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15 minute posts, Buddies, crazy stuff, easy on the words, elsewhere!, gardening, I forgot to tell you this earlier, the sticks
99 degrees in the shade
Dude. The over-100-degrees weather I dreaded since I moved out here to the sticks (aka desert), is here.
I’d say we’re coping quite well.
Fitting in with the natives.
But then it’s not like we didn’t have practice.
So far so good.
By the way, my dad is here. He was even here on Father’s Day! Which was really cool. We didn’t do anything special for him which pretty much sums up my dad: We love him to pieces and we take him for granted. Rapunzel is baking him an entire batch of chocolate chip cookies for him to take on the road with him. So there’s that. But it’s not even a drop in the bucket compared to how much he does for us. He fixed my swamp cooler and killed about 99 black widow spiders I had living around the outside of my house the first day he got here. The rest of the time he’s spent helping my mom move back into her old house. (Yes, we’re kinda sad. More on that later.)
I love my dad so much.
And I didn’t even make him his own Father’s Day cd or buy him that Archies album he’s always talking about (which one was it again Dad?) Sheesh.
He’s been raving about my sugar snap pea garden and begging me to blog it. So this is for you, Dad. Here’s a picture of me behind my row of sugar snap peas, or were they snow peas? I always mix them up. Anyway, they are not supposed to grow in the desert. It’s like some kind of freak gardening event and my dad has been flipping out about it because they remind him of living in Northern California where they grow all the time and bring back memories of his childhood.
See! Sugar snap pea harvest!
Truth be told, my mom and I had a whole mess of seeds. Some I had ordered off the internet blindly, not paying attention to what region of the earth I live in and others were just random things that people had given us from 1986 and beyond. Most of the seeds got left in this little wheel-around card/stool thing my mom has and were the unfortunate victim of a hose accident. They got soggy, they molded, the end. But some of them survived and that is what we planted. That is how we came to have about 20 pea plants growing in my backyard. Usually they would have croaked and died under the scorching hot desert sun but because we had such an unusually cool spring they survived! You could even say prospered since I’ve picked them twice now and there are still more flowers coming.
They were delicious in dinner.
p.s. I’m posting about my weight and working out over on my review blog. But there’s also a little video of my dog poop and weed infested backyard you might want to spy on so you don’t get too jealous of my mad gardening skillz. And of course there’s $$ dangling at the end to make you comment.
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Where the wild things are.
My brother came to town and he’s staying in my house. I love hanging out with him but it amazes me how adding one person to my household can totally screw up my very ordered day. But then it’s my brother so I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s always liked to screw with me.
There are twice as many dishes to wash, half as much food to go around (he eats everything in sight, like a WHOLE BLOCK OF CHEESE IN ONE SITTING!!!!) the bathroom stinks, his room stinks, he stinks (he can’t take a shower because he has a cast) and THERE ARE KITTENS IN MY HOUSE!!! That I am stuck feeding every four hours. How did that happen?!!!
But how could you be mad at this face, right? Of course I’m not. I might sigh heavily and make snarky remarks all the live-long day but I really do like having him around. I find myself forgetting to lock the door at night and then just shrugging, Eh, Shawn’s here. He’ll squash the bad guys with his bad breath.
There is something about my big, bad, little (he’s two years younger than me) brother that dispels all fear. He’s just one of those kind of guys. He can look at other guys and make them whimper in fear. He’s good to have around. Even Bug is minding better. My brother doesn’t even have to say anything, he just raises his eyebrow and she obeys.
Anyway, you’re probably wondering why there are kittens in my house. Wormy, little, sick, infant kittens with gooped-up eyes who need to be bottle fed. (Yes, we are washing our hands like crazy.) Here’s why: They were abandoned at my mom’s other property by a feral mother cat and we’re just taking care of them until my brother and my mom take a road trip back up to my brother’s home in northern California. He’s got a friend up there who wants them so we are taking care of them until they have a proper home and a much-needed trip to the vet.
It’s a lot of work but I have to admit I’m falling in love with them. We all are. They started purring this morning. Their little bellies vibrate your whole hand. It’s the cutest thing ever. I’ve gone around and around in my head, thinking that maybe it would be okay to keep one. But I just can’t do it. I’ve been down the long cat life with too many cats and it’s just too hard. They get so sick when they’re old. They pee on the carpet and that smell! It just never goes away.
I vowed to myself that I would never have another cat after we had to put Maddy down. We still have Pounce and Lily at Toby’s house and they are starting to show the signs of old age. It’s going to be hard to lose them. So, I don’t know…it’s such a tough subject for me. I want Bug to have the experience of owning a kitten at least once in her life but I just don’t know if now’s the time. I’m catted out. You know?
So we’re just enjoying the time we do have with them. And when I have to wake up at 3 a.m. to make them a bottle, I just remind myself that it’s only until Friday and then I won’t have to do it anymore.
It’s good having my bro’ around too. I’m going to miss the whole stinky lot.
OH! I almost forgot to add there are chickens here too! Weird stuff happens when my brother is around. Chickens, kittens…I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow there’s a donkey in my yard.
A neighbor in my mom’s neighborhood gave my brother two chickens for free. He’s going to take them up north and start a real farm I guess. So they’re hunting and pecking all the earwigs in my yard until they make the trip up north. That’s going to be one long interesting road trip.
I’ll be staying home, thankfully. Phew!
