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- I applied for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness thing, fully expecting they'll deny me, but whatever. It would be nice. I ought to qualify - I qualify for the spirit of the program - but I bet you the balance of my student loans that they say I don't. And if they say I don't, perhaps I will write to my congresspersons to protest (but I probably won't). Today I made winter dog paw protector stuff by melting a beeswax votive candle (I couldn't find just plain old "beeswax" anywhere and didn't want to commit to buying a pound online), coconut oil, calendula, avocado oil, and a pinch of borax. I poured it into tins and will give some away for Christmas to certain dogs I know. I didn't know until just now that borax is a terribly, terribly useful mineral compound. Actually I didn't even know it was a mineral - I thought it was a brand of laundry detergent. For my sisters and mom, I mixed up some coconut oil and some other fancy oils - arnica, argan, sea buckthorn, clary sage, and some stupid-expensive Lancer oil. It's what I use for a facial moisturizer - coconut oil mixed with whatever other fancy oils I've gotten samples for - so I figure it would be nice to impose on other people. I'm also making quilled snowflakes again. I haven't done this for a few years, and I figure the people I used to give them to probably don't have the snowflakes I made them anymore, so it won't be obnoxious if I give them another one this year. I looked at different snowflake patterns online but some of them are too dumb and some of them are wayyyyyyy too ornate, so I'll just stick with the pattern I've made before. And I'm fermenting some peppers for one of my brothers-in-law. I brought two pepper plants inside this fall, a Thai chili and a Chinese Five Color. The Thai chili looks like it just might survive the winter (if it survives this fucking aphid infestation right now) but the Chinese Five Color just up and died a month ago, just shriveled up and died. But its peppers had ripened! So I picked them all and, uh, I don't like hot peppers, and they'd probably have ended up drying out sitting on my counter (which would be fine, I've got other dried peppers from similar situations and I actually use them sometimes). But I decided to try fermenting them - I've wanted to do that for a while but have always forgotten to. And then I decided to give them to my brother-in-law (if it actually works, and I think it will). Also, I used up my last garden tomatoes a couple days ago. It was a weird year in the garden but technically this turned out to be my most successful tomato year yet - I've never been able to get green tomatoes to ripen inside, and this year a MILLION of them did. Ha ha, this entire thing was a big bragfest, wasn't it. Ugh.
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