Sunday morning and Halloween Monday

First, we have the Halloween photo-shoot, done a couple of days before.

Witchy woman!  With a grumpy face, no less.

No black cats, here... grey and orange kitties, and you've seen their photos before, so not going to do more today.

Lights across the street, and in my own window, taken early Sunday morning, before sunup.  I plan on doing the outdoor candy thing again this year, as it's supposed to give us a high temperature in the 70's (F, of course).

Mid-Sunday morning, I finally met up with my niece.  She's my ex-husband's sister's daughter, and while we've swapped Facebook messages and live in the same town, we haven't been in the same physical space since the 4th of July the year her mom passed away in January.  And that will be ten years ago, next year.  

We met at a shop space she and three others share.  It's an antique place, and it is FULL of nostalgia.  They pretty much run it as on-line and by appointment only.  She had been looking for a VCR from her youth era and I happened to have one to donate.

We hung out and chatted about this and that, her vision for the place, her plans for the future, the current state of the world, how we'd both gone into full hermit mode for the past couple of years, etc.  Remembering her mom and brother, dreams and how folks we love might visit us in them.  

Health update on Rubia?  She's her spry self.  She is not a fan of her meds, but she's letting me administer them.  She's not drooling any more.  Do I feel foolish having dragged her to the vet?  Nope.  Not at all.  Is she an expensive kitty?  You bet.  In her 8 year lifetime, yesterday put her over the total 11 years worth of vet charges I've paid taking care of Prisoner's various woes.

Just now I'm waiting for a call back from the vet to let me know if it's OK to continue the same meds, given my original thought about what was wrong was incorrect!

New experiment, starting Monday (today), is my next hack at "intermittent fasting".  Interestingly, the app I chose also wants you tracking food and liquid intake, and activity... so, still waiting to see what's different, other than alarms to start and stop your overnight fast.  Will let y'all know how it goes.  If nothing else, it's "a new toy", which CAN sometimes be a motivational help.

Well, time to wrap up and post.  Here's hoping we aren't too badly "tricked" by the Halloween "treats" that aren't really treats to our bodies at all!  Remember to hydrate, get in some activity, and rest the rest of the accomplished, come nightfall.

Life is good.  Spark on!

🔥✨💖🎃

Rubia's home and I feel abashed

 

Sweet little Rubia spent most of Friday at the vet's.  They called me no less than three times with questions.  

Had I actually observed her peeing in her sleep? I described how I had observed that she would be in a spot, leave it, and there would be a puddle left behind.

Does it smell like urine?  Well to be honest, I hadn't really sniffed at it... but I did sniff at a page of instructions she'd got wet, and to my mind it had a faint cat smell, so I assumed.  

Does she drool?  She was very stressed out at the vet's and was drooling a lot.  They were able to aspirate a lump near her mammary glands (she's spayed, and was spayed young), but the lump wasn't hard, and it wasn't related to the issue I took her in for.  

They were not able to collect a urine sample, saying that her bladder was small.  Her blood work was OK. The x-ray and ultrasound gave them nothing... no bladder wall thickening, no obstructions.

They would send her home for me to attempt to collect a sample for them.  They also sent meds.

But here's the deal... I gave her the first dose of her antibiotic last night, but I observed what the vet was talking about:  massive drooling.  So much that it left small puddles!  I was assuming it was urine, but she was making no moves toward the litter box, so I was interpreting it ALL WRONG!

Now I'm not sure whether to even give her the meds, because they are for an infection that I'm pretty sure is not there.  That does not mean that there isn't a different kind of infection, though.  Anyway, while I wait for the University analysis of the slides from her "lump", she's home, and I'll call the vet again on Monday with my "ah-hah"!  She is, by the way, still drooling but not as badly.  I kept her in overnight so that I'd know.  I let her out on request this morning.  I did give her the antibiotic this morning.  

At least she seems to have forgiven me for dragging her off to the vet, and she's a lot better about accepting the little syringe of pink antibiotic than The Prisoner is (at least so far).  There is an anti-inflammatory pill, too, but so far I have not attempted its use.  

Anyway, wanted to update the blog readers, in case anybody was waiting for it.  We do get wrapped up in one another's fur-friends.

Hope you all have a good weekend, and getting ready for Halloween, if you celebrate it!

Spark on, pets and all!

Life is Good

Prisoner was very focused on something the other side of the deck.  I never did figure out what, but loved that alert look on his face.  We've had mild weather for a few days, following a colder than seasonal patch.

How perfectly lovely that Sunday was looking for a record high temperature, and the Good Life Halfsy was being run a week or two earlier than in years past.  They time it for a bye week or an away game weekend (football competition for the section of town that holds the finish line).  I ran that half marathon four times over the years, but not this year.

I was offered an outing Sunday but turned it down.  I'm in full hermit mood.  Still working my way through old episodes of Murder, She Wrote.  I've got up to season 8, when Jessica moved to an apartment in NYC, only going back to Cabot Cove on the weekends.  In my prior reviews of old episodes, I never got this late in the series.  Perhaps because it hadn't been available on the streaming services I then had; perhaps due to burning out on the series.  Nowadays, no matter what series I may be watching or re-watching, I tend to mix in "live TV" and "YouTube" sessions, so I can let the experience soak in.

Later in the day Sunday, I flipped over to catch the local news, but it was still some football game.  However, across the bottom of the screen was an alert for evacuation of the southwestern part of our county.  Yikes, the drought has made wild grass fires a reality in our state, and this is the closest one has got to our city.  

The family Facebook messenger group filled up with "are you aware" questions, appropriate responses, and later in the evening, my older sister's posts made it clear that being the closest of us to where the fires were... she had packed the musical instruments, etc. into her car, "just in case".  She had seen the coverage of fires in the Western states and how quickly one has to act if ordered to evacuate.  Thankfully, that did not happen, and Monday morning they reported the fires to be "contained", unfortunately with two volunteer firefighters injured, one seriously.  It rained some on Monday, so that helped in the fire areas, but we are still very, very dry.

Wednesday afternoon's walk with kid sis had a destination.  For the first time since the pandemic began, I ate inside a Subway sandwich shop.  Turns out we were the only customers, and there were only two servers on duty, probably due to the "off" hour.  It was very pleasant.

Tuesday and Thursday I have my regular workouts with a personal trainer.  It dawns on me that I've been with this same trainer ever since I retired, except for taking 2020 March through 2021 May "off" for the pandemic.  I started going back once fully vaccinated.  I continued to wear a mask.  Why?  Because I have a chronic drippy nose.  The few times I skipped the mask, I was having to use my sweat towel to also wipe the nose drips.  When I mask, the mask catches it without my having to pause to wipe. Mask goes in the laundry, same as a hanky would.  Shall we call this my auto-hanky?

On Thursday morning I discovered that I once again have a leaky cat.  I at first suspected The Prisoner, since he had this problem last Winter (or maybe even the Winter before, not sure).  But the "puddles" were in the wrong places.  They were in all of Rubia's spots.  I watched them carefully, and Thursday night Prisoner was out all night, and there were puddles / wet covers in all of Rubia's spots again Friday morning.  Now Rubia is at the vet, and I am washing couch pet-covers for the second day in a row.

And suddenly, it's Hallo-weekend, as one advertiser is calling it.  I have not yet laid in the treats for the tricksters, but will probably do so sometime in the next couple of days.  It's supposed to get up to 70℉ on Monday (Halloween), so the great outdoor adventure of trick or treat will be repeated.  It worked well last year.

Hope you're all well, and taking care to adjust to whatever your local season is.  Remember whatever the season to hydrate and get your nutrients!  A little activity is a good thing, too.  Don't forget proper rest, either. After all...

Life is Good...

We can all keep on Sparking!

🔥✨💖

Miscellaneous

The "old new" laptop is about four years old.  The "old old" laptop died suddenly during my first year of retirement, you see.  Suddenly it dawns on me that come December, I will have been retired five years.  Yikes!  Where did those five years go?

Sunday, the replacement laptop arrived, thanks to Prime day deals.  Just in time, it would seem.  The old laptop formerly known as "new" is the one the cat knocked on the floor, that lost its "4" keycap, and has been a little fritzy at times.  Sunday evening it decided to freeze up on me.  I had been fantasizing about having two, and putting them in different rooms, so that I could just leave them in place and log in wherever I happened to be.  It's still a backup plan.

The new new machine is a Windows 11 operating system.  There are some differences, but it's enough like Windows 10 that I can deal.  Interesting feature of Windows 10 and 11 is that my automatic "new login" alerts from Google that come to two e-mails AND my phone... identify BOTH of them as Windows NT devices.  When did Windows NT become so old timey in my brain?

In any case, setting up a new machine isn't what it used to be.  Anybody else this old?  You booted up the machine, loaded the operating system with multiple 3.5 inch floppy disks, then one at a time loaded your software packages, many also with multiple disks  It would take a few days to get the machine into usable shape.

Now?  If you are going from one Windows machine to another, you log in to Microsoft with your e-mail address and password and tell it you want the new machine to look like the old one, and it ghosts all the files, hooks you up to OneSource, and except if you WANT to change how you use it, and the little changes to the OS, you're in business in an hour, tops.

Monday's adventure was finding the drive-thru lane at my local pharmacy (inside my grocery store) blocked off by a cone.  I parked and went inside, masked.  The line was really long.  All of us who would normally have used that drive-thru to pick up our prescriptions had gone inside.  Oh, well.  All were in typically good spirits, waited patiently, and got our business taken care of.  There was a sign that they were low on the Pfizer Covid boosters, so no walk-ins for those, but flu shots were still available without an appointment.  

The kids are bird-sitting, keeping Ollie while DIL to be's parents are busily road-tripping.  Here's Ollie, perched on Lacey's shoulder.  This family the mythical son is marrying into is quite mobile.

Lacey says Carl is grumpy, as he's not allowed out in the main part of the house when the birdies are on the loose.  The two Cockatiels are also hopping and flying about, as the birds are being encouraged to flock together.  It's an adjustment.

Overnight Monday to Tuesday, I woke at about 2 a.m. to doorbell ringing, insistently.  Spooked me.  I turned off the TV, which I had on when I fell asleep, and carefully crept downstairs.  Nobody pounding on the door, no more rings.  Crept back upstairs and peeked out the window... totally quiet street, just the glowing lights of Halloween decorations across the street.

I went back to my room, tucked back into bed, wondering what happened.  This morning, I'm thinking whatever TV show I had on had a scene involving doorbell ringing, and in my sleepy state I thought it was my real doorbell.  

Sound effects are so good these days. I've had this happen with commercials, where I think it was my phone signaling a message, or my doorbell. I often have the TV on for background noise and am not paying close attention to the plot.  So, yeah, I can miss that it's the TV doing this!  

Anyway, I went back to sleep, and when I got up Tuesday morning, checked the stoop for signs, the garage for if I'd left the door open (I had not), etc., as one does, when second-guessing.  No signs of any disturbance in the night.

I guess the question this leads to is:  What do you all think about the new authorization for "over the counter" hearing aids in the US, that you can control with your phone?  Anybody lining up for these?  Of course, even if I were to get these, and they helped a lot in the daytime, I would still be putting them on the bedside table while I slept.  So unless I stopped watching TV reruns to fall asleep to, I could have a similar experience.

Tuesday also brings the 23rd anniversary of my father's passing.  I'd been thinking about him a lot, as the October weather rolled in.  As I find old photos of him, I remember what a process it was, developing photographs.  This is a "selfie" from the early 1960's, that he took, oh, so carefully, to get the special effect of himself as twins.  I think he was inspired by Haley Mills in "The Parent Trap" which came out about that time.

Dad had a darkroom in the basement of our childhood home (pre-age 7), and then when we moved and he took a better job "in the city", he had one at his workplace.  This photo was taken in that darkroom.  I remember it well, as for a special treat, dad would sometimes take one of us with him, when he was doing work on a weekend.

Here's to the ongoing journey of life, which is good.  Spark on!

🔥✨💖

Ever wonder what happened to Baby June?

I mused in an earlier blog (probably months back) about finding actors and actresses in roles on Perry Mason episodes.  This is a similar experience.  I'll see a face, wonder who *is* that?  Then go to the cast list, and continue.

The passing of Angela Lansbury of course drew me to watch some old episodes and I discovered some seasons that had escaped my earlier viewing, and among them was season 6, with an episode titled "The Grand Old Lady", filmed on the docked Queen Mary.  

The striking look of the actress playing the part of Lady Abigail Austin drove me to look up the cast list, and I discovered this episode had June Havoc in that role.  June Havoc was the younger sister of Gypsy Rose Lee, and she did go on from vaudeville into B movies, as an actress.  I found her obit in the Guardian for reference, from 2010.  She was 97 when she passed.  From IMDB I learned that Gypsy Rose Lee died 40 years earlier, from cancer, in 1970.  For most of their lives, the sisters were estranged.

Isn't it fun tracking things down, on a simple whim?  Ever notice how long some of these actors / actresses lived?  Only now are several of them passing.

Which leads down the memory lane of which ones I identify with my mom (Angela Lansbury was one of these), and what movies make me think of Dad... which led me to view some of the more recent 007 movies as Dad was a Bond fan.  I notice several of the ones I never did see are films that were made after he had passed on.

An interesting side note, when looking at the episode on IMdB, I noticed a review that bashed this one as being one that "doesn't work" because Jessica is merely narrating the story, not one of the murders she is involved in solving.  The side note is that this was my attitude back when they originally aired season 6, that had several of this sort of episode in the mix.  Now, though, I am finding myself appreciating them more.  The viewer has changed, not the episode!

Here's hoping you're having a good weekend, this mid-October, whether out and about of relaxing with nostalgic shows!  Care to share some of your favorites?

Life is good!🎃

Spark on!  🔥✨💖

Walking in Autumn

It really is starting to feel like Autumn, and to look like it, too.  Just now (Thursday afternoon), the wind is howling outside.  It is howling because it is gusty.  I feel for my trainer, who is also the cross country coach at one of our smaller high schools.  They have a meet this afternoon, about an hour's drive away.  Should be interesting.

Yesterday afternoon I went walking through the neighborhood, which is when I started taking these photos.  They appear here in reverse order of the walk.  Lots of orange, in honor of my son's lady.  Orange is her favorite color.  I've probably said that before.  I do repeat myself.

I do love seeing the Halloween decorations that families with children tend to spend energy putting up.  I do the minimum, and spend my energy appreciating what others do.  No need to be the star.

The natural resources district is working on the stream and drainage that goes down through the neighborhood park.  They have installed a new foot bridge, and the footings around it have been poured fresh this week, so it is all blocked off.  I was kind of grateful that we did not have a sister walk scheduled this week.  

Next week it will be a bit worse... starting Monday they will be shutting down traffic on the street that goes by my house, from the next intersection over to the corner after the park entrance, so we'll be adjusting our walk route next Wednesday.

 Hope you're all having a good week, taking care of yourselves, preparing for the change in season, and getting your rest!

Life is good.

Spark on.

🔥🎃💖

The selfie collection from Friday

 

The five of us, selfie taken by son's long arm Friday night.  "Boo!"

This one was taken by Lacey's mom

And of course, they are each other's "Boo"!

The selfie the kids were setting up turned out very well:

Starting the gratitude list for 2022:

October 10th, Canadian Thanksgiving - day 1:  the warm blankets I crawled out from under, this cool morning.

Today the kids had a new kitchen/dining table delivered, and as you can see, Carl is taking on the role of Maitre d'.

It may be a few days before I get my sleep cycles back 'round to where I like them, after having adjusted to Hawaii race times, and Sunday the Chicago Marathon slammed me right back into Central Daylight Time.

I tracked my brother's friend Christine through her whole 26.2 miles of Chicago.  She was running as a fund raiser for Alzheimer's research.  Alicia had a couple of people to follow as well, a TikTok creator who goes by Mrs. Space Cadet was running for Team Fox (Parkinson's research), and another fellow from NYC who is in an online group she follows.  Since I had the app downloaded, I tracked them, too.

I did not do a very good job of catching them at the finish line, though.  With 40,000 runners on the course, and aging eyes, it's hard to read bibs fast enough to know who you are looking at.  Heck, it was hard in person at Boston to pick out my brother, and I should know his gait, right?

Some of those runners looked in quite a bit of pain as they came across the finish line.  Not that different from the Ironman races I watched on Thursday and Saturday... and these folks "only" did the run part.

Here's hoping we're all remembering to do what it takes to take care of ourselves as the calendar pages keep flipping by!

Life is good.  Spark on!

🔥✨💖

As Promised

It was well worth it!  "The kids" picked me up about 7 p.m.  The reservations were for 7:45, at the state park, about a half hour down the road.  I was so grateful that my son drove, as I no longer care to drive at night.  We squished the three ladies in the back seat of the truck, Lacey's dad rode shotgun.  I wore jeans and my jeans jacket.  I knew when I chose it that there was a pair of gloves packed in the pockets.  The sun went down as we drove, and it was dark in the park when we arrived.

The dragon was NOT the first display, but I chose it first so it will be the thumbnail.  This one and several more are photos that Lacey took, as first, she's a better photographer than I am, and second, my hands got cold and I stuck them into the gloves, and then the pockets, giving up on taking photos, and just enjoying the experience.

Every one of the 4,000 (plus?) pumpkins was hand carved by local crafts/artists.  They had the shells so thin, and I'm sure they must have put some form of preservative on them, as this display will be up for a month.  We've about a week into that month now.

It's almost a full moon, and what this photo shows is one ghost-shape carved pumpkin hung on a tree with the moon peeking through.

Full moon?  That goes with Ironman!  Yeah, back to that...

There was a display of a giant spider "mama" with single pumpkin baby spiders, and appropriately creepy music.  

On the other side, there was a "Lucky Charms" display of a giant unicorn surrounded by the classic horse-shoes, hearts, clovers and rainbows.  

There were food and beverage vendors but the line was horrid.  My son had not been able to eat before we went, having a late work appointment, so we left him to stand through the line while the rest of us tried to figure out a hill full of displays.  He was still in line when we got back, so we did it again, and there was so much to see that we didn't mind.  He shared a French fry or two around the group, and downed his hot dog, grateful to be fed.

The skill of the carving artists showed in the various displays.  I loved the one where they re-created art of the masters... Mona Lisa, Scream, The Creation of Man, American Gothic, and the girl with the pearl earring decorated one pile of bales.

Lacey could not quite get the best angle for Where's Waldo, but that he's there, too.

I am not going to dump ALL of the photos here, but when we got further in, there was a collection of dinosaurs, and that's a BIG favorite of my son's fiancé.  So the young couple spent some time trying to get the right background for a selfie:

There were embedded puns in some of the displays.  This was at a state park that has a wave pool, so they put a display of the stars and stripes in the wave pool, leading up to a display of pumpkins with ears of corn silhouettes carved in them, spelling out "Nebraska".  Nebraska used to be an inland sea... yeah, something for everyone!

As we wound through the vendor area, Lacey's mom hooked us up with apple-cinnamon filled donuts to munch on our way onward.  We still had sticky donuts on our fingers as we took the dinosaur photos.

By the time we wound our way past photo-portrait celebrity pumpkin displays to the exit, we'd been there well over an hour, and we topped off the evening by getting in the pre-heated truck to hear the final minute of the Husker - Rutgers football game.  We were astonished (and pleased) with our second conference win in a row!  It's been a minute since last we saw that.  Everybody is immediately in love with the new coach (this is his 3rd game as interim coach).

The dropped me off at home, about 10:30 p.m.  This was the second night up past my bedtime, and this morning... I'm back streaming Ironman coverage, this time the men.

Hope you all have a fine weekend, whether spooky, sporty, or Thankful... Happy Thanksgiving weekend to my Canadian friends, and those elsewhere in the world who are celebrating... it's time to start the Thankfulness exercise for the year, to last through US Thanksgiving!

Life is good.  Spark on!

What have we done with our 2022?

Remember the pebble jar calendar?  Here it is as of October 1st... you can see that there are only three "to go" months in the 2022 year, and the center jar of "spent days" is getting full!

The shell holding October's pebble-days was a souvenir from the kids' trip to the Jersey Shore last May.  

I woke Sunday morning to messages from my daughter in law to be related to their honeymoon plans.  I'll get another week-long Carl visit as my consolation prize, while they go visit Colorado.  I'll pray for the weather, because I know the end of April can still be snowy season up in the high country.

This started me thinking about "will I be up to it?"  Better be diligent about the healthy diet and gentle exercise... which I have not always been over the cold months.  

And what about the vision?  I put off having the cataracts looked at by the eye surgeon, thinking I'll be examined again in February by the regular eye doctor.  Maybe I want to have that behind me before I deal with Carl for the honeymoon?

Anyway, it's another thing to ponder over during the next month or so.  

I took a couple of photos of the trees in the park on my Sunday walk, just because I want a baseline as the colors have not yet turned.  Just the slightest bit of gold/yellow is starting to show at the very tips.

Tuesday was workout day with the trainer.  He has a brand new granddaughter!

Then it was "set up appointments" day.  

Tuesday afternoon I also got a joyous phone call from my dentist, the one who's married to a marathon runner.  She had promised she would call me if he got accepted to run the Boston Marathon next April (which one finds out in September)... he made it!  So they will be Boston bound next Spring.  I have to make a list of places to recommend that will be appropriate for a family with two kids.  There are some fine places that I remember from trips past.

One of the things I find most enjoyable about getting "old-er" is the excitement for younger folks entering into new phases.  I swear I'm almost as excited as she is!  I have an appointment with her in January, so I have time to contemplate.

Wednesday the HVAC company came do my heating check.  One more check box ticked off.  Gee, the seasons are flying by.

As the HVAC guy finished up, Barnaby the rough-coated collie was being walked by the front of the house, so I chased him and Bill (his human) down, to offer a dog cookie.  Barnaby has been working on his manners and he looks full grown, but I know there's still puppy in him.  I asked after Amber, his house-companion dog, as I had not seen her in the walking group, and Bill sadly let me know that they had to put her down.  She was 17 years old (human years, that is... which is a very old medium breed dog).  Sad, but probably the kindest thing they could have done.  I'm glad they have Barnaby to still take care of... because I can tell Bill and his wife are hurting from Amber's going.

The Ironman world championship triathlon on Kailua Kona is being split into two days.  The women and some of the men competed on Thursday, the rest of the men will go on Saturday.  I have six or seven locals plugged into the tracker app so that I would know they made it through the grueling course.  I know I shall never work up to that level of endurance event, and have backed down to the "I'm glad I did what I could while I could."  I do miss that level of fitness, but I also know what it took to get there and I just no longer have the drive to do it.

I wrote this paragraph at 10 p.m. local time; subtract five hours for Hawaii, and that makes it 5 p.m. there, and my locals were still out on the course.  It looks like one of them probably tapped out after the bike leg, but the rest will finish sometime between now and 1:30 a.m. here.  I doubt I'll be awake for them all, but as of the moment, I have the live feed of the finish line running on the TV.  I tripped out over the professional women's race which was very exciting, but a race that lasts 8 hours for the pros, and 11 hours for the faster age groupers (my vintage, anyway) is long even for spectators.

I ended up staying up until 11:38 to watch my friend across the finish line.

I will end up in spectator / tracker overload over the weekend, as a friend of my brother's is going to be running the Chicago marathon on Sunday.

Anyway, I've dribbled out the week's events, and I need to get ready for the Pumpkin viewing outing, which will be in about an hour.  We are under a freeze warning overnight, and I have brought the hoses in, but now it's time to get ready for the outing.

Trust everyone is remembering to take care of their health, physical, mental, and spiritual as we are entering the season of waning sunlight!

Life is good.  Spark on!

🔥✨💖

Corn muffins and 'maters and chili rice... oh, my!

Corn muffin mix was on sale at the grocery this week for some outrageous price (19 cents).
 

OJ gave a suggestion in the comments on my last blog about how to use some of those fresh tomatoes from the neighbor. I expanded on it just a bit, adding rice and beans.  Soooo yummy!  Plus chili powder, and it goes so well with the corn muffins!

It does not take a lot to add excitement to my life.  I got a jury survey in the mail on Thursday, which indicates they could pull me to serve in the two weeks beginning November 7th.  

The last time I had to do this was probably ten years ago.  I was asked to report, and got to sit through jury selection, but I wasn't pulled from the random list.  Still got to listen to the questions they asked the jurors, and the judge's explanations, which was fascinating.  Since they got enough acceptable jurors from the first draw, the rest of us were given the "thank you for your service" exit speech and sent back to our regular lives.  The whole thing took maybe an hour and a half.  At the time I worked within walking distance of the court house, so it was an excuse to get outside and walk, both to and from.

Friday was laundry day.  And grocery day... with the change of seasons the idea of firing up the oven to warm the house has started to enter the calculation of what to buy.  I did a check in with the niece and she waved off doing garage sale this weekend, as she's still feeling after effects of the covid.  Wise woman.  Get fully recovered first!

I've had check ins from the Florida cousins in the Tampa area, and from Marsha down in Lakeland, and the people are all OK (the trees are not, the fences are not, the power is not)... but where they were they did not suffer the ravages of the storm surge or flooding, thank goodness.  I even heard a brief "I'm OK will write later when I get internet back" from Debra T who lives in the Naples, Florida, area, and an e-mail from Sandi who used to go by some form of ThatGirl (7, maybe?), in Tampa Bay.  

Prayers continue for those who were not as fortunate, the news is scary.  And for that matter, prayers for the rebuilding efforts.

Saturday morning I listened to some of the coverage of the clean up in the aftermath and they mentioned not knowing the counts of the folks who might have hunkered down in some spots due to:  part-year residents!  I had known about this particularly Floridian "feature" because I used to live across the street from a couple of "snow birds" in our little village in the Southern Tier of New York.  They would button up their house about the first of November (they liked to stay around to see the trick or treaters at Halloween) before heading south, then show up again when the blossoms appeared in our corner of the state in April or May.  The TV  commentators mentioned that for many of the part-year residents, Ian was early in the season.  While their property could have been damaged or destroyed, the people who haven't yet arrived are probably fine.  People first... that would indeed be a blessing, wouldn't it?

Rubia hopes things are well with all of you out there in blog-land, and of COURSE firmly believes that this table was put here just for her, nothing to do with it being an organizing space!

Take care of yourselves, get your rest, and be kind!

Life is good.  Spark on!  🔥✨✨💖