Friday Randomness

How is it Friday already? I have no idea. This week was back to work, which somehow went really quickly anyway. A week and a half off was really nice though. Do you like my house horse, Clip Clop, above? He’s darling.

Anyone want to do yoga with me? Yoga With Adriene has a new practice every Saturday in January. I know we’re one week in already, but if you’re at all charmed (like I am) at the idea of us doing the same practice on the same day, let’s do the Saturday practices! Search for Yoga with Adriene on YouTube. I’m not sure what time the new practices will be posted, usually pretty early. Not sure if I’ll try to manage the live stream or not, I’ve never tried to figure that out.

These sweet brothers are the current residents at PetCo, where I volunteer 2 days a week to clean their kennel while they await adoption. They are very loving and sweet, but they made me cry a little, because they made me think about my mom. Why? Because they are here for adoption because their mom died. Which reminds me of my mom’s sweet Hooligans, Merry and Pippen. (Link is to her post about the same thing.) How confusing it must have been for them, when she left for breakfast with friends one Saturday, and they ended up taking her to the ER, and she was whisked off to Anchorage for care and they never saw her again. My brother and SIL could not take them in, as they had cats of their own at the time, so they were surrendered to the no kill shelter. I hope they were adopted together. SIGH.

In more cheerful news, I put these little gummy bears in the little free library yesterday. I bought them on Christmas Eve at the Chevron station when I panicked about stocking stuffers. Then I walked over to 7-11, and found gummy worms, which Maya likes more. So these are extra and will not get eaten. As I was walking with them, I thought back to my time in Junior College. There were a group of us that would sit on the brick steps and chat between classes, watching the world go by. In the hot (HOT) days of August, we discovered that if you lick the flat back of a gummy bear, it will stick to the side of a brick, and you can then watch it melt like a bad LSD trip. Ah, to be young, right? Notice the copy of Moby Dick a few books to the right of the gummies.

I took this picture back when Mulder was almost 1. He’s thinking maybe he can get the squirrel on the fence, but there’s no way that’s going to happen. See the little tree/bush in the background? I liked it like this, short and kind of busy. It’s out of control, and we don’t have the right tools to trim it ourselves.

See how it’s gone straight up as we’ve badly trimmed it over the years? We can’t reach the top, and I don’t want it to get worse. Actually, that angle doesn’t look that bad. Look at this one.

See how it’s all leggy and reaching over like a crazed plant? I don’t like that. I mean, we could call a gardener, but who is going to come out for such a small job? Good news! Our friends’ son has recently gotten into landscaping, and is going to come and trim it back this morning. He said it’s the perfect time of year for a ‘hard pruning’. There’s another plant that could use some similar help. I’m hopeful for a prettier plant this summer/fall. (Does anyone else find the big eucalyptus tree in the background menacing? We live in constant fear that it will drop a branch on our house, mainly because they are old and have dropped branches on our fence and our neighbor’s yard in the recent past.)

Yesterday would have been my first husband David Bowie’s birthday, and our favorite radio station, KEXP, played all Bowie for their morning show. When Life on Mars came on, it made me laugh, because when we had COVID a couple of years ago (last year?), Maya lost her voice and enjoyed testing it out by singing the high part, “Is there life on Mars?” LOL.

Today’s plans, aside from gardening help and my regular exercise, will include taking care of the cats, and then linner (late lunch, early dinner) with my friend Neva. We usually get together in December to celebrate Christmas and my birthday, but this year our dates didn’t mesh, so we postponed to now. Excellent, actually, because I like stretching it out a bit. I always make fudge for her and her family, and this year is no exception. For packaging, I bought a little cookie box from the bakery at the grocery store, then I used the front of a lovely Christmas card we received this year as a decoration. Nice, huh?

How about you? Have you ever watched gummy bears melt? Do you have garden challenges? Are you watching the new season of The Pitt? If you haven’t watched yet, the first episode is NSFD (Not Safe For Dinner.)