Closer

It’s 9:40AM here and I am barely awake. I had another rough night and I’ve tried some green light therapy, though I don’t know that that’s perked me up too much. Caffeine seems possible but I do have to be careful. As a HSP, ceffeine + tiredness can mean heart palpitations, and those are never fun.

I did lose another chili rasbora rasbora last night, which makes me sad. I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe it was weak or weakened already, and maybe the dramatic water change just finished it off. It’s unfortunate, but again, there is no point in being miserable about it. “You don’t have to like it, you just have to accept it”. Words to live by.

I’ve bought some Tetra InitialSticks, which I’ve researched thoroughly and apparently do not alter the water chemistry, but also, and again, I should have used before planting my java fern. The downside of them is that dosing is a bit fiddly and will involve me weighing out 54 grams for my 54 litre tank, dividing it by three for my three bunches of java fern and then using some sort of pipe or tube to move the gravel back from the roots and pour the sticks on down. Well, that’s definitely not the most simplest aquarium treatment that I have ever done.

It’s only once a year though, so for all of this moaning about how tricky dosing the InitialSticks will be then it’s not like I have to do it every week. I’m still going to be a bit bugged by it though, okay? It’s allowed.

Last night Hugo made an escape, ran outside and got muddy, then he bought mud back in and all over the sofa. He was in his element, of course he was, right up until Matt grabbed a pet wipe to clean his paws. When Hugo growled about his paws being touched, the muzzle came out to play.

Hugo, naturally, was not amused.

“Yep, you can grumble and growl all you want mate, I’m still cleaning your paws” Matt says, I can barely contain my laughter. He says it’s from too long working in customer service, he’s unaffected by grumbling and growling now.

I did consider making my own CO2 reactor for my aquarium for a time, which sounds and looks a lot like something from Breaking Bad, though I decided against it for now. I’ve opted to take a conservative approach for the moment: let’s add the InitialSticks first, then we’ll see what happens.

Our TV broke last night, though there was no big bang and fortunately no smoke or fire. One of Matt’s friends commented on his Facebook status that it might been the light inside it, but for the cost of the TV and the cost of a service then we decided to replace it instead. It’s a bit like our compact dishwasher – when that went home, it was only £60 more expensive to get a new, more ecological one with a whole life ahead of it, so we did that instead. We don’t have a huge TV anyway – a 42″ screen for our small home was hardly going to be expensive.

It’s smart too, which feels like even more luxury and even more buttons for me to get used to. No pun intended, of course.

Still, last night gave us a TV-free evening with some soft jazz music in he background instead.

“This is nice” I sigh. We really don’t do this often enough and it feels great to slip into this soothing soundbath. The Google speaker has amazing audio quality in our little lounge.

“Well we haven’t done it in a while and with the TV off I thought.. why not?” Matt says.

“There was a time we used to do this every dinner time” I reminisce. Ahh yes, the good old days. Whatever happned to the good old days? We had a routine set up too, whatever happened to that?

“I know” he says guiltily.

“There might be some changes around here yet.”

“Oh?”

“Mmhmm, Kitten makes the rules” I grin.

“Some of them she does, but Daddy decides which ones we keep” he grins back.

Touché, ass.

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Last night I had an unexpected surprise. After thirteen years, H of TMI Tuesday called it quits. There’s a sense of grief, in a way, given that the TMI Tuesday posts have long been a part of my blog. My stats always did well on a Tuesday-Wednesday, too.

But there’s another feeling for me, almost as though H has pulled the carpet from under my feet. Why? Because in days before, I too was considering cutting back on how much I blog. I was going to TMI Tuesday every week, and do my Friday posts every two, until…

Dear Reader, it wasn’t so much of a “because I have to” thing but more of a “because I want to”, and also “because I can”. Kinky With A Twist is not an explosive success, but it is successful enough with enough views each day for me to be able to relax a little now. You know you’ve made it to blogging success when you can relax a bit and not worry about how much you’ll be read. There are bloggers out there who are forced to blog daily in order to be noticed, and bloggers out there who pay for traffic to boost their rankings. Up until now I’ve blogged twice per week and I’ve never paid a penny for my views, instead I’ve relied largely on SEO alone. Despite that, Kinky With A Twist is still growing.

I want to use that free time effectively and productively, but also take some time to relax. I want to use some of that time to edit my older posts and make those too SEO-friendly, something I’ve been meaning (and trying) to do for months. I also want to get started on the books that I have planned and finally, finally get those out, to be more on top of the housework than I have been, and myself. It will not be wasted time, it will be time used more effectively.

I did adjust my Slowly profile reply time this morning as well, from “as soon as possible” to “once a week”. I love replying to and interacting with my penpals, really I do, but they have to be something that I enjoy, not another obligation for me. I know that some penpals like my Canadian penpal, Ben, would lecture me on that. I say lecture, but really it’s because he cares. That’s something else that I love now, the number of people who I have in my life who care and actually want to interact with me. It does make me a little bit emotional. – I guess when you’ve felt like number two for so long then it’s going to have that effect.

I still plan to keep these rambles – though maybe a little bit shorter – just because I like to write them and it seems some people like reading them. I try not to be a depressive old bore and to interject some positivity and humour too. Life happens sometimes. Shit happens to good people, but said shit doesn’t have to ruin your day, unless of course it does.

That’s probaby another headstone-worthy quote.

Why do we like talking about ourselves, anyway? Am I a narcissist?

I’ve always enjoyed TMI Tuesdays, they feel a little like an interview and a chance for my readers to know me, but why so?

I’m up again when I most certainly should be sleeping.

It turns out that, and according to some brain scans, talking about ourselves initiates the same pleasure hormones as sex. Cool! I’ve never likened conversation to fucking before, though maybe I can see it.

It does make you think about those exceptional conversationalists in a whole new light, though. Unless you’ve already had those thoughts before…

I huddle my pillow to myself and settle myself down to sleep. As I do, a thought crosses my mind: Bill smells like this.

I mean, maybe.

Bill introduced us to Ecoegg, the more-or-less detergent-free laundry egg, which means to say that, if Bill also uses the “cotton fresh” scent, then we effectively use the same laundry detergent. I wouldn’t say that it was a besotted feeling, but it was a closeness, a comfort. Another little thing that makes me smile.

I do know that he doesn’t use the Ecoegg dryer eggs though, so he will never truly understand the monthly sadistic satisfaction that I get from shoving a scented stick up the rubber egg’s arse.