoming, without ever blooming. We grow bigger, we grow taller, we endure the hardships and storms of life,we age and mature, but we never get to blossom, never get to bloom into the pretty flower, never get to become something beautiful, never get to our potential, never get to shine, never get to contribute to the garden, never get our time in the sun, never get to be picked for our beauty, never get to be a flower, but just stay a plant but never progress, grow, or transform beyond that and then just wither up and die without ever getting to blossom. Maybe it’s sheltered too much inside and hasn’t got a chance to grow properly, or maybe it’s just stunted or missed out on certain opportunities in life and wasn’t able to blossom, also like me? This pathetic and struggling little plant is so symbolic of me and my life; struggling, surviving, but never get to blossom.
 The Daily Bruise: Day 7. It’s been a whole week now and it still looks this good! I wonder how long it will take until it heals up completely? I also have this massive headache and I tried another allergy med as well and I still have the constant runny stuffy nose and it made me wonder: maybe it’s actually not just my allergies afterall but in actual fact something else that mimics the same symptoms and I just assume it’s my allergies? Maybe it’s even a tumour in my sinus or CSF or something somehow leaking from my brain causing headaches and what I just think are my usual allergies, esp. since the usual allergy meds no longer work anymore to relieve them, unless I’m just somehow immune to them now, or something? I also hope with my mother’s back pain that she doesn’t have bone cancer or something, affecting her spine,causing the pain, although you’d think something like that would have showed up in the scans….
 I was also bored and so I drew this little stretching baby hippo doodle. Just because.
 Here is my little sweetie.He actually poses for the camera. He’s such a ham. I just love him so much.He is my heart, my joy, my light, my love, my life, my everything. I’m so grateful God sent him to me and getting him was the best thing that ever happened to me. I could never thank God enough for the blessing and gift that He gave me when He gave him to me. I prayed for Him to send me someone to love me and He did: pure selfless unconditional love.
 Check out my epic bruise! This is what the blood clot in my varicose vein in my leg I had yesterday has turned into now, this massive bruise. It was a hard, hot, painful lump yesterday and it hurt when I was trying to sleep, turning over and changing position in bed hurt, but when I woke up the lump had dissolved by itself, the clot had broken up and changed into the bruise and now it just feels achy like a normal bad bruise but it’s gigantic; 4 inches across and 5 inches long!
 The photo doesn’t even really do it justice; it’s actually a much deeper, darker purple in real life but a glare of light seems to be reflecting off the picture and makes it appear lighter than it actually is. I must say, it’s quite impressive, and to be this visible thru my suntan is quite something. I can only imagine how much of a more brilliant dark purple it would appear in the winter on my pale pasty white-girl skin! This has got to be one of my best bruises ever! One of my friends said I should see the doctor but knowing him he’d just shrug and say, It’s just a bruise. Leave it alone. It’ll clear up on it’s own.
 I was outside and I saw 2 squirrels sitting in a tree, a black squirrel and a grey one and the grey one I didn’t even notice at first as he almost blended in completely with the tree; he was camoflauged, but the black squirrel stuck out and was really noticable and I remember saying to myself how he doesn’t blend in…. and then I thought about it for a minute and then re-phrased it, He’s just in the wrong tree.It’s not that he doesn’t blend in. In the right tree he’d blend in. If the tree had dark brown bark instead of grey-ish he would have been hidden. It got me thinking: it all depends on how you look at it,and it also reminded me that I’m like that squirrel in life.(and my tree would be a rose-gold glittery palm tree.)
 My cut sunflowers have also opened up, and I was outside with Buddy and heard a gunshot so we came inside and Buddy just bolted up and ran in like a bat out of hell, and I knew it was a gunshot too and not fireworks as there was just the one bang! and no echo, unlike fireworks which always come with an echo, more like a boom! boom! My hubby in cleaning and packing up prepping to move is also throwing out lots of stuff, incl. other people’s things and he doesn’t even look and check or ask to see if they even want it thrown out or if they want to keep it; he just chucks it out,and I’ve rescued a few things from the garbage and I tell him not everything has to be thrown out and we are allowed to keep some things,and he kept tossing out the Shel Silverstein books I love too and I had to keep fishing them out for garbage and I finally just ended up hiding them. Books should never be thrown out( or burned) though but always kept or donated so that someone will always be able to love and enjoy them.
 This is also my sad pathetic, wilted and last sunflower, on it’s last legs yet I still won’t give up on it. I’m determined to “resurrect” it and have it perk up. I still faithfully keep watering it and every day I go outside I bring it out with me and sit it in the sun and then bring it back inside later in the day so the squirrels and raccoons won’t ruin it. I keep putting hope, love, time, and effort into it hoping eventually it will pay off and I’ll eventually get a nice sunflower in the end, despite all the set- backs. It reminds me of me and my life. I could be that sunflower: despite all the set-backs,hardships, teetering on the edge. losing hope, trials and barely holding on, some days it looks like it’s starting to perk up and other days it’s almost dead, and even on days it’s looking particularly haggard , wilted,and weary it still holds on, endures, survives,and lives on, and with hope and care, maybe it can make it one day? Just like me. We just need time,love,care,hope, and the right conditions to blossom. Sometimes though, despite our best efforts trying to hold on, the outside environment is just too hostile and we can’t withstand the storm or survive the elements and we wither away and die.
 This is my one last, lone surviving sunflower. The poor thing is dying. The leaves are less green and getting yellow and wilted now. Maybe it doesn’t get enough sun, I don’t know. It figures. I fail at trying to grow sunflowers too just like I fail at everything. I’m just a failure in life. I can’t think of one thing that I’ve tried that I’ve gotten right or succeeded at and haven’t failed at. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s big things(like raising kids) or small things( like trying to grow sunflowers) no matter what it is I always seem to find a way to f*ck it up. You can only imagine how that makes me feel, how each failure chips away at my already non-existant self-esteem, how it breaks me down continously and tears me down until there’s nothing left. Why can’t I ever do anything right? Why can’t anything ever just work out for me?
 The damn mice also bit this huge hole right thru our sofa made of Italian leather, ruining it, taking stuffing out to build their nests and for all we know they might even have a nest somewhere inside the sofa itself,too. I just wish for once that something good would happen. I’m just so sick of all this shit, all this bad luck, everything always going wrong, so many set-backs ,expenses, disappointments, unmet expectations, problems, financial issues, stresses, issues,second-rate crap,crisis, etc. I keep waiting for my miracle, my break, but it never comes…..
 This is what the lump/bump under Buddy’s eye looks like and how big it is. It’s even bigger today but I’m hoping it’s nothing more than swelling and the thought came to me: maybe it’s even a spider bite, esp. since he has been going under my bed lately, a place that’s dark and where spiders are more prone to hang out? It may also be another kind of insect bite or sting,too, such as a wasp or mosquito. Today when I touched his snout he also recoiled and yelped, as if it was very painful and he looked at me with his big old sad Dachshund eyes and I wondered too if maybe it could perhaps even be a dental absess? My mother had that once and one entire side of her face all swelled up and she looked like a chipmunk with it’s cheeks full of nuts. That might explain his horrible breath that literally smells like dead mice and I lovingly refer to as Fish Breath and Death Breath.
 This is also my last one surviving sunflower, growing tall and doing well but will soon out-grow it’s windowsill home and I’ll have to move it somewhere else, where it can sit on the ground in front of a window to get sunlight, but not right in the window itself as it’s getting too tall. I also have this really gross black diarrhrea for the past 2 days, it looks like tar,which usually indicates internal bleeding, and it’s liquid(maybe it’s oil, HAHAHAHA; liquid gold, and that’s how I’ll get rich; I can refine it), it just squirts out of my ass and the abdomenal pains are back bad again as well and it really wouldn’t surprise me if I actually do have colon cancer afterall; it just somehow got missed in the tests and went undetected. It would certainly explain the abdomenal pain, the diarrhrea, the bleeding, the colon polyp, the significant weight loss, the changes in bowel habits…I think there’s more going on than just IBS…..
 I had a load of dishes washing in the dishwasher and I was out in the backyard and when I came inside into the kitchen it smelled really bad, really smoky like someone had been smoking in there. It smelled like smoke and fire, really strong, and it was coming from the dishwasher. The 23 YR old said it was so bad that he could even smell up 3 floors up in his room. I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to smell like that(esp. since it didn’t used to before) and I called my hubby to come in and check it out, to smell the smell before it all evaporated away, but he didn’t bother but I know something’s wrong( and it didn’t finish the cycle and dry,either; the dishes were still all wet, and that’s where the heat comes in, so my guess is it short-circuited somewhere and shut itself off) and I’m afraid it might catch fire, and we already had one fire at our old house back in 1996(an electrical fire) and we certainly don’t ever need another one, plus it would also complicate us trying to sell the house and move! I’m scared to use it again and don’t think we should but my mother refuses to have anyone wash dishes by hand again( we’ve had the dishwasher for years but it was broken; the mice had chewed thru the wires but my hubby recently fixed it) and still wants to try again but I’m scared it’ll catch fire and don’t think it’s safe and I don’t think we should use it anymore.
 I had a revelation yesterday when I was getting down on myself again for settling in life and all my regrets over things I wish I had done but didn’t and how I wish I could go back and rewind time and do so many things over and differently in life and it came to me about settling: that settling sometimes is just a part of life, you don’t always get what you want and things don’t always turn out the way you hope and sometimes you have to make do with less and settle for less, but there are other times where you don’t, where you stay determined and stick with your goal and pursue your dream and accept nothing less; the problem is when you always compromise and settle and sell yourself short and then you deserve better.
 The damn squirrels destroyed 4 out of the 6 sunflower seedlings I just transplanted into my garden outside, either snapping them in half or uprooting them, leaving only 2 survivors now. I started off planting 24 seeds originally and 12 of them got eaten and then of the other 12 that I brought indoors only 6 grew and now there’s only 2 left. I now dug them up yet again and re-planted them into tall glass vases and brought them back inside, back in the windowsill again and I guess they’ll just have to stay inside if they’re ever going to have any chance at survival.(This will get very challenging if they make it and get to be 6 feet tall indoors) If any of them do end up making it to full-grown they will be like me; a survivor. Enduring alot, alot of adversity in life, but keep surviving thru it all, being re-planted and buried and dug up again and again and still end up taking root and blooming thru it all and surviving the hardships….I’ve even named them: Sunny and Soleil.