7 Quick Takes (Vol 253)

Let it hear be said, “Winter is DEAD!”…or at least I hope it is. When you are done basking in the blather radiance you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of the rain falling on this, the Cleveland Indians Home Opener, over to Conversion Diary.

Blather that can overcome all obstacles.

1.
I just want to say a huge THANK YOU to the person who discovered Cipro.

HHBL and I finally gave in to the Peruvian Intestinal gods and started on antibiotics on Wednesday. We just couldn’t take it any longer.

And I don’t think I have to give any more explanation than that.

2.
As is usually the case, I really need to have a vacation to get over my vacation. And as is also usually the case, that was not an option. Life just starts right back up and I had work this week and the house needed to be cleaned and there was laundry to be done.

Sigh.

I am such a post-vacation whiner.

3.
It is only April here in the Frozen Northeast Ohio and that means that we are still not out of the winter woods yet….but all the snow is gone and there are actually Spring flowers peeking their heads up.

And I am actually getting excited about the flower possibilities here at Chez Knit. My gardening options are so totally different here than anyplace else that HHBL and I have lived in our married life, other than our first apartment. We have no yard work to do, that is done by the landscapers that the association hires. I don’t have to trim the bushes, we don’t have to blow the leaves in the Fall. I don’t have to spread mulch.

Can I get an AMEN! for no 20 yards of mulch to spread.

Even though I do not have to do yard work it doesn’t mean that I am not going to have flowers in pots and perhaps some herbs in flower boxes on the back patio. I haven’t lived here through an entire summer and I am a bit concerned that the patio area may not be sunny enough for herbs.

And there are always the four footed hateful marauders from the woods deer to contend with.

But what is gardening if not experimentation. And I look forward to a new challenge.

Now if I can just “un-learn” the deer herd (all three of them) from eating my Hydrangea bushes. It really isn’t my job to take care of those bushes but I sense that the landscapers could care less if the hydrangea blossoms are consumed by the deer. So as soon as it stops raining I will start spraying that area with my deer away, smells like a vomitorium stuff.

It is me or them and I have the opposable thumbs.

4.

I call these things “Olive Pillows of Heaven”. Just little pockets of bread filled with chopped cured olives. Not the olives that come out of a can but brine cured, salty and tangy and altogether fabulous.

I would eat them every day.

If I lived along the Pan American highway that is. And since I don’t know if I will ever again stop at the roadside stand that sells these, as we have decided not to drive down to the beach again when in Peru because, well, we have done that a bunch of times and it is time to do something else.

I am going to have to figure out how to make them myself.

I wonder if the homeowner’s association will let me build one of these in the back yard?

5.
I am feeling another possessions purge coming on. I think it can be tagged to the un-acted upon concept of Spring Cleaning.

I think it is a very good idea to re-evaluate what is contained in your house on a yearly basis. For the most part, if you have not used something at least once over the course of a years time then I am not sure that it has any place in your life. Now obviously this does not apply to the boxes of family flotsam and jetsam that hang around. But the day to day, week to week, month to month things that make up a life should be re-evaluated regularly.

We still have too much stuff in the basement.

And in the garage, which is a major source of un-organized heebee jeebeeies for me.

Soon, on a nice and sunny day, I am pulling everything out of the garage and re-organizing.

And then I am purging stuff in the basement.

6.
A week from tomorrow is my father’s Celebration of Life memorial.

I still don’t know what I am going to say

7.
And as usual, here are some Instagram photos from the past week.