The Week That Was..

In spite of the fact that my hair smells all wood-smoky(from last night's fire at a barbecue), my coffee's gone cold and there isn't anything in the house for breakfast(and I am hungry...stomach all stretched out from the mountains of food I ate last night at the party), I think I'll list some things that made me happy this past week(besides my Friday night date and the good time spent with friends at the party last night

and R's Honor Society night).

Of course, there were plenty of things that made me unhappy this past week(and made me rant and rave) and I was even thinking of doing a blog about the two(!) headless squirrels we discovered in our yard one day(our seemingly innnocent and cute and fluffy kitty cat is really an evil, twisted squirrel brains devourer), but then I decided not to.

So, instead ---my Pollyanna-ish take on the last six days or so:

*First--I saw the grey "El Conquistador" El Camino parked in its usual spot at the town beach one morning as I drove in to work. I was starting to worry that something happened to the older man who drives it because I hadn't seen it for months and months. I wrote about my uneasy fascination with this car in another blog (read it here), but I think I have to say I have changed my mind about those cars and I now smile when I see them(there is another El Camino--a brown one--parked in front of a house at the top of our road now , too).

*Yesterday, as I drove up the hill out of our neighborhood there were two children--a boy and girl between the ages of say, seven and ten, flying down the hill on their bikes and dressed in a way that made me think they were out of the seventies. I had a little flashback to my own "70's" childhood for some reason when I saw them and I had a wave of happy nostalgia come over me.

*We finally got our tickets to go and see Guster when they come to Newport in August. I was also pleasantly surprised that R still wants to come with us to this, so it's three tickets for Guster. Not only am I looking forward to that, but also am getting excited about the way the whole summer ahead seems to be lining up, with some trips and concerts planned, and all the unplanned moments ahead, too--whatever they turn out to be. I live in a place where the summers are near perfection, and now, if only I didn't have to work.... ;-)

*I have two more days off after this one--what a luxury! So far, I haven't been too "productive" with my time off--spent Saturday in a kind of haze, not doing too much other than a little garden tweaking and made an orzo salad for the party we went to. But it is a great feeling knowing that whatever I don't do today, I'll still have more time (to do it, or not do it).

* The lilies-of-the-valley out front are blooming!

*Another happy thing--a happy discovery: Armenian String Cheese. Someone I work with made me try it. I told him I didn't like most cheese and was really trying to get out of tasting it, but he insisted I try it. And...I loved it! It's very mild with a good texture and no smell
(I can't eat any cheese that has a smell to it), with little black nigella seeds in it--had never heard of a cheese with seeds in it before.
It's great on a platter with some pita bread or crackers, some Kalamata olives or jarred artichoke hearts.
I would eat that now, I am so hungry!
We have cereal and milk in the house, and some frozen waffles so I could eat that. But I am in the mood for something like Huevos Rancheros and a big pile of home fried potatoes and cooked for me by someone else.
Which means going out to breakfast.
Which means first showering to get the wood smoke smell off me.
Which also means having to wait longer for R and Mr. F. to get up.
They are still sleeping and snoring(in Mr. F's case). We got home around 1:00 in the morning, but for some reason I still woke up at my usual time at 6:30 (by the irritating sound of squirrels fighting under our bedroom window--maybe they would keep quiet if they knew about the squirrel killin' feline that lives here) and have been up out of bed since 7:00.