Friday Randomness

I have a week of Randomness for you! How did you get so lucky?

If you like the cat art above, you can see more here. It’s not new, it popped up in my Facebook memories and I had to share with you. Want one more? Here you go.

Speaking of cats, happy news that Pinocchio (the cat that was hanging out in his litter box, deserted by his people a few weeks ago) was adopted last week! I was peeved, because he was adopted on Monday, and no one alerted the agency or the Facebook group where we do our communication, so I took an hour I didn’t really have out of a very busy work day to drive across town for nothing. Turns out the person who cleans on Monday and Tuesday isn’t on Facebook, and had some kind of emergency, so didn’t let anyone know. Lesson learned, from now on I will call before driving over, especially on Wednesdays when I don’t have as much time. Anyway, I’m really glad that he was adopted, I hope he has a great life. Also, they didn’t have any new cats by this Wednesday, so I didn’t have to go. Of course, this Wednesday was a slow day at work and it wouldn’t have been an issue. C’est la vie.

OK, on to the day by day random stuff.

(Last) Friday
Maya took several days off from work in honor of her birthday, and I generally have Fridays off, so she gathered several bags of clothing and we went to a thrift store in Oakland so she could sell them.

We had a lovely lunch just over the city line in Berkeley. Smoked salmon and cream cheese on toast with cucumbers and pickled red onions with a little salad for me, avocado toast with cherry tomatoes and a poached egg for her…both delicious. (Not my photos, I grabbed them online)

We then did a little book shopping at a local bookstore we love. I bought a few gifts for friends, took pictures of books I want to get from the library, and bought myself a paperback.

I bought My Dreadful Body, by Egana Djabbarova. It doesn’t look to be a cheerful romp by any means, but it looks like it might be really good. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

“A dazzling debut novel about a young woman’s vexed coming of age in a traditional Azerbaijani community in Russia, grappling under the weight of Muslim patriarchal norms and a debilitating neurological condition. The mysterious affliction leaves her unable to control her muscles, plagued by pain and speech disorders, defying diagnosis. Addressing each body part with the scrupulousness of a medical researcher, the narrator explores memories, traditions, and taboos related to her physical self. In the process, a woman once destined for the role of a beautiful marriageable daughter comes to be perceived as damaged goods. With verbal elegance and poetic power, Egana Djabbarova unveils a hidden world in which illness unexpectedly facilitates her liberation. Her book stands in the proud tradition of confessional feminist writers like Sandra Cisneros, Arundhati Roy, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Jamaica Kincaid.”

Saturday
We did not attend our local No Kings Rally, as we were busy celebrating Maya’s birthday with family. Our towns showed up though! Above is a photo from one of our local news sites, showing part of the 5 mile roadside ‘Solidarity Span’ with between 10k and 12k people. This is in addition to even larger demonstrations in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, etcetera.

Speaking of rallies/demonstrations, I haven’t been in several weeks. In perpetration for the human chain from last Saturday, they’ve been having the weekly demonstrations along the route, mostly at street corners with no shade. I have found that for several days after a sunny demonstration, I have a painful rash on my chest, even with sunscreen and covered by clothing, so clearly my Minocycline has made me super sensitive. Since I haven’t been going, the rash and pain have gone away. From now on I will be more vigilant about staying fully in the shade.

The party was lovely. We had a brunch theme, with eggs and mimosas and fruit salad and carrot cake. Maya’s ‘niece’ just turned 4, and we celebrated their birthdays together. It was a lot of fun, and always great to spend time together.

Sunday
Maya’s actual birthday. After a fancy dinner on Thursday, a day in Oakland/Berkeley having lunch and book shopping on Friday, and a family party on Saturday, we had a more low key day. We started with a hike around our local reservoir. It was perfect weather for it.

After that, we had lunch at Maya’s favorite sandwich shop, and then later we watched one of our favorite films, Spirited Away. We have the dvd, but I haven’t watched it in quite a few years. I forgot how much I love this film. I’m not big into anime, but this is one of my favorite films of all time. So, so good. If you haven’t seen it, it may be time to reconsider your life decisions. Please do yourself a favor, watch it, and you can thank me later. Charming, funny, thoughtful, and ridiculous. Maybe a little scary, but no more than your average Disney film. I took Maya when it came out, when she was 6, and she was fine. Streaming on HBO, Hulu, and probably other places.

Monday
The demolition portion of our re-siding project began. The shingles were all removed. It was loud as hell, and my noise canceling earbuds were a godsend. This is our back yard. They cleaned up after themselves several times throughout the day, and again at the end of the day. This was in between clean ups. I thought I might run away and go work in a coffee shop or something, but it was a pretty busy day, and I am a two big screen kind of gal.

Tuesday
This is what the place looks like, totally naked. No shingles. Do you see the chicken wire on the gate, and the BS wood they’ve nailed to the fence so the gate will close? That’s because this is not our gate. It’s our neighbor’s gate, and it’s on backwards (we share a wall, their house is the mirror of ours, and their gate goes the other way). The chicken wire is to keep their dog inside. I kind of like him (because he’s a dog) but also, he’s kind of an asshole. He attacked Mulder once when we were walking past, he bit a woman who had bent down to say hi (she should not have done that without checking to make sure it was OK), and he used to try to fight with Mulder through the fence between our back yards. But I digress. The chicken wire – Both Ted and I cut ourselves on it. Me on Monday night, when I was wearing flip flops and didn’t realize how much it was sticking out at the bottom, and it jabbed my toes, took off a bit of my toenail, and drew just a drop or two of blood. Ted was cut on Tuesday morning when he got too close and it went right through his sock. We don’t take tetanus lightly around here, my grandfather died of it in the late 1940s, when my mom was 6 or 7. Ted and I both got booster shots, as we were past the 5 year ‘no booster needed’ time frame.

Here’s your wisteria update. Blossoms are almost all gone, lush leaves have replaced them.

Wednesday
Suddenly, here we are in April. Here’s Yoga with Adriene’s April yoga calendar. I’ve noticed that the March and April calendars have leaned heavily on her Yoga Camp series. It’s good, I like it, but her sweet dog Benji is sadly absent, as he was just a puppy and I assume too much of a spaz to be on camera. In her last new video, it looked like Adriene had gotten a super cute lob. I’m looking forward to finding out if this is indeed the case, or if she had it tucked up somehow. Such important information.

Lately I have been waking in the middle of the night with pain in my quadriceps. Not my joints, which I would think of as arthritis, but my muscles. After a few weeks of this, I realized it is perhaps because I have increased my hand weights from 10 to 15 lbs. Because this was such a busy weekend, I took a break (Thursday through Monday) to test my theory. The aching quads went away, coming back just a bit after the hike around the reservoir, which is more hilly than my usual walks. I’m not going to stop doing weights, but I am glad to know what the issue is. Ted’s cousin is a physical therapist, and she said that sometimes if our form isn’t right, we put more pressure on our quads doing squats, which is perhaps my issue. I will try to focus on that.

I saw this on my local Buy Nothing Group. Cute April Fool joke.

Since it’s April, it’s time for Elisabeth’s Cool Bloggers Walking Club! I pretty much walk every day, a habit I started when we got Mulder back in 2015. I was slowly reaching remission from my first Rheumatoid Arthritis flare, and wanted motivation to get me out there, which is part of why we adopted him. I found it really helps both my mood and my back (since I sit at a computer all day for work) to start the day with a walk. I’m thinking we might start doing an evening walk after dinner, now that it’s light out and the weather is nice. This picture is from Wednesday morning’s walk. I like the drought tolerant landscaping here. The lavender on the left is just starting to flower, and the leaves are coming in nicely on the fig tree on the right. I don’t know the rest of the flowers. These folks also have a lemon tree right on the edge of the road, so I felt OK picking a couple of lemons.

While some of you are still buried in winter and rightfully bitching about the snow, our heat wave a couple of weeks ago pretty much wiped out our winter snowpack. Our reservoirs are pretty full, but as that water is used, there will be no snowmelt to replenish them. Is this drought? No, as I said, there’s water in the reservoirs. But it will mean an early, and thus longer, fire season, and if this is a sign of winters to come, we’re kind of screwed. The picture above is from the April 1st snowpack measurement, where there is usually about 5 or 6 feet of snow.

Thursday
I took this photo on my morning walk. This oak tree provides a beautiful canopy and cool shade, but look at it…it has been cut back in such a way to avoid the electric wires above, so it just grows sideways. Regarding our weather, I guess we’ll have to learn from this tree and adapt.

This is our place as of Thursday evening. Still some flashing to add, then the siding will go up. Will it be finished by the end up next week? Perhaps, or maybe the week after that.

What else. We finished season 4 of Bridgerton, so now we’re rewatching Season 3. Enjoying The Pitt and Shrinking. Looking forward to watching the new season of Friends and Neighbors. Haven’t decided yet about watching Margo’s Got Money Troubles, but I’ll probably give it a try. Ted loves Michelle Pfeiffer, and she’s playing the hot mess of a mom. My current physical book is Thirst Trap, and my current audio book is The Marriage Portrait, which is gorgeous.

That’s it for me. Happy Passover if you celebrate, Happy Easter if you celebrate, happy Friday no matter what.