Tuesday, June 14, 2011

More Space, Less Space

Stanley is leaving tomorrow (Wednesday) for a 5-day canoe fishing trip to the Boundary Waters.  Seven other guys are going. The fishing is supposed to be amazing. Hope he takes lots of pictures. We used to go backpacking all the time and I am a little envious watching him load up his backpack. 


Just noticed he's got an ax. I'll have to ask him what that's for. Not that I don't trust him.

I'm looking forward to backpacking with the Blueb when she is older.

So Blueberry and I will be on our own for a few days. When I was a naive youth I thought being a single mom would be preferable to being married. One less variable to deal with, is how I reasoned. Now I wonder how women do it on their own. Stanley kindly prepped several dinners for us that require me only to preheat the oven, place dinner in the oven, and take it out before it burns. So we won't go hungry. So I guess the rest is just a matter of keeping busy but not too busy. 

Blueberry slept until 6:00 this morning. She hasn't done that in months. Maybe over a year. It was wonderful. I'm pretty sure the cat woke her up - he was agitated because we were "sleeping in". Meowing, walking in and out of our room and probably her room as well. Anybody want a cat? He's great.

I just went back through this entry and corrected the spacing. A couple of months ago, I was rather shocked to learn that the proper number of spaces after a period is one, not two. But I'm so used to using two spaces that I have to be thinking about it when the sentence ends or my thumb just automatically taps twice. In my high school freshman year typing class, I was instructed to use two spaces, so that's how I've done it ever since. Then I saw an article that said one space is the rule. And that was even the rule back then, when my teacher told us to use two spaces, but it just hadn't reached my teacher yet. What I can't believe is that this never came to my attention until now. All those grants I had to write in grad school where space was at a premium, and I'm throwing an extra space between every sentence. The horror. The horror.



Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Signage

We went to the zoo a couple weekends ago.  Blueberry is at a very fun zoo age.  She gets it.  She's on board with the whole see-the-animals thing.  It's really nice to have a free (with suggested donation) zoo within walking distance from our house. 
Here she is with the flamingos.  She liked them.  She's signing "more".  I guess one cannot have too many flamingos.



Here she is with the giraffes.  She's giving her sign for giraffe, which is to tap her head and say "oh?"



The correct sign for giraffe (I just now learned from google) is to make the G sign and bring your hand from your neck to up over your head.  Blueberry's giraffe sign came about because she was once playing with a giraffe and hit herself in the mouth with it and it hurt, so from then on when she played with it I would tell her "be careful, oh?" (Oh? being the sound she makes when she's starting to cry, or when she's worried about something).  So now to mention a giraffe she mimics hitting herself in the cranial region with a giraffe and then complaining about the pain.

She also signs "all done" (waving both hands) and "Could you sing 'Close to You' by the Carpenters?" (touching her eye while I'm singing good night songs to her).  I taught her the Carpenters one on purpose just for the heck of it.

In case you're interested, I posted a new garden update on our garden blog.  I guess I'm into blogging again.  For now.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Hi Stranger!

Hey there!  It's been too long.  The blogging tips I have read say that you should not point out to your readers that you haven't been blogging lately, because maybe they didn't notice.  But you noticed, right?  I hope you did.

The Spupspes took a trip to California for the main purpose of seeing family and I managed to take some pictures (see below), but I realized too late that I was not taking enough, and I was taking too many pics of animals and scenes and not enough of family.  I always forget to tell people to get together for a photo, and now I'm kicking myself.  It's one of the pitfalls of living life in the moment.

We enjoyed visiting my niece and nephew and meeting their new baby.  No pics of them here of course, but here's an artsy shot of Blueberry in their amazing back yard.


Did some olive oil tasting at a Corning, CA company, Lucero Olive Oil.  Corning is the olive capital of California, and it's a tiny town just a few miles from my hometown.  We are very proud. 

We visited my great aunt Mabel*.  She's 91.  I thought she was older than that but she says she's 91 and who am I to argue?  She is doing well, and it was a really nice visit.


 
We toured the bay area with my sister Lotus* and her boyfriend Pete*. 


We drove through Sausalito, which is such a sweet town in a neat location at the tip of the upper peninsula of the bay (I'm not sure I'm describing it's geography correctly - doing it from memory).  It was fun just driving through it and I hope to spend some more time there someday.  If/when we do, we'll bring our pets and get them some acupuncture:




Also took a quick trip through the Napa Valley up to Calistoga and visited Lotus' half sister (my quarter step sister) and her husband.  No pics of them, of course.  But here's one of Old Faithful Geyser.  It was going off every 5 minutes, rather than the typical 40 minutes, and some people think this means that a big earthquake will not be happening anytime soon.



This was a new one for me: Four-horned sheep.  They live near the geyser.  I thought I was hallucinating when I first saw them.  More info on the sheep here.


 
What else is happening...I'm spending pretty much all of my spare time making cloth books; orders are coming as fast as I can make them.  It's been a lot of fun and the customers have terrific ideas for books.  I would link to them here but I want to keep the blogs separate so as not to spill Hazel's identity.  Speaking of the other blog, I haven't posted anything since March, because I felt like I should focus on filling orders (I hate to keep people waiting), but I want to get back to it at some point soon, even if I only post once a week or so. 

Hope you all are enjoying summer!  Keep in touch!

*Names changed.