Home From Vacation

I just got home from my 11 day working vacation on the Central Coast. I spent the last two days at the San Luis Obispo Renaissance Faire. I took a lot of amazing photos. My camera is still buried in the car somewhere but I'm looking forward to sharing the best ones after I get a good night's sleep. It is late and I don't know why I am still up. I'm certainly tired enough to fall asleep sitting up. I guess I've missed my computer and I'm catching up on Internet time.

I'll be happy to get back to my 'Give it 100' goals. I wasn't able to do it while traveling since I don't have a portable computer. So I'll just start fresh in the morning. Come check it out if you are not following me already.

My garden and my chickens grew a lot while I was gone. Chicken tails are much more prominent than when I left and the yellow chicken has a lot more white on it now. The squash and beans have both sprouted and the nasturtium seeds I planted now have leaves about the size of quarters.

The only thing that looks bad is my terrarium. I need to go look at it before bed and figure out what happened. My boyfriend thought it looked too wet and rotting so he took the lid off. But I fear then everything wilted. Oh dear. I may have to start from scratch.

I got home right at sunset. It seemed just like a cowboy movie.

Happy Day Challenge Day 44

Tell a New Story Happy Day 44

Working on my Law of Attraction Art Journal makes me happy. I decided to also do it on Give it 100.com. If you join that site, just remember each video clip is only 10 seconds long. I'm finding it hard to make something so short!

Happiness Challenge Days 40, 41, 42, and 43

Taking the photo is the fun and easy part. Finding the time to edit, number and post the photos to 3 or 4 spots is tedious. I've missed so many days I'm not even half done yet and I'm about to be away from my computer for 2 weeks. If you do a photo project it really helps to  have a smart  phone and Instagram. I don't have either of those things. I have to wait until I'm physically sitting at my desktop computer.

100 Happy Days: Day 40 Enjoying the 4th of July weekend

Day 41 Lucerne Valley 4th of July parade. Galliker's milk truck handed out bottles of milk.

Day 43 I got my new clown badge.

Day 42 Planting a new garden. 100 Happy Days Challenge

Happy Day 39 Knitting a Bunny

Sitting on my neighbor's porch knitting.

Happy Day Challenge Day 39

I found a tutorial on how to make a bunny out of a knitted square. If all else fails I'll still have an orange washcloth, right?

Happy Day 38 Breakfast at Big Bear Lake

Perfect weather and a chance to escape the heat of the valley floor lead us to Big Bear Lake. We found a restaurant called The Log Cabin where we sat on the patio and I enjoyed a breakfast of hash  and hash browns, rye toast and 2 fried eggs over easy.  A cute pooch was out there begging. Seems he lives in a nearby house but knows a good meal when he smells ones.

Then we cruised over to see the lake, and on the way home we visited a thrift store. I bought a craft book aimed at teenage girls and a bag of stuffing for crochet animals that I like to make. I was tempted by a cool painting of Kokopelli. But I have nowhere to hang the paintings I already have so I passed on it.

Then we had a twisty curvy drive back to Lucerne Valley and triple digit temps. 

Breakfast at the Log Cabin Restaurant in Big Bear, CA

Christmas Bear at the Hummingbird Project Thrift Store

The Lovely Big Bear Lake

Happy Day 36 and 37

I got sidetracked from the 100 Happy Day Challenge. My daughter just published her 100th photo and she is now done with the challenge. I'm somehow still in the 30's. Ah well, that's what happens when there is a sudden death in the family. I'll keep plugging away at it though and doing my best to focus on happy things.

Enjoying the crescent moon at sunset. #100happydays Day36

Fabric for my Starry Starry Night clown costume. Happy Day #37

Happy Day 35 Sempervivum Arachnoideum 'Cebenese"

All my life I've propagated succulents. Then when we moved from Anaheim to Lucerne Valley, CA, I brought some of my succulents with me to start off my collection at my new home. Only they all froze a few weeks later when temperatures dropped. I was very upset. Now, almost 2 years later I bought another succulent. It has a bunch of common names including hens and chickens and spider web plant and house leek. Right now it's on the bathroom shelf. I knocked off two bits in the truck, so I'll put those 2 in a pot outside and hope that they root. The care instructions say it can handle cold weather so hopefully I'll be able to keep it growing.

Care Instructions: Sempervivum Arachnoideum 'Cebenese"

Happy Day #35

Sempervivum Arachnoideum 'Cebenese"

Sempervivum Arachnoideum 'Cebenese" AKA Hens and Chickens, Spider Web Plant, House Leek

Happy Day 34 Apricots

These were my neighbor's. She asked us to pick them all while she was on vacation before the birds get them. It's a shame you have to pick them a little green, but the birds ate all her cherries!

Dream About a Tent City

Last night's dream was long and complicated so I'll just tell the end.

My boyfriend made some pretty shady friends and we got dragged along with them by plane to their home base. Once we landed, I was furious with the way my boyfriend had gotten so wrapped up with his new seedy friends that he completely ignored my well being. After we landed he was nowhere to be found. Finally I found him in a house on the property sitting on the living room floor making a balloon animal for someone. I told him I came to say good-bye. He just looked at me blankly.

So I left and started walking back to California. I was wearing flip-flops and only had the clothes on my back. Eventually I came to the shoreline where it was twilight and the water was blue green. There was a tent city/ shanty town stretched for miles and miles along the ocean. I tried to keep moving, wondering how long it would be until I was too hungry to keep going. People were milling about everywhere. Some were minors. The tent city was very colorful. But it was pretty much filth and squalor. Various people tried to befriend me or distract me. One girl said we could get a motel room for $25 a night. I said, "Are you kidding me, I don't have any money," and she wandered off to look for another sucker. I befriended a couple. I was rubbing his shoulders. A young boy came up and said something to them, then wandered off. I didn't hear, but they started fighting over him. The man had wanted him to stay to perform some sort of favors. The woman said no way, don't you know he has another boy with him? It sounded creepy to me so I moved on again. It was getting darker. I didn't know where I'd be staying so I just kept walking. The tent city stretched for miles and miles. I wondered if my boyfriend even realized I was gone. I wondered how far away California was. I wondered how I was going to survive.

A Strange Mother's Day

My life has been a whirlwind of trips to and from Monrovia to clear out the house my boyfriend's mom lived in (and subsequently died in). So much stuff it's backbreaking. Right now I'm at the point where I can't pick anything up off the floor because it hurts too much.

We are back home again still waiting on the death certificates before we can proceed. Once that happens we'll have to rent a moving van and storage facility, finish cleaning, and hopefully the buyer won't back out before all is said and done. We are selling the mobile home as is, but in her opinion that means whack $5000 off the price. But I'm not the executor and it's not my decision to make. I would have dumped her at the get-go and found a buyer who was easier to work with.

My real task is to lend moral support, clean as much as I can, and maybe sell stuff on Ebay down the road. My daughter helped by taking a lot of the furniture, toys, and doodads off of our hands.

Mostly I just wanted to vent because it's Mother's Day and Joyce was like a 2nd mom to me. So I'm either going to cry or get mad. Seems I only have 2 modes today.

At least we are at home today and it's a beautiful day. The tanagers are back. A chipmunk was just drinking from the water bowl. I need to go outside and fill them back up. The birdbath is empty. It's so hot the water evaporates. I guess I should move it into the shade.

100 Happy Days Challenge Day 33

I've decided to keep track of my #100happydays challenge here. I'm on number 33 and the other ones are posted to Twitter. Unfortunately Twitter scrolls, and I keep losing track of what number I'm on and it's tedious fishing through all my tweets trying to find the relevant number. Then there was a death in the family on the 14th and I haven't posted a happy day since! My daughter suggested I just start where I left off.

I subscribed to the website, which promised to make a book of all the photos, but since they never sent my daughter or I a confirmation e-mail I have no idea if I'm officially in the challenge or not. No matter, I'm doing it anyway to encourage myself to focus on happy things right now.

So here is my photo for the #100happydaychallenge #day33 We got an unexpected storm that dusted the mountains behind my house with snow.

Some Thoughts On Persistence

A thought on persistence and feeling good: Sometimes persistence can be a bad thing. For example, I'll start playing an online game and it feels good, so I play it more. At some point it stops being fun and yet I keep playing it. Because I have a value system that says persistence pays off and you shouldn't quit until you win or are done or whatever. I tend to keep hitting the flippers long after the thrill is gone. That applies to many things...lovers, crafts, food, careers. I need to learn to let go of things quicker. To maybe once an hour ask myself, 'Does this still feel good? If not, what can I do now that will make me happy?' So on that note, I'm going outside to knit, but only as long as it makes me happy.

Mushroom Biome on Minecraft

Mooshrooms on Minecraft