TGIF! We’ve almost run out of April! Unreal how crazy fast time is going. Okay time share five random things about our week. Here’s mine:

1. Monday we got our Covid boosters. Wizard arranged it, so I did it. Tuesday, Wizard was mildly sick (mostly achy) and I went on as usual Wizard bounced back by Wednesday. Fun story, we know the pharmacist who gaze us the shots. We both went in, and Wizard was teasing that he’d watch me flinch. The pharmacist laughed and said, “She doesn’t flinch.” She was correct. Wizard flinched a little, but there’s a decent chance he was messing with me, or Karma was messing with him
2. First I’m all proud and then…well let me back up. One morning I came home from a walk and was out talking to a neighbor. The street was quiet so I released Maggie from the leash and she stayed with me. Then I told her “Let’s go home” and she ran to our front porch. Neighbor was impressed and I had a proud mom moment. A few days later, I went for a long afternoon walk, came home and at the bottom of the driveway, I released Maggie from her leash. She bounded on the grass, and I took off my shoes. I looked up and she was gone. Confused because she never does that, I turned and she’s down the driveway standing on her hind legs, trying to get to a tiny little fluffball dog in the woman’s arms. The poor dog was scared and growling, and Maggie being a total tail wagging dufus. I grabbed her, and apologized for not paying attention. The woman was so sweet and thought the dogs could be friends. They probably can, but I didn’t want them meeting then because the little dog was already scared, and it wasn’t the right moment (energy) for them to officially meet. I was pretty mad at myself. I never even looked around to see if someone was walking their dog by before I let her off leash in our driveway. If it had been a big dog, Maggie would have hid behind me. But she loves tiny little fluffballs and doesn’t realize she can look scary to them. I’m such a Bad Dog Mom. And I’m the one that rants about others having their dog off leash!
3. I made salted dark chocolate cookies because Wizard asked me to. Also I’m weak. I’ll freeze a lot of them, which is nice because we can just pull out one cookie when we want it.
4. I took some shoes back to Penny’s yesterday, and they sent me to three registers before someone told me where the actual return section was, LOL! I figured it out, but had to laugh at the runaround. Then on my way out, I accidently found another pair of shoes and bought them. I swear I find things when I’m not looking.
5. A couple weeks ago, lost a pair of sunglasses on a walk. I had them tucked in my pocket and they had to of fallen out. I wasn’t worried, they were cheap and I had a good pair at home. Except I couldn’t find the good pair. I kept looking where I put them, and nope, not there. Today I looked again…and I swear this is true…they were exactly where I’d put then in their case. I forgot they were in a case and so I looked right over them. For two weeks, I’ve been wearing an old scratched pair that I use for hanging out in the pool because I’m special that way, LOL.

That’s my five, now I’d love to hear yours! I hope everyone has a terrific weekend!

I was all proactive about doing physical therapy, willing to work as hard as it takes to relieve my nerve pain without doing x-rays, MRI’s or injections to handle the discomfort. PT is usually the first step so I’m here for it.

Or I’m trying to be. But as it turns out, I can’t get an appointment for at least a month.

Apparently it takes Elon Musk less time to buy Twitter in his bid to control the hearts, minds and opinions of the world than to get a physical therapy appointment.

Hmm, maybe if I complain on Twitter, Musk will fix access to the health care that I make substantial monthly payment to supposedly ensure my access to???

So how’s your Wednesday going?

Aside from computer problems, the weekend was good.

Friday, I went to my doctor and he believes it’s not my cervical spine causing the pain, but a compressed nerve at neck level on my left side. It was amazing the way he isolated the pain points. Plus I have garden variety tendonitis in my left elbow. All of it is from overworked muscles But the doctor wants me to continue with yoga, and as long as I don’t feel pain while doing it, I won’t cause any more damage. So he did a shot in my left elbow, then two anti- imflammatory shots, and he’s sending me to physcial therapy to see if we can release that nerve. For now, the shots are helping some of the pain. I’m relieved that it doesn’t appear to be my spine, and am very willing ot do the work. The shots have helped some of my pain and I’m grateful for that.

Saturday was my mother-in law’s-brithday. My two sister-in-laws did the bulk of the work and made it beautiful for her. Lovely table setting out on the patio, gorgeous flowers and catered food. All I really brought was the cake. But my mother-in-law seemed to love it and I was thrilled.

I really wish I could show you the cake. But my computer is cranky as a wet cat. My bottom tool bar that allows me to run multiple windows, and control other key elements, is frozen. I have yet to find a solution. I also just discovered that I can’t move files from my cloud to my harddrive or even download and save a picture…grrrrr! I’ve tired relauching programs (windows explorer specificially) and other troubleshooting, but so far no luck. The old computer is getting contrary and mean. I’m taking it persoanlly, LOL!

Sunday, Maggie and I took a long walk, did yoga, and then Youngest came over. Maggie got to go in Youngest’s Jeep to go see our house in the framing stage. She showed him all her favorate spots, then she got back in the car and curled up on his sweatshirt. I laughed and thankfully, Yougest doesn’t care. Wizard missed out since he was gone racing in RC cars and hanging out with his friends.

OK I’m inserting the cake picture using my phone:

How was your weekend?

TGIF! Let’s dive right into sharing five random things about our week. Here’s mine:

1.  I made and froze lemon cake (trust me on freezing cakes–when done right it helps seal in moisture and freshness. I was shocked to learn this too!). That went easily enough. Then yesterday I made lemon curd for the filling and it failed. I didn’t quite cook it to the stage I needed it. But no worries, I redid it today and it turned out fine. This is exactly why I bought more eggs than I technically needed as I mentioned in my Wednesday story Also, my neighbor has a lemon tree and is happy to share with all of us on the street, which is pretty awesome. That tree keeps us all stocked up!
2. And after a long debate between the voices in my head, I’m going to mix the curd into buttercream icing to make the filling. I love straight lemon curd filling, but not everyone is a fan of the tartness, so this choice should please a wider range of palates.
3. Wizard and I went to the dentist, and I told him about my neck, jaw and arm. He manipulated what would be the trigger points if it was TMJ and the most pain I felt was a 3 out of 10, and it didn’t radiate hot burning streaks, so that’s likely not the source. That’s actually super helpful in beginning to eliminate it. I’m going to my regular doctor today, and I’m going to ask for x-rays, and include the jaw joint too. In the meantime, I’m dialing down my yoga practice to a little less strenuous.
4. Back to the dentist, I love people who respect their staff. So one of the dentist-owners of the practice was filling in the for the receptionist. He does this every Wednesday so she can babysit her grandchild. She’s that valuable. He kept teasing that he had to do it right so he didn’t get in trouble from her. While he was partially joking, he really does values her and her work, and is willing to go the extra mile so she can do something important to her. We need more of this all around.
5. Tax Season is Over!!! Yesterday we went out to babysit Turbo. Turbo’s on spring break from school, his mom had to go into her office, and dad was going to work from home for a few hours. But Turbo’s dad surprised us and took the day off to hang with us. I love that. He did take an hour for himself to work out, then we played and all went to lunch at a little bistro and ate outside. I had an amazing salad! CPA Boy was stealing off my plate because, like me, he loves rabbit food too, LOL It was so great to see CPA Boy relaxing after putting in 7 days a week for months for various reason. And he really wanted to spend time with us and his son, which means a lot to us.

So that’s my five, now I’d love to hear yours! I hope everyone has an amazing weekend!

Wizard and I went to the grocery store. We have this down to quick routine. Our biggest challenge is the part where the courtesy clerk bags the groceries.

Lately, they’ve been an interesting group.

There’s Aggressive Guy. A middle aged cheerful man who threw…and I mean like picked up each item and lobbed them into the bag. Whatever his hand hit, it went in the bag until no one could lift it. Tomatoes and cans of soup became intimately acquainted. They finally moved him to stocking shelves.

Then there was Engineer Kid who I liked. He was slowish but that’s because he would stop and think. I could see him scanning the groceries, mentally fitting them into bags, then following through. No one trained him, but his engineer brain was sorting it out. I don’t know what happened to him, he just vanished. Probably making the others look bad.

The one today packed most things fine…until the end. She was down to the last bag (we bring our own…because California makes everything expensive and complicated). I bought two dozen eggs which is more than I needed but one dozen wasn’t enough

So there’s one bag, two cartons of eggs and bags of heavy fruit. I see her mental struggling for a second and started to turn to the checker to tell her I’ll buy another bag (Because…California…don’t ask.)

Before I could she put the two cartons of eggs side by side in the bottom of the last bag.  I turned back and stared in horrified fascination. It’s like watching a car (make of egg shells) crash in slow motion.

Next she put in two bags of heavy pairs. On top of the eggs.

Then two bags of bananas.

And she finishes it off with a bag of apples. (Yep we eat a lot of fruit!)

Thank the Lord I didn’t buy bricks. Or a bag of cement because it would have gone on top too.

Then, she lifts the bag, and proudly tells a frozen Wizard, “Your eggs are in here, so you might want to be careful.”

She was so sincere that I clamped my mouth closed on hysterical laughter. Once we were out the door, I said, “Good thing I bought extra eggs.”

Wizard turned his head slowly, still processing what he just witnessed. “You saw that?”

I couldn’t hold back anymore and laughed. Hard. Most of the time, I’m aggravated, but today in a world filled with violence and rage, this just cracked us both up. She’d been so genuine and sweet about being careful with our eggs — that she’d just piled ten pounds of fruit on top of, that how could we not laugh?

We rearranged the groceries in the car while I kept laughing and Wizard grinned at me.  I think my reaction was more amusing that the eggs. But honestly, he didn’t see the way she turned to him holding that bag like precious cargo, and his face frozen into deer in the headlights expression.

The eggs made it home.

And before anyone asks, we sometimes say something, and sometimes don’t. These grocery folks are overworked and undertrained, and I strive to keep that in mind. Heck, at least they’re working, and working hard. Add to that, we don’t have enough stores in this part of my town so they are crazy busy, and times are tense in general. I pick my battles. This girl packing today was trying, but she was clearly not trained and thrown out to do a job she didn’t know how to do. I wasn’t there to embarrass her when I was going to fix it myself once we got to the car anyway.

Some days, it’s better to just laugh.

Happy Wednesday!

Hope all who celebrated had a good Easter! We went to Middle Son’s and daughter in law’s. My DIL is an excellent cook, and she smoked a pork loin. I’m generally not a port eater, but this was good. I ate a slice and a half, which for me, is impressive Youngest son loved it, and was quizzing DIL on her recipe and methods. I see a smoker in his future, LOL.

Middle Son and DIL had an egg hunt for Turbo too. It was so cute. He loved it. DIL’s mom had filled a bunch of plastic eggs with toys, chocolate and money for him. I thought it was really sweet.

And we all got to play with Jett and Hazel. I didn’t think to take pictures (my phone usually stays in my purse), but they are super nice dogs. Jett, however, doesn’t know he’s huge, and can bowl people over with affection, so we have to watch him around Turbo. Poor Jett is confused by us holding him back when his smaller, gentler sister plays with Turbo. But then he plopped down and watched like a good boy.

It was a fun and relaxing family day, and Youngest got a box of homemade cookies out of it   I made two kinds of non dairy cookies and took them all just to get them out of my house. I really wanted to test the non-dairy white chocolate macadamia nut recipe. Especially since it was vegan and getting those to turn out can be a little tricky. I got a positive response from everyone which was nice.

Otherwise, Maggie and I took two walks on Saturday, and the second one involved climbing huge stairs in to the side of hill (it’s part of a trail).  I haven’t tried going up those since my neck surgery. I was too afraid of falling because some of the risers are so large. But we did it on Saturday. Only problem was once we went up, we had to go back down. Maggie was fine because she’s part goat. But I’m just a two-legged human with cranky knees. I handled the normal spaced steps, the but big ones had my knees yelping as I tried to step down. I had to tell Maggie to wait at each step. That part was slow progress, and I had to look ridiculous, but we made it! I call that a win.

This week is going to be busy with appointments, we’re babysitting Turbo Thursday (I think) , and I need to do a cake for this Saturday so I need to run around getting stuff I need for that.

How was your weekend?

TGIF. Let’s jump right into sharing 5 random things about our week:

1. I made spaghetti sauce last night and used some fresh oregano from my mini herb garden along with my dried herbs. It turned out good.
2. I finished another Lucy Score book. She’s sort of my crack right now. It’s the brassy heroine, snappy dialogue and fast paced plot. (FYI: Her writing is very sexy and explicit, which some readers may not love.) In the last couple years I’ve read a lot of deep and dark books, so this is a nice break.
3. I’ve worked on some fondant flowers. I’m making a cake for my mother in law’s birthday in another week, and I can’t settle on a simple design that I can transport. But either way, it’s practice, and kind of relaxing to work on the flowers. However, my session was cut short by a phone call from my sister-in- law. The problem with that is we talk too much, LOL! Wizard was gone when she called, came home, went upstairs to work out, came downstairs saw me on the phone and laughed. It’s funny because these days I usually get off the phone pretty quick. My sister-in-law and I clearly need an intervention
4. The three pairs of sandals I ordered came, and I’m keeping two of them. That’s a big win for me. Normally I’m too cheap to even order them, but I really need a summer options to my favorite comfortable flip flops. Plus Wizard was chatting, “If they fit keep them!” It’s possible he brainwashed me…just saying…
5. We’re going to Middle Son and his lovely wife’s house for Easter. All the boys, wives and Turbo will be there. I’m looking forward to it. Plus Middle’s wife is an excellent cook. I’m always willing to try her dishes even if it’s out of my normal range. And she’s gracious when I can’t eat something because of my stomach. I’m taking deviled eggs and some dairy free cookies, so it’s pretty easy for me. Oh and I get to see Jett and Hazel, their two dogs. It should be a nice weekend.

So that’s my fine, but I’d love to hear yours! I hope everyone who celebrates has a Happy Easter! Happy weekend to all!