Chef JayJay

Jac made most of our dinner tonight. She didn’t eat it, except for the jasmine rice which is one of her favorite food groups. 

I thought she’d give up after her first touch of shrimp but Jac removed the tails - and a couple pieces of “intestine” - from about half a pound. And enjoyed it. She usually doesn’t like touching cold or slimy things, or getting her hands dirty, but none of it bothered her tonight.

I also showed her how to “snap” asparagus and she did the whole pound before putting them in the skillet and stir, stir, stirring. 

She told Pop and Donovan that she plans to have 3 jobs when she grows up - geologist, teacher and chef. And her reaction when D told her she couldn’t have that many was basically Watch Me -“I can be whatever I want.” That’s my girl!

Plates and Plants

Way back, like 45 years ago, we bought a set of dishes using stamp books (remember those??) from our local Alpha Beta grocery.

The cups and bowls fell (literally) away over the years but we still use the plates as our everyday dishes. A few weeks ago I fell in love with a random flowered plate on FB, which made me think we needed more COLOR and PRETTY in the house. Three stores and a bunch of websites later, we found these at Home Goods…

Not flowers, not super colorful, but they make me laugh. And 4 plates for $9.99 is a deal. (Even if they are melamine and neither dishwasher nor microwave safe. So not practical…)

Bowls were 4 for $10 too

I didn’t realize how much of a deal until I checked the manufacturer’s website (looking for bigger plates.) The ones I bought are apparently last year’s model, but still for sale at 4 for $48. 

The new design? Available now for pre-order? 

$20 per plate. I feel like I won the jackpot. 😂 

 My favorite color. So pretty.

Hubby made some contributions to COLOR too. We now have a couple of orange trees in the backyard, visible from the kitchen windows, that light up at night…

and what I thought was a hollyhock 

- correct name is Sea Mallow - for the front. 

He’ll be heading back to Home Depot soon to get a few more. Love them!

Sewing Bug

It’s been awhile but the sewing bug finally hit again this weekend. 

In January? February? a speaker at my quilt guild talked about tools she recommended, including a lap pillow for hand stitching.

A friend found a video/pattern (here)… 

it looked simple… and easy… 

and didn’t require precise sewing (still can’t see close up)…

so Saturday I cut and quilted the pieces

and Sunday I sewed it up and stuffed it.

Why buy little bags when you can have 5 POUNDS of stuffing??

The idea is to use the pillow to rest your arms/hands on while stitching, which relaxes the tension in your shoulders and neck. 

Such a weird shape…

Not sure if it will work for me - may need to make a larger one or one with less stuffing - but it was fun to make. Hoping my sew-jo is back for reals. 

J-Sorry

One of my favorite parts of the day is hanging out with Jac, playing board games that she renames and makes up rules for as she goes. 

J-Sorry has been a favorite for a few months: tonight she came up with a new version called “School”.  I especially love that her rules always benefit both of us equally, she’s not doing it to give herself an advantage. So fun to see what she comes up with each time. 

Can you see our new friend?

We had a couple of visitors in the back yard. I opened the back door to toss them some carrots and scared them away. ☹️ 

Hope they come back at least long enough to collect their treats. 

Snake!

Matt’s family has gotten into reptiles in a big way and today Mary brought over the newest, recently arrived member - 

Luna Lovegood, a Western hog-nosed snake. 

Luna should grow to about 2.5 feet long.

Isn’t she pretty?  

I think Luna is snake #4, to go with the 8 lizards, assorted spiders (jumping and “only mildly poisonous” tarantulas), 2 birds, 2 rabbits and 2 dogs - all (except the dogs) named for Harry Potter characters.

Donovan adores them all.

Jac likes snakes, in theory, but had to be persuaded to pet Luna today. 

And me? I’m Team Jac - they are pretty to look at but not really my cup of tea. 

Yep, Still Here

Still here, still sick, ready to be over it. I was going to say hubby was pretty much done with it, but he’s still taking 2 naps a day… The tiredness and the cough are the worst parts now. 

Donovan‘s still sick too. His dr says it’s a strain of influenza, so that’s probably what Pop and I had/have too.

Had the first of two light treatments for my eye today. Such a fiasco time-wise - we sat in the waiting room for over 2 hours, then another hour and a half in the treatment room, while they restarted and recalibrated their fancy, high-tech machine over and over… They were so backlogged, I think they finally canceled and rescheduled all the afternoon appts. 😜 But… did it work? We’ll know tomorrow, after the dilation drops wear off. Crossing fingers!

Still Here

So, we had an uneventful flight home last Tuesday. Then Wednesday hubby got knocked out with a bug of some sort (who knows what all is out there right now…) and Friday I came down with the same thing. We’re both still sick but starting to feel a bit more human. 

Jac and Donovan were here Friday, so while I lay wrapped in quilts on the couch, they happily entertained themselves with video games. They ended up sitting in the hall, next to an electrical outlet since Donovan’s iPad kept running out of juice. The cutest part? Jac kept reminding Donovan to keep his voice down since “Grandma is sleeping.” And he did! (Big D usually has just one volume and it’s not “inside voice.” 😂) Hoping to be back to regular life soon…