TGIF!! Friday is so reliable and shows up every 7th day like clockwork. I appreciate that! Okay time to share five random things about our week. Here’s mine!

1. Top of my mind as I write this is that the five people on that Titanic submersible are presumed dead. So tragic. Confession time: I tried not to read this stuff and get invested because submarines in general trigger my fear of being trapped, plus the fact that wasn’t a fully functional submarine but a submersible dependent on a launch ship, and finally, I didn’t think this would have a better outcome. But I got sucked in, and I really feel for all the families and loved ones of the victims. Just to be clear, despite my own fears, I respect those who are more adventurous than me, and I’m deeply sorry this tragedy happened.
2. I have not baked anything since Sunday. I’m mildly proud of that for some reason, LOL. I was on one heck of a baking spree last week.
3. Yesterday I met Biker Witch for coffee, a little browsing and then we finished up the day at Trader Joes. I so enjoyed just seeing her and hanging together. Plus the coffee at the little pastry and sandwich shop we went to was amazing! It’s been awhile since I had such good coffee. The people who worked there (and I think owned it) were so nice and very friendly too. I love that. Then we found another lovely woman in a small arts and crafts shop — she’s a retired accountant now working for fun in her son and daughter-in-law’s business. I found her refreshingly happy and living the life she chose with joy.
4. Oh, I just looked at my walking app and discovered I’ve walked 30 miles this month (that I tracked, I only track dedicated walks, not anything else). That shocked me. Of course, the math makes sense, but I just hadn’t thought about it. By the way, Maggie is fine now, I’m just making sure I keep her walks a bit slower and no more than a mile through at least today. Then we’ll edge up a bit more if she’s ready. She is an aging girl and it’s getting hotter so I’m keeping a close eye on her.
5. Wizard and I planted the rest of the hill along the side of the house. I’m amazed at how much Wizard is doing now that his back is healed. He laid the rest of the drip line and dug all the holes for the plants! Now we have a couple bare spots here and there left to fill in with some plants but that’s easy to do. It’s been a bit of work and a lot of pleasure to work on this back yard. I hope we continue to love it over the years as we do now. Even Maggie really enjoys being out there! That said, in the summer we will miss our old pool, and that’s okay. We can always invite ourself to Youngest’s house to use his pool!

That’s my five now I’d really love to hear yours! I hope everyone has a fabulous and healthy weekend!

I’m going to do this backward — first the bad.

Here’s a pic of Maggie in one of her favorite spots 12 days after her hernia surgery:

I took this pic right before I wrote this blog. She looks good and acts normal, so I took her on a normal walk yesterday. When we got home, she threw up a little. I had an instant attack of major guilt. What the heck was I thinking???? Did I take her too far, push her too hard? But she was absolutely fine the rest of the day. And she has a history of occassionally throwing up for no reason anyone can find, so who knows? Wizard and I have been distracted with very serious worry about someone else we love, but that’s no excuse for me to be careless with Maggie. Her health and recovery are important too, so I’m going to keep her walks limited for another week or so.

Now for my good. My adult nephew stopped by unexpectedly. That was a joy! He was working in the area so he just popped in. I was in the middle of cleaning bathrooms and looked awful in my tank top and rubber gloves, LOL! But he didn’t seem to care, so I didn’t care either. He really brightened our day! Maggie met him once before, and clearly remembered him. She was as happy as we were to see him.

So that’s my good and bad, what’s yours?

I hope all the dads had a terrific Father’s Day! I think Wizard did. We went over to Youngest’s house for dinner and had a great time. Otherwise, I spent the weekend baking. First I tried a gluten free lemon cupcake recipe that I didn’t like. I threw half the batch away (they were underbaked) and froze the other half to taste another time. Sometimes it’s just me.

I regrouped, and made some gluten and dairy free chocolate crinkle cookies that came out delicious–they were my favorite with a tender flakey shell outside, with a brownie texture inside. After that I made some gluten and dairy free sugar cookies, and turned those into sandwich cookies with a dairy free chocolate buttercream — those were youngest’s favorite.

After that, I made the cookies I’ve been looking for an excuse to make: A raspberry cheesecake cookie that’s supposed to be a dupe for the Crumbl cookie version. I made those for Wizard and my daughter-in-law, and they were a winner with them! Since I’ve never had a Crumbl cookie, I have no idea if they were close to their version, but the as long as the people I made them for are happy, that’s all I care about. There’s was no reason to make so many different cookies, but I did it just for fun to test some recipes? That should hold me in the baking department for a while.

I finished listening to A HARD DAY FOR A HANGOVER and was sad it was over.

How was your weekend?

TGIF!! If I have my days of the week correct, then it’s time to share 5 random things about our week! Here’s mine:

1. Maggie is in the dog house! So her stitches are fine, and if you ask her, she’s 100% and has no clue what all the fuss is about or why I’m taking her on fake walks only to the end of the street and back. So I was outside working with my plants, and I got a new plant — chives — which I transplanted and gave some plant food. Maggie tried to eat the plant food <<insert eye roll >> and I told her to leave it. Then I decided to wash out my standing planter and put all the herbs on the ground on the side of the house. When I went back a couple hours later to move the plants — Maggie had dug out half the soil in my chives, probably eating the plant food or maybe the chives just smelled interesting, I don’t know. I was so mad at her! But it does show that A) She’s feeling good enough to be mischievous enough to get into something I’ve never seen her do before, and B) I’m leaving her out in the back unsupervised so I’m not worried about her.  I am worried about the poor chive plant! We’ll see if he survives.
2. Wizard told me yesterday I couldn’t wash the floors because I’d done too much already. I just looked at him. He goes, “What? You say that to me and I listen.” Ha! Sometimes, he listens. Also, I washed half the floors only because I ran out of time and energy to do the rest. So I guess we both won? (Yes, I do listen…sometimes.)
3. Wizard started clearing rocks and raking out the soil on the long side of the hill (with the retaining wall) where we haven’t planted anything yet and I helped in between making sourdough bread, which was as crazy as it sounds, LOL! I moved tons of rock. Well okay maybe it was pounds rather than tons, but I was happy I could do it without hurting myself. It’s so nice to see Wizard feeling better! We’re going to put my tomato and bell pepper plants there as we don’t think there’s enough sunshine on the other side where I originally wanted them. I’m not even sure I can keep the plants alive and get them to produce, but I’m gonna try!
4. Last week I hit 10 miles of walking on my tracking app. I was pretty happy with that since I only track when I go out for long walks. This week will be much sadder. I think I got one or two 2-mile walks since I feel guilty going without Maggie. I’m trying to save the last couple hours of the audio book HARD DAY FOR A HANGOVER because if I don’t have Maggie with me, I love listening to it while walking. I just need the time in the morning when I tend to be busiest!
5. I made and froze four layers of 8 inch found cake so I can decorate them for fun when I get the inspiration and chunk of time. It’s nice to have the cake layers in the freezer, ready to go when I am.

That’s my five (I know, I’m soooo bring these days!), now I’d love to hear yours!

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all the Dad’s!

Before I get into the blog, I need to say I heard Monday night that Julie Garwood died. It feels like the world has lost a truely original talent. I loved her books! I want to thank her for sharing her sweet, funny and sassy romances with the world. I adored her heroines!

Now I want to share a conversation I had yesterday. I was standing in line at the grocery store while clerk was trying to stalk the point-of-sale racks there — you know the ones with the candy bars and snacks — and I was trying to stay out of her way. She stopped stocking, turned to me and shyly asked, “I see you in here all the time, I wonder how you stay so in shape?”

I was caught by surprise, and said something I think was polite and nice, but what I remember is away she said next. “I try so hard…” and she went on to describe her workout and how hard she works to eat right and she said she was 55. I would have guessed her to be late 30s, maybe early 40s! I told her how floored I was because that she looked much, much younger and that I thought she was lovely.

She was very gracious, but the weight bothered her and she told me some “old friends” had commented on her weight. I could feel that in my heart. This beautiful woman, who also appears to be kind and hardworking from what I could see, was really distressed by a few extra pounds. And I’m not only sad for her, but pissed.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why people would focus on something as unimportant as putting on a few pounds when this woman appears to have so much more to offer? I’m just mad, sad and disgusted about it.  I’ve had people say things to me over the years too, we probably all have. Sometimes, it’s just people with foot-in-mouth disease and say stupid things and I try to give them a pass. God knows, I’ve occassionally suffered from that disease myself and I’m always mortified.

But others? I think they are looking to bring us down to make themselves feel better. Which is utterly pathetic. Given that this women looked so young, maybe that triggered others’ insecurities, who knows?

What I really wanted to end with today is that each and every one of you have a special kind of beauty. Let’s all try to listen to our friends and family who recognize our positive beautiful qualities and ignore the mean idiots who find our insecurity and comment on it. They are the pathetic ones who don’t deserve our attention.

P.S. I’m not in any particular “good shape.” I think this women just needed to talk to someone and I’m glad I was there at the right moment.

Happy Monday!

So first Maggie; the lipoma on her belly turned out to be a hernia, but now it’s repaired and she’s healing great so far. Our biggest issue is limiting her activity as she thinks she’s just fine. She is being very good about wearing the shirts I have for her to keep her from annoying the wound. One story; for two nights, I had her sleep on the floor by me so I could watch her. I didn’t get much sleep because I reacted to every sigh. So the third night I put her in her onsie (a shirt with snaps to keep her from getting to the wound) and told her to go in her kennel. She did that willingly, but I didn’t want to be too far away from her so I slept in the guest room. I shut the door but figured I’d hear her.

I didn’t hear something about 4:30 a.m. but it wasn’t crying or barking, it was movement in the house. I told myself I was dreaming or Wizard was up early and tried to go back to sleep.

Twenty minutes later, Wizard opened the door and told me Maggie got out of her kennel. Maggie bounded in, soooo proud of herself! Since the closed door prevented her from seeing me, she happily woke up Wizard. The first time he pet her, turned over and went back to sleep, thinking I was up. But she woke him again and he knew something was up.

Long story short, I didn’t latch the kennel right, and she must have turned around in her kennel and inadvertently pushed the door open. This isn’t really a surprise as I had noticed it didn’t really catch, but I thought it was partly latched and didn’t worry. I was obviously really tired.

Anyhow, Maggie thought she was an amazing magician for this incredible feat of escaping her kennel, LOL. I’ll make sure a latch catches tonight, only because we want her to sleep as much as she can and she rests better in her kennel.

Otherwise the weekend was fairly quiet. We bought and planted four plants (limiting it to be careful of Wizards back, which is improving steadily!). Saturday night we went to a neighbors to celebrate their sons high school graduation. We only stayed an hour as we aren’t leaving Maggie alone for long stretches until we know the stitches are healed enough to keep her from opening them, but we had a great time. And twice I went out for long walks without Maggie. I feel weird and guilty doing it, but I do take Maggie out front on a leash or slow-walk a few houses down to the mailbox before I go. I’m reading a non-fiction book that would probably bore you all since it’s by a gastroenterologist, but I’m consistently and slowly trying to teach my stomach to handle a bigger variety of foods. To stay on track, I do a mind-numbing amount of research.  On the lighter side, I’m listening to a book by Darynda Jones, it’s the third book in a trilogy (or is it a series?) — A HARD DAY FOR A HANGOVER. I’d listened to to the first two books a year or two ago and forgot about the third I’m enjoying it.

How was your weekend?

TGIF!! I would sure love to know where all the time goes! Okay, enough whining, let’s dive into sharing five random things about our week. Here’s mine:

1. It’s Thursday afternoon as I write this, and Maggie is at the vets getting her teeth cleaned, her tummy mass removed (we are pretty sure it’s a harmless lipoma), and they’ll check her ears. This week she suddenly developed itching and misery in one ear, so we’ll see. Could be anything including allergies, AND she was a boarding just about two weeks ago so she could have picked up something or other.
2. I’m sure Maggie will be fine, they’ll call me when she’s ready to come home. But I’ve kept myself crazy busy so I don’t have time to fret and worry I cleaned the carpets in the front of the house, did the laundry, went to Trader Joes and did a ton of other tasks. Now I’m moving a bit more slowly, LOL.
3. So in the front hard, we have the pretty stone planter with flowers which we love, but we’ve been stymied on what to do with the rest of the yard. It’s just dirt and bark right now (we ripped out the plants the housing track put it because, in our opinion, they looked like dying weeds). So I printed a picture of the front yard, and began searching. I lost three hours of my life looking at pictures and coming up with very little to show for it. I showed Wizard the picture of our house that I’d printed and told him I didn’t find many ideas. Then he printed five copies of the picture and drew up five designs. I tried to get away with just picking one of his designs, but he was all mean and bullied me into making five designs of my own. I whined for a day then grudgingly did it, and now we have two designs, one from each of us, that we both really like. I’m sort of annoyed that he was right to nag me into doing it. Soon we’ll get estimates but right now we’re just happy to have some solid ideas.
4. Wizard’s back is improving but he’s on the bench until I say otherwise. He’s cooperating (with the pretty much the same attitude I had about the front yard designs, LOL) because while he’s healing, I can see he’s about one sudden sneeze away from reinjuring it. He flat out overdid things for a long time while ignoring warning twinges and aches. But he’s steadily improving so no worries. The fact that he’s only putting up a token fight tells me his back really needs the rest.
5. While Wizard is dealing with the frustration of being sidelined, I keep outlining all my ideas like my secret container garden down the long narrow side of the house. This poor man! First, there’s no time for that this year, and I know it. Second, there’s no money. Third, we have to get rain gutters on that side because we didn’t do it when we should have (we were idiots!), and we’re having some minor soil erosion there. Then once the rain gutters are in, that area will need to be leveled and maybe more soil brought in, rake and prepared. It’s a next Spring (if ever!) project, but I’m researching it now and excitedly babbling to him, and he’s rolling his eyes so hard, LOL! Honestly, I’m just proud of developing a vision for an area that we though was relatively useless and I’m having fun. It really will be like a secret garden because no one will know it’s there unless we show them.

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