Family
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Flashback Friday
Yesterday’s post was a list of 13 things that I have given away recently. Today’s post is about something that I tried to give away, but couldn’t. Looking at the picture above, from an Easter Sunday years ago, notice the adorable hat I’m wearing. I love that hat. I will never wear it again, however, and Maya doesn’t want it, and no one on Buy Nothing wants it, and I can’t bear to think of it going to Goodwill and no one wanting it and it being used for stuffing or rags or something. It needs to remain a hat. This is our beautiful girl, Genevieve, borrowing my hat back…
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Friday Randomness
So much randomness this week…this one is going to be scattered. Let’s dive in. Eggy GoodnessLet’s start with eggs, shall we? Maya and I watched a video on YouTube the other day about egg cooking hacks. If you need a lot of chopped up hard boiled eggs for egg salad or something, she has a tip where you crack raw eggs into a baking dish, bake them until they are set, then chop them up. That looked pretty good, but I can’t tell you the last time I needed a bunch of chopped hard boiled eggs. She had a trick for making poached eggs in the microwave that I had…
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Portland Randomness
We had a lovely time in Portland last weekend! My step-mom, my sisters, and their families live in Portland, and we haven’t been up to ‘just visit’ in a long time. Actually, it’s been over a decade. We have gone up for weddings and parties and funerals and to scatter my father’s ashes, but a visit with no schedule, no plans? I think our last one was in 2013. (Edited to say, um, the 2013 trip was for my Dad’s 70th birthday, so it’s been even longer since we went up without an occasion than I thought. No wonder Ted’s mom asked, ‘and why are you going up?’) The last…
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Friday Randomness
Time to get you caught up on the randomness around here. Weekly protest, nice restaurant time, 4th of July insanity, and more! Bougie ProtestI’ll admit, my weekly Anti-Trump protests are pretty easy. They are in a nice part of town, we don’t get a lot of backlash (maybe the finger, maybe a comment, maybe a thumbs down). After, you can shop or dine or go home. It’s easy. Last Saturday Ted came with me, which he doesn’t usually do for work related reasons. The crowd was not as small as I had feared for a holiday weekend. It was a picture perfect day, lovely weather for waving signs and flags…
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32 Years!
Happy Anniversary to us! It feels unreal to me that we’ve been married 32 years now, that we’ve been together for over 37 years. I look at our wedding pictures, and goodness, we look young. I was 27 the year we got married, which didn’t feel particularly young at the time, but does to me now. Ted took the week off from work, and I have both today and tomorrow as company holidays this year, so we won’t have to go to work. What will we do with ourselves? We have tickets to go to one of the fine art museums, which has an exhibit of photographs by Paul McCartney.…
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A Few Days in Oceanside
My cousin Carey and her wife live in Oceanside, half way between San Diego and Orange County. When she invited me to go with her on the cruise to Mexico, she also invited me to come down a few days early to see Oceanside and San Diego. The last time I was in San Diego was 1988, and I had never been to Oceanside, so I jumped at the chance. While Carey has lived in Southern California for 11 years, she has never been to the Hotel Del Coronado, and has always wanted to see it from the inside. The Coronado is a beautiful beach resort in San Diego with…
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Happy Birthday Ted!
Today is Ted’s birthday, and we are going to celebrate in the best way, with family and friends. He and I will celebrate some more later this month, we’re going to Los Angeles to the Cruel World music festival! There will be some great 80s and 90s bands, like New Order, ‘Til Tuesday, Madness, Garbage, The Go Go’s, Devo, and more. That will be a lot of fun, but for now it’s time to party. In honor of my beloved husband, let’s do a Saturday Six, shall we? Six Things About Ted
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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday
I wanted to include this picture in last week’s post about my mom and great-Aunt’s birthday, but I didn’t have it. Now I have it! This is my Great Aunt Flo’s wedding, on her 26th birthday in 1950. My Mom is the flower girl, with her curls and her hoop skirt, and it’s her 8th birthday. I think her dress is yellow. My Grandma is next to the bride, and then my other Great Aunt. I don’t know the other bridesmaid, nor any of the groomsmen. My Great Uncle Wes died before I was born, so I never met him. Doesn’t this look like a beautiful wedding?
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Birthday Girls
Today my mom would have been 83, had she not died too young at the age of 66 in 2008. Today my Great Aunt Flo would have been 101, had she not died at the ripe old age of 100 last year. This is my mom when she was a little girl, with her Shirley Temple curls in her red hair. And here she is in college. She went to UC Berkeley, though she dropped out for a while. After she married, had my brother (six days after getting married), had me, and got divorced (I think her divorce became final on my day of birth, but I’m not 100%…
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The Friend
The Friend ~ Sigrid Nunez The unnamed protagonist of The Friend is a writer and professor in a tiny apartment in Manhattan, a self proclaimed cat person, who inherits a Great Dane, Apollo, when her mentor and close friend dies of suicide. She is buried in grief for her friend, she does not want a dog, her landlord does not allow dogs, and here she is with a dog that weighs (quite a bit) more than she does. What happens is predictable to any animal lover. She falls in love with Apollo. “When you’re lying in bed full of night thoughts,” she thinks, “such as why did your friend have…
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Spotted Photo Theme – Circles
OK, I’m squeaking in under the deadline here. iHanna has another Spotted Photo challenge, where the idea is that you go through your phone/iPad photos, and find pictures that match the theme she has given. You’re not out looking for that theme, not taking new photos, just curating the pictures you already have. I’m not a photographer by any means, so mine are not going to be gorgeous like some others, but here they are anyway. A lot of them are food. And I snuck in some memes, which is totally cheating and not cool at all. The Rose Window in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, 2018. I really hope…
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Happy Birthday Maya!
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, today is Maya’s birthday! This is her ‘Golden Birthday’ or ‘Champagne Birthday’, which is the year your age and day of the month match. She turns 29 on the 29th. I don’t remember what year the picture above is from, but it’s not new. I considered taking her shopping for something gold, but took a look at her jewelry and decided she has plenty and likely won’t wear it, so I bought some Veuve instead to enjoy at her party. Bonus photo from 2022. Note the candle is not on the cake. I didn’t think we’d ever go back to blowing germs all over cakes…
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Back in Stockton
Last week I was able to serve as an ‘emotional support cousin’, helping my cousin Carey to try to figure out the situation with her late father’s ex-wife’s final wishes. Confusing? Maybe. My uncle was married 3 times, first to Carey’s mom, then to K, and lastly to C, his widow. K never had children of her own, nor did her late husband B. She said that her plans were to leave her estate (such as it is) to her step-daughters (Carey and her sister), and B’s step-daughter. K passed away suddenly last month, and as is too often the case, a will and/or trust could not be found. I…
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Miscellaneous Monday
This is my favorite thing that Maya has shoved in my face and made me watch recently. We had a good laugh. It starts with ‘my mom with the cat she didn’t want’, and we agreed, that’s Ted with Mulder. If you enjoyed this video, watch the next one, where mom makes kitty a beautiful dress and sings to her. Friday I slept until 7:15!!! I rarely am able to sleep that late, and it was DELICIOUS. I felt so well rested. I had a relaxing day, which included using a reverse vending machine to recycle some cans for CRV (California Redemption Value), which was kind of novel but a…
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Friday Randomness
The Return of Fabulous FridaysLet’s start with the excellent news that Fabulous Fridays are back! Technically, they never went away. In past years, either the CEO or HR sent an email telling us that the perk of a 4 day work week was continuing. When we heard NOTHING this year, our boss decided to err on the side of caution, and told us to work 5 8-hour days instead of 4 10s. So we worked last Friday, and we noticed that gosh, most people were not around, so our boss checked with HR, and it looks like it’s a manager discretion type thing, so YAY! Back to having Fridays off!…
