Which Way Did He Go? Which Way Did He Go?

Turkey Day

Playtime

Bocce B

Signal Clouds

Trained Squirrel

I think there are more than one, but I can’t be sure. It’s because they are wile. They look alike and they act alike with a single-minded pursuit that borders on diabolic: Making my dogs insane.

The squirrel that tortures the dogs running on the cable next to the house must be stopped. It’s in the dogs DNA. Once, I reached out of the window and grabbed the cable—or is it an electric wire?—shaking it with a fierce cry. The squirrel barely made it to the other side of the tight rope and into the waiting trees. I thought better of it when I considered how I’d feel if the squirrel had lost its balance and fell off. What if the fall had killed it? So now, sometimes, I knock on the window and glare at it in solidarity with the pups. Not only does it not scurry away in terror, it stops, looks, and cleans its paws right in front of us.

Now we are enemies, my friend.

Bag of Favors

Los Angeles Dreaming

Bride & Groom

Bumperless

Bumpers. When did we decide that car bumpers are a bad thing? Someone tried to explain it away by saying that car makers eliminated the rubber and metal bumpers of our past in favor of plastic to make cars lighter. Lighter cars use less gas so in a roundabout way they were aiming for fuel efficiency. I don’t buy it. That doesn’t explain how SUVs sprang up at the same time that bumpers disappeared. So instead of a bumper that takes a few scratches and dents that might need replacing after a few run-ins with a shopping cart or an old lady backing out of the bank, the plastic sheet collapses and needs to be replaced at great expensive when it’s tapped. A fender-bender becomes a major repair.

I don’t remember agreeing to plastic bumpers.

Overpass

Short Wedding Video

A niece got married and boy was it a fun party. My partner officiated and walked the walk of fame to great applause.

Diet

My father is obese. So, when my sister and I were growing up, we were either on his diet or we were off his diet. It was Melba toast and low fat cheese or pounds of bacon and crepes dripping with butter, sugar and cinnamon.

Because the gods loved us a little, my sister and I had my mother’s physique. She’s slender and we were skinny beanpoles that could take the gallons of ice cream, homemade donuts, and coca cola straight out of the can.

Food in the 1970s in Alaska formed my eating habits as well. And, because the gods loved us only a little, money was short so my mom had to stretch the family budget. One staple was pork chop and brown rice. Cheap cuts of pork chops surrounded by rice and bullion to soften the meat with simmering white rice that turned brown from the broth. It’s still one of my favorites. How many gorgeous, juicy, expensive pork chops have I toughened up cooking in a stew of bullion? Plenty.

I bring up my history of food because I promised myself that I would never be on another person’s diet again. And, while my partner isn’t heavy by any means, the Prussian/Irish stock shows up now and then in a few extra pounds. One of the things I love about my partner is that there is no diet talk and no action taken. There may be less eating, but no drastic change in the pantry. There is one exception. Peanut butter. You know the kind of peanut butter I’m talking about with the oil on top. My partner dumps most of the oil out so that you end up with peanut paste. It’s disgusting and you have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger to dig it out of the jar and once you get it out you don’t want to eat it and you’ve bent your knife.

As I write this, I’m jumping up to take a bite of a toasted bagel with honey and peanut butter. It's a pain to fit in eating with everything else. That’s a habit I share with Joyce Carole Oats who said in her journal that she wished she didn’t have to waste time eating when she could be reading or writing. Brava!
Besides, I got to the peanut butter jar first.