cimorene

Wax and her inheritance: We mentioned a while ago about Wax's ancient granny-who-hated-me dying. Well, the sale of the house was finalized this week, and Wax has spent... about the last week putting in mostly-full-days emptying the house of crap. She's been exhausted, and also not at home because she's in Pargas which is 45 min away.

Sick: A week ago this past Wednesday my throat swelled almost closed to the tune of INTENSE PAIN. I thought it was some sort of allergic reaction (it's happened 3 times to me before, always in response to certain perfumes in the face) until a few hours later when the flu-like muscle quakes and hot-and-cold took over. The flu symptoms lasted 1 day and the sore throat 3, but I took it easy through Monday. I seem to be okay now except for sinus congestion, but luckily I have a box of Sudafed purchased last summer in the US. (Sudafed is prescription-only in Finland.)

Perry: This week he acquired a really bad ear infection: suddenly he wouldn't eat or sit down for more than like 20 seconds at a time all night. I skived off Thursday for an emergency vet appointment and now I've got to squirt slimy medicine in his ears twice a day. I think it's helping, though. Anyway, another thing that I need to get my energy together for is dog diapers. I've seen some tutorials online and I guess I can crochet the diaper cover and you can use baby diapers and cut a hole for the tail... I just don't seem to have the energy/time to determine the sizing and the budget and actually make the cover. Well, that's my agenda for next week I guess.

Rupert Replacement: My mom has a big dragon collection dating from before I was born, and my favorite of these is Rupert, a 2' long tabletop Chinese dragon that she got as a wedding present. He's durable and lightweight, made of resin with plastic jewel eyes, and the somewhat rare product of a Chicago-based statuary company that was active from the 30s-60s, and which has now become rather collectible. (Most of her favorite dragons had names, and she made them talk to me in different voices, but my other favorites to talk to were one-of-a-kind ceramics; Rupert I could actually hug and play with.)

I've been looking online for something sort of like Rupert for five years or so, but without much luck. There are cast stone garden decoration dragons, and there are ceramic and resin collectible dragons, but the latter tend to be smaller and somehow less friendly, and all of them are kind of pricey. But this week I talked to my mom about it and got Rupert's manufacturer information and I found two more Ruperts online. One of them was about $70 USD on eBay with a very ugly paintjob but one of them was more reasonable and mom's gonna try to buy it for me. Even if she can't get it, though, we talked about trying to cast a duplicate of him, or if that fails, I'm now determined to sculpt my own from papier-mache or clay, if necessary (clay's easier to work with, obviously, but more fragile and there's the problem that I don't know anybody with a kiln. But if nothing else, there's mom's kiln). Anyway, just the prospect of getting a Rupert made me happy. I only have stuffed dragons and a lego one at the moment.