Kibbles and Bits

The purple bump on my eyelid is still there. Still purple, still bumpy. Still have no idea what it is. If it were a bug bite or pimple or something, it would have gone away. Maybe it's the bubonic plague!

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I found a necklace to wear with my dress. It looks kind of like this.

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When we get home from CA there will be a big ol' wooden privacy fence in the backyard instead of broken chain link. Our landlords were over last night taking down the tree at the fence line and talking with the guy who will build the fence and all that kind of stuff. We're hoping it will help cut down on the Local Businessmen and Loyal Clientele using our yard as a way to get from the alley to the street or vice versa.

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Said landlords have a 3-year-old, and this was the first time that they brought him down to Denver with them since we moved in. He's very tall and pretty articulate for a 3-year-old, and his favorite thing to do was ask "why" about everything. He played off and on during the evening with our next-door neighbors' 5-year-old (they are the same height!) and at one point they decided to terrorize our kitties. Our cats are not used to small children, having never been around them. Petra mostly runs and hides and Loki hangs out for a bit and will consent to play a little, but Kayla (the 5 y/o) likes to pick him up around the middle so that his legs dangle nearly to the ground. He weighs about 14 pounds and I doubt she even weighs 3 times that, and it clearly makes him uncomfortable. Last night I had them give Loki treats (he even did his trick for those treats. Good kitty!) and we found some toys to throw and dangle, and then I redirected them to something a little less terrorizing. Here is a sample of our conversation.

Landlords' kid (LK): where is the kitty?
MLE: She's hiding
LK: But why?
MLE: Because she isn't used to being around little kids
LK: Why?
MLE: Because we don't have any kids
LK: Why?
MLE: (thinking to myself that it's annoying when my mother and Hulk's mother ask this question, but LK is 3 years old and clearly isn't feening for grandbabies) We just don't. Petra doesn't feel like playing right now.
LK: OK.
MLE: (redirects LK to Tangle toy)

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Speaking of parents with agendas, Hulk got a slideshow of photos emailed to him yesterday from his parents. They were out visiting his aunt and uncle in CA last weekend and said aunt and uncle have recently become grandparents of twins. Most of the photos were of Hulk's parents holding one or both small things and looking forlornly at the camera. (I'm only exaggerating a little). Hulk's brother had the best response: "So, this should take care of that reproductive pressure for a while, huh?"

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Our tomato plants are finally starting to give us delicious tomatoes. The middle plant exploded over all the other plants (tomatoes, peppers, herbs) and has about 80 growing tomatoes on it. Some of them are as big as my fist. We got the first two ripe ones off Monster Tomato Plant a couple of nights ago and had BLTs for dinner (My B was Turkey B). Fantastic. Nothing like home grown tomatoes. We got another smaller one last night and it added to our poached wild salmon over veggies/greens with pecans, smoked gouda and nectarine dinner salad last night. Ah, summer. The herbs on the fish and the red bell pepper also came freshly picked from our garden. The crackhead thing may suck, but I'm loving our new place - having a garden goes a long way to make up for crack smoke coming in the bedroom window at 2 AM.

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My high school reunion is in 2 days. Two! Ack! And we have some pretty kick-ass plans for the rest of the trip, despite Monkey being unable to join us (it's a bummer, monks, but we may be in SoCal the 3rd weekend of September. I'll keep you posted). I'm going to shop at H&M if it kills me, Hulk is going to nerd out in the comic book store, we have a sushi date and we're going to the ocean with my mom and sister and sister's BF.

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Sister's BF surprised her with a trip to Greece for her birthday. Well done, sir. Well done. They go for 10 days in October.

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I mentioned before that 2 of my cousins are currently gestating and another one (my middle sister's age) is getting married in September. Hulk and I just got an invitation to the wedding (I guess nobody's freaked out too badly that we live together and are UNMARRIED, the SHAME!). It will be a 10:30 AM Jesus wedding on a military base (cousin's dad is ex-career Navy). We're considering going, if only to see a lot of family and friends. It's a no-kids wedding; I wonder how well that is going over with my reproductively blessed extended family (We are descended from Catholics and the married cousins that are my age are popping them out like nobody's business).

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I'm getting my hairs cut in less than 1 hour! Woohoo! And then we go to the airport, and then we get on a plane, and there will be no snakes on that plane or Hulk will go ballistic, and then we will land in SF eventually and have Ethernopian food with QIR. Kickass.