Seals

There are seals in San Diego. They have taken over a children's beach in La Jolla, a little ways north of downtown.

They are fast as fish in the water, but they look pretty lazy on land!

By popular request

Here are some pictures of pregnant me with Joe in San Diego. He was there for three weeks on business, so we had time to explore together on the weekends. It was great.

I look considerably rounder in real life, for some reason... so if you really want to see what I look like, you'll have to come visit!

I think this is a cypress

The Pacific Ocean in La Jolla

Pools and tidepools

Sandstone + ocean = fun

The lion is stuffed

Under a rare torrey pine tree (they grow on seacliffs!)

More torrey pines

Joe (the white speck) on a ridge in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Near some old desert petroglyphs

At the first Spanish mission in California

Wow

Oh wow. What a loving woman.

Back and smiling

So I know only a few people in the neighborhood... more of them keep to themselves or to other circles. And I am starting to be okay with that.

That's because I finally DO have a few neighbors I know. The yard sale was the turning point, actually. It gave us an excuse to chat with people, learn (and re-learn) a few names. I had a really good feeling about the family from almost right across the street, so when Joe and I were gone in San Diego for more than a week, we gave them the key and the older little girls watered our plants. The mom said I didn't have to pay them, but I did. What's the going rate for five sessions of plant-watering, anyway? I got a hug back from one of them, aww.

They were coming over only every few days, though, so even though I asked them to bring in the newspapers, the house started to look a bit unoccupied. Our lawn-mowing neighbor from up the street noticed the papers piling up, stuck them inside our storm door, and mowed our front lawn again!

There are a few other people I know well enough to chat with on the street, but I'm starting to think that what helps the most is having at least a couple good neighbors -- people who will notice you (or your absence) and help out if they can.

Now I just need to finish learning their names. The family almost right across the street has four children, and they ALL have long, unusual names that start with the same letter. One day I'm going to ask their mom for a cheat-sheet.

Nice neighbors make me happy. So does an evening without a huge downpour. I even got the back lawn mowed.

Parenting II

We had ... (counting on my fingers) ... 17 people over at our house on Sunday for one of Joe's family potlucks. Everyone brought too much good food and the house was full of conversation. Nieces and nephews ran around our yard and played in a raucous game of Go Fish! in the living room. Just about every dish in our house was dirty by the end of the night, in addition to a small stack of paper plates, and the compost bin was full of corn cobs and watermelon rinds. It was good. 

After we waved our goodbyes and finished up the first phase of cleanup in the kitchen, though, Joe said he's getting a better idea of what it will be like to have our own children. 

A pint-sized greasy handprint left on the wall

I guess it seems different when it's our own carpet that the toddlers toss their food on, when it's our yard where they're sitting down onto my catsup-covered plate and tracking Play-Doh into the grass (even though that's a pretty good place to track the Play-Doh, in the general scheme of things). Joe gave the older kids oil pastels to color with, and now we can't seem to get all the pastel off our tablecloth. This is okay, Joe said, since we can just make that table our coloring spot. And we love the kids so much. But we do have the sense that once our home is inhabited by little ones, it will be a very different kind of home. And I imagine that might take some adjusting.

Cleaning house

Just listed 30-some items on Freecyle, hoping someone wants the things we no longer want (mostly yardsale leftovers). This usually ends with no one wanting the stuff we were using just recently, which I always take somewhat personally. But maybe things will go differently this time!

Meanwhile, here is my favorite freecycle post in a long time:

Wanted - couple of hens - any area

I have a little bantam rooster that is lonely. He lives in the barn with my
goats. I have tried grouping him up with my other chickens but they ganged up on
him and beat him up. So after nurseing him back to health I put him by himself.
But he seems lonely. So if you have 1 or 2 hens, young or old, that you would
like to give up, I am sure that would make "Henry" very happy. "

I thought I knew how to garden

I was talking to my mom about my garden this morning and feeling pretty hopeful. Even though a few of the plants I planted had died, I'd planted other ones in their place and figured I'd learned lessons for next year.

What I forgot was to go out and shade some of my seedlings from the sun. This is not something that's usually necessary, but I didn't get my wimpy seedlings very used to the sun, and they have been frying in it. So I just remembered now and went out to survey any damage.

What I found was half-empty beds. A few seedlings that were doing fine yesterday were gone completely -- and I found their shriveled remnants, uprooted, elsewhere in the garden. One of the strongest ones had its stem snapped - by what? - and it will finish dying in the next few hours. Some others were sun bleached and dead of natural causes, including a couple I planted just yesterday. Just a few look okay.

I'm not sure what happened. What would uproot my plants? I'm going to plant a few more homegrown seedlings this evening and buy some better ones to fill out the beds at the farmer's market on Saturday. And maybe the squash seeds I planted will come up stronger, since they've known nothing but the outdoors.

The blackberries and raspberries are my consolation. They look happy, it seems.

Haha

Oh, this made me laugh.

But if I was his mom and knew about half those things, I'd about die of fright.

How am I ever going to stand having kids?

I myself have survived many a ride around the block in the back of a pickup truck. But unlike my sisters, I was a bit scared all the time. I'm such a wimp.

Wowee

Going out to mow the lawn a little while ago, I stopped with my toes at the screen door as a four-foot-long snake slithered past. Eep!

Wildlife doesn't scare me generally, but snakes that big do make my heart pound a bit, especially if I'm not expecting them.

It looked like a black rat snake (that is, black), but I'm really not sure what it was. In any case, it's not poisonous and probably something that will keep the mouse population down a bit, which is fine by me as long as it stays out of the house and preferably out of sight.

In other news, Joe and I have had fun mail and visitors lately, most of them of the non-reptile variety. And most of Joe's big family is coming over for dinner Sunday to celebrate various birthdays. Whee!

Overflown

It looks like we have a hummingbird living next door, with its nest is at the top of a sweet gum tree. It likes to sit on  the top of a tall, bare branch, surveying the neighborhood and making the occasional loop-de-loop.