You're Doing It Wrong

I could swear I already posted about this but I can’t find it.

Back in 2021, I took a photo of the world’s fullest vacuum cleaner bag. Just a skosh short of 2 lbs!

Having learned nothing, I recently had another overfull bag that I could barely yank out of the machine. This one looks fuller but weighs less. What a disappointment.

Do you think this is the bag I replaced in 2021? I wonder. The vacuum cleaner isn’t insistent enough in telling the user how full it is.

It sucked great once I changed the bag!

Meanwhile, I was at my mom’s and guess what?!? I didn’t have my scale so I couldn’t weigh it.

Sorry animal lovers. I use a legit mousetrap in the shop.

There was a time when I was willing to let the mice run around out there but then I could hear something in the walls by the kitchen and saw some mouse poop in the kitchen so I had to revise my peaceful ways.

I set this trap and placed some delicious peanuts out and if you look carefully: you will see zero peanuts, the trap is not sprung, and there is no mouse.

The mouse out-smarted me. But also probably that’s a cheap trap. Right now I have sunflower seeds on there (not pictured) that would really need to be dug out but no one is touching it.

Look at this cutiepie. This is Chinquapin.

Shortly after exiting the car upon arrival in Orleans, Chinquapin came over to visit our dog (Summer, the white and black dog.)

I had brought treats and was happy to see him. I pet him and scratched him all over.

AND. Woke up the next day with the first red dots of poison oak.

Over the next couple of days, the poison oak bloomed into big gross rashes all over my wrists and hands and even a little on my fingers.

It has not been pretty.

The photos are from early last week.

Today, it is just over a week since I was exposed. I’m sure it was the dog — I wasn’t hiking or gardening or anywhere around poison oak.

The rashes are still ugly although they are drying up and not quite as painful.

The last time I had terrible poison oak was in October 2019 and it was worse than this. I do not recommend.

I was gone to Orleans all last week for a family visit.

It was a nice trip. Lovely drives there and back. No news.

I am still recovering from being away for a week. Hopefully more news in the days to come.

This is from a neighbor’s house during covid.

This is an article about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings who wrote The Yearling. which I haven’t read in probably 50 years.

I love the opening quote:

“If you like the book, I shall drink a quart of Bacardi in celebration,” Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote to Maxwell Perkins before sending him her first novel, “South Moon Under,” in 1932. “If you don’t like it, I shall drink a quart of Bacardi.”

I can’t drink a quart of Bacaradi but I think I would have liked hanging out with her.

I don’t get cats. I also haven’t spend any time around a really cool cat.

This is Oaky. He lives at Mom’s.

Look at that face. He cracks me up.

But he’s also a giant pain in the butt and completely lawless.

I think everyone who knows me knows I am a big NCAA gymnastics fan. (Starts in January!!)

I did gymnastics from about 6th grade to maybe 11th. I was never very good.

It kills me to see all these drills and training support methods they use now. We would have this thin mats and you’d just watch someone do a skill and they try it.

I’m curious if I can still do a cartwheel. I feel like I could but I’m afraid to try.

I’m afraid my complete-opposite-of-bendy body would never be the same.

This is a funny little corner of our front yard at the end of the driveway.

It’s always been weeds. I had grand plans but as per always I ran out of time and energy and weather.

I did a really half assed “scrape up the grass” and then I put a bunch of native meadow type seeds along with some seeds I collected from my other plants. I sprinkled it all over here.

We’ll see what I get.