You're Doing It Wrong

Another classic shot from the 60’s. I’m the one in the red dress.

Remember the Beverly Hills diet? I thought about it because I just peeled and ate an entire (huge carbon footprint) mango. It was delicious.

The Beverly Hills diet was where you ate only one fruit for a whole day. Like one day you’d eat only pineapple. But you could eat as much as you want. Do you have any idea what that does to the inside of your mouth?

I think other days you could eat different fruits for different meals. Like for breakfast as much mango as you want and for lunch as many strawberries as you want.

I’m doing this all from memory so this may not be a 100% correct representation of the diet. Do not begin without consulting your doctor.

If you’ve ever eaten nothing but fruit for a day you can imagine what this does to your digestive system. Nothing dawdles in there for long.

One other thing I remember was that the diet recommended air-popped popcorn as a “natural broom for the system.” Like your system needed a broom after eating pineapple all day. It’s hard to imagine that diet was ever appealing but as I recall it was all the rage and you’d see the book with its little gold pineapples on the cover in every bookstore window.

If you’re curious, abebooks.com has over 500 copies for cheap.

It’s Rose Festival in Portland and that means cold drippy weather and the ships come in.

And this is the best I have to offer.

Yesterday on the way home a Subaru pulled out in front of the bus in the HOV lane. I didn’t see what happened because I was reading my book but that’s what the other passengers said happened. The bus had to slam on its brakes and skidded for a long time and veered to one side and I fell on the floor with all my stuff. I wasn’t hurt but I was embarrassed. Plus I’ve always joked that if there’s ever an accident on the bus that I will probably die and now I’m sure of it. The bus driver stayed cool as a cucumber but the passengers were rioting to chase down that Subaru.

Then I got home and I’d barely put my purse down and the doorbell rang. It was Sierra Club. Whenever these people come to the door they always tell me that it’s important that we do something about the environment and apparently the most important thing that we can do is to hand them a check right then. They have nothing on paper that you can look over and decide later. Also his story waffled a bit because first he said when I joined I’d have all these benefits of membership like a magazine. Then when I objected to giving them money so they could send me tons of crap he said they wouldn’t mail me anything. I sent them on their way.

I don’t give money to people that come to my door except small children selling candy for ballet camp and baseball uniforms.

After dinner I watched an XFiles from the first season called Gender Bender that was good and creepy and included a bit part with Krycek before he became Krycek.

Old Brain

The last thing I did before I left the office last week was leave a note on the top of my desk that says “Inventory?”

I have no idea what that’s for.

I’ve had it sitting by my keyboard all day waiting for that moment of recognition so I could remember to find out about the inventory, or inventory something, or follow up on that pesky inventory question.

Still don’t know what it’s about.

Chives

The guy in the newspaper says these flowers are edible. I see no reason to doubt him but I’m not sure how to serve them.

I’ve been working on a writing project which means that everything else has been abandoned. Except the garden. I put in some good time on weeds and edging and more weeds and I re-planted a bunch of dahlias that I dug up last fall. I probably should have given them away but I dug a trench and tossed in some bone meal and put the moldy blobs in there. I also did some creative vandalism and dug up some of my next door neighbor’s weeds and planted some bulbs over there.

Future Raspberries

Doctor Who is really bumming me out. I had a disk of three episodes I missed from last season and I hated them all. There was a two part Dalek one that was doody and another one about a ship falling into the sun which also was pretty lame. And for the new season I don’t like the new companion who seems like a whiner. I wish Torchwood would start up again.

Future Apple

I didn’t have time to watch the season finale of Lost yet. I can’t believe that myself. Battlestar Galactica peeled my face off. It’s a great show in the sense that no one does anything that you want them to.

I did clean the interior of my car which I know will be rewarding when I sit there tomorrow on my way to work.

I’ve been meaning to take a picture of this for a long time. I wasn’t sure how well it would show up.

This is the side yard. If you see that darker green line that starts at the lower left and curves up towards the back — that is an animal trail.

When I first noticed it, I thought it was from yardwork but later I noticed it was there all the time. You can see it in the back, too and it leads up to a big gap between our back fence and the next door neighbor’s garage.

I’m not sure if it’s raccoons, opossums (wolves? deer? rhinoceros?) or both but this must be the neighborhood crossing spot. There is some open space beyond the street behind our house. Since we’ve lived here we’ve occasionally seen raccoons and opossum in the yard usually after dark.

Several years ago there was a dramatic baby raccoon rescue in our backyard. I used my barely-there photo and html skills to write about it here but at some point later I deleted it. I just dug it out and tried to improve the photos and you can see it here.

The Hound of Mapleton: there are actually two hounds but I did a lousy job of picture taking.

Yesterday and today’s photos taken in Florence, Oregon

I’m despairing over whether I’m ever going to have time to write a decent post again. I’m sitting on a couple of ideas but I can’t seem to put together enough time to get them organized and I have other priorities right now.

Also, that thing is happening where I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. I woke up at 4am a couple of times and that wasn’t too hideous. I woke up yesterday at 3am and that wasn’t even too bad. I’ve been able to monitor and the birds start singing between 4:06a and 4:11a.

This morning I woke up at 2am and that was completely gruesome. I feel like I spent the night dancing on a barstool and swilling tequila from the bottle. I did have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. How come straight sleep deprivation feels like a badass hangover?

On Saturday I was working in the front yard and I saw this big yellow dog come scampering down the street. This was the happiest dog you’ve ever seen in your life. He bounded from one yard to the next bouncing in circles sniffing every wonderful hedge and tree trunk and marking his territory as needed.

Since I have adult onset fear of dogs all my brain was computing was “Omigod, dog with no people. He is going to run over here and bite me.”

He was too involved in his smell inventory to even notice me. My next door neighbor was much quicker on the uptake and I heard her yell, “He’s over here.” Then I clued in that there were kids at some distant location calling for the dog. She yelled again and the dog ran over to a red pick-up truck and set to work checking the smells on the tires.

My neighbor jumped in her car and drove towards the voices and a few moments later these two kids came sprinting down the street, huffing and puffing.

“Are you looking for the dog?” I asked.

“YES!” They said, together.

“He was just over by that truck.” I pointed.

Moments later the dog leapt out from behind a hedge and the kids smiled and grabbed his collar.

“Thanks!” they said and waved at me. Then a woman in a van came and picked them up and she waved at me, too.

And I thought, “Yes, what a great neighbor I am, helpfully pointed at your beloved and obviously sweet pet, in terror that he was going to run over and bite me. You are welcome.”