Friday Randomness

Before we dive in to this week’s randomness, let me apologize if you received an email on Wednesday saying my Friday Randomness post was live. I was trying to save my draft, and accidentally hit publish. Bah. I should have just changed it to Wednesday Randomness, but instead I moved it back to Draft. So, here we are.

Do you play the NYT game, Connections? Are you a Gen X gal? If so, were you as happy as I was when you opened it up on Tuesday? OK, enough Judy Blume, time for this week’s randomness.

Last weekend our neighboring town had an art, wine, and music festival, and Ted and I decided it would be fun to go walk around on a beautiful May afternoon. It was perfect weather (though I wished I had brought my hat, it was a very bright, sunshiny day). We got there and walked around a bit, and stopped to have a snack before trying any wine.

We found this food truck, which is Indian and Cajun I think. We ordered a tasty chicken Naanwich to share, and while the guy was taking our order, he said to us, ‘You smell like the mall’. What?

Ted asked him what that meant, and the guy said, ‘You know, Sunvalley Mall? Are you from around here?’ Which still made no sense to us, but thankfully the guy dropped it. I’ll admit that I thought an art, wine, and music festival would have some local vineyards there selling wine. Nope. You bought a glass and a couple of tickets, and went to one of two or three booths, where you could select from a small selection of wines that they probably bought at Costco. Strange. I think they could have easily said it was an Art and Music festival and just served wine. But I guess charging $20 for a wine glass is a big money maker for the chamber of commerce.

The art was crafty type stuff. I thought of Nicole and Michelle when I saw these little gnome planters. There was a lot of metal work, woodwork, some textiles, jewelry, that kind of thing. It was fine, but not really our jam, other than getting out of the house. I feel like I did absolutely nothing on Saturday (besides getting caught up on blogs, which is worthwhile but makes my butt sore), so it was nice to do something outside.

What’s kind of funny, beyond the obvious ridiculousness of it, is that we were planning on going to the mall after the Art and Wine festival. Crazy, huh? We decided it was time to retire our every day dishes, our Sakura, Masquerade stoneware, circa 1993. Above are our new plates, showing off the delicious frittata, salad, and strawberries – ingredients mostly sourced at the Farmer’s Market on my Tuesday lunch hour. I say mostly because I bought the eggs and avocado at the grocery store, and the salad dressing was in my fridge already. Our new plates are much thinner than the old plates, hopefully they will last. They were pretty inexpensive. I like the stark white with the teal border around the edge. I have been wanting to replace our dishes for ages…and yet I started getting sentimental at the thought of discarding our old set. Why am I this way? We put them in storage for now. Not because I plan to pull them out again, but what if these new, thinner plates break too easily?

Speaking of sentimental, DB Stewart got me in the heart strings with this charming post. I don’t often link to specific posts by my blog friends, because so many of us read all of the same blogs, but I’m not sure how many of you know DB. I loved the idea of him circling the store trying to resist a certain purchase.

Wednesday morning’s walk included coming across these articles of clothing. Sweat pants and a t-shirt. I hope the owner of these clothes wasn’t going commando when they shed them, is all I have to say. Also, I’m glad that I didn’t come across said person.

Tuesday was 3 years since we lost Mulder. UGH. What a good boy he was. I miss him so much. Engie had a post the other day, and in the comments there was a discussion of dogs taking selfies. I decided these two would be the kind that Mulder would take…all nose. The one on the left is the day we first met him in October of 2015. I’m not sure when Maya took the other one.

Wednesdays I usually go to our local Petco and clean up the kitty habitat, but this week there were no cats – the two scared kittens were adopted! I considered what to do with my lunch hour…I could take a nap, read my book, do some yoga, clean out a kitchen cupboard…then I remembered that I had wanted to get some herbs at the nursery down the road on Sunday, and we hadn’t done that. So off I went! Gosh, I love wandering around the nursery.

So many pretty flowers! I was reminded of Monet’s Gardens in Giverny, and how all of the tourists (myself included) spend much of their time taking pictures. I enjoyed taking pictures of the flowers. I may have to remember this on future Wednesdays if there are no cats to care for.

I ended up getting Italian parsley, chives, and cilantro. I already had basil, thyme, and oregano. I also got a dahlia, which is hiding behind the herbs in this picture, because then I can see it from the kitchen. Do you see the little brownish planter in the foreground, near the basil? My mom made that in a pottery class many years ago. I’m glad that I have it.

What else. Well, there’s the serious BS that is our current Administration. I’m so disgusted by the $1,776,000,000 slush fund, the dismantling of the voting rights act, and the absolute willingness of the Republican Party to roll over and take it. The grift and corruption is so far beyond the pale that I don’t even know what metaphor I can use. It’s infuriating. I’m trying to not grind my teeth down the stubs. Going to protests feels so pointless right now. I’m focusing my energy on letter writing. I would make phone calls, but the last time I tried that, I was there for a couple of hours and didn’t get through to a single person. Which is fair, because I don’t answer my phone and talk to people I don’t know either. But I found the process to be very frustrating and I do not want to repeat it.

Besides stewing in rage and trying to figure out who I’m going to vote for my the election for California Governor (I’m down to two, and neither one is a self funded billionaire, though of course if he is the candidate in November I will vote for him), no big plans this weekend. I suspect there will be a farmer’s market trip at some point, because the fruit right now is really, really good. Maybe I’ll have some time with a book or two. Maybe a movie. Today will be kittens again (two new kittens, unless they are adopted before I get there, which happens sometimes), and probably dinner out with Ted. Thankfully the weather is going to cool off. I mean, it’s been beautiful out, but almost warm enough for the A/C, which my cheapskate heart does not like. Monday is Memorial Day here in the US, the day when we honor those who have lost their lives in support of our country. It feels wrong to say ‘Happy Memorial Day’ for such a somber holiday. Enjoy the long weekend if you have it, and yay to the unofficial beginning of summer.