So this is what I'm doing to my nails for strength at the moment.

So this is what I'm doing to my nails for strength at the moment. It's not beautiful or interesting, but I do think it's a pretty neutral and looks nice with my skin tone. I could do nail art over it with gel or regular polish. I just haven't had time.

So this is just structure gel, which could possibly be considered an overlay. But it's not as thick as polygel and (in my opinion) much easier to apply. It takes a fraction of the time to create an apex in the correct position and get a nice glossy finish. With polygel I was using pop-its to get my apex and smooth finish, but there was always an issue of shaping/filing the free edge and creating a smooth transition at the cuticle. By the time I was done with that process I was no longer interested in doing any sort of nail art, which is the whole reason I ever want to do my nails.

This gel also removes faster and easier than polygel. You can buff the surface and soak off with acetone. To make it faster you can use an e-file to take down the bulk of the product. This is similar to removing polygel with an e-file, but takes a lot less time. My polygel overlays were always on the thick side.

Here's hoping this is a good solution for growing out the damage I did to my natural nails. It would also be nice if it worked as a reinforcement for them once they grow out. I don't like to grow my nails super long, but I really hate it when they break. Who doesn't, I guess. 😂

So far they feel nice. Not thick or heavy, but somehow strong. They aren't bending at all. Hopefully, my application was good and I won't get any lifting for a couple of weeks. We shall see!

Day 2 of ugly crying.

Day 2 of ugly crying.

I guess I'm gonna feel my feelings today.

Who DOESN'T love having sandpaper eyes? 🙄

Thanks. It was me. 😂

Thanks. It was me. 😂

I'm having a hard day.

I'm having a hard day. I know I don't talk about him anymore, but I'm still mourning the loss of Oreo. I just carry this deep sadness in my heart. It's heavy.

I finally got around to mailing some of his remains to his Aunt Taimi. Maybe that's the reason I'm struggling today. It's like the last thing I can do for him - send him to rest at the last place he was happy. The only place he ever gained ground. The only place he ever played.

I've got a paw print and a lock of his fur. I don't need anything else. It's just hard. I've been avoiding my grief instead of processing it. There are things about him that I miss, like the goofy way he held his ears out and trotted back to me after he realized we were friends. That was my favorite shit. ❤️

It's an odd situation, though. He was only in my home for a few days before he left us. I barely had a chance to get used to him being here before he was gone. I feel like that makes it easy for me to push it to the side, like a dream. There aren't reminders of him everywhere like if he'd been here for months or years.

In this regard, I feel like I got off easier than Taimi. I left him in the most capable hands I knew. I was optimistic. He made progress. She nurtured him and cared for him and shared her space. Then like a hopeful idiot, I took him and wanted to get him well and if I got slapped in the face by his outcome, then I know it was a beat down for her.

And yet. Here I am a blubbering mess over a pup who's BEEN gone. On days like this I don't know what to do with myself, but it's a relief to cry. I should do it more often.  It's just tricky to mourn with so few reminders.

Do any of you ever think about him anymore?

Toebean playing with Shaun's toebeans.

Toebean playing with Shaun's toebeans. I don't know what has gotten into him. 😂😂😂

This is Tort Baby's new home.

This is Tort Baby's new home. I think he will really enjoy it here.

So he's not on the bare floor. We used our scrap flooring to make a floor for him, as well as flaps on his hidey areas to hold the humidity/bedding. We rolled the flooring up in the main area of his cage so that no one will bother him and he won't hurt himself trying to get out.

He's got grippy stones so that he can drink his water without getting in, or he can have something to grip to help him get out if he goes in. The stones will also keep him from dumping out his water and it will be good for his nails. He's got his food plate easily accessible to both of us, and I'm hoping he'll do his dooks on the vinyl so it'll be easy to clean up.

Inside his enclosed area is more things to climb, which leads to a box of dirt he can bury himself in. Every time we put him outside in the kennel he buries himself, so I hope he'll make good use of this. When the pool is put in this summer his kennel will be concreted in so he won't be able to to do that anymore.

We've hung his heat lamp. The only thing I have left to do is set up his humidifier. We'll get that done either today or tomorrow.

I love this kid, but tortoises are surprisingly noisy and determined little creatures. When he's hungry or wants out to exercise he scrapes and bumps into things to let us know. I definitely want to meet his needs, but now that my office is downstairs I can't handle the noise when I'm in a meeting or otherwise concentrating. I hope this much larger space will give him plenty to do without us having to carry him in and out so frequently. We used to leave him free-range in the sunroom, but Bear wants to play with him so those days are over (for now).

Thankfully, he seems quite happy so far! ❤️

Bear is checking out Tort Baby's new digs. 😂

Also, that is not poop. Just bedding from the other area that fell out of the flaps.

Fancy dig area that we hope he loves.

Sunroom, from left to right.

Sunroom, from left to right.

We are exhausted, but we got everything moved out, the floor put down, and everything moved back in yesterday. We even built Tort Baby's house, but ran out of steam before getting it finished and him moved in. Final picture of that in another post.

I don't know if vinyl sheet flooring is really going out of style everywhere or if it's a New Mexico thing, but it was hard to find here and that's specifically what we wanted for this project. For one, when we bought this house there was no sunroom; there was just a concrete patio with a roof for shade. The first modification we made here was the sunroom because that side of the house is South-facing and we knew that my plants and the cats would love it. We also didn't want litter boxes in the main part of the house.

I got totally off track here. 😂 So the concrete patio wasn't perfectly even/flat, and we knew if we wanted to put rigid flooring down we'd have to smooth it out, which we didn't want to do. We read that newer vinyl tile/plank flooring did better with spills and messes than it used to, but I felt wary about that after having it in my first house, and the rigidity was a problem, anyway. This isn't a bougie room. It's one that we fully expect to get messy and I wanted something easy to clean and that we won't freak out over if something does happen to it. So we used gap fillers and different flooring methods to smooth out the lumps and bumps and fill the gaps, then slapped this stuff down.

The one thing I didn't get to do was paint my plant shelves. The timing isn't right. It's super windy here right now so that would make it hard to spray paint anything. Not to mention that I had to rush getting everything back on the shelves because Bear decided he was going to "help" me clean the dead leaves and whatnot off my plants. The problem is that he didn't know what to pull off and just started pulling all kinds of leaves off. 😂 The boy even full-on mouthed a prickly pear pad and that didn't stop him. He gets an A for effort, though. 😂❤️

I am so, so happy with how it came out. When the floor was just concrete I'd have to use a Shop Vac to clean it and that was so hard on my back and sinuses that I avoided cleaning it as often as I should have. Now I can sweep and mop it so easily. I do need to get a few litter mats to help with litter tracking, but for now this is so much better. 😁

Tort Baby's mansion to the left. Beyond that is the dog food and water plus food bins and their door to the outside. Against the window we have this raggedy cat tower that the cats LOVE. You can see Calypso's little back feet hanging out. 😂

Next to that is a litter box box with the cat fountain and feeder on top.

View from our kitchen table:  Wood holder and heater that keeps the plants from freezing. On top of the heater is a bunch of prickly pear pads that I need to pot up. Nothing tall that could obstruct our view into the yard.

The one thing I wanted to do but didn't get to was paint these shelves green. They remind me of bamboo and I think they would look great in green. They were Shaun's mom's shelves and I love them.

To the right is some of my planting stuff. I might see if I can find a rolling storage thing that would suit my needs. I just kind of stashed that stuff there for now. You can also see the Litter Robot stairs. I'm really happy to have those over there instead of in the middle of the room like they were.