Three things ~ 3.18.23

Things I’m loving this week

Cheap avocados and lots of fresh cilantro. The cilantro in my aerogarden has gone gangbusters and I was looking for a way to either save or use a lot of it this weekend and….voila….Aldi’s had bags of avocados for a few dollars. Too bad nobody else in my house likes guacamole. Yep…that’s just tooooo bad. 😉

An empty gym. Nothing makes me happier at the YMCA than having an entire workout space to myself. This week it was the Obstacle Fitness Interval Center that Kelly and I had all to ourselves on Saturday morning. Shame more people don’t use it, but I’m not sad about that.

Celebrating St. Paddy’s Day. I haven’t gone out on St. Paddy’s day for many, many years, but this year, we went to the parade last Saturday afternoon and then hit some of the local bars up and down State Street because Kelly could — for the first time — enjoy some green beers and experience the spectacle. We had a lot of fun, which made my long run the next morning not so much fun, but….

Lauren loved her time in London. My entire family and most of my friends thought I was crazy for letting Lauren fly across “the pond” to meet a guy she’d been talking/videotalking to for the past year. They met playing Minecraft and he’s a student at Wembley University in London where he was born and raised, and she had the chance to spend her spring break visiting him. And, it all went as well as I knew it would. I rarely expect the worst…maybe someday that will come back to bite me, but mostly I think it’s a good thing to wander through life assuming everything will work out.

Things I’m not loving this week

Haddie strikes again. Now I’m afraid to have packages delivered to my doorstep. (Get a puppy, they said…it will be fun, they said…)

This private college student who threw a girls wheelchair down the stairs. I mean…I don’t know what to say here. You should never be so drunk that you want to harm a disabled person. The level of anger, disrespect, and meanness in the world today is just shocking and disheartening.

That said..

I find it hard to find any sympathy for these folks who keep building mansions on spits of land in the sea. I mean…have none of them read “The Three Little Pigs?” Don’t build your home in stupid places. The seas are rising.

Three things ~ 3.2.23

Things I’m loving this week

The perfect ice storm. I am not a fan of ice in winter. I’ll take snow over ice any day as snow at least gives you some traction, but this past week we had the perfect ice storm — the kind where the streets were clear, but everything else was coated in a thin layer of ice. Gorgeous.

Winter festival Ice Sculptures. Speaking of ice, we made time on Sunday morning to stop by Perry Square and see (what was left of) the ice sculptures from the winter festival this weekend. Despite the cold, they were melting in the sun. One of these years, I’ll make it down there on Friday to watch them carve these things. There were dozens of them — big and small.

These fleeting moments. Kelly came home for the weekend and on Saturday night, I snapped this pix of them playing Hangman — a vintage 80s era game I used to play with my little brother back in the day. When I see them hanging out at home playing board games, I’m reminded that these moment are fleeting. It won’t be long before Kelly graduates from college and then who knows how things change.

Baby Cleo. The bonus when Kelly comes home is that Cleo comes with her. She’s a sweet, affectionate little ginger who likes to supervise any work going on in the house, like the master bath shower renovation Dan’s working on.

Things I’m not loving this week

A bored pup. Two days of rain and no walks = a bored puppy who….yep, ate the couch. Sigh. Honestly….whatever. Good excuse to get new furniture in a couple years. For the time being, I’ll just spray it with “Bitter Yuck” and buy a couch cover.

Three things ~ 2.23.23

Things I’m loving this week

Peleton bikes. The college’s new fitness center has several Peleton bikes and Lauren and I did our first workout last week. It was fun and hard, even though we were on a 20-minute beginner ride.

Dinner with the girls. Dan got a raise so we went and blew some of it on dinner and drinks (not Lauren, of course) at the Plymouth on Saturday night. It’s good to see restaurants packed with people again. COVID seems like a weird, distant memory, though I’m fully aware it’s still with us.

Behrend’s STEAM Fair and little kids. While I don’t love being at work for 12 hours, volunteering at the college’s youth outreach annual STEAM Fair is always worth a late night. The kids are so cute and engaged and this year our group — the Women’s Engagement Council — hosted a coffee bar (hot and cold) for parents, which was a hit. I mostly stayed at our activity table where kids were encouraged to build something with spaghetti and marshmallows. Some of the things they came up with were impressive. Spaghetti and marshmallows….who knew? Wish I’d have known when my kids were young.

Hanging fireside with Blue. We cleaned up one half of our finished basement enough to make room for a little 2nd living room with a comfy loveseat couch and ottoman my mom gave us, end table/lamp, and a big TV. The best part is that there is a gas fireplace there that can throw a lot of heat if we turn it up. Blue is a fan. He’s often in the basement these days, hiding from Hadley, who will not stop chasing the cats (argh!). This has become my quiet reading spot when Lauren isn’t lounging down there watching Hulu.

Things I’m not loving this week

MTG. While I would truly love to divorce her, what this moron is suggesting is that we not have a UNITED States.

FOX under fire. In the category of appalled, but not even remotely surprised.

Three things ~ 2.16.23

Things I’m loving this week

V-day treats. Kelly recently went to Cleveland and brought home cookies from Crumbl, which three of us ate little by little for days. Mmmm…. Then, she and Lauren got me a dozen chocolate covered-strawberries in a bouquet for V-day. (P.S. this is why I’m fat now…and I kinda don’t care anymore).

Amazon humor. Someone is having fun at Amazon putting witty sayings on some of the boxes. This one made me LOL.

Scholars in Collars. I was nervous about taking Haddie to a group obedience class because, as of late, she’s been lunging at strangers (people and dogs) and I was worried she’d be thrown out in the first night. But, the owner/dog trainer, Nikki, was so good with her and calm and not rattled by her aggression. The dogs in class were already nicely separated with plenty of space and barriers, but the trainer gave Hadley some extra comfort from a few extra fence panels and a blanket until she was more comfortable with all the strange people and dogs in the room.

Things I’m not loving this week

Ron Desantis. What is wrong with this guy? I can’t imagine why anyone would move to Florida right now. What a shitshow. He is hell bent on dragging that state back to the good ol’ days of 1954. Sad. Makes me wonder if colleges will be like…oh, I see you went to high school in Florida….ummmm….

A five-alarm fire on abortion pills. A judge in Texas is considering a longshot bid to ban the abortion pill. 

“Nobody knows what kind of follow on effects the potential banning of the abortion pill could have. Certainly a single unelected public official having the power to revoke the FDA approval of a medication does not bode well for health care in the United States.”

Three things ~ 2.9.23

Things I’m loving this week

This Month’s Vintage Tee from Erie Apparel. This month’s design features the Erie Railroad, which is now defunct. I love that the shirts come with a card that contains a little history lesson about the place featured on the shirt. This month also included an Erie Railroad pin. You can join the club here.

Sunny winter days. It was only about 35 degrees yesterday, but it felt like 50 thanks to the warm sunshine. I worked from home and Hadley took full advantage of it by spending her entire day outside running around the yard and sleeping on all the porches. Wait till we uncover that pool this summer…she’s going to lose it.

Winter hiking. We took a weekend girls trip to Ohiopyle, a summer adventure (white-water-rafting, hiking, biking) hot-spot, that is basically desolate in February and, I have to say, it was pretty sweet to have the whole town (practically) to ourselves. It was cold, but it didn’t matter when you’re moving/hiking and we had a great time hiking the gorge trail with the Meadow Loop. There were so many cool things to see (icicles, frozen waterfalls, etc.) AND the nice thing about going on a very cold day is that the mud was frozen, so it crunched under our feet rather than squished.

Things I’m not loving this week

The incivility of certain GOP members in Congress. What happened at the State of the Union address was just embarrsingly bad behavior by people who are supposed to be “leaders.” No. Just no. Leaders don’t behave like 11-year-old boys on the playground screaming insults at each other. This is just sad. Sad. Sad. We have to insist that our elected officials be more respectful of each other…and us. I wouldn’t tolerate this behavior from my children.

Panera Bread’s prices. After grocery shopping, Kelly and I went to have a quick dinner at Panera, mostly because I had a $25 gift card. We each got a “pick 2” meal — for me a rice bowl and soup, for her a sandwich and soup — and water and it was $32. *blink, blink* For that kind of money, we could’ve went to a local restaurant and had a couple of drinks, too. Sheesh….I’m out, Panera.

The stair wars. Only one kid lives at home now and she is the only one on the 2nd floor, so guess who owns all of this stuff that is on the stairs that is meant to be taken upstairs and put away? Much of it are Christmas gifts, which I put on the stairs after asking her to pick them up off the living room loveseat since she opened them on December 25. At this point, I’m about to just start returning stuff and see if she even notices.

 

Three things ~ 2.2.23

Things I’m loving this week

Blurams dog watch. Kelly had this pet camera on her Xmas list and after seeing how well it worked, we picked one up to keep an eye on Miss Haddie. It’s both entertaining (she’s fallen of that bench more than a few times) and heart-breaking (chin on the windowsill watching the driveway for someone to come home), but for $30 totally worth the cost. You can even talk to them using the microphone, which I try not to do unless she’s tearing something up because I think it confuses her.

The master bath shower project is finally underway. We’re done with the plastic surround and floor. Dan is putting in an all-tile (and larger) shower. It’s been a long time coming and I hope it lives up to the $700 glass door he bought for it.

Getting together with old work friends. There’s just something about your first real job…you know, the one where you were in  your 20s, still young enough to go to Happy Hour after work, to play in snowball softball tournaments, and to go through life stages (weddings, babies, divorces, etc.) with coworkers. This photo above is five women from five different departments at the Erie Times News in the 90s (Marketing, Circulation, Advertising, Finance, and Newsroom), but…..we really were one big happy, overworked and overwhelmed family. Ah…those were the days…

Things I’m not loving this week

Corporate greed. Hey…it’s it weird that all these companies (gasoline, healthcare, food manufacturers, egg producers, etc.) that are raising prices and squeezing more money out of the working class are making record profits for their shareholders? Greedy bastards then find a way to blame it on the guy on disability or the mom making $12 an hour at McDonalds. The boldness of it all is just astonishing.

Readers. So my slide into old-lady vision began last year with glasses to see distance (and, holy crap, it’s a whole new world), but my up-close vision was always pretty good until the last few months when I realized the small print was getting fuzzier and fuzzier when reading a book or printout. I tried a friend’s readers and was like, CRAP, they work and now I need those, too. This means I’m now constantly switching between glasses and I know that this means I need bifocals, but I’m not ready to accept that just yet.

January is over. It feels like the longest month ever. And we are now one month closer to spring.

Three things ~ 1.26.23

Things I’m loving this week

“Nobody Hates You” by Jessia. I don’t know how old this song is, but I just heard it recently and immediately added it to my “liked” songs list on Spotify. The lyrics are awesome, especially for young women, but…sadly, I know, also for plenty of young men, too. What have we done to our kids? Sigh.

“Alexa,  play some music.” I discovered this command by accident, but I’m finding it fun to see what she comes up with for my personalized playlist. Usually it’s based on my listening habits, but sometimes it’s way out there — like contemporary R&B, which was actually pretty fun. I find it hard to discover new music using streaming services (Spotify’s Daily Drive, etc.) that just feed us what they know we like. 

College basketball games. I never watched basketball until a friend’s daughter began playing for Behrend, so I couldn’t be more surprised to say that I really like going to the games. They are fun and exciting. People. Pep band. Dance Troupe. Cheerleaders. Mascot. And, of course, a fast-moving game that never drags into extra innings or long overtime sessions.

Microban Multi-purpose Cleaner. My mom swears by this to clean up pet stains and I have to say it works better than most of the other products we have tried. And, it’s not even very pricey — maybe $5 or $6 at Walmart.

Things I’m not loving this week

$400+ Emergency Vet Bill and a sick pup. I don’t know what’s wrong with Haddie, but she’s had liquid poo for days. On Friday night she sprayed it all over me in the truck on the way home from my inlaws (oh, yes, that’s a story i must find time to tell here soon) and when it continued Saturday morning, we decided we had to bite the bullet and take her to the Pet ER. The first quote was nearly $900. They took off some things to get the price down to $414, which was still steep for no diagnosis, but we did get plenty of meds — nausea, stool hardener, worm medicine (just in case) — as well as antiseptic butt wipes, antibiotic cream, and a cone-of-shame from a lick-induced infection/hot spot on her back end.

I’m still not sure what is wrong. Is it her food? Does she have some sort of inflammation or chronic, sensitive belly? Does she need probiotics? Did she pick up some infection from something in the yard? I don’t know, but I hope we get it figured out soon. In the meantime, she’s enjoying rice-boiled-chicken-and-pumpkin dinners and is clearly feeling much better. (The tail wrap was to keep the fur out of the mess going on back there.)

M&Ms. Good gravy…..imagine being Mars Inc. and taking orders from that fat, blowhard, soft, squinty-eyed, perpetually-confused-looking loser, Tucker Carlson. No…I’m not “canceling” M&Ms now, I’m just hoping they realize they don’t need to kowtow to a man who literally contributes nothing to this world but more resentment and anger. He makes a living off keeping people mad about stupid shit.

 

 

Three things ~ 1.19.23

Things I’m loving this week

Snow covered trees and blue skies. This past weekend was stunningly beautiful with snow lining every branch and surface and the sun making it all sparkle and pop with a vibrant blue-sky background. I took full advantage of the chance to enjoy the scenery, running twice, hiking twice, and snowshoeing with friends, too.

Dog puzzles. On days we can’t walk Haddie, she can be ….ahem…obnoxious. So, I recently bought a bunch of enrichment toys, including some treat balls, lick mats (which she of course, she licked clean…then started to eat…sigh)  and this puzzle game.  I didn’t actually think she’d be able to figure out the treat puzzle (I love her, but she’s clearly not the brightest pup in the litter), but it didn’t take long for her to move the covers to get the bits of scalloped potato (leftovers) I put in each hole.

Odis 12. Dan and I had a couples date with our friends Betsy and David and we went to Odis 12, which I have always heard people rave about but Dan and I had never been there (we’re eastsiders, you know). But, the menu was extensive, the prices very reasonable, and the food was great. Definitely worth the big drive to the west side.

Things I’m not loving this week

Cold rain. It’s my least favorite kind of weather — near freezing and raining and windy, but….I’ll still take this over snow. (I know I just talked about how pretty the snow was, but I hate driving in it).

Rude students. I’m taking an Intro to Writing Fiction class (OMG….SO much better than Algebra!) and I’m shocked at how many students sit in class and play games on their phones or laptops. Yesterday, one girl opened a notebook and was clearly working on other homework while the teacher lectured right in front of her. I mean WTF is wrong with you? Why are they paying for classes and then not paying any attention? More importantly, why are they unaware (or unconcerned) that they are being completely disrespectful? I wanted to go all mom on that girls ass yesterday and remind her that she’s paying about $2,000 for that class so she might want to try to learn something, but I managed to reign it in.

Three things ~ 1.5.23

Three things I’m loving this week

“The Outside Boy” by Jeanine Cummins. Coworkers raved about this book by the author of “American Dirt” (also excellent) and it’s lived up to the hype. It is one of those books that I find myself longing to go home and read because I want to know how it turns out. Also, it’s focused on an interesting culture/group of people, Pavee travellers, that I didn’t even know existed.

Pork-and-saurkraut. It’s hard to believe I used to hate pork-and-saurkraut dinner becuase I seriously love it now. It’s one New Year’s Day tradition I do enjoy and since it’s meat and veggie — and I add more veggies to my plate — it’s a healthy way to start the New Year.

A lap dog. Though he’s not lap dog size, Hadley thinks she’s a lap dog and she loves warm hugs and tongue kisses, which I don’t love so much, but…

Things I’m not loving this week

Fear aggression. For all my talk about my awesome, sweet pup, if you saw us out on a walk or came to my house, you would be met with a snarling, lunging, aggressively barking dog. I know this is fear-based. It’s her way of keeping scary people away from her, but it’s so disheartening because I want a dog I can take everywhere with me. I’m contacting dog trainers to see what I can do to put an end to this and let her know I’m in charge and I’ll keep us all safe.

The GOP Congress shit show. This fight over the Speaker of the House is just embarrasing. And, I keep wondering what McCarthy will have to give that gang of bullies to get the gavel? God help us all….the GOP is incapable of governing anymore.

Three things ~ 12.29.22

Things I’m loving this week

The 5-Ingredient College Cookbook. I bought this from Amazon on a whim to give to Kelly for Christmas and it has really great (and easy) recipes. So good and easy that I went and ordered a copy for myself. At less than $8…it’s worth it.  I actually found it for less than $5 at Thrift Books.

Dog Treat maker by Dash. Another gift I picked up for fun was this dog treat maker. While the bones don’t look like the ones on the box, they are still yummy (so the dogs thing) and they are made with all natural ingredients you probably have around the house (with the exception of whole wheat flour, which…I actually did have from some past baking recipe).

My new coffee mug. Does Kelly know me or what?

Kitty Christmas Wreath. Kelly made me this wreath with items primarily from Dollar Tree with the exception of the wreath form and the cutout cat, which she bought on Etsy. I just love it!

Spider Curls. We’ve avoided doing these because we thought we would look silly, but….they are so fun, and you can feel how/why they really work your biceps. We’ll do more of these, no matter how weird we feel. 🙂

These puppy dog eyes. Even when they are begging, they are just. so. dang. cute.

Things I’m not loving this week

Snow IN the house. How cold, snowy and blowy was it this week? Snow came THROUGH the outlets and into the house.

Blown out pool panels. How snowy, blowy, cold was it this week – part 2? So cold that our pool fence blew out in two places. Sigh.