April, Come She Will, When Streams are Ripe and Filled Wtih Rain

I don't have a lot of pictures to add to this post, so you all get to see Gus again. Hi, Gus!

 Oh, kids. It's that weird time of year. You know, the ass-end of Winter, where it feels like warm temps will never come, and then we got our first fake Spring last weekend. If you have ever lived in the Midwest, you'll know that a fake Spring is when it all the sudden warms up, sometimes 50 degrees in about a day. Everyone goes crazy and gets outside, and the college kids who normally wear flip flops on the coldest days of Winter, are practically wearing swimsuits. It feels like it's finally done being cold and snowing. Then a day later there's some weird rain that turns into ice, and then into snow, and the temperature drops another 50 or 60 degrees, and everyone cries.

Well, this week looks like it will be our second fake Spring, for maybe an entire week!!!!!!!!!! I can't tell you how excited I am about it...Or maybe those 500 exclamation points just did. 

I am trying to be better about so many things right now. I'm trying to be a kinder person, who doesn't get annoyed so easily. Wish me luck with that one! I'm also trying to eat less food, and better food. I'm trying not to eat in between meals and be more mindful when I do eat, instead of devouring my food, barely tasting it, possibly biting my cheek, and then not giving myself a chance to see if I'm starting to get full, before I serve myself up some more. 

We''ll see how that goes. Also, I'm trying to drink less alcohol. I've never been a big drinker, The migraines have always helped me remember why I can't drink more than a beer or two at a time, but I can get into this habit of just having a beer after work, just one, but if I drink a beer everyday, that's seven drinks a week, and that starts to add  up. Now, I'm cutting way back. I'll still have a drink here or there, but I hopefully won't get in that bad habit of drinking a beer most days of the week. I'm not sure if cutting down will help or hurt my other goal of being a kinder (more kind?) person. I guess poor John will let me know.

The other thing I'm trying to do is work-out more. For most of my adult life, I ran six miles almost every day. Now, with this stupid perimenopause, my body isn't letting me run like it used to. I'm still trying to run, but a lot of times, I can walk a little, run a little, walk a little more, and so on. ANNNNNDDD, I can only do that for about two miles. I'm still hoping that the worst of this will go away once I'm actually in menopause. I finally figured out my almost constant migraine situation last Fall, and that has helped me be able to run, and ride, and cross country ski, and stuff more often this year. Thank the lard! With the first fake Spring a week ago, I got all motivated and did my little run/walk thing four times that week, I also rode my bike on the road, outside, for the first time this year, and weirdest of all...I swam laps for the first time in two years last Saturday. It felt strange to actually work my upper body for a change. We rode our bikes outside today too. Since I'm not in the best shape of my life, we just rode down Sand Road, which is almost completely flat. That's my kind of road!

So, tomorrow starts our second fake Spring of 2022. I am all goofy and hopeful at the prospect, but it will be a few months yet before I put away my Winter things, It's snowed her in May before. I'm just going to sit around drinking many glasses of water, and not drinking very many alcoholic beverages, or eating many delicious snacks. Do you think I'll get used to it and not crave cookies and ice cream any more? If you think I still will, feel free to lie to me. Like I always say, I'm a sucker for false hope.

Mama Said There'll Be Days Like This, There'll be Days LIke This, My Mama Said

This is my mom, my oldest sister, and my mom's amazingly drawn-in eyebrows, when we lived in Scottsdale in the late 1960's.

 Well, Valentine's Day would have been my mom's 90th birthday. I can't imagine what she would have looked like as an old woman. She died when she was 43, and I was 10. Her death when I was so young, and everything that came after it, was probably the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I always say, I was lucky to have her even just for those ten years. Here are some of the wisdom that I carry with me all of these years later:

I was a mama's girl. Clearly. I was a pain in the ass, overly sensitive, hyper spaz, and my mom was so patient and sweet to me. She would say things like, "Here. Let me do it. That way if it's not done right, I won't have anyone to blame but myself." It had never occurred to me that my mom could make mistakes before she said that. I had never met an adult who admitted that they were fallible before. I just thought I was the only one who messed everything up. 

She also made sense of unrequited love for me. I told her I was in love with Brian Chapman. He was sooo cute, and all of the other girls liked him too, but he didn't like me back. She told me that she used to love a boy in grade school and he didn't love her back. She said he was so cute when they were kids, but then she went to a grade school class reunion when she was older, and he was fat and bald and even worse, so booooorrrrring. and she was glad he hadn't liked her. She made it seem like Brian was doing me a favor by not liking me back.

When we lived in Arizona among many Mormons, one of my friends invited me to what they called Primary. It's when their family sits around and talks about their religion. We were Catholic, and they took every opportunity to let us know how bad that was, and to try and recruit us to Mormonism. I just wanted to hang out with my friends, so I said, "sure". I came home in tears that night and told my mom, "They said when we died, all the Catholics were going to this layer just above hell, like purgatory. We would be with Black people and Jewish people too," My mom told me that it sounded great. We'd be in good company.She could always turn things around for me against the negativity of the world.

There are many, many, days where I wish I could tell her something that made me feel bad, so she could turn it around for me. Now, I have to do it for myself. At least I was lucky to learn how to do it from a pro.

Let's Talk About Poop, Baby, Let's Talk About You and Me

 Well, Valentine's Day is upon us, and what better way to celebrate it, then talking about poop? That's right. I had my first colonoscopy last Thursday. I know, I know. I should have had one years ago, but I was doing these guaiac cards once a year instead. If something tested wrong with the poop smudged cards I sent in THEN they would make me do a colonoscopy.

They never came back bad, but about a year ago, I ran into one of my daughter's grade school friend's dad at the store. Got that? Sadly, he was dying of prostate cancer, and we were talking about preventative tests, and I happened to mention about my doing the guaiac cards instead of the colonoscopy. (because these are the type of things that totally NORMAL people talk about when they're casually shopping and run into a friend, right?) He gave me a little lecture about how important it is to do the REAL test, and he was right. 

Sooooo, at 56 I had my first colonoscopy. Like everyone told me, the prep was the worst part. A week before the procedure, you're supposed to only eat meat and white bread and pasta, and cheese, and very little of what I normally eat like veggies and whole grains and beans. I'm not sure why they want to stop people up for a week before they let everything explode out of them. Maybe it's for dramatic effect? Also, I was allowed to have ice cream, and I figured since everything was going to go right through me the next day, I made sure to get some Ben and Jerry's the night before I had to fast. It was absolutely guilt free.

The day before the procedure I had to fast and they had me start taking a laxative at noon. Then at four I had to take more laxatives, and then at six they wanted me to start drinking EIGHT WHOLE GLASSES of the Golytely shit. It wouldn't be horrible if you had to drink a glass or two, but eight? JAYSUS! It had this weird, vague, salty/fishy taste to it. After the first three glasses, I decided to add a little dash of Squirt soda to it. I didn't want to have to drink more than the eight glasses, so I didn't add a ton, just enough to take the fishy edge off of it, and keep me from puking it all up.

Needless to say, the Golytely and laxatives did their jobs, and I might have to rewatch "Nightmare Alley", because I had to keep pausing it and running to the bathroom, and then "Where were we?" and then like that there for about two hours. Poor John.

At nine, and then at ten, they told me to take a couple of Gas-X tablets before bed. The next morning, I had to do the Golytely bit again, and all this time not eating for two days. I did spend a considerable amount to time fantasizing about what I would eat the minute after the procedure was over.

The nurses and doctor were all very nice. I warned the nurse that I have bad rolling veins, and that she needed to really hold them down, but she spent a lot of time digging around in my arm anyway and said, "Yer not kidding!" I used to do phlebotomy, so I get it, and if that's the worst thing that happens to you during a procedure (which it was) than you're pretty damn lucky. (which I was)

John came with and went next door to 30HOP for lunch and a beer while I was busy having someone stick a camera up my butt. He made it back to the recovery room, just as they were wheeling me in. Perfect timing! The doctor came in and said everything was fine and there were no polyps or other problems and I wouldn't have to have another one for ten years. Thank Jeebus!

I felt a little dizzy afterward, but not much worse than normal. We decided to go to Los Agaves for a late lunch for me, and since my stomach was very small, I wasn't able to eat very much, but it still tasted pretty damn lovely.

So, if that all wasn't the most romantic prelude to Valentine's Day, I don't know what would be. It had all the sexiness of backless hospital gowns, uncontrollable pooping, and reminders of impending old age. I'm not sure what John and I can do to top that next year. Maybe I'll let him sit in on my next mammogram?

Summer is Gone, But Our Love Will Remain, Like Old Bicycles, Out in the Rain

Okay. So, where was I? Oh, yeah. Last Saturday, my cold was getting better, but I woke up with a migraine. Wah!

I took my migraine meds (Zomig) and they worked just fine. By the time we got to the race venue, my brain pain was all but gone, and I was surprised at how much energy I had.

Cyclocross is always a fun spectacle, and the world championships brought out the costumes and cow bells in full force.

To me, the women's races are way more exciting than the men's, and this competition was no exception. There was a race to the sprint for first and second, and the third and fourth place racers battled until the very end too in the Women's Championships.

The biggest problem for me with the race was the food and drink situation. You weren't supposed to bring any food or water in with you, and they made you wait sometimes an hour and a half to stand in line for a bottle of water. Also, it was sixty degrees on Sunday, and for us Northerners, that was a LOT to get acclimated to, so dehydration was definitely possible. So dangerous. So dumb.

The food there was another shit show. Again, we missed watching an entire race, so we could stand in line for an hour, and they had about five options available. All were gross, fried food. The only thing I could eat there, because I don't eat beef or pork, and I don't like mushrooms, was this greasy cheese fries concoction with a mess of chicken and cheese. I ate about half of it, before it made me sick.

I don't know who plans a bike race without plenty of different kinds of beer? On Saturday they had an IPA, but I guess Miller Lite was their sponsor, and on Sunday that was the only kind of beer we could find. Have you ever tasted Lite beer? It felt like we were transported back to the 80's. Fayetteville, you could have don SOOOO much better.

Like most people we knew, we snuck food in on Sunday. Believe me, no one wants to be around me when I haven't eaten all day. We did that race venue a favor by ordering an extra pizza for leftovers, and hiding it in our bag on Sunday.

On Sunday one of my favorite riders was racing in the Under 23 women's race. Puck is amazing, but she kept getting 2nd in all of the big Under 23 races this season, and I was REALLY hoping she would win.

Lucky for me...And her too, I suppose, she pulled it out in another sprint finish. I was so happy. She is such an incredible bike handler.

Since I was feeling a little better, John and I went to ride on the mountain bike trails in Bentonville after the races were over. We were staying at a place just across the street, so it was easy to just pedal over.

These trails are amazing and abundant. They are made with Walmart money. I wish Walmart would pay their workers better, AND make cool trails.

I am not the bravest mountain biker, but there were plenty of green trails, and any trail we rode on was super scenic.

Since I still wasn't feeling 100 percent, John did a lot of riding ahead and waiting for me. Riding ahead, and waiting for me. I'm sure he's used to it by now.

I really do love it when people put art on the mountain bike trails. It makes the experience even more fun and photogenic.

We spent our last night in Arkansas eating Torchy's tacos. I love their food. We went to our first Torchy's in Austin, and then the last time we were in Arkansas, we found out they were a franchise. There are two in the Fayetteville/Bentonville area. We took full advanatage.

 So, after our long anniversary weekend adventure where it was warm enough to even see a butterfly at the end of January, we returned home to the cold, and our cats. The cats were happy to see us, but sad that they didn't get to free feed dry food all day anymore Too bad for them!

Still It's a Real Good Bet, The Best Is Yet to Come

Well, kids. I caught a cold. I know. It feels so weird. I did a covid test and it was negative, so it really is just a cold. I haven't been sick in over two years. I almost forgot what it felt like, until I was so rudely reminded. So much sneezing, and Coughing, and blowing my nose, and hacking shit up, and then my ears got all clogged up, and I was dizzy and exhausted...Even more than usual. Before I took the Covid test, I looked up the difference between the Omicron variant, and a cold. They said the biggest difference was having night sweats with Omicron. Really? Then I could have had Omicron for the last several years.

It was horrible timing, what with our planned trip to Arkansas and all. I was in bad shape on Wednesday and Thursday, but I'm feeling much better today. Which means I'm not so dizzy I can't stand up, and I'm not hacking, and blowing my nose as much. I slept most of the way down to Arkansas. We stopped for lunch in Kansas City at a place called Martin City. We got mussels, and crab cakes and shrimp tacos and split it all. Everything was lovely. I still can't eat that much, because I can't taste the food as well as I can when I'm not sick, so I'm not quite as interested, but I did my damnedest.

We got to Bentonville right at 3,and we couldn't get into our AirBnB until 4, so we thought we'd check and see if I was strong enough to ride a little on the trails there. Bentonville is lousy with Walmart money, and I guess the Walmart boys like to mountain bike, so they made tons of cool trails all over town.

 

 

 

They also run through Crystal Bridges Museum's sculpture garden, and so we rode the easiest trails, and took many photos, as I am wont to do.

Come to find out, I was not very strong at all. I was getting winded riding up the slightest of hills, and my lungs were very angry with me. I was even slower than this stationary tortoise.

I loved this exhibit where they asked that you please do not touch...The balls. Heh heh.

We rode past a pig, back to our car to get settled into our place before dinner.

 We went to an early dinner at Table Mesa (table table?) and the food was lovely. We got some Ceviche, and margaritas to start off with, and then ordered the crab enchiladas, and spinach chile rellenos. It was all delicious, but our food came out about a second after we got our appetizer, which was poor form. Oh well, it could be worse. We could have waited forever for our food.

Let's see, great food, riding bikes around art, more great food, and margaritas? I think we covered most of our bases on this fifth wedding anniversary.

Funny thing: The gift your supposed to give people on their fifth anniversary is wood. Tee hee. Sure, diamonds and flowers are nice, but what straight girl doesn't want wood?

On A Winter Sunday I Go, To Clear Away The Snow, And Green the Ground Below

 

 Well, Stinky tested positive for Covid on Friday. She is smart and is vaxxed and boosted, so her symptoms aren't too bad. She's just exhausted, super congested, and very, very tired. Since I was in a car with her on Thursday evening, John and I each did a home test. We were both negative. Yea!

 If you know me at all, you know that food is love in my world. I went to three different stores to get Stinky some orange juice, chicken noodle soup, Mucinex, fresh flowers, a bunch of microwaveable meals, snacks, treats, cereal, Dr Teal's bubble bath, Kleenex and electrolyte tablets. If she's sick for the next month, she's still all set.

Remember how I said I was going to read the Stacey Abrams novel? I lied. I saw the T. C. Boyle novel about Timothy Leary and LSD, and since it's January in Iowa, I needed a LOT of escapism, and so I went that direction. Now that I'm crawling down into that rabbit hole, I'm going to read Michael Pollan's non-fiction book about hallucinogens next. Unless, of course, something else pops out at me instead.

Today was the first Sunday in about a month and a half where I didn't work on our bathroom reno in any way, shape, or form. It would have been nice if I had been at all productive, but I really just read, spent some quality time with the cats, and played Wordle, and did the Sunday New York Times Crossword puzzle, and the mini, and Spelling Bee. John has tried to get me to do Sudoku, but that is a puzzle of numbers, and my brain can only do puzzles with words, so it never really stuck with me. And also, I don't really think I need to add more puzzles to my repertoire, do you?

I hope you all have a lovely week saying goodbye to January, and not getting Covid, and doing all of your puzzles, whether they be word, or number, or if you're some kind of crazy genius who can do both.

 Every now and then I like to go back to the early days of my blog and check back at what I was doing around this same time that year. This post happens to be from January 20th, 2006. Wow! That was over 15 years ago. Anyway, what I was doing back then, apparently, was being all nostalgic. Soooooo, not much has changed since then.

 It's weird to think that this was only a few months before the Iowa City tornado hit our apartment. Being from the future, I know how it all panned out after this post too.

Here is my post from this time in 2006:

  Here is a picture of my mom's family taken at my grandparents' house on the Southside of Chicago. I'm assuming it was late 1964. That Alfred Hichcocky looking baby is my brother and he was born in March of 1964. My mother was pregnant with me when this was taken.

It's weird to look at these old photos and see everyone looking so hopeful, but already knowing how it all panned out. Don't you wonder if they would have done anything differently had they known the way things would end up? I ask that about myself when I was younger too. If I had any idea, would I still have made the same choices? I've always been kind of a dumb-ass when it came to learning those harsher life lessons, so probably. I'd like to think I would've at least been smart enough to have worn a very sturdy helmet to protect myself from all the times I hit my head against the same brick wall.

I Turn Myself Around. I'm Moving Backwards and Forwards.

Well, kids. My lovely month of getting to work from home is over, and I had to go into the office today. Sigh. I hate having to wear actual pants, and riding to work on snowy/icy roads was tons of "fun" too. I didn't crash my bike at all, so that was a plus. 

I felt really crappy today, which led me to play my favorite game again: allergies and migraines, or Covid? I took a Covid test when I got home and it was negative Soooo....Allergies and perimenopause for the "win"!

So, you'll all be happy to know that except for repotting plants and sealing some tile, our bathroom is pretty much done. I spent most of the Martin Luther King holiday cleaning the last of the paint chips and sawdust off of the walls and floors, and wiping down, checking expiration dates (you'd be amazed at how old some of this shit was), and organizing all of our bathroom crap. I didn't do the whole "does it bring me joy" thing, because if sunscreen, stool softener, and band-aids gave me joy, you should all feel free to worry about me. I threw out all the old stuff, and wondered where the hell a lot of it came from, and tried to organize what I kept. Who knew what the shelf actually looked like? It was covered with five year old bottles of bug spray, bottles of lotion with just a centimeter left in the bottom. Behold the fact that you can see the shelf now, for in about two weeks, I'm sure we'll have acquired enough Mucinex, hand sanitizer and Thera-fu to cover it all back up again.

 While I was doing this lovely project, I listened to different episodes of "All Things Considered" on Spotify. It was mostly interviews of people who recently died - Joan Didion, Sidney Poitier, and Betty White. It was kind of like having old friends tell me stories about their lives while I worked.

Now, I'm going to talk about books for a hot second. I just finished reading "The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett. I had read "The Mothers" a year or so ago, and I really liked it, but I LOVED "The Vanishing Half". If  you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it. I am going to start reading Stacey Abrams' "While Justice Sleeps" next. My daughter let me borrow it. It' a novel, and if it's good, I'm going to have to ask what CAN'T Stacey Abrams do? She is a power house. And also, where does she find the time? Okay. I know what you're going to say, she doesn't waste all of her time watching shitty shows on TV. Yeah, yeah. I'm old and broken. I need my cheese.

Anyhooooo, I better get to sleep, so I can get those night time hot flashes rolling. Woot!

Is There Anyone Else Here Who Doesn't Know? We're Under Fifteeen Feet of Pure White Snow

Of course, with me blogging more, comes the side effect of some pretty damn boring posts. Maybe they were boring when I only wrote once a month, but now there are just more of them. Sucks to be you!

You'll be happy to know that Gus finally calmed down yesterday. And this is the problem. He's a big jerk who drives me nuts, and then he gets all sleepy and cute, and all is forgiven...Until tomorrow morning.

It snowed on Friday, which meant we got to ski on Saturday, and hopefully again today. I know a lot of people hate Winter, and it's not my favorite season either, but sometimes its starkness can be stunning. The sun shining up the snow, and all the textures? It's almost enough to put up with the cold for. Sorry about that awkward sentence. I'm sure there are plenty more to come.

 Now that it's Winter and I have more time, I would love to find some more blogs where people actually write in them. So, if you know of any, please leave a link to them in the comments.

I get one extra day of weekend tomorrow for MLK's birthday. I hope it's a good one, and that we figure out voting rights. Why don't people want to make it easier for people to vote, so that more people do it? I don't get it.

Well Something's Lost, but Something's Gained, From Living Everyday

Apparently, I'm just going to keep posting photos of my renovated bathroom until I die. I went from being embarrassed for anyone to see my bathroom, to non-stop internet bragging. If you saw it in person, with all of it's weird patches on the wall and strange divots in the wood, you wouldn't think I had much to brag about, but when you have only one bathroom, and it's very small, and it's suddenly isn't gross anymore...Well, you might just want everyone that had to see it when it looked like shit, to get a gander at it now too.

It has been a tough week for me. Lot's of hormone issues. My sleep pattern looked like this: Exhausted all day, and then a half hour before I was supposed to go to bed, BOOM! I'm suddenly not tired and felt the need to go into every FB rabbit hole I could find. Then when I finally went to sleep, about a half hour or so into my happy sleep, I had a horrible hot flash, kicked off all of the covers and turned the fan on, then fell back to sleep, and once the hot flash was finally over, and I was all sweaty, the covers were off me, and the fan was pointing at me, I was FREEZING. I put the covers back on me, fell asleep, and started the whole process all over about an hour later. Lovely.

Needless to say, I was a real peach all week, and I didn't get much done. Sigh. 

I was so tired yesterday, that I kept hitting my head on everything. When that kind of thing happens, I like to say that my equilibrium is off. And then give myself all kinds of get of jail free cards, like telling John that we should just walk to Shakespeare's and let them cook for us, and we just drink beer and get hugs from our bear-like friend. 

I guess I'm finally admitting that I'm a person who wears glasses now, and doesn't take them off for pictures anymore. It's kind of freeing getting older and just saying eff it. I look how I look. I wear glasses, I'm overweight, I have wrinkles and my neck has its own personality now. Welcome to my fifties, bitches!

Gus has been a real pisser today. He's been hunting Heidi down, or waiting until she falls asleep and pouncing on her. Sure, it's better her than me, but I got annoyed and sent him downstairs and closed the door to the dormer room. Now, he is scratching at the door and making the saddest crying noises. Poor thing. I won't let him torture Heidi. I'm the worst human ever. Sorry, Gus. I raised two girls. I've heard it all before. That shit doesn't work on me.

Here's hoping for a wonderful MLK weekend, where I stop having hot flashes and my cats give us a break from their assholedness. I wish the same for all of you too, of course.
 

I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy

Well, look at 2022 Churlita writing two whole posts in one week. I'd love to make a habit of that, but I save most of my time and energy on bad habits, so we'll see if I can get around to that healthier one.

So, this pandemic, right? What a bunch of crap. The latest variant is so contagious that most of us will probably get it. I am smart enough to be vaccinated and boosted, so if/when I do get it, I'm hoping to avoid any messy hospitalizations or death. I have been lucky enough to be able to work from home this month that the students are gone, but we have to go back the first day of classes, so then I'll get to be exposed to all of the people who have traveled from all over the world, and some of them won't be vaccinated or wearing masks, so I think that should create a nice Covid stew. I would love it if they could wait a couple of weeks for all the germs to settle down before we came back to the office, but apparently, the board of regents would rather we all get sick, so that we will have to call in sick, and not be able to come into the office anyway. That's how the "smart" people do things

So, yeah. We're still working on our bathroom. We're just starting our second month, and we're almost done...I think. My brother was very, very, kind and came to do some work on our house for us last month on the eighth. He said he had a very aggressive estimate of finishing everything in four days. Since I know what an old, cranky asshole our house can be, I saw him, and raised him a week. The actual time it took him was ten whole days. Yikes! Poor guy. 

Anyway, John was great and got our sink installed, after about 15 trips to the hardware store to get the many different things that were supposed to have come with the sink and pipe installation kit, but were missing, and then a couple of different screws that didn't quite fit. I am so bad at dealing with that kind of thing, so I took on the responsibility of scraping, sanding, scraping and sanding again, and then finally, today, priming the woodwork in the bathroom. Guess how many layers of paint I had to get through to even see the wood? That would be, or at least seem like, 5,987. Ugh! Tomorrow, I get to paint it all. Then we'll clean and put everything back, and then put all the pretty stuff in, like plants and towels, and rugs. That's what I'm looking forward to, but mostly being done with the whole thing.

It has been ridiculously cold here lately. I know, it's January in Iowa. What do I expect? I guess the good thing about it, is that I certainly don't mind wearing a mask around everywhere I go when the windchills are 30 below zero. My face doesn't freeze off, AND it keeps away those pesky Covid germs. Two birds.

 The cats have been total jerks lately. I'm sure it's from not being able to go out on the porch while it's this cold out, but JAYSUS! it's getting old.

They start out like my kids used to do, where they're messing with each other, and they're all laughing, and everyone seems to be into it...Until someone hits the other one too hard, and then suddenly all hell breaks loose and you're not sure you can get them apart and there are tears and threats, and in the case of the cats, there are tufts of hair flying and hissing and growling and I get super stressed out. Then five minutes later, it's all forgotten, they're all happy and friends again, and nobody knows why I reacted the way I did. I just must be psycho or something. Whatever. Kids and pets. They're all the same. I love them so much.

So, here's to things warming up with the weather and cooling down with the pandemic. I hope everyone gets their projects completed, and that all our kids and pets just calm the eff down.

So, I Turned Myself to Face Me, But I've Never Caught a Glimpse

 Holy cow! Happy New Year and RIP Betty White! There's so much to talk about and I haven't been very good about doing it lately. I blame our house renovations we've been doing for the last month. We're so close to being done with the bathroom, but there's still plenty to do.

I hope you all had a great new year, and that this year is better for all of us. I've been seeing a lot of people posting New Year's resolutions, and I say good on them. I don't do it, but I hope it works for those of you who do.

It's hard to be good, isn't it? I'm not talking in the way of trying not to kill people. Although, I've had days at work where that's hard too. I'm talking about taking care of ourselves. We all know what we need to do: Drink tons of water, drink less alcohol, eat better food and less of it, exercise more, be kinder to others, don't blow our money, get rid of half the shit we own, keep our houses up better, and blah, and blah, and blah. Trying to do all of that shit is hard. Really hard. There are days where I'm better at it, and days where I just let it go and give myself a get out of jail free card. Eff it. I'm tired. I'm annoyed with almost every living person on this earth. I want to eat handfuls of sugar, and add salt to everything I eat. Also, I'm going to sit around in the same jammies for an entire weekend, and maybe I won't shower either. 

They (the illusive they) always say it's a balance. But who really gets that balance down? They also say we're not supposed to beat ourselves up about stuff. So,when I do say screw it all and watch the crappiest, cheesiest TV shows, and believe me, I do that way too often, I just have to give myself that. I will watch a marathon of "Hawaii Life" on HGTV and want to take a shot every time a middle aged white dude says, "Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!" (Which would mean I would die of alcohol poisoning by the end of each show, so I don't). But then I'll go through a week where I read more than watch TV, I ride my bike or go running more, I watch my sugar intake, I actually fold my clean laundry and put it in drawers instead of letting sit in a pile in the hamper in my room. Then something happens, oh, say, like a pandemic hits, or I have a bad perimenopausal hormone bout, or something stressful happens with my daughters, and I backslide and reach for the comfort of Ben Jerry's and a super embarrassing Christmas movie or whatever.

So, trying to make a resolution to change all my unhealthy behaviors for a year, or the rest of my life is just way too stressful. I just try to be better about stuff in general, and sometimes I am able to be mindful, and I take better care of myself, and other times I spend way too much time watching movies and BBC TV series' based on Jane Austen novels, and it hasn't killed me yet,

What I'm trying to say is, sure, take care of yourselves, and try to be better and all that shit, but also, cut yourselves slack when you need to. Happy 2022 to all you all!

A Straight Line Exists Between Me and the Good Thing

Okay. So, it's been a while since I've written. I could give you a million excuses, but who cares. Right?

Instead, I'll just pretend that I've been keeping up with my blog this whole time and get right to the super (not) important thing I'm going to talk about today.

As I always say, we could and should be working on our house all day, every day, for the rest of our lives, but we don't have the money or the time. We almost always choose playing outside to working inside. Big picture: If I died in a car accident tomorrow, would I be glad that I spent my last day tiling my bathroom, or would I be glad that I went on a fun bike ride instead? Also big picture: If I live another twenty or thirty years, would I be glad I finally tiled my bathroom for a couple of days and skipped a bike ride or two? Yes. Yes, I would. Sometimes it's really hard to weigh my priorities.

Luckily for me, I may not have to do so much. Last Friday my brother contacted me to see if he could come and stay with us for up to a week and work on some of our house project while we're at work. WUT?! Of course, he can stay and do all of that. What a gift.

Our kitchen is almost done. We still need to install a vent hood over our oven. It will be so incredible to have a light above our stove, so I can actually see what I'm cooking. My brother will have to cut into our house to install it, which, to me, sounds absolutely scary and impossible, but he doesn't think it will be that bad. Hmmmm. He also said he would put on the baseboards in our kitchen after we tiled the floor last year. Then we'll be mostly done with the kitchen. Yea!

My brother also said he would work on some things in our bathroom. We have a shower surround that is DISgusting, and we talked about just buying a new surround for it, but as John said, "Do we really want to bring a gigantic piece of plastic into our house?" We really don't. My brother said he would replace the surround with subway tile for us, and we are thrilled. 

We thought we might replace our sink too. Our current sink is a very tiny pedestal sink, and I wanted the cool, 1950's style sink in the photo above. Because our bathroom is so dam small, we had to measure out the sink dimensions and see if it would work. 

Of course, I cannot visualize how the whole sink would fit just by pulling a tape measure out. So, John being the sweetest husband that he is, made a model of the sink on top of ours, so I could have a better feel for how much space it would take up.

I'm going to go ahead and give you a trigger warning before you scroll down any further. Our bathroom is awful and gross (Which is why we're renovating it).

So, here is how far the dream sink would stick out, if we bought it. Which means, it's too damn big. Wah.

 We still aren't sure if we'll get a new sink at all. There are a million other things we could spend money on in our one and only bathroom, so we may just leave well enough alone, and do the five million other bathroom projects that are way more pressing.

Since I punished you all with the before shots of our gross bathroom, I promise I will show you some afters, and I'm sure we're all hoping for a HUGE transformation.

Well, If You Want to Say Yes, Say Yes.

Okay. So, I am going to keep trying to keep all my "what I did on my Summer vacation" posts going, but they are long and take a lot of time to do, and as you can see, I'm not getting very far with them. Soooo, I will still be inserting shorter more current posts in between these.

Now, back to my California vacation in July...

On our first full day in Point Reyes, we decided to do the one big hike I wanted to do. It was a hike to a waterfall on beach. It's called Limantour Falls and the full hike is about 12 miles long but there is a shortcut, which I will get into later.

We got there early to avoid lots of people and to make sure we could find parking. We were also trying to contact our friend Nick, because the night before he asked us if we could meet him in Point Reyes to hang out in the afternoon. Of course, there is almost no cell service, so we had no idea if he was getting our emails or tests. It also meant that we were going to have to hurry up our hike if we were going to meet him on time.

The hike was GORGEOUS. We walked along the coast at first, and had amazing views of the craggy cliffs below.

We also came across a couple of lakes/ponds that were beautiful as well.

At one point, we saw this homemade arrow made of rocks and pointing to this little path in the underbrush. I kept telling John it had to have been made by cannibals and not to go in there at the risk of becoming lunch.

John being John, took that as a challenge and went right in. He said it didn't really lead anywhere that he could see, and I told him that it for sure meant that there were cannibals or trolls in there trying to lure us in. My suggestions was that we pick up our pace.

The first part of the hike was about six miles long, which wasn't a big deal, for the most part. It was so pretty, that had I not been a decrepit old lady, I would have hiked it for days. I have this weird problem with my feet called metatarsalgia (which I guess just means unexplained pain in your feet). It doesn't always bother me, but when it does it feels like someone is stabbing knives in the balls of my feet just under my toes. It started when I was in my late 30's and it seems to be getting worse and worse. At first it only bothered me when I ran 10 miles or more, and then it started bothering me when I ran shorter and shorter distances and now it hurts me sometimes when I ride my bike and walk or hike. Hurray for getting old, ad also, it's always something with me, isn't it?

Anyway, damn if my metatarsalgia didn't start acting up on this hike. I barely made it to the beach where I could take my shoes off and walk in the sand and cold water, which seemed to really help.

We walked along this desolate beach until we finally came to the waterfall.

It was worth all the pain and all the miles of the hike.

We stopped by this adorable, but ridiculously pricey little market in Inverness the night before and picked up some sandwiches and salads for our beach picnic. However quaint it is to have a picnic on a beach, it ALWAYS means that everything is served with some crunchy sand.

While we were eating lunch, we were contemplating our route back. We needed to go faster if we were going to meet our friend Nick at the appointed time, and I needed to walk fewer miles to keep my feet from hurting so much that I wanted to just saw them off and walk on the stumps.

We saw a couple of guys come down the cliffs, and we figured that it must be the shortcut that they took. We had read all these warnings about how nobody should take the shortcut because the trails were dangerous and tricky and went straight up the cliffs. We asked the guys if they were really that treacherous and they said they thought it would be harder to go back up them than it was to go down. A little while later,  a young woman who was hiking by herself came down the cliffs and we asked her about them. She looked us up and down to measure our strength and mobility, and then said, "I guess it depends on what you're used to hiking. I've done a lot worse..." John and I talked it out, and we decided that we both had probably done worse (especially in Spearfish Canyon in South Dakota). We decided to try it, and if it got too hairy, we could just go back down. Boy, were we glad we did. It didn't seem all that treacherous at all to us. We both grew up being monkeys and climbing trees and rocks, and even though we're old, we had definitely done worse. Also, at the top there was waterfall after waterfall. A double waterfall where one led into another.

As you can see from where John is, I wouldn't recommend taking the trail up if you had never had experience climbing up and down slippery shale and rocks.

This double waterfall was a side by side one. 

We hiked back and cut off about two miles or so on our hike. My feet still bothered me, but when it got so bad I couldn't stand it, we would stop and John would rub my feet before we started back again. I promised John I wasn't just making this pain up so he would give me foot rubs.

We realized that homemade rock arrow wasn't for cannibals to lure us into their den at all, it was marking the shortcut to the cliffs. I still think cannibals was a WAY more logical explanation.

Lucky for us (but not for him), Nick got a flat tire on his way to Point Reyes, and we ended up all getting there within about five minutes of each other. We figured we'd take him to a couple of cool places, so he could get a feel for the area.

We started with the shipwreck in Inverness. 

 Pssst! The not so secret secret is that it isn't really a shipwreck at all, but some boat a guy was working on and didn't finish for some reason, and he just left it on the beach there.

It was more fun to pretend it was a real shipwreck, and soon The Goonies were going to show up and do the Truffle Shuffle for us.

Next we thought a trip to a swimming beach would be nice. Point Reyes is on Tamales Bay, and not directly on the ocean, so the water is warmer and not as rough and you can actually swim there. We chose Shell Beach.

It was so nice.

There were all these little inlets to even smaller beaches, and I claimed the one above as my own. If I had more time, I would have gone back to that beach every day.

John swam out to the buoys and said he could see tons of jelly fish, so I made sure to stay closer to shore.

After the beach, we headed up to the light house.

It was after five, so it was closed. On the walk to the light house, I was saying that I'd never seen a whale in the ocean before, and about five minutes later, Nick pointed out to the water and said, "Look!" There's one right there." and sure enough, you could see water coming out of the blow hole and it jumping up and slapping back down in the water. I don't think it's all that common to see a whale around there in the Summer, but we got really lucky.

 When we came back to the light house, we headed over to Tap Room. Apparently, Wednesday night is sushi night, so we were getting lucky all over the place. At first, we were each just going to order one roll, but then we would have missed out on some other amazing rolls, and we had hiked SO. DAMN. MUCH. that we said, "Eff it!" and got the extra rolls too. We couldn't finish all of it, but it was great for breakfast the next morning too.

We said goodbye to Nick and went home and fell asleep about two seconds after we went to bed. These amazing days can be really tiring.