Miscellaneous Monday

It’s Girl Scout cookie season! Do I love Girl Scout cookies? Not really. There are definitely better cookies out there, and even better would be homemade. Do I buy Girl Scout cookies? Absolutely, because I love the organization and want to support them. Just typing this, I remembered New York City Troop 6000, which is a troop for girls living in temporary housing. I just popped over and made a donation, which you can do too if you’re so inclined. You can also order cookies from them. Anyway, I bought a few boxes from some GS in front of the grocery store last week. I ate a few too many Samoas, and Maya took the rest to her office.

Anyway, I didn’t get around to my regular Friday Randomness post, so here we are. All of the same Randomness, now on Monday! Let’s start with my FIGS for Elisabeth’s FIG Collective.

My Week of FIGS

Last week’s FIGS ended on Friday, so I have some catching up to do.

Saturday – Facebook Memories
Sunday – Pretty Sunrise
Monday – Rest Days
Tuesday – Flowering Trees
Wednesday – Plant Advice
Thursday – My Blog Friends
Friday – Black Power Kitty
Saturday – Penelope the Porcupine
Sunday – Yoga

Facebook Memories

I enjoy looking at old posts on Facebook when they pop up. I mean, there are sad ones that break my heart and remind me of losses in my life, but then there are funny ones. I liked these two from February 6th. Sigh, David Bowie, my first husband. Generally when famous people die, it doesn’t bother me much. I mean, I’m sad for their families, and I acknowledge their contributions to the world, but it doesn’t hurt. When David Bowie died, it hurt. I’ve been having dreams about him since I was about 18 though, so this wasn’t new.

Do you ever have these weird dreams when you nap? Where someone is in the house walking around, and you can’t make yourself wake up to see if it’s real or not? I thought I was the only one, but then I heard about it once on This American Life. I’ve had these dreams for decades, only when napping on the sofa.

Pretty Sunrise

I saw this pretty sunrise outside my kitchen window Sunday morning. Sunday was the Super Bowl, and Ted wanted to watch it with his parents, and Maya and I had zero interest in watching, so he went to their house and we stayed home. We watched the halftime show so we could see Bad Bunny, but we forgot to watch Green Day. Bad Bunny was wonderful. I don’t know his music at all, but the vibe was so joyous and awesome, it was great. Fun tidbit, my mom lived in Puerto Rico for a bit when she was a kid, her stepdad was in sales and they moved a LOT. My aunt was born there.

Rest Days

Mondays and Thursdays are my rest days from strength training, and it always makes me SO HAPPY to not have to do that boring chore on a Monday morning. I have a 7:30am meeting for work on Mondays, which is stupid, but I don’t have to look at a screen too much and just call in from my phone on my morning walk. Excellent. I’ve taken to listening to audiobooks while I do my weights. It makes it SO MUCH BETTER. Even better than listening to music, for me. Ted has recently started doing some Caroline Girvan videos, he says she looks like she’s computer generated. Fair.

Flowering Trees

Last week I mentioned that the tulip trees in my town were not yet blooming, but then later that very day I went downtown and saw a glorious huge tree in full blossom. I was driving though, so no picture, but let’s compare apples to apples anyway, this is the flower progress on the same tree from my last post.

Plant Advice

Hello, my name is J and I kill plants. See these lovely houseplants? I bought them all at the Farmers’ Market last September (these healthy pictures are from then), and none of them survived. The one on the right was doing poorly and I thought I would cut it back so it could start over. But I didn’t clean my pruning shears first, and I introduced bacteria in there and the stem turned black. I sent my cousin, the Master Gardener, a text, and she said, yeah, it’s dead. What I’m grateful for here is not so much that I killed three perfectly lovely plants, but that I have my cousin to ask for advise, and that she can tell me when it’s OK to let a plant go. It’s sad to have dying plants around the house, but I am always hesitant to get rid of them if there’s a chance they could bounce back.

Blog Friends

You all know I adore you, right? Being able to text random thoughts to you, and receive random texts, is kind of a game changer for me. So fun. It makes me so, so happy.

Black Power Kitty

Friday I was at a card shop looking for Valentine’s Day cards for Ted and Maya, and came across this Lego set. My friend Cherry’s husband, Eric, always raises his fist in solidarity when at an Asian restaurant with one of these little cats, and he calls them ‘Black Power Kitty’, which I love. So of course I had to snap a photo and send it to her.

Penelope the Porcupine

Saturday we went for what we call a ‘Three Boss Walk’, which is when we all three take a walk together. I don’t remember whether we came up with that term for walking with Genevieve or with Mulder, but sometimes I still think of it when we’re out on a weekend family walk. Saturday we found ourselves near a local park, and Maya wanted to stop at a drinking fountain for some water, which is near a little wildlife rehabilitation center and museum. They do great work in education, and they also rescue injured wildlife and release it back into the wild whenever possible. Sometimes an animal cannot be released for whatever reason (an eagle with a bad wing, for example) and they keep them and care for them there. They have a big room for parties, and if you have a birthday party there, you can tour the museum and learn about the residents. We came across just such a party, where the naturalist was talking about Penelope the Porcupine. I had never seen a porcupine in person before! She was so gentle and sweet. She came to the rehab center as a tiny baby and they bottle fed her. Is it because she was born in captivity that means she can’t be released? I’m not sure.

We had a lovely Valentine’s Day dinner! Ted made rack of lamb, I made mac and cheese, and we added peas and salad to the mix. Maya bought a bottle of champagne, and Ted bought a bottle of red wine. Everything was delicious, though we forgot to buy any chocolate for dessert, so ended up eating a high protein chocolate bar thing that I bought Ted for his Christmas stocking, that I got at 7-11.

Yoga

Yesterday I woke up feeling stiff and sore. Why? I don’t know. My Saturday weights were arms, but it was my legs and hips that were so stiff. Bah. Instead of doing legs for my strength training, I did abs, and then I did my yoga, which guess what? Helped. Not entirely, but at least some. Then we had another Three Boss Walk, which loosened it up even more.

Bonus Randomness

In other randomness, the medication that I am on for my Rheumatoid Arthritis makes me sensitive to sun exposure. Friday when I went for my walk, it was overcast and kind of foggy, and I decided to walk to Ulta to pick up some shampoo. It is not a shady walk, and the sun came out pretty early in the walk. I discovered that while I had put sunscreen on my face, there was a spot at the top of my chest that I missed, and I got a bit of a sunburn. BOO! It burns and kind of blisters and it sucks. That sun sensitivity has been the only side effect of being on Minocycline for 11 years now, and I’m thankful every day that it has put me (and kept me) in remission. It doesn’t work for everyone, and it doesn’t work overnight, but I’m so thankful that I found this treatment and that it has worked for me.

Oh, one last FIG, which I am sure will show up in next week’s wrap up – RAIN. We had such a dry January and first half of February, and the snowpack that supplies California reservoirs with water went from pretty healthy at something like 85% of normal in early January, to a not so healthy 31% of normal in mid February. California relies on winter snow, it does not rain here much from May to November, so to have a really dry month in winter can lead to drought pretty quickly. So we were grateful when it finally started raining yesterday, and that the forecast for the mountains is for plenty of snow. A rainy Sunday also means excellent reading weather, which is good because I am behind in my CBBC chapters! I know not everyone has been feeling The Age of Innocence, but I’ve been loving it. (Still not caught up, but hopefully a rainy Monday/Presidents Day will get me there.)