Odd. Been waking up at horrid hours these days, today it's 3am. Now boiling some water to make hot milo, hopefully it'll get me to slumberland soon. Been having generalised pruritus too ... why am I itching all over? Might be uraemia, or liver dysfunction! Then again, might be my freakishly sensitive skin. I hate not being able to use facial wash or any facial products for that matter. Crappy rash ... oh ... not lupus I hope?

And, I found something exciting in the tank yesterday! Was sitting in front and having a fly time watching the signal goby digging holes, when I saw a hitchhiking coral on my old squamosa clam! It's a small orange coral with flourescent green edges. Wonder when it got there, since I don't recall seeing anything exciting on the clam shell. On the other hand, I found something even more exciting - a bunch of pink-and-white tunicates, also on the clam shell! Damn .. must have missed seeing all these eh? Just realised that not all tunicates (aka Sea Squirts) are passive filter feeders - the deep-sea tunicates are able to close a hood in a purse-string fashion, and trap small animals. Sounds very much like flytraps!

Talking bout flytraps - chee kin called me last night. I'm going to strangle that boy, he said he's quitting plants for good, but hah! As I predicted and told him, he soon got back into it. Come on - once a plant-person, always a plant-person! Xiaoting brought some of her NIE friends back home yesterday (some were eye-candy, although one was already married and the other 2 slightly older than me I think) to gawk at my CPs and reef tank - their prof brought them to Raffles Museum and they were going nuts over the pitcher plant specimens and preserved reef animals there, so apparently Ting thought it a good idea to show them the real stuff. Heard the usual shrieks of delight when the flytraps get triggered by ting, and most surprisingly, one of them went completely berserk over my Lithops. Interesting that she realised those stone-lookalikes were actually plants. Another one very enthusiastically wanted to keep a reef tank too, until she saw how much DIY, wiring, equipment and whatnot was needed, then she desisted. The shrieks of delight and discovery continued all the way till they met my mom's cat. *Evil Cackle* It was ... silence .... Think they were shocked. Still, throughout the entire episode, I was completely nonplussed. Come to think of it, yes .. my house does have rather weird plants eh? Time to expand my fern and CP collection!

But FREAK. No time for my lovely hobbies these days, sob ... Really miss the early morning gardening and pruning of those pitchers. And scouting the nurseries in Singapore for that particular fern. =( May be going Serangoon North later today to buy some mice for Phantom .. my dear mom, gave away 50+ of my mice! Arghhhh!!!! I loved them! Although they were positively invading the house (ok, exaggeration, but they did eat a lot. Costs about $20 a month for food alone!). She has a knack of giving away my beloved pets, especially mice.

Alas, I'm not the only one awake. My mom just went out of the house; she's going to the market to help man my aunt's stall. Yikes ... at 3.30 in the morning?? Should really buy her a pepper spray or something - really dangerous for 2 women to be alone early in the morning.