A huge relief

My therapist is amazing. Somehow there was a loophole. I can't really remember what she said, but I think they recorded the missed appointment as a rescheduled appointment, and I saw my therapist today. I don't lose my docs!! I unloaded a lot of baggage on her because it had been two weeks since we spoke. We talked about the death of Sprout, recovering from two surgeries, this blog, being nocturnal, revenge-crafting... (I wish I could go into detail, but I can't due to personal safety reasons.) A lot of topics were covered. Talking about Sprout's tragic end helped me process it better. I do have some guilt, like "did I not try enough?" My therapist is correct though, I did absolutely everything I could. He was probably doomed from the start as a genetic mess. I love the hobby of frog keeping, but these breeders that keep inbreeding are making it more difficult to buy a healthy frog.

So no progress on the polkadot plant. Nothing has germinated, not even the smallest green shoot. I sure hope that these seeds weren't duds. Stumpie is still hiding in her cave, which does worry me a bit, but I know from participating in gecko groups that sometimes it can take weeks for them to get acclimated. I'm feeling pretty impatient about the frog situation. It's tough not to have another pet to take care of. Stumpie only eats once every 3 days, and she's not friendly. She'll gladly take mealworms from my fingers or on my hand, but if you try and touch her she'll give a warning bite. I of course check on her every day, refill her water bowl, water the plants, but that's not a lot of required care. It's weird to say, but I actually want more work. I love caring for animals. I guess there's nothing else to do but wait until I hear back from Josh's Frogs or Mike Matson. (Mike is the same breeder I bought from in 2017, top notch frogs.)

I actually used to have 5 pacmans, all bred by Mike. Two cranwelli brothers from the same spawn, a male and female ornata, and another cranwelli. The male ornata seemed to have died from some weird mold in his substrate. None of my other enclosures got it. The cranwelli tragically died from an injury in his mouth, probably from the tongs. (I guess I should have used tweezers.) Neither death was the fault of the breeder. The three that lived were big, robust, and enthusiastically hungry. Couldn't have been better frogs. Sadly my depression got really bad. Like REALLY bad. This was around the time that my guilt and anxiety over being asexual in a normal sexual relationship became too much to handle. It completely broke me. That's a whole another story though. I ended up giving my three frogs to a rescue/sanctuary. I cried, the woman from the rescue cried... It was incredibly tough, but I did what was best for them. I didn't have a frog from 2017 to 2020. Those weren't the best of times.

Anyway, I trust Mike's breeding practices and will definitely buy my tree frogs from him. My next pacman will have to come from Josh's Frogs, a company that sells frogs bred at the Frog Ranch. They're legendary for having discovered and isolated the genes for pacman albinism. They're known for more than that, they work with universities and US states to protect and promote research of frogs. It's also their mission to breed the most robust, healthy frogs. Unfortunately you can't buy directly from them unless you're a wholesale buyer, but that's where Josh's Frogs comes in, of course. I haven't heard back from Josh's Frogs about the ornatas yet. Just have to be patient I guess.

I am really starting to loathe my needle-felting project. I've spent so much time on it. I work hard only to have to correct it again and again. 

Not even Bruiser was interested. But yeahhh, I need to fix a lot. I'm running low on pink so I decided to use yellow in it too. I need to bulk out the feet because they're flat and frog-like. I tried expanding the head, but like I said... don't have much pink left at all. I also need to cut down the fur on the end of the tail because I don't want it to look like a troll. Then I'm going to do stripes and a yellow belly, and then finally I need to do the ears and face. I'm thinking baby blue eyes? Ugh, so much work. Why did I make this thing so big?!

I'll be so relieved when this thing is done and over with. Smaller projects only from now on.