Just regular folks.

I had a playdate with my friend Claudinna and her dog Carly (or Carlie – I did not clarify the spelling of the name) and we spent the morning chatting and watching the doggies play. Elka, poor deprived dog that she is, does not have a fenced yard, so luxuriated in her new friend’s fenced yard and tumbled and rolled (and pooped). Apparently Carly does not poop in her own backyard. She poops only on walks.

Carly taught Elka how to use a doggie door (Elka barely fit through- and Elka does not like to push things with her nose, but she managed somehow).

We tried this tea that Nat brought from Paris – it smelled so good, but has caffeine, so I knew I had to try it in the morning. The tea smelled better than it tasted.

Claudinna is about to drive across the country to a cabin with no wifi and you can only get there by canoe. And she’s going to do it with the pop up camper which I happily got to help her pop up. Lots of fun to play with other people’s toys.

I have no photos – so you just get a photo of the Vice President’s motorcade – Jeremy was in DC on Thursday to save the world. He’s doing much better these days – he’s so busy at work doing things that are important and moving fast. He’s going to be traveling a bunch in the next few months, we are BUSY.

I’m feeling good. After months of feeling really bad (mostly mentally, but the last week physically), the blue mood has lifted (fingers crossed). Hopefully, I’ll blog more. We’ll see, I feel like photos are the cornerstone of the blog and I haven’t been in the mood to take photos. I have no idea why the mood lifted – when I was younger, I was sure it was due to an actual circumstance and now I think it has to do with nothing at all, just that for whatever reason, the sun came out (metaphorically) and shone down on my mood and now here I am. Hopefully it’ll hang around for a while.

I have most of the day here at the house with only me and Edda which is glorious. Felix is off working as a lifeguard at the local pool (11 hour shift!), Jeremy is on a long bike ride, Eliana – Edda’s usual weekend caregiver – is out of town for a few weeks, so she’s not here. Our house is large, but we run it hard and it’s almost constantly occupied with at least two people, but most nights up to six at dinner time. Everyone has their own energy which makes it both fun and tiring. I love being alone. But I also love being in a full house. I want them both! Only when you have both can you appreciate them. Just like the moods – you want to have the entire range of emotions.

Yesterday, we drove about 90 minutes to my parents undeveloped plot of land in Pennsylvania where they are harvesting some trees from the property and my parents (who are on the west coast for the season) wanted us to talk to the contractors for a bit. The main contact for this project is Amish and has no cell phone, so it’s a bit tricky to get in touch with him, but possible in a 1990s kind of way with voicemail – he has a landline. Why a landline, but not a cell phone? Dunno. The world continues to confuse me. Why a landline, large machinery and an entire wood milling operation and no cell phone? Again – have absolutely no idea. To me, it’s like, I’ll eat the round pasta, the curly pasty, but absolutely not the long, string-y pasta (this, by the way (in a tender and completely not obstinate way) is Jeremy. and perhaps Vince is the exact opposite (I want to repeat, both are flexible, but have strong-ish preferences)). But again, I’ll totally and happily make you the round pasta. Round pasta!

We were not sure if we were going to bring Elka – is it worth a three hour trip for 15 minutes exploring the muddy woods? In Elka’s mind – yes. Totally worth the trip. She was delighted and muddy and got prickles in her paw that needed attending to.

I’ve been wrestling with a cold that I got from Edda the past few days. I’m OK in the morning (usually), but then get very worn out at 3 pm and want to nap the rest of the day, which I often do.

I leave you with some photos of this weekend’s cupcake baking adventure. These did not turn out very well – a little dry, but they still got eaten, which I guess is fine.

Edda’s been slightly under the weather the past few days. Borderline as these things go, I picked her up early on Wed and she stayed home on Thursday. But it didn’t stop us from partying at Main Street’s fifth anniversary celebration on Wed. It was nice, but also there was a lot of talking and speeches. And they were, I felt, always a little short of food. But what can you do? It wasn’t raining and I felt happy.

We bought these matching bright orange main street shirts. Fun. Jeremy thought he was buying it for himself as he loves orange, but it was a women’s medium and not a unisex medium, so now it’s mine. hahahaha.

I had a lovely mother’s day weekend. Baked, played music, sang, visited with friends (at Panera, my favorite restaurant) and had a really funny Sunday night dinner. All good. I love my kids, they are the best. You never know how the kids are going to turn out and if you’ll all suit each other- but we generally all get along and don’t resent each other, so I feel very lucky. And, of course, lots of love to my own mom who is fearless in her own way. <3

As I grow older, the less I understand anything and that anything may even be myself. Why do I do things the way I do them? Why do I find certain things so hard one day and then a few weeks later, just breeze through them? Why are people so weird? Why am I so weird?

Anyways, I’m in an odd spot where when I’m by myself, I can be very sad and grumpy and then when I’m with other people, I’m generally OK and perhaps even delightfully happy. WTF? I really have no idea, usually it’s the other way around. Who am I? Anyways, I’ve been busy – brunch with a friend, a long walk with Elka and another friend, getting secret ice cream with Jeremy. Singing! Lots of music.

Look at this beautiful forest that Elka and I explored with Kristen. We are all good.

So I’m exploring AI to help with some coaching (mostly strength) and it’s both been mysteriously good and abysmally bad. I know the kids are using it, so I don’t want to let it pass me by. You know how when you lift a barbell – the total weight is the weight of the barbell plus the plates on both sides and the two sides should match, otherwise you tip over like a seesaw. Anyways, the AI couldn’t do the bar/plate math for me correctly. This is addition people. It couldn’t do math! I tried to explain it many times to AI and it just kept apologising and then doing the same wrong math. Also, our smart home is slightly not smart anymore, I can’t really figure out why our doorbell doesn’t ring on all our home speakers which it did when I first installed it. I looked carefully at the settings and I’m…confused.

Busy weekend, Saturday I went to guitar lessons and then in the afternoon evening, I went to two concerts – the first one was from 6:30-8ish at the UU church with the house band as a benefit for the music fund. That was fun, Jeremy and Edda came with me and Jeremy made some delicious pulled pork sandwiches for the event. We danced and had a nice time. Then I dropped them off at home and I went to downtown G-burg to hear my guitar teacher in his band which was also a lot of fun. The UU band hit 85 decibels and I didn’t wear earplugs, the Sonic Spell (my teacher’s band) hit 100 decibels and for sure, I wore my fancy earplugs. I think I was the only one wearing ear protection which is CRAZY because at 100 dB, it actually hurts my ears. I’ve been to a number of guitar performances now and I won’t go without earplugs because 100 dB is apparently the correct volume for rockin’ out. Also, impossible to hold a conversation with any friends.

Sunday, I went to lift and Ward is trying to get me to compete in a competition in late August. We’ll see. Hahah.

For decades, I think since 2007 or so, my best thrifting find was a pair of Dansko clogs (retail at that time – $100 or so) ever so lightly worn, for $4. As time has passed and the secondary, used market has matured, it’s been really hard to find such amazing deals anymore. Now I still shop used – for example, I still buy used shoes (ebay, rei used market), but usually I’ll pay $30-50 for a pair that used to be $120 dollars new. Still a good deal, but not a zinger anymore.

But yesterday, I think I outdid myself. I found this chair at a used furniture store – I’ve been wanting a simple bow back wooden chair with no arms and those cross supports so I can tuck my feet into them when I work. It was a singleton – no priced marked. I asked how much it was and the lady shrugs and says $5. And I said – SOLD. I bought this chair for $5.

Underneath – it’s made in Denmark by Tram Stole.

Made on October 2, 1981.

And here’s the chair for sale for 590 euros – or about $650! I’m very excited about this. I don’t think I’ll be able to beat this find for the rest of my life. Lol.

I’m loving our new heat pump dryer. I would recommend it to anyone in the market for a new dryer. But! This weekend – we discovered that it was leaking. Yikes! Christine, our downstairs tenant, was doing an extra large load (which normally I don’t do) and I was happily puttering around the house on my self-imposed “vacation” when Jeremy yelled from the kitchen – there’s a water leak! And we ran around and found out it was from the dryer. So, that’s weird – a leak from the dryer, hahaha. A heat pump dryer has no vent, instead, it draws out the water from the clothes and condenses it and then puts the water down the drain. And then because I was on “vacation” and the house was not flooding – I was like, I’m dealing with it tomorrow and not thinking about it right now. Lalalalala. I spent a long time thinking that it was the large load and trying to figure out why that was, but it turns out that the installers had put the drain hose on the wrong hole and the entire time we’ve been running this dryer, it’s been just putting a puddle of water on the floor and I didn’t notice until a large load was placed in it and emitted more water – enough to drip through the ceiling. So I sighed and moved the pipe to the correct drain hole and now I think I’m good. I’m glad Christine did the large load, otherwise, I might not have figured this out for years and completed rotted out my house from the inside, but now, I just have some water stains which match all the other stains in the house.