Summer Hideout

In the winter, it was so cold in my house. I had no central heating, so I would bundle up and sit under my warm kotatsu and then sprint into bed with my heated blanket (when I didn't fall asleep under the kotatsu). Basically I lived in my living room under my kotatsu for all of winter.

But now that it's summer, I've found myself holing up in my bedroom, since that's where the AC is. Last summer I managed to go for decently long without running the AC too much (and then I caved) but I feel like I've turned on the AC really early this year. But my room is the one place that's really nice and cool in my house - though when I need to use the bathroom or cook, it's like running into a wall of disgustingly thick heat when I step out of my ice box of a room.

Not having wi-fi (since my time capsule broke) is making this experience much more annoying. Also, the fact that my softbank internet thingie has no signal in my house (but my phone has full bars! I don't understand! Augh!) makes it even more annoying.

Oh! So for something not heat related, I *finally* did what people have been telling me to do for AGES. I planted a small garden in a planter box. It looks really awkward and a little stupid (I have this giant long container thing that's this not-so-pleasing color of pastel-y green). There's also the chance that nothing will actually grow there, since I'm planting my seeds really really late. I mean, I know it's a little on the late side to be planting stuff, since generally that's done in the spring (thank you Harvest Moon) but I didn't find the proper seeds until just last week or so.

I'm trying to grow zucchini, since it's EXPENSIVE over here for zucchini! One zucchini at my grocery store today was about 180 yen - almost $2 (with the exchange rate, probably $2) for a single zucchini. Wat. The. Fak. So I found the seeds at the hardware store (and was like "omg where have these been?" since I've been looking for zucchini seeds for ages, and I swear those weren't there when I went to the store in the earlier months.

I also think I planted them wrong. ._. After I planted them, I was reading that you should plant one seed per hole thing about a couple inches or so apart... I kind of just dug holes in a -_-_- pattern and planted them there like that. Yeah. Probably shouldn't have done that. Sigh. And I dumped two to four seeds in each little hole.

I'm growing a little basil plant though, that's doing quite nicely. If I want like, a couple of leaves it's fine for that, but I'm like, for cooking purposes it's not really... yeah. I'd have to have like, a couple of basil plants. Maybe I'll do that sometime. But I think I'm supposed to thin the plants out, you know, like survival of the fittest style.

Last night I went over to Hannah's place with Caroline and we watched Up and Tangled. :) Good times. I love being able to just hang out like that sometimes and not like... do anything but watch movies and eat. We found a cockroach in her house partway through the movies though, and had a... an interesting time freaking out and standing on the couch and the bed haha. Regular bunch of girls we were. This was promptly followed by a trip to the supermarket she lived by (it was 24 hours! Had a nice bout of city envy right there) where we stocked up on things that can kill cockroaches. Sticky roach traps, roach dango, and this nice spray stuff that we used to also kill several flying bugs that had come in when we opened the door. I don't think I could do the traps, since it means I'll have to remove it too... and that's just kinda gross.

I'm pleased to report though, that I was not among the hysterically screaming. Nope. Freak out yeah, but like, there was very little screaming and swearing from me. Probably because it wasn't my apartment.

It's kind of weird though. The roach was about the length of my thumb - super huge! We were like GOOD GOD. But roaches don't actually bite or anything. They're just really annoying and move really fast. (Most of them) don't even fly or jump. You'd think that we'd react worse to mosquitos or something. But yeah, they're kind of disgusting. And by kind of, I mean, really are.

Someone also said they were never visiting me during the summer because of all the bugs haha. I don't quite blame them; there's a ridiculous amount of flying critters around light sources (like the train station) during the evening.

I think I'm getting a little bit better at bugs. The ones I can anticipate anyways. Maybe. Haha. I am still, by no means, "good" at being around bugs. I still freak out. But I like to think that I freak out a little less. Maybe. Probably not.