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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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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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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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A Million Things
Beckett at The Birchwood Pie Project posted that the best book she has read this year is A Million Things, by Emily Spurr. Coincidentally, I was looking for a new book to listen to via Audible. I usually have 2 books going at once, a physical book that I read before bed (generally getting a page or two in before falling asleep), and an audio book that I listen to while I walk Mulder, while I cook, and sometimes during my work day if I have down time. A Million Things is told from Rae’s point of view. Rae is a 10 1/2 year old girl who lives with her…
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Paris! Part II
Above are the beautiful stained glass windows of Sainte Chapelle, a stunning gothic chapel built in the mid 1200s. Sainte Chapelle is located on the same island as Notre-Dame de Paris, Île de la Cité in the river Seine. Unlike Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle is no longer a church. We actually started our day at Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre. We used a helpful app called CityMapper to get us from point A to point B, which you can use in any location, not just Paris. It will tell you what the quickest options are. Unfortunately for us, we were unfamiliar enough with the area that we didn’t know that it was…
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Monet’s Gardens and Mont. St. Michel
Carey and I decided to spend a couple of days outside of Paris/Vincennes, so we rented a car and drove to Giverny, home of Monet’s home and his famous gardens. The picture above is a home in Giverny that I liked, not really affiliated with Monet. We had so much trouble with our big car in the south of France, so we were dismayed when we were given an SUV this time, though we had requested a much smaller car. When we asked about this, the car rental employee told us that the problem is that most Europeans drive manual cars, and thus there are not a lot of automatics.…
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Meme Monday – Dreaming of France
Allow me to bore you a bit with the plans that my cousin Carey and I have for our upcoming trip to France. We are leaving on Friday, September 9th, and coming home on Monday, September 26th. We are both SO EXCITED, and dreaming of France and the things we will see and do is a lot of fun. Our first week will be in the South of France, in a small village called Mougins. This is where the time share is, and looking online, it looks like a picturesque place. We fly through Paris, into Nice. Hopefully our baggage will make it, as we are taking a chance and…
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Shakshuka
I realized the other day that I haven’t posted in over a month, and that it was a month between my last couple of posts too. Also, my last post was just a political meme with no input from me. I will try to do better, I do have things to tell, and I want to come see your blogs as well. I sat down with the intention of writing a ‘catching up with J’ type post, but now Ted wants to go to see a movie, there is a new library that is opening today, I need a shower, blah blah blah. So, here is a recipe for a…
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Meme Monday
My brain has been very distracted lately. In late August, my 97 1/2 year old Great Aunt fell. She lived alone, but was able to call 911, and a neighbor was able to let the paramedics in, and off she went to the hospital. She said her ribs hurt, so they did an X-Ray of her ribs, found no problems, and sent her home. They sent her home even though she could not walk without collapsing in extreme pain, and even though she lived alone. One of my cousins, K, took her back to her house, where she stayed for almost a week, until her follow up visit with her…
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Lura
Ted is the youngest of 4 siblings. His eldest brother is Ray, then sister Lura, then Steve, then Ted. This is a picture of Ted goofing around way back in about 1986 or 87. This is about the age they were when I met them. Even in this goofy picture, you can see her beautiful smile. The last few months have been rough, as Lura went to the hospital thinking she had asthma or perhaps even pneumonia, and it was discovered she had stage 4 lung cancer. It was inoperable, and had spread enough that there wasn’t much they could do for her. With medication and treatment, she could perhaps…
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Meme Monday – A Saturday Morning Walk
I didn’t ride through the desert, but I did drive to my old hometown last weekend to take my Great Aunt for her second dose of vaccine. I haven’t spent much time with her since COVID began, for obvious reasons, and it was really nice to have some time together. I spent the night with her, since I’m fully vaccinated, and I wanted to spend the night with her just in case she had any side effects. I didn’t like the idea of her having a fever or aches in the middle of the night, and being all alone. Happily, she had zero side effects. No fever, no aches, no…
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Meme Monday – Happy Birthday Edition!
Today is my daughter Maya’s 25th birthday! That is somewhat shocking to me, I remember 25 very well. Actually, 25 is when my biological clock started ticking, and I started really wanting a baby. Before that, I was more hypothetical about it. But Ted and I were dating still, had just recently gotten engaged, and I was just graduating from college, into a recession. So it was 5 more years before we had Maya. Anyway, this is her 2nd COVID birthday. She went out yesterday with some friends, and sat in the park and had a lovely time while socially distant. It was almost 80 degrees, so pretty perfect weather…
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Meme Monday
Sorry for that meme, but yeah, we all feel that way sometimes, right? I saved it for you awhile ago, and was reminded of it while out running errands with Ted the other day, when cut off by someone who then stopped short to turn into a driveway, of course without signaling. Sigh. I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving. We did. We went out to Ted’s parents house, just us 3, his parents, and his brother. We worked on being safe and socially distanced, and hopefully none of us had anything to pass around. We’ll see in a few weeks whether that worked or not. Other than the…
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Life is Hard
Life is hard right now. To be very clear, it is not currently hard for me personally. We are all working, we are all privileged and safe and healthy. Since Ted and Maya are working from home, so there are no commuting costs, we’re probably coming out a little ahead, financially. At least for now. But my heart is broken. The murder of George Floyd, on top of everything else, on top of the pandemic and a tanked economy and our shit for brains asshole President, it’s too much. I talked to my sister last week, before the news of Mr. Floyd’s murder, and she said, if we can only…
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Thursday Thirteen, Los Angeles version
(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia – there was a TINY bit of snow on the tip of the mountains, nothing like this. I don’t think I realized before that there are mountains RIGHT THERE, but I’ve not really paid much attention to LA in the past.) My BFF Rosemary lives in Pennsylvania. She and I met in High School in 1982, and after HS she moved around a bit for a few years, ending up in PA a few months before we moved back to California. She has two boys in college, one is graduating from Clemson in May, the other is a Freshman at Lewis and Clark in Portland, OR.…