Why, no.
No, I don’t.
My officemate, the Divine Miss M, recently received this handy little item as a gift.
You get bonus points if you can guess what this lady’s purpose in life is.
Personally, I think she’s been much more valuable as “guess what this is” show and tell than she ever will be in her proper context.
If you really need to know: http://www.patemm.com/pdfs/RealDealsJanuary23.pdf
Sometimes I need a little help from the Monster to get through the commute with my eyes open.
7-11 is a world unto itself. I’ve stopped a couple of times in the past week, and there are all kinds of people who seem to go in on a regular basis and it’s kind of friendly. The parking lot is tricky, because everyone seems to zoom in and out of their spaces like they’re in their own little zone.
Worth the risk for the Monster.
(So the Monster tells me.)
Luna came to work with our office manager. This is one of the perks of working for a very small company. People can bring their kids and pets into the office occasionally.
Every so often Luna would come check on us all. I wouldn’t even hear her come into my office, but then I’d feel this little tongue on my ankle and turn and see her going on about her rounds. Hee hee.
I don’t know who she is, but she sits outside my front door.
She came from Cousin Lucy’s after Cousin Lucy passed away. Lucy had a wonderful green thumb and always had lots of potted plants around her door.
Those are credentials enough for me.
Morning inside the trailer.
This is taken from the little dinette in the kitchen. One of the women on the campout brought me a rose from her garden to thank me for organizing things at the last minute (the person who was going to do it lost his mother last week and flew to England for the memorial.)
It was a very sweet gesture and I hope she knew how much I appreciated it.
Below: Dodger looking a little rumpled, just about to give himself a good scratch while he looks out the diner window.
We camped in a different section of the campground than we usually do because the group we camped with was smaller than usual. It was nice and quiet, and we were so lucky with the weather. After weeks of 100+ temperatures, it dropped to the mid-eighties for our camp out. We win!
This truck was visible through the hedge around the campground when we came out the door of our camper trailer.
These pieces of quartz have been sitting on this slab of quartz for a couple of years. They all come from the Owens Valley.
The slab comes from the courtyard of an abandoned house along Highway 395. I am not entirely comfortable with having taken it, but I am always concerned that these old places will be bulldozed away and no one will have anything to remember them by.
I remember standing on this slab, looking into the house through the tattered remains of yellow cotton curtains. I could see straight through to the Eastern Sierra Madre mountains on the other side.
Someone slept and ate and probably raised kids there.
On this day, I noticed how little rings have formed around the stones sitting on the slab. These things are part of this place now.
Maybe someday a stranger will carry them away.
Somewhere nearby there must be some oregano scented honey. The bees are busy in the herb garden outside my back door today.
This is the oregano that I dug out and moved to another spot a couple of years ago. Now it’s coming up around the winter savory.
Well, anyway, it’s good in pasta sauce!
I think of myself as a person who is reasonably careful without being paranoid or petrified by the stuff she hears on the morning news. But recently I’ve started washing my fruits and vegetables with fruit soap that I bought at Trader Joe’s. It just seems prudent. And I find that I like my veggies and fruit without a layer of wax.
And on an unrelated note, I believe that the hummingbird outside my library window knows that it is I who replenishes the syrup in the feeder. No, really. He just came buzzing up to the window and hovered meaningfully. He quite possible made eye contact—who is to know for certain in such a tiny face?—and then backed away and looked at the feeder as if to say, “Forget something?”
Upon checking the feeder, I found it empty. So I rinsed and refilled it with fresh syrup from the fridge. I’d no sooner regained my seat here by the window than the little fellow came back, looked in at me again, and then landed on the sticky full feeder. He is even now leaning back and peering around the side of the feeder.
Is that an appreciative gleam I see in his eye? “It’s almost as if the humans understand when we need more nectar!”
[Good grief, can you tell I'm reading Melville?]
My coworker’s daughters were here yesterday. ‘Fia took my Crocs for a spin.
She’s an amazing, beautiful kid.
And she has good taste in shoes.
Fuzzy photos, darn it.
There is really no reason for my lunch to be perched on my windowsill at work. Except that a couple of people innocently encouraged me to continue with the jars motif.
And I am a shameless sucker for pleasing the teacher or apparently anyone else who asks me for something. Tell me what to do and I will do it and I will try to do it in a very special way. (Oh, ugh…annoying child.)
Also, this doesn’t require a huge amount of staging, since part of my small effort to reduce my environmental footprint includes reusing glass jars. There are supposed to be nasty chemicals in plastic containers that are released when you microwave them, so I’m also trying in small ways to keep my brain and body intact a little longer.
Hence, this photo of my lunch having one last outing before it meets its demise.
Happy grain. Happy canteloupe. Blissfully unaware of its impending fate.
I had to check out the newly refurbished Starbucks across the street from my office. I told myself it was because I forgot to bring milk for my tea. Thought I’d read a couple of scripts for work over there, while I was at it.
So I crossed the street to get some coffee and a scone. Realized I forgot the scripts.
Got back to my car, where the scripts were, and realized I’d forgotten to put milk in my coffee. Sigh. Back across the street with the scripts and the black coffee.
Sat down and enjoyed myself, and read the scripts faster than I would have with the Internet in front of me. So there!
My boiled egg breakfast.
Gee, a lot of interesting stuff goes on, on my kitchen counter.
Right.
I was mixing up fresh hummer food this morning and noticed the light angling through the jar.
It’s always a little comedy routine around here when I’m making this, because Dodger loves hummingbird nectar. I let him sample it out of the big glass measuring cup.
The hummingbirds have already come to the feeder by the library window and taken a good look at us. Dodger on the sill, me at my writing table.
Free! Well, sort of. Free to my friends and family.
Finally acheived my little goal of putting up some pickled onions. It takes 3-6 months for them to pickle well, so I will have some in time for Thanksgiving. D’s cousin, MC, loves them as much as I do. It’s from his grandma’s recipe.
It’s one of those recipes with lots of wiggle room. Cider vinegar, pickling spices and onions. Aunt M uses full strength vinegar, but I water mine down by about 2/3 to 1/2. The amount of pickling spices is anyone’s guess.
These jars are in the back of my fridge now, and there they’ll stay till the onions are infused with the color of the vinegar.
To celebrate, I ate one of the 3 remaining onions from the last batch with slivers of sharp cheddar cheese.
I had some errands to run on the way home, so I took San Fernando Road down most of the length of the valley yesterday.
Bad day for street vendors. Hot and humid. We aren’t used to the humid here. What’s this!? Moisture!? Aaaaaah!
I had to stop further along my route to get this shot. I never would have thought of the brush on the hillside as dusky purple, but there it is. Like pieces of the sky have rained down onto the grass.
ST pointed this out to me this morning. What seems to be a grapevine—what a nice volunteer to find in your yard!—reaching out and knotting itself around wrought iron.
We are both fascinated with the thousands of strategies that plant life has employed to survive and thrive. Beautiful diversity.
Morning light on an asperagus fern in ST's back yard. Can you just see me walking around her beautiful place taking shots? (Wait! Don't look, I'm in my sleeping shirt and shorts!)
Actual proof that I was there. My super-special pedicure is still intact! I didn't see both of these tendrils when I took this.
