Stuck at Hartford

I was stuck at the Bradley airport... So I crocheted a heart

Pattern from mini crochet motif and pattern published by Asahi. All jape se but the patterns are readable :)

New Year and lots of changes

2013! A new year and lots has happened. I've almost finished my extremely long stream of job interviews and I've posted a ton of new stuff on my etsy site. My husband has continued to encourage me to draw which he considers my foremost gift so I've obliged and somehow a tweaky little pufferfish was born as well as a bunch of other creatures.

All of these were done with copic and prismacolor alcohol markers, white gel marker, and judicious use of a clear blender marker. If you want to start with alcohol markers, I'd recommend buying prismacolor first, they cost about half as much and perform almost as well. I did the pufferfish on marker paper which I'd never used before - it's ultra thin and smooth and surprisingly holds onto marker aggressively. I've used mostly bristol before and you can move pigment around with the blender after colors have dried on bristol but not the marker paper. 

Please feel free to check out my etsy shop for prints of any of these :)

abunnyandbear.etsy.com

Also I've gone on an Oya lace tangent and have been making these little flag charms like mad. I think i'll make a series since I have all this lovely vintage mercerized cotton lying around.

~ happy new year

How I treated my cat's infected abscess and avoided a huge vet bill

My kitty, Hermes, is a little numbnut. He is chubby, cute, friendly to people but loves to hiss at the first sign of any other animal. He also loves to escape the house and get into fights. His first abscess was a few weeks ago and it cost us $200 at the vet YIKES. The vet had to put him under and also 'reversed' the general anesthesia which cost $100 alone - not going that vet again.

He gets abscesses on his back near his tail - this means he was attacked while running away. I'm sure running away from a fight he picked himself. Special. My friend who is a farmer suggested a well tried remedy he uses for his animals - plantain weed. My mom has actually pointed this plant out to me often saying it has healing properties and I decided to give it a try to avoid another whopper vet bill for something that just needs to drain.

This is the plant. I bet you've seen it growing in the cracks of sidewalks before and never paid it any heed - I certainly never did. I got a handful from my farmer friend's property and went home to make a nice poultice out of it. I took three or four leaves, rolled them up and mashed them with the butt of a knife (a pestel and mortar will work better if you have one). If you can get your animal to tolerate a wad of plant on their skin with a bandage on top, that's best but my cat immediately began licking the area. So instead I mashed the leaves, squeezed some juice out and dabbed a small brush in the juice and brushed it on the area. I did this two or three times a day and on the third day the abscess ruptured and a nice amount of pus drained out. Another good idea is to  gently clean the area daily with 50/50 hydrogen peroxide in water. This may hurt on an open cut so be gentle. This is Hermes on day 4 of treatment:

There are actually two scabbed areas - on in the middle of the bald area and one at the lower right. These are the spots that the abscess came to a head and ruptured, much like a pimple. While gross, this is what you want! An ancient greek medical phrase, 'ubi pus evacuo' or 'when there is pus, evacuate it' meaning that pus has to drain for things to heal. This area was a firm red lump and now it's a fuzzy healing patch. He doesn't even mind much when I touch it now.

Well, I wish you luck with your own pets and I hope you try this alternative to a big vet bill for a simple abscess. This remedy is only for simple abscesses that have not caused full body infections. If you animal is acting sick, not eating , sleeping or hiding more than usual - go to the vet!

Good luck :)

Big Box Orchid Score!

I live pretty close to a Lowe's an I go there maybe once a month to check out the clearance plants. Though the big box stores don't tend to have high quality orchid in terms of root systems sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes it's worth the 5$ if you get a month of flowers and the plant still dies. So I was doing my usual routine when I found this GREAT Oncidium (Onc. 'Howard's Dream') for $12! It has like 12 pseudobulbs on it, most of them 6 inches high, only slightly wrinkled. The roots looked dry but ok, not growing profusely though. Yay orchids :)

A day in the life of a medical student

I wrote this HILARIOUS story about a young lady who was in labor and didn't realize she was even pregnant. Oh california, how you confirm the stereotypes. Take a read of my rough draft. I hope to submit this to a publication but no idea where it should go. This story is 100% true.

here is an exerpt, please see link for full story:

A young woman was lying in bed with her boyfriend and an older woman, possibly the boyfriend’s mother. She was fair with a shock of maraschino red hair with brunette roots cut like Betty Paige. And really, really pregnant. Her torso was like an isosceles triangle (like your arithmetic teacher always told you - as wide as it is tall).  She looked vaguely but not exceedingly perplexed. As the hubbub of preparations began around her and the fetal heart monitor starting ticking at a happy 140, our attending doctor announced, “You’re pregnant.” This was met with very a minimal ripple of perceivable reaction. The soon-to-be-mom seemed to chew over the idea for a moment and said, “I’m pregnant?! So that's what that was … Is it a boy or a girl?”.

:)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lUXZOL-UPqQ6cQoHGQLCGDKBUf4khn_YxwKBBMpPX2E/edit

worst hug ever - laughing in retrospect

Since I lost my job I've had a lot of time on my hands. I remembered today, while driving, one of the funniest moments of my life and I want to chronicle it in case I don't think of it for months or years to come. Though I'm only 27 I've been lucky enough to have had many wonderful, challenging, colorful experiences in my life, many related to the pursuit of medicine. I was able to visit Japan as an exchange student during med school and, representing Hawai'i, it was my duty to present the Dean of the School with a flower lei as a sign of our thanks. Usually, especially between people from hawai'i, the universal greeting is a smile, a kiss on the cheek and a hug. The dean was a stately older gentleman, in his early sixties perhaps. He wore a very solemn expression on his face and stood very straight in his neat heather gray suit. As I walked up to him, he bowed forward ever so slightly to graciously accept the lei. This, to my elated, effusive mind, was a big go-ahead. I grinned, grasped him firmly by the shoulders and leaned in for a big kiss. As I began pulling on his shoulder, he firmly resisted and looked at me like, "Are you insane." I ended up giving him an awkward distanced half-hug with a smile frozen on my face. As I eased up, he cleared his throat and said, "In Japan, usually we do not touch each other." Ha! At the time I wanted to sink into a hole and die, but in retrospect I can't help but laugh at myself. I was giggling in my car cruising down the road today and, as often happens when I'm entertaining myself too much, the people passing me probably think I'm a complete nut.

The picture below is of anonymous university staff from Japan. Any one of them could be my dean though none of them are. The grumpiest looking one is the closest to what I got.

My new neighborhood and tumbleweeds

Having recently lost my job, I've had some challenges to say the least! My lease with my apartment was up and we had given our 30-days' notice before I lost my job meaning we had to find a new (affordable) place to rent STAT. I am so blessed to have wonderful friends and one of which was moving out of her house and let us move in. It's right beside a big swath of undeveloped endowment land which is full of scrubby native plants (Boise is in a semi-arid zone).

Endowment land

Somehow these delicate wildflowers survive in the scorching heat

I found a beautiful dried branch that had blown in from somewhere!

There's a cafe in town with a piece of tumbleweed as a lampshade it's gorgeous! While this definitely isn't tumbleweed it has just the right rustic chic look I want :).