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it's sick i tell you.

i'm so used to sleeping at 4-5am in the morning, i couldn't get myself to go to bed at 2am, so instead of tossing and turning, i'm up doing anything else but sleeping. watching late night infomercials. watering my plants. making an additional weblog entry. i have to reclaim my normal sleep patterns. i can't keep on waking up around noon, feels like the day is already half over when i get up.

something's been on my mind though. sure, it could be a few things, i'm usually very much preoccupied in thought, but tonight, on this night when i should be sleeping but am not, i'm concerned about the welfare of my plants.

now amongst my social circle, i've developed a reputation for being somewhat of a gardener, someone with a green thumb, a man who knows his way amongst plants. while this is true to some extent - i have several seasons of gardening underneath my belt (a hobby i sort of just picked up when i was in high school) - now that i have my own place, with my own plants, i am somehow driving them all to the brink of botanical doom.

okay, maybe that's a bit of melodramedy, but my houseplants are not doing well.

first, there's the jasmine bush. since it's been relocated to my place, it sort of suddenly stopped flowering when it used to be an all year round producer of fragrant blossoms. the jasmine i can't sort of understand why it wouldn't be doing so well, it likes a warmer, sunny climate, and standing on the floor of my kitchen close to a drafty backdoor with only a few hours of morning sunlight, it's not the most ideal condition. nevertheless, it seems to be surviving anyway, which is a lot more than i can say about some of my other plants.

the spiderplant laurie gave me as a housewarming present, it's barely clinging to life. i had it in my bathroom, which you figured would be a good place for a plant, with all that humidity from the shower, but over the months the tips of the leaves have yellowed and then browned, and now i'm down to just a few leaves when there used to be more. the leaves i do have, they're all brown at the tips, and i don't know how long the spiderplant will last. maybe it's the frosted window in the bathroom, not letting in enough sunlight. thinking that's the case, i've relocated the plant to the southern facing windowed part of my house. it's been a few days, it'll take a few weeks more before i can tell if the plant will survive. i hope it does pull through, this plant has sentimental value. i remember laurie telling me that spiderplants are easy to take care of, you just basically water them and they thrive. apparently that's not the case here.

the same browning is happening to my lucky bamboo plants in the bathroom as well. now you have understand that browning is a result of dry weather conditions. wintertime here in new england, plants are prone to browning, because of the low humidity. it doesn't help to water the plants, excessive watering will only rot the roots and cause more damage. misting with a spray is futile unless i can keep the plants perpetually moist. one solution is to put the plant in the bathroom, but that seems to be what's causing all this problem. i have a feeling it's the lack of natural sunlight, or at least the filtered sunlight in the bathroom isn't good enough for the plants. maybe there's some sort of plant medicine for this condition, or maybe i can run a humidifier.

it's starting to get close to my bedtime (4am), maybe i'll try that "sleep" thing again.

having a supermarket right next door is one of the greatest things in the world. i can just slip out, run across the street, buy some food, and come back in just 10 minutes, you wouldn't even know i was gone. this was the case today, when i didn't have anymore plain yogurt to make my fruit elixirs (henceforth that's what i'll be calling my smoothies). for lunch i once again dabbled in belgian wafflery (once again mixing too much batter, major overflow on the iron), heated some sausages in the microwave, and created a strawberry fruit elixir (two glasses, i overdid it on the ingredients).

i spent a major part of the day with my mother at the fresh pond shopping center, first at kitchen etc., where i had a coupon clipped out of today's newspaper for a $10 discount off of a $50+ purchase. i got myself a timer ($7) for the kitchen and a miniature cheese grater ($2) (not a big cheese eater myself, i'll use it to grind things like cloves of garlic). later, we went to the t.j.maxx next door, where surprisingly they had a lot of cool interior decorating household item gifts, things like lamps and vases and cookware. things like that never really appealed to me, but since i bought a house, i'm all about that world. there was a 4 feet tall ceremony mask from bali for sale, but after some careful consideration, i passed it up, despite the cheap price ($12). i acquired another christmas gift, and bought a japanese glazed earthenware ($12), the kind that has that crackling green finish on the interior of the bowl.

dinner, my whole family came over to my place. old habits die hard, and while my parents made food in my kitchen, i took upon my ancient role as the son who just sits around the house while dinner is being made. actually, my mother made dinner, and we also ordered two dishes from zoe's next door. we ate in the living room, sitting on the floor, the entire family so used to being in front of the television that having dinner in the relative silence of the kitchen dining room would be strange.

before they left, my father showed me how to properly marinate a small chicken (hen), sitting in a tuperware of marinade composing of garlic power, black pepper, salt, sugar, soy sauce, cooking wine, and water. my mother told me i should write it down, but i'm a dedicated practitioner of the art of recipe memorization. a few hours later, i turned the chicken over, massaging it a bit to work in some of the juices, and put it into the fridge, ready for cooking tomorrow night. working with meats is gross!