First Walk of the Year

“Danger, Keep Off, Ice Not Safe” ha

I found this. Someone must have made a garland crown last summer.

 

Turtles sunbathing. 

 

I couldn’t really capture it, but these branches had a layer of fuzz on them.

 

A loon!

 

A cardinal!A robin!

 

One Perk of Working in a School

This past weekend was amazing. Since I work in a school, we had Thursday and Friday off, so it was a nice break. I am a woman of simple pleasures, so the things that made me very happy this weekend seem kind of silly, but just let me have my fun.

Thursday, I slept in, cuddled in bed with Jane forever, which I think she was maybe okay with:

When you can see the third eyelid, you know they’re happy.

I got lunch, and since it was THE MOST GLORIOUS FALL DAY IMAGINABLE, I did one of my favorite things: walked around a lake listening to podcasts.

Then, YOU GUYS, I got a facial. Wha..? I’ve never had one before, and I’ve never done a spa thing for no reason (like it wasn’t a gift from someone or whatever). I’ve just never done it before, and I was curious. I’m a planner, so I rarely do things like this on the spur of the moment, so that was kind of fun (I mean, I booked it the night before, so there was SOME planning, but a lot less than I normally do). It was very nice. There were a lot of …feels: creamy, oily, gritty, dry, wet, heavy, light, dark, there was even some pain (she used something that I think had cinnamon in it, so it burned the way that it burns when you chew cinnamon gum).

Then I went home and had some chai tea and started a new book.

Super exciting story: I picked up one of my ginger cookies and thought, “Hey, what if I dunked this cookie into the tea? What would that taste like?” So I did, and it was like heaven.

Then I opened my window, and it was amazing. (This is Minnesota, so it’s usually too cold for that in October, so this is a bigger deal than it seems.)

I had dinner with the folks, and finished the book. Starting a new book is exciting, and finishing a book is satisfying. Both feels in one day!

The next couple of days involved some brunches with friends, running errands, getting stuff done around the house, reading two more books, and attending a RollerGirls bout (so much fun!!):

I also baked an apple pie…

And got some library books…

…for babysitting the nephews!

Whew!

 

Elf House!

I was taking a walk with my nephew this weekend, and we came upon a cute little yard pond…

With a cute little elf house!! (One of my favorite things in life along with 50s Diners, boots, and any and all animals.)

Also on that walk, there was this very large tree next to a power line….and the power line held a large chunk from that tree. Look, is this not the weirdest thing?

And one more thing, I just have to put this here because I think it’s funny and cute. When I told my nephew that I was going to take a picture of the elf house, he plopped himself down next to it in a very specific “I’m posing for the camera” stance, assuming that I must have meant that I was going to take a photo of him next to an elf house. His grandmother has taught him well. Look at his super serious “getting my picture taken” face:

 

A Letter

To the charming bicyclist guy who yelled “Must be nice to be entitled!” at me because I was walking along the very outer edge of the bicycle path:

I hope that you soon encountered the many other people doing the same (at least I was keeping to the edge):

And I hope you realized that it was because of this:

And I hope that it didn’t ruin your circuit around the lake like you ruined mine.

And I hope that you have a great day and a wonderful life.

Regards,

The Woman Who Never Did Anything to You

The Truman Show

I’ve always suspected that my life is like The Truman Show, where I’m secretly being filmed at all times, and everyone in the “real world” is watching my (boringest ever) show. Yes, it’s super egotistical (yeah, because I’m soooo interesting that anyone would want to film me), and totally paranoid (it is actually supposedly some sort of fear of judgment/self-judgment), and basically insane. I even thought this was happening BEFORE the movie The Truman Show was made. So you can imagine how nuts I went when I saw that they had made a movie referencing MY movie. Boy was my producer playing games with my head.

Aaaanyway. I’m not actually crazy, I don’t actually think this is happening. It’s just kind of a “feeling” that I have. It’s basically a little inside joke I have with myself. So it’s funny to me when stuff like this happens:

I walk around Lake Calhoun a lot, and when I was there a couple of days ago, I passed this couple (a tall bald guy and shorter blonde woman). I remember them because the guy was holding this small stereo that was playing upbeat music SO LOUD that I could hear it from far away and wondered where the heck that super loud music was coming from, until I saw them ahead of me.

Well. I was there again today, and they were there. Same couple, same loud hand-held stereo, and we passed each other AT THE EXACT SAME TIME as before. I generally go to the lake around the same time of day each time (early afternoon), but I’m pretty sure this was at least about a half an hour different. What are the odds?

And this is what happens in The Truman Show. He starts realizing the truth when he notices that the people around him (the people hired to be “extras”) were always the same people, and that they were always doing the same thing at exactly the same time. They’re on a loop, they just go round and round!

My director is usually a little more on top of these details, but I found a crack in the system! I caught some of my extras in a loop!

Also, geez, this rain is serious business. At one point on the path around the lake, the lake had overflowed so far that the path is gone and you have to walk through about 4 inches (at the shallowest) of gross lake water. And then you squish squish squish in your sneakers the rest of the way around the lake. Yuck. And there were lots of places where the lake had just risen much further than it normally does, leaving scenes like this:

I Went for a Walk!

Today I took my first walk around a lake of the year. It’s been, what, like 9 months since I walked around a lake. It was wonderful.

I would have gone out before today, but I’ve been too busy working on my mystery project!

We’re getting there. I’ll be able to reveal it all in probably about a month.