Musings
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Grandma’s 100th Birthday
This is my Grandma Ward, on the left, and her sister, my Great Aunt Flo, on the right. Had she lived, today would have been Grandma’s 100th birthday. I wrote about her here when she died. She had a long life, full of adventures (as she put it), travel, and a lot of loss. She outlived both of her husbands and all four of her children. She and my Aunt Flo were best friends, born 16 months apart. They lived together for the last almost 30 years of Grandma’s life…and for at least the last 15, Aunt Flo was Grandma’s caretaker, as Grandma’s health was not great, and Aunt Flo…
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Sunday Musings – What the Hell is Wrong with Me?
This is the outlook on my weather app. It’s Sunday morning as I write this, and it’s raining right now. We’re going to get a break for a few hours, in which time we will take Mulder for his walk. It is going to start again this evening, and we have a storm tomorrow. Then it is supposed to calm down, no more rain in the forecast for the next 10 days at least. Which I will admit, stresses me out. I mean, I WANT IT TO DRY OUT, but at the same time, if this is IT for the year and we don’t get any more rain (it has…
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Water Water Everywhere…
I know I talk a lot here about how much I love rain, how tired I am of drought, how much I worry when we have a long, dry winter. If you’ve been watching the news, though, you will see that California is getting too much of a good thing right now. (I guess it’s almost impossible to make a Californian happy about the amount of rain we get…I read an article today that talked about how all of this rain will mean a good year for us, maybe, if it doesn’t all stop soon, but it won’t reverse a lot of the damage that has already been done. We…
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Half-Assing It
I’m not much of a ‘New Years Resolution’ type person, with a couple of exceptions. One year I resolved to eat more pancakes. Since I rarely eat pancakes, that was an easy one. Another year I resolved to floss my teeth more. Actually, that was a resolution MANY years running, until it finally stuck and now I floss my teeth semi-regularly. I’ve seen a lot of posts where blog friends are very organized and planning how many books they are going to read, date nights, etc. I don’t really track that sort of stuff, so I wouldn’t really enjoy that, I don’t think. I have, however, decided to make some…
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Birthday Gifts
I received quite a few lovely birthday gifts, including the lovely necklace in my previous post. (Did I mention it was made in France? I didn’t buy it there, but loved that detail.) Among my favorite gifts were the flowers above, a new iPad and keyboard(!!!), and some lovely earrings. Flowers – I always thought my favorite flowers were tulips, until I discovered peonies. Now I go back and forth. And gerbera daisies are just so joyful! I love them all. iPad/keyboard – My old iPad Mini was from 2015, and was showing its age. I’m a grouch and want anything I buy to be perfect and last forever, but…
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Rainy Day Thoughts
It’s early on Saturday, and I’m sitting downstairs with a cup of tea and the back door open, because it’s not cold and I love to listen to the sound of the rain. Once anyone else wakes up, I will have to close the door because it will be too cold for Ted and Maya (I do have my robe and slippers on), but I’ve been here for almost 2 hours and I’m loving every minute of it. Mulder just came downstairs about an hour ago, and he refuses to go outside and have a pee. Not sure how long he intends to hold it, but I guess time will…
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Friday Thoughts
I’m a day late to wish you a very Happy Winter Solstice. Longtime readers will perhaps remember that I have shared this photo before. It is a time lapse photo from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, of the path of the sun on the Winter Solstice, taken December 21st, 2012. Fairbanks is outside of the Arctic circle, so the sun does technically come up every day of the year, but in the darkest days, it peeks above the horizon, then skits along for a bit, before setting a few hours later. Speaking of the Winter Solstice, I read at Light and Momentary that although after the Solstice, we get a…
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Meme of the Day
Work is crazy right now, I work for a payroll software firm, and year-end means getting changes in to start in January. It’s exhausting. Things will slow down soon, and I have a few days off, so hopefully I can spend time with my family, and also post here, and come by and check out your blogs as well. I’m sorry I haven’t been there. I’ll be there soon. In the meantime, I love this meme.
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Christmas is Coming
I’m not sure how this happened, but I just realized that Hanukkah starts on Sunday, and Christmas is the Sunday after that. I think I thought we had another week somehow. I’ve been feeling pretty prepared, but am just realizing that I have some things that I want to get done this week, rather than waiting until next week. I had assumed I would do holiday shopping on Friday, since I have the day off from work, but then I made an appointment at the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew my license, and I’m getting together with my friend Neva for late lunch and shopping after that. I feel…
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Friday Wrap-Up – and Vitamin Advice Needed
Yesterday was another Fabulous Friday, and I had the day (mostly) off from work. I started out being very responsible and went to get some blood work done. I have never gotten in and out that quickly, it was great. Then I did a little bit of work…we get Fridays off right now, but if something important comes in, we are supposed to take care of it if we can. A good part of our team is in India, so if I waited until Monday to do these things, they wouldn’t be able to move forward until Tuesday. After I finished with that, Mulder and I had a lovely walk…
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Friday Wrap Up
It was another Fabulous Friday off from work. I started out by Getting Things Done. Mulder and I dropped the car off to get its smog test so we can register it, and while they were working on that, we walked over to the post office to mail my gift for San’s Secret Santa Mug Swap. I had been worried, because I found what I HOPED would be the perfect mug, but I ordered it online, and communication was poor. However, the mug came in plenty of time, and off it went. There was a big sign saying no dogs in the post office, and I didn’t want to be…
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Ouch!
Random photo of a purple flower, from Monet’s Garden in Giverny, France. I chose this picture specifically because I am too vain to take a picture of my black eye, which is also purple, though not nearly so pretty. I take thyroid medication, which has to be taken with water, and works best if taken on an empty stomach, at least 1/2 hour before eating anything. I feel like that means before having a cup of tea or 3, since I take my tea with milk. So I take it when I wake up every morning, at around 4am. I then roll over and go back to sleep. This wouldn’t…
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Caveat Emptor
You all know better than to buy items advertised on Facebook, right? I mean, unless they are advertised by a reputable, known company. Apparently, I have not yet learned that lesson. Or perhaps, I have finally learned that lesson. You can see how I was tempted though, right? Look at that cute holiday card. Seeing as how I went to France this year, I couldn’t resist. So I ordered a set. Scratch that, I ordered 4 sets, so I would have enough to send to everyone on my Christmas list. As soon as I completed my order, I started to regret it. I should have done a bit of research…
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Happy Birthday to my Sisters
This picture is at my Dad’s 70th birthday, in 2013. My sisters are twins, and today is their birthday! Melissa is on the left, I am in the middle, and Maya is on the right. Due to NaBloPoMo, I have a lot of new readers, so I will give a bit of background on my relatively unique upbringing. For anyone with a lot of time on their hands (ha!), I wrote about meeting my dad at the age of 21, here, here, and here. The short version is that my parents met in High School, and were great friends, though never dated. My mom dropped out of college at U.C.…
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Picture of the Day
Wow, my hands look old. I’m turning 57 next month, so I guess it’s not surprising. Anyway, my old lady hand is showing off the lovely bracelet that I bought in France this September. I had in mind that I wanted to buy myself a memento in France, something to remember the trip. I went with my cousin…she and I were in charge of our Grandma’s estate after she passed away. Her will said that her sister, my Great Aunt Flo, was entitled to stay in the house as long as she wanted to. So my cousin Carey and I managed that, with repairs and taxes and so on, for…