Back

After 14 hours of travel, I finally arrived back home about 2am this morning.  Minus luggage, but still happy to be back.

I haven't been forced to run in the airport for so long, I think my 10 minute layover barefoot sprint with subsequent pleading with the flight attendants to open the door keeps me on my toes. 

I have a lot to do - highest priority, pick up Atticus, buy coffee creamer and mow the front yard, which contains weeds almost as high as my knees.

Will share more pictures tomorrow.

Excerpt from a prohibition map at Boston Public Library's map room. 

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
~ Maya Angelou

Super duper vacation

I'm getting the hang of this vacation thing.  I'd love to NEVER go back to work at this point.

I leave in 7 hours for the airport.  Haven't packed yet, but I'm pretty much on target for my plans for the day. 

Just got waylaid by a bunch of female Jehovah's witnesses.  They're sneaky...didn't even see it coming. 

Finished baking a batch of biscuits for Atticus to take to the kennel.  Getting sad I need to drop him off soon...we've been like peas and carrots this past week.  Its been nice to just chill at home with him.  I can't pack my suitcase with him here though, he gets really anxious and clingy.  He already started to whine a little when I packed up his food for the kennel.  He knows what dog food in sandwich bags means by now.

My birthday was actually pretty awesome.  I shouldn't have doubted it.  Finished the Birthday Project - 33 random acts of kindness.  They included making cards for the Selflessness Project, bringing ice cream to my coworkers, giving the mailman a giftcard, taking clothes to Goodwill, volunteering at the foodbank (Jayme and I bagged 100 bags of food in an hour!), and handing out flowers to people outside of Target, to name a few things.  It was actually pretty neat, and Jayme was excited about it as well.  She wants to do the Birthday Project for her birthday in September.  I already volunteered to help. :)

Man, I'm still annoyed by the Jehovah's witnesses.  Well, not them, they were fine.  Just by the fact that I didn't realize who they were right away and got sucked into a conversation. 

Here's some new and old pictures....

My contribution to the Selflessness Project.

Friends treated me to dinner and dessert last night.  MMM...Snakebites. 

Jayme got Atticus a new toy.  He loves it. 

Investigating a brand new bag of dog food. 

An exciting goodwill find.

Got stuck at a drawbridge opening the other day.  I still find it odd to get out of your car in the middle of the highway, even though traffic is stopped and can't get through. 

You can't see it, but there's a bear in there.  Sometimes the wildlife agents will bring by animals for us to see or hold.  No, this was not a bear to hold. 

The fallen officers memorial at the Academy.  Tony's name is on the right, left column, very bottom. 

I volunteered at the Trooper Tony memorial run at the Academy.  Kinda fun. 

Not something you see every day at work.  They were fixing and replacing satellites on the radio tower. 

This guy makes me laugh every time I see him.  A goodwill find, I think the succulent I planted makes it look like he has hair. 

If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.
~ Seth Godin

My purse is almost 33

What a day.  Full of good and bad, disappointments and surprises, sun, and craft fails and successes. 

I'm putting off going to bed, even though I'm tired.  For some reason I have been dreading this birthday. 



How could I possibly have ever lived without a dining room table? 


Sometimes I lay
Under the moon
And thank God I'm breathing
Then I pray
Don't take me soon
Cause I'm here for a reason
Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down
So when negativity surrounds
I know some day it'll all turn around. ~ Matisyahu

A mostly fruit and vegetable dump...

...photo dump I mean...



I'm a horrible person and bought myself a present from anthropologie.  This ceramic strawberry basket.  Looks good with lemons, right???  Mom - they also come in yellow!



A handful of carrots from my garden - I picked them for a potluck at work where I brought the vegetable tray. 

 

First night of the firepit.  This picture makes me laugh.  Jayme was guarding the vegetables. 

 

Went to a u-pick farm today.  Ran out of time.  This is a field of blueberry bushes.




Our loot - blueberries, boysenberries, and blackberries.  We ran out of time to pick raspberries.

 

My firepit food tonight.  Not that you want to see it.  But I figured out how to not char my chicken.  And I did a foil wrap for the potatoes (including some chives from my garden!) and for the brussel sprouts.  Worked out really well.


I'm tired.  Spent a couple hours in the sun today picking fruit.  Walked around a hippie grocery store in Sequim (near the fruit place)....bought some other produce including okra and some corn.  I was going to try my hand at that tonight but I was too tired to look up a recipe.  Maybe tomorrow.

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
~ Kurt Vonnegut

If only every day could be like today...

I finally planted my lavender.  If you only knew how long it took me to hand-till this section and plant everything.  5 hours.  Ridiculous.  The soil was littered with a ton of well-rooted weeds and other unrecognizable plants.  The soil is also so rocky I started pulling out the decent sized rocks.  And decided to make them into borders.  If the plants don't die immediately I might actually spend some money and put down some mulch.  We'll see. 

I stll have all these rocks left.  I'd have more but I got tired of pulling them out of the soil. 

This is a good representation what I started with.  And what I will be getting to another day.  Grass didn't work as weed-killers in this area so I think I'll spray vinegar and just kill off everything and leave it as dirt for the rest of the summer. 

Atticus wisely basked in the shade for a good part of the day.  What a guy. 

Fired up the firepit again.  Ate the rest of my potatoes and brussel sprouts, then decided to go for a grilled banana with chocolate and peanut butter.  I won't lie....it was AMAZING.  I got the idea here. 

Even Atticus liked it.  Yes, I'm a bad dog mother.  In my defense, its vegan chocolate.  I don't know if that makes a difference for dogs or not. 

So yes, my first day of vacation was vastly productive.  Awesome.

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.
~ Audrey Hepburn

Oh, Atticus!

The other day, I was in the living room, and Atticus trotted through with what had to be the dirtiest tennis ball I had ever seen.  I asked him where he was going, but he didn't reply, seeing as his mouth was full of tennis ball.

I had my sneaking suspicions about his destination...confirmed later that night when I went to go to sleep...

See if you can spot the tennis ball mark

Up close

Oh, Atticus!!!  :)

Don't let them tame you.
~ Isadora Duncan

My life

Zucchinis and Atticus - my life at the moment....

From the garden straight to the kitchen and into the frying pan!!!  I might be a little biased when I say this, but I'm pretty sure the fritters I made with this are the best ones ever. 

I'm on 8 hour shifts this week....I can't believe how much you can get done with 2 extra hours...
- worked for 90 minutes outside.  Cleared most of a flowerbed on the side of the house.  Raked up an insane amount of rocks from the soil.  I should be ready to plant lavender the next time I work outside (although mowing the back yard is the priority - the weeds are almost up to my knees.  Luckily all the grass is dead).  I uncovered a mystery of #1 who was making holes in the piles of grass I had in the flowerbed (I was naturally killing weeds by suffocating them), and #2 what Atticus found so fascinating in the side yard....  apparently he's been hiding his chew toys in the piles of grass.  Funny dog.

- Went to the gym for an hour. 

- Wandered around internet world looking for a new recipe.  Decided not to use anything I found and instead fell back on an old favorite

- Cooked up two batches of fritters and a batch of cookies for dayshift tomorrow - we're having a mini-potluck.

- Cleaned up the kitchen, set up the coffee pot, played with Atticus a little, took a shower, etc etc etc. 

I feel so accomplished.  Now its time for some sleep.  I haven't been getting nearly enough of that this week.

She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there, leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
~ JD Salinger