iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Stupid strength training stabilizes my hypermobile joints so I don’t have 1001 low level aches all the time.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Met a fren on my walk this morning

A wild rabbit in an urban setting, sitting on concrete behind a chain link fence. (It’s not trapped in there or anything, I just didn’t think I could get a picture without the fence unless I got a lot closer, which would have startled it.) It looks like how I imagined Hazel from Watership Down.

It has huge liquid black eyes, short ears, and a brown coat that’s actually agouti (each hair has bands of multiple colors - light brown, dark brown, white) which is just as good at camouflage in the city as it would be in the wild. The rabbits are kind of pests around here, but they beat rats IMO. Also I know I said the eyes are huge and liquid and they are, but there’s a look in them which makes me think “beady” and also “ready to dart away”. Not a hint of “approach and pet my coat to see how soft I am”

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

He’s a mur-diddly-urderer!

A striped mackerel tabby in a doorway that leads to a second story outdoor porch. In front of him on my wood floor is a common house sparrow with a broken neck. He looks a little smug.

Please note that not only is this porch on a second story, we also have an owl statue to discourage birds from landing on the porch railing so they don’t get killed. Now I gotta dispose of the body, EW EW EW

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

This is a bad cat, but a good blep.

A old lady tortoiseshell cat with a very pretty face and big green eyes and a tongue sticking out

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Blursed timeline. This is the sun.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

How are all these World Cup elite athletes just out there mouth breathing the whole time?

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Guess who insisted on a walk when I got home and flushed out a rat? 🐀🤢

Sassafras, a mackerel tabby cat, looking at the camera and licking his chops

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Frassy with volunteer echinacea

A striped mackerel tabby sniffing a purple echinacea (cone flower)

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

SUCH a good cosplay of Kinger from Amazing Digital Circus - this is right outside a movie theater playing The Final Act on opening day

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

What a good year for the roses. Bloomscroll incoming

Part of my garden, you can see white peonies and a single blooming pink one on the middle left. Middle middle is a pink rosebush, with a couple of late purple Siberian irises behind it.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Ahhhh so I picked up @trungles.com ‘s Angelica and the Bear Prince on a whim yesterday & it’s the best thing I’ve read in AGES. I’m hoping my kiddo reads it so I have someone to talk about it with. The character arcs are so good! All the subplots are so thoughtful. The art is divine. All the feels.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

All the weeding that I did has paid off - I can enjoy the spring flush of blossoms without feeling dread and shame from all the weeds

An exhuberant, even blowsy, yellow rosebush doing its thing, with some red roses (separate plant obviously!) behind

Pink peony blossom in the marshmallow stage where it’s big and puffy and soft looking but hasn’t opened yet.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Mother! I shall perish if we don’t go for a walk right away.

Sassafras, a mackerel tabby, is pawing at the glass part of a door. He looks cranky and also YOU CAN SEE HIS WIDDLE TOE BEANSSSSSS mashed up on the glass. Also you can kinda see me in the reflection.

Frassy is still doing a frantic beseeching anxiety dance visible through the glass of a door, and he looks adorably grumpy. Also the paint is peeling and the glass on the door is dirty in ways I hadn’t noticed until taking this picture, oh well.

In the reflection you can see me wearing sunglasses, a tank top and shorts because it was 85F today and I’ve just gotten home from an outdoor workout where I got super sweaty, per usual, which you can kinda tell from my hair

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

(almost) all the flowers in bloom in my garden right now are purple, here is a bloomscroll.

Irises. These mofos are super tough. I basically have to jackhammer them out of the ground if they spread somewhere I don’t want them to. The bloom time is fairly short but the grasses provide some interest the rest of the year. Also cover for 🐀

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

I mildly regret leash training this cat because he narps at me incessantly for walks now. But he loves it a whole lot.

Sassafras, a mackerel tabby cat, is loving up on some hydrangea twigs for his own mysterious reasons.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

I don’t think anyone is going to have an opinion on this. But does Whitey the Rat from Flushed Away look like Jason Statham to anyone else?

Whitey the rat, a gangster character from Flushed Away. He’s white (as the name implies), with a high forehead and close set eyes. He’s built like a brick shithouse and (for some reason) wearing a suit reminiscent of the one work by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, complete with a heavy chain link goldfish necklace.

The British actor Jason Statham, usually cast as a hard man. He’s pale skinned, bald with a high forehead and close set eyes. He’s wearing a suit (not at all like Saturday night fever, sadly) and you can’t see from this picture, but I assure you he is built like a brick shithouse.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Mood heading into a long weekend: almost there, just gotta lay low until the end of the day.

A striped mackerel tabby js peering out from among greenery, looking vaguely like a tiger in a jungle. Greenery = hosta on the right, I believe some kind of geranium family member on the bottommost left, maybe that’s loosestrife in bloom on the left, some kinda weed on the bottom right which might just be violets, still a weed but a friendly one.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Someone has committed CRIMES against this streptocarpus (top leftmost plant if you aren’t familiar)

A wildly blooming streptocarpus (cape primrose) (when did I become someone who casually uses the plant’s Latin name??), a severed leaf from said streptocarpus, and a mutilated flower.

Also visible: some other plant, a sad fruit bowl, and a weird little steampunk-ish heron (or maybe it’s a crane) dangling from the fridge. I bought it for my husband decades ago (when steampunk was just getting started). He never liked it because he wasn’t a fan of steampunk so I’m not actually sure why it’s still hanging around, maybe today will finally be the day I bin it

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Why is every fucking thing a portal to social media? It’s pointless enshittification. Spotify: portal to YouTube Pinterest: portal to TikTok Nintendo switch FFS: portal to YouTube Super annoying to parent this. “No you can’t have spotify time to fall asleep to, I know you’ll just sneak tv”

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Like the night sky was giving me a smile and a wink

Dark twilight sky with a fingernail moon and one star (probably a planet) off to the left. The placement makes it look sorta like a winking smiley face.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Great Blue was so close to me! Like 10-15 feet away. I accidentally scared it trying to get my foot into the picture to show how close it was (whyyyyy). The movement startled it, and it flew off scolding angrily.

Great blue heron on a rock, waiting for lunch to swim by

Great blue heron flying majestically and angrily away from me and my clumsy-ass self

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

5 hours weeding, this is only a fraction. I’m so tired. I’ve filled 4 garbage cans with weeds in the last 7 days.

Before - part of a garden bed with hostas being swallowed up by weeds

After - the same garden bed, hostas now freed from the weeds.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Longish meeting yesterday that I mostly needed to pay attention for, so I kept my hands busy drawing without a net (straight into ink, no pencil sketching beforehand.) It’s not very accurate, but it’s nice and loose.

Gel pen sketch of an oriental lily in my regular working notebook (so it has grid dots, haha). I used a .5 mm black pen for the outlines of the petals and .7 mm light green, light pink and yellow gel pens to add some color to the center of the petals and to the stamens. It looks messy and fast because it was, but I’ve been trying to figure out how to loosen up my drawing for a while now. Drawing from life always accelerates this, and so does working directly with pen (no pencil outlines or anything to get proportions first). In this case, I was working from life AND using pen first, so it’s quite shaggy. But I’m happy with the way the pink and yellow gel pen colors blended. Usually there are some parts of a drawing that I’m unhappy with and some parts I am pleasantly surprised by.

A reference picture of the original flower I was drawing (although I was drawing the actual flower since I had it in front of me, not this picture, to be clear.) I never noticed how similar the proportions of oriental lilies and starfish are until I drew this, although most starfish have 5 arms, not 6.

My drawing looks a little different than this pic since I was sitting at a different angle than the picture was taken (also the drawing just wasn’t that precise.) My husband gave me these for Mother’s Day, which was sweet of him - lilies are my favorite. They are also toxic to cats so all the cats (including my best beloved Sassafras) have been exiled from my office for a week. They are VERY fragrant so it’s a nice change from the way my office normally smells when the door has been shut (which is like a locker room, ew) but also fortunately it’s warm enough to keep a window cracked.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Frassy1 Me: 0 since I’m in the middle of a thorny rosebush holding the other end of his leash waiting for him to get bored or hungry and come out

Sassafras, a mackerel striped tabby, peering out from the nethermost regions of a dwarf spruce-ish thingie. You can’t see his halter or leash but they’re there. I can’t extract him without making a blood sacrifice to the roses, which I am not hungry enough to do.

At least the lilacs are in bloom and smell nice while I write this alt text. Frassy always wants to go on walks and if I can get him acclimated to the front garden (where the majority of the work needs to be done), I can bring him out and get the weeding done at the same time. Win-win!

Plus there are rats all over the city and a couple of days ago, a softball sized one shot between my feet while I was gardening and ran into Weed Forest right where Frassy is now, so he could protect me, which I would appreciate. Or kill some rats which would also be fine (at least until I have to dispose of the body, a disgusting chore)

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

I have some quibbles about this tree that the city planted in front of my house, but for about 2 weeks in spring I love it.

A small tree filled with pink blossoms. Unfortunately it’ll never get tall enough to provide decent shade or have its lowest hanging branches stay out of the way of cars or pedestrians. Also the placement of the cutout wasn’t great - makes it hard for me to get trash and recycling bins onto the curb.

On the plus side this tree is healthy AF, I have never watered it after its first summer, it takes a shitload of salt and sand in winter and keeps going, and the small size of the canopy indicates a root system that’s less likely to interfere with underground infrastructure (also small size means it won’t interfere w power lines). And it’s not that big a deal for me to trim the branches that get in the way. Doesn’t drop too much crap either - some petals in spring, leaves in fall and crabapples in winter, but far less annoying than the fireball nips that spring up constantly. It also smells reasonably nice in bloom. So basically you pays your money and you takes your chances.

Close up of a pink blossoms on a tree branch

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

My real answer is Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Excruciatingly boring. My normal person answer is Lord of the Flies. Unpleasant people behaving badly, body horror and suuuuuuuuuper obvious symbolism.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

I was looking for herrings, not herons, but still cool

A heron wading - I think it’s a great blue heron but I am not a birder

The same maybe great blue heron flapping its wings

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

An aftermarket insinkerator but for your toilet. I would call it the Turlerator. Or possibly the Turdminator.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

So much grass to chomp, so little time

A gray striped mackerel tabby wearing a red leash and black harness chews on some pathetic early grass. His head is blurred because he’s moving and bc I took the picture in very low light, at the tail end of dusk

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Lookit this fuzzy lil guy/gal/non-binary pal (idk much about bees)

A fuzzy bee harvesting something (pollen? nectar? Idk) from the center of a yellow pansy, with an orange pansy and purple phlox (I think, idk much about flowers either) also in the shot

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

A rare non-void capture of Lucille

Black cat with a tiny bit of white fur on her chest and peeking out from her belly. Unusually for a black cat picture, the light is reflected off her glossy fur, defining her shape and preventing the usual black cat = void effect. Her eyes are also closed and she looks happy, which she was, because that’s a little portable heater in front of her

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

What in the deep-fried hell is this? Fried chicken jelly beans, sweet corn jelly beans and gravy jelly beans. Colonel sanders smiling on the bag like everything is ok

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

First walk outside in 2026 - but won’t be the last

A gray striped tabby with a harness and leash setup outside, in my driveway. Snow shovels and a recycling bin in the background.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Uh so does a bulging yogurt container indicate botulism the way a bulging can does?

A container of my favorite flavor of high protein yogurt with the top and bottom domed from the pressure of the contents

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

My kiddo was late after school, my phone rang just as I was starting to wonder if I should worry. “Come outside, I need help” Sounded urgent so I ran out in bare feet, only to be confronted by a desk that looked like it was ready to give birth to something right there at the bottom of the stairs

A view looking down a short staircase at a desk lying at an awkward angle braces against some trash and recycling barrels and a collection of winter snow shovels. Its legs are pointing up and out in a manner somewhat reminiscent, if you have a good imagination, of a human giving birth

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Going to be 65F later today but right now it’s still chilly

A stripey cat sitting on a lap getting scritches

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

ijeomaoluo.substack.com/p/hi-would-y... “All I want is a hobby to be something I can become very good at right away, but also something that is always challenging, forever changing and new feeling, but also comforting. I don’t feel like that’s too much to ask.” just stab me in the heart already

ijeomaoluo.substack.com

Hi, would you like to talk about plants?

Beyond the Book: I have a new hobby.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

I finally finished the drawing for a button for my husband featuring his favorite cat ever. I’ll put it together tomorrow. I’m *never* happy with anything I make, but this turned out both earnest and absurd and for once I’m satisfied

A pen and ink Baby Lucy surrounded by a Jesus-style flame job. above her airplane ears it says “pet me with your eyes”

There’s also a rough practice Baby Lucy visible above, but with a pink and yellow flame job. Scribbles are all around the edges of the paper and it’s had a hole cut out of it, grease stains are visible, etc. vibes are extremely casual.

Reference photo a black cat (Baby Lucy) looking beleaguered because a child’s arm is holding her and she doesn’t like to be held, ever.

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CaradB @caradb.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Got kiddo a button maker for 12th birthday. Realizing it, uh, might be getting more use from me. Obviously Sassafras, my muse, had to be on the first one I ever made. Now I’m noodling on a design for my husband which will feature Baby Lucy, his heart cat

A button made from a drawing of a stripey cat yawning - the way I drew it, he could just be yelling excitedly, not yawning. He has happy eyes. There is visible cat hair trapped between the paper and the plastic and the whole thing looks sorta shaggy, appropriate for a five minute doodle.

A sketchy pencil drawing of (what will eventually be) a black cat with airplane ears and huge angry pupils. There is text that says “PET ME WITH YOUR EYES” and then lower down in slightly smaller letters it says “FREAK”

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