Before I start this post, let me briefly encourage you to do something useful for Memorial Day today, such as take a specific action that in some small way could reduce the likelihood that future young men and women will have to go off to war. There is no point in remembering, if we do not use that knowledge to improve the future.
It’s hard, isn’t it, to even think of something to do?
One thing we could do is encourage each other to not get stuck into bipartisan, us/them, righteous vs. evil dichotomies, by (wait for it…) saying something nice about the OTHER political side or the OTHER president (or recent ex-president) or the people who elected them.
If that doesn’t sound like it is enough to create world peace, that’s because it isn’t. But how many of us even do that much? When is the last time we said something nice about the other side? How are we going to learn that we aren’t always right and justified in our beliefs if we can’t even do that? And how are we going to avoid war if we don’t understand that we aren’t always right?
Another thing you can do is send some money to a less fortunate part of the globe. Or another part of your town. Suffering is always destabilizing. So is inequality.
Ok, now I hope you’ll enjoy our pictures from our really pleasant Memorial Day weekend. Originally we were going to spend Memorial Day Weekend camping in the Chiricahua in Arizona. But John unexpectedly needed to be in New Mexico immediately before and immediately after Memorial Day for work. We didn’t want to miss our camping trip, so we drove our camper van to New Mexico and went camping at Mesa de Cuba instead.
This is the same spot where we spent last Memorial Day Weekend. I was on chemo then and couldn’t hike. I was excited to go back and do the hikes I missed last year. This time I felt better and hiked some, but I still couldn’t hike very far because of a migraine. Ah well, who needs to hike when you have a reclining camp chair? 🙂
The migraine started the morning before our drive out to New Mexico last Tuesday, and I continued to have it for most of the week. I can’t really blame the New Mexico elevation because the migraine started in Tucson.
We did have unhealthy air one day, shortly before leaving Tucson. I don’t know if that’s what triggered the migraine or not. I couldn’t smell any smoke so I assume it was a dust storm. It didn’t seem very bad; I’ve definitely seen worse in Albuquerque. I wouldn’t even have even noticed the poor air except now I have a fancy new phone that tells me everything I didn’t know I wanted to know!
I usually get migraines whenever there is a storm. It might be due to the drop in barometric pressure. Regardless of what initially triggered the migraine, I suppose the traveling didn’t help. I continued to have the migraine through the week and into about half of the holiday weekend.
However, we still really enjoyed our camping trip. It was warm and relaxing.
I felt better the next day, and we did get out hiking.
Hahaha, lol, yes, I usually hike with shirt on! (Because backpacks aren’t very comfortable against bare skin.) In fact, I often hike in long sleeves for protection from the sun. We had just stopped to cool off. It was hot!
We were originally going to spend the entire weekend camping, but we left on Sunday afternoon due to an impending storm. The roads out there are a fine silt/sand which can turn into impassible mud in a thunderstorm. We had a very nice trip and didn’t mind going home a little early.
Now we’re having a quiet Memorial Day at home. This morning went to Jackalope, which is my favorite store in Albuquerque. https://jackalope.com/
There are probably similar stores in Tucson but we haven’t discovered them yet because we had been avoiding stores during the pandemic.
At Jackalope we bought a wooden bench, a mirror with a Mexican tile and tin frame, and some textiles for the house in Tucson.
It’s a good thing both houses are about the same style, otherwise it would be an amusing mess when we consolidate again someday. Can you imagine if we had bought a place near the Puget Sound in Washington and filled it with woodsy bears and salmon fishing decor? That would not go well with our desert southwest items from Albuquerque, lol.
These appliqués were hand sewn and very cute.
I would enjoy making something like that myself someday, but it would take a ton of time.
They were huge! Big enough to use as a bedspread, although I was thinking of folding them to display on the wall. In New Mexico people often display quilts folded and draped over short wooden ladders called pueblo ladders or kiva ladders, so I might do that.
We did get some pictures hung in Tucson just before we left. We’ve discovered it’s easier to tape cardboard to the wall to help decide where to put the pictures, than it is to realize it’s wrong after all the nails are in. We didn’t bother every time, but this large wall has been a challenge.
Doesn’t the cardboard look wonderful? It’s the newest style! Lol.
My mom painted this picture:
It used to be in a dark frame and I rarely had anywhere light & bright enough for a dark picture. But I reframed it and the white frame highlights the white flowers in the center. I’m much happier with it now.
We’ve also bought a few houseplants so it’s starting to feel like a home. It was pretty bare there for awhile. (Not to mention the blue walls! Omg! We’re so glad the walls aren’t blue anymore!)
This, by the way, is John’s office, which is located between the kitchen and the garage, with a sliding door to the back porch. Where else would a man want to be? (Other than camping?)
After we got back from Jackalope we sat on our covered porch and listened to the thunderstorm.
I love covered back porches in warm desert areas that don’t have a lot of bugs. It’s so fun to be out in the rain without getting cold and wet! I’m super lucky we have a covered porch at both houses. It’s pretty much where I spend most of my time during the day – whichever house we’re at!
In my cancer support group we recently discussed what stressors may have happened in our lives prior to our diagnosis with cancer. It’s generally unknown what specific situations may have caused individual cancers. But we do know that cancerous cells are circulating in all of us, all of the time. It’s up to our immune system to take care of them. Why our immune systems sometimes become overwhelmed and the cancers take hold, we don’t know. But we do know that immune system health is clearly tied to a variety of stressors in life.
One of the stressors we discussed in class is the ACE study. ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that childhood trauma is clearly linked to poor health outcomes, even much later in adult life. The study looked for 3 types of childhood abuse (psychological, physical & sexual) and 4 types of household dysfunction (substance abuse, mental illness, violence and criminal behavior). It then correlated those experiences with subsequent physical and mental health issues in adulthood resulting in statically decreased life expectancies.
Of course as well all know, correlation does not imply causation. Just because something happened first and something else happened second, and they are statistically related, does not mean the first thing caused the second thing. But correlation is by itself important and interesting, even in the absence of causation. Correlation does imply some sort of common risk factor, even if causation is unknown.
Here’s some key findings from that study, “More than half of respondents reported at least one, and one-fourth reported ≥ 2 [two or more] categories of childhood exposures. We found a graded relationship between the number of categories of childhood exposure and each of the adult health risk behaviors and diseases that were studied. Persons who had experienced four or more categories of childhood exposure, compared to those who had experienced none, had 4-to 12-fold increased health risks for alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempt; a 2- to 4-fold increase in smoking, poor self-rated health, ≥ 50 [50 or more] sexual intercourse partners, and sexually transmitted disease; and a 1.4- to 1.6-fold increase in physical inactivity and severe obesity. The number of categories of adverse childhood exposures showed a graded relationship to the presence of adult diseases including ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, and liver disease. The seven categories of adverse childhood experiences were strongly interrelated and persons with multiple categories of childhood exposure were likely to have multiple health risk factors later in life.“
If you’re curious what your ACE score is, there are lots of places on the internet you can take the survey. And you don’t have to actually submit your answers. In fact, here’s the questions; there’s only 10 of them, you can keep track of your points in your head or on a little scrap of paper. You get one point per question you answer in the affirmative, for a total possible of 10 points.
While you were growing up, during your first 18 years of life:
Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? …or… Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
Yes
No
Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? …or… Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?
Yes
No
Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever… Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?
Yes
No
Did you often or very often feel that … No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?
Yes
No
Did you often or very often feel that … You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? or Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?
Yes
No
Were your parents ever separated or divorced?
Yes
No
Was your mother or stepmother: Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or Ever repeatedly hit at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?
Yes
No
Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic or who used street drugs?
Yes
No
Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide?
“ACEs are common…nearly two-thirds (64%) of adults have at least one.
They cause adult onset of chronic disease, such as cancer and heart disease, as well as mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence.
ACEs don’t occur alone….if you have one, there’s an 87% chance that you have two or more.
The more ACEs you have, the greater the risk for chronic disease, mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence…People with an ACE score of 6 or higher are at risk of their lifespan being shortened by 20 years.”
Twenty years. I first heard about this study a long time ago, and I’ve sometimes wondered, what if some people with high (poor) scores from childhood managed somehow during early adulthood to get off to a fairy good start as adults anyway? What if they kept their noses clean, managed to stay off of drugs and alcohol, went to college, got a good job, exercised, kept their weight down, never smoked, did all the right things…do the shortened lifespan statistics still apply to that cohort? Maybe to a diminished extent?
Good thing we canceled our trip to Florida! The weather this week turned out to be worse than it had even been forecast.
Rain and enough wind and waves to trigger a small craft advisory (yep, that would have been us).
“Action Recommended: Avoid the subject event” LOL, yep!
“Inexperienced boaters, especially those with smaller vessels, should avoid operating in these conditions.” Oh yeah, tell me about it. Boaters (of any experience level) with smaller vessels should also avoid attempting to get a good night’s sleep in those conditions!
We’re still disappointed, but so relieved to be sitting outside, enjoying our dinner on our back patio in the shade in the 90 degree weather, watching the wait, what? Large seabirds coming in for a landing right here in our swimming pool? No…they’re ducks. Average-sized ducks. In our pool!
Hey! No ducks in the pool!
I guess we got our views of aquatic birds from the comforts of home!
Sadly, we have canceled our trip to Florida at the last minute. We had towed our boat to Florida in February and left it on a storage lot there, hoping to be able to regularly fly out once we were vaccinated.
The plan was to take the boat out on the water for several days this coming week. The experience is a somewhat primitive – sort of like camping on the water. It’s a tiny boat, only about 20 feet long. Boats of that size are generally considered day sailors.
There is a small cabin down below where we can sleep on narrow bunks, and we’ve installed a composting toilet. But that’s about it; it’s not even big enough to stand up straight down there when the hatch is closed. And it’s barely big enough to squeeze past the keel that comes up in the middle of the floor. Once you’ve managed to maneuver yourself onto the toilet you can’t sit up straight – you have to do whatever you’re doing leaned forward, with one hand bracing yourself so you don’t fall forward onto the retractable keel that’s inches from your face while the boat rocks wildly in the waves. Try explaining that to an emergency room technician – “Uh, I did a face-plant onto a keel when I was trying to take a crap in a thunderstorm…”
Like camping, most of your time is spent outside, so the weather really matters. And even when you’re down below sleeping, you’re still very subject to the weather.
Unfortunately, the weather forecast is for wind and thunderstorms. And not just for a few hours in the afternoons of a day or two. We looked at the hour-by-hour forecast for the whole week, and the wind is steady through the whole night, every night, and the scattered thunderstorms are 24/7 for the entire week.
Here’s the hourly report for just one day – the other days are similar.
Those wind speeds are actually good if you’ve got a decent sized boat and you’re trying to get somewhere. But our boat is small. We’d certainly survive the trip, assuming we weren’t hit by lightning (sailboats have big metal masts sticking way above everything else, like a big middle finger to the sky). Chances are we wouldn’t actually be hit by lightning, but I’d be worried about it the whole time.
And those everlasting winds! Winds of that speed aren’t going to lay us flat, but they’re going to cause chop. The waves wouldn’t swamp the boat, but it wouldn’t be pleasant. The water would be choppy all night long. The boat would be rocking and rolling and the rigging would be whistling and banging and clanging non-stop, every night. It makes it hard to sleep.
We’d be out there in the non-stop wind and chop, tossing on a tiny boat, listening to the thunder and the wind in the rigging, thinking, what are we doing here? Are we crazy? Why did we spend all that time and money and effort to subject ourselves to this? We saw the weather report. We knew better than this.
The whole point of the trip is the beautiful water, the warm sun, the birds, the peaceful solitude, paddling around exploring the mangroves in the kayak, and fishing quietly in the evening.
None of that happens during thunderstorms!
It was still very hard to bite the bullet and cancel the trip. It was our last chance for the season. The thunderstorms start in the spring and build intensity through the summer, peaking in July or August. Not to mention summer hurricanes. Now we don’t expect to make it out to Florida until the weather has calmed down this fall or winter.
Meanwhile, now what? No Florida blog posts. I’m sorry. I’ll have to think of something else to write about. The next two weeks loom empty…what will it be?
OMG, OMG, I just rescued a baby bunny from the pool. OMG, I’m still shaking. It’s alive, it ran off. OMG!
I wasn’t even outside; I can’t believe I saw it in time! I was was walking around tidying the house when I paused to bounce a minute to a particularly catchy segment of a song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At2D0NGfGjk) and glanced outside to see something struggling in the pool! Again! It was only 3 days ago I rescued a struggling lizard, and only a few days before that when I found a lizard too late to rescue.
I immediately assumed another lizard, but as I ran outside to grab my skimmer, I could see it was too large for a lizard. A gila monster? As I got closer I thought for a second that it was a huge frog – smooth and round with spindly legs. Clearly it was in trouble. “Oh My God, I’m coming, I’m coming, hang on!”, I shouted (helpfully, I’m sure).
At the last moment, as I struggled to catch it in my skimmer, I realized it was a small bunny. In my haste to get it out of the pool, I almost threw it too hard against the nearby wall.
It was alive, and sat against the wall and stared at me for a moment, too stunned to move. I turned and dashed inside to get my phone to take a picture. I dashed back out and it was still sitting there. When it saw me coming, it started to run.
I was afraid I was going to scare it right back into the pool! I regretted going back outside for it’s picture.
Don’t run back into the pool, little bunny!
But he swung wide of the pool, and dashed under the fence toward the prickly pear cactus where I’ve seen the rabbits before.
Whew! Lizards in the pool, phones in the pool, now bunnies in the pool. What am I going to do with that pool? Now I know for sure – that pool is a hazard for the local wildlife!
I’m not sure what to do about it, although I was already thinking about making our fence rabbit-proof. Once I start planting things, I don’t want rabbits eating my garden. The prickly pear, where I see them a lot, is outside the fence along the side yard – I’m happy to have them live there.
Why do they end up in the pool? Why don’t they just drink from the fountain in the front yard?
Oh no! The fountain is empty! Hot and dry.
I’m so sorry, bunny! Here we go, it’s gurgling again.
Poor bunny, traumatized for life, because I forgot to fill my fountain. John, we need to get a drip line on that fountain!
Water – the life force of the desert. For good or bad, we’ve got critters depending on us.
It was well after dark; bedtime. John was away on a business trip. I really should have already been in bed, but I wanted a cup of hot tea to take to bed with me.
Once in the kitchen, I talked myself into fixing a little, half-cup of hot chocolate instead of tea. It had been a long day after all. I got the chocolate from the cabinet and turned on the teapot for hot water. I stood by the counter, sleepy, lost in drifting thought, waiting for the teapot.
Suddenly there was an enormous crashing to my right. Before I could even turn to look, I realized something was attacking me! Aah! Aah! Aah! It hurt! Or wait…it didn’t hurt, it was cold and wet and in my eyes! Or wait…what? Wet? I was being sprayed by someone – or something. Everywhere!
A second round of crashing commenced as I ran toward the far end of the kitchen and toward a possible escape route out the back door. I turned to look behind me and there, piled all over the floor below the pantry were cans; dozens of cans of soda and La Croix sparkling water. I looked down and realized I was drenched in soda.
A diet Dr. Pepper had attacked me! There was soda everywhere. In my hair, on my dress, my legs and feet, and all over the kitchen. Soda on the cabinets, soda on the wall, soda on the ceiling, soda 8 feet away in the dining room.
Why, oh why, did I decide to have a cup of tea at bedtime? It took me 45 minutes to clean all the soda out of the pantry, and off the cabinets, the wall, the ceiling, and the floor. And then I had to shower before I could go to bed.
I had pictures for you, but then I took my phone for a dunk in the pool before I downloaded them, so I don’t have pictures anymore. It’s been a bit of a week!
As I no longer have any pictures of exploding soda cans, here’s a more serene take on current life here in Tucson to brighten your day. I took this picture of a nearby neighbor’s house when I was out on a walk recently. Those oranges look so tempting!
Happy Mother’s Day! Here’s a post for those of you moms who like garden pictures! For the rest of you, I tried to make a few clever comments here and there, but mostly it’s gonna be a yawner, lol.
As you’ve probably noticed, John and I both really enjoy botanical gardens. We wisely went last weekend before Mother’s Day, to beat the Mother’s Day crowds and to give me time to put together this post for Mother’s Day.
OK – I’m joking! We just happened to go last weekend, lol. It would be a lovely place to spend Mother’s Day and now you can imagine you are there.
We were particularly excited about our trip to the Tucson Botanical Garden because it showcases all the different plants we could grow at our new house.
First up; blooming cactus!
Then things briefly got weird:
This next one I’ve named, “Juxtaposition”.
Now that’s what’s called thriving in a tight spot.
I took more pictures of signage than usual, because in this case I am looking for ideas for my own garden (unlike when we visited the Miami Botanical Garden in February – I didn’t bother to try to learn the names of those plants because I’ll never be able to grow those)! These I can grow. In theory at least!
Years ago Laura bought me a star jasmine, which I kept in a pot and moved all over the country for several years, bringing it inside in the winter and putting it back outside in the summer. It always wanted to wind itself around nearby objects and get established. Every year I had to remove the twining vines to accommodate our wandering lifestyle. Finally, I’m going to plant some star jasmine in the ground and it can climb and twine all it wants.
I probably will not be incorporating large artworks into my own garden, unless I suddenly become an amazing artist myself.
Hey, I could practice creating murals on our freshly painted garden walls!
It’s going to be a very long time before our garden looks anything like what I’m imagining. That sad bougainvillea nearly died in a container before we finally got it planted. John hastily put a short drip line in before his most recent trip to Albuquerque. I’m looking forward to having a good drip system across the whole yard. The cycad (sago palm) on the left got badly frosted in Albuquerque right before we left last fall, and spent all winter a depressing dead-gold color. It’s since rebounded.
Speaking of walls, maybe I could do this!
Ok, maybe I shouldn’t paint the wall, or it will look like we released 3-year-olds with finger paints. This is one incredible wall though.
The artistic signs also include helpful hints about desert gardening:
I didn’t take pictures of the herbs; they aren’t showy and I already know which ones I want to plant.
The shady garden section of the botanical garden is a favorite of mine. I wish my yard already had big beautiful trees. If a tree gets planted in 2021, will it someday get big and beautiful even if Kristina’s not still there to see it? Maybe not but nonetheless, I plan to plant trees.
A couple of times I took pictures of the signs and didn’t even bother to take a picture of the tree. Seedless grapefruit! And it was big and healthy. I don’t care what it looks like, we’re getting one of those!
I also failed to get a picture of this Jujube, but anything called a Ziziphus jujuba sounds good to me!
Everything and their brother is called “myrtle”, but I liked this one; the leaves and branches grow in unusually distinctive patterns.
Here’s a whole bunch of shady garden shots:
Nasturtiums! I’ll never have that much shade – or water.
And Columbine! Also a shade loving flower that does well in cold climates. I’m not going to even try to grow it in my yard. Look at that massive tree over it!
And lastly, a riot of color at the end:
Oh, and me with an incredible artichoke! Totally adding artichokes to my list for my garden! Except that one plant would take up a large percentage of my growing space.
This final picture wasn’t taken at the botanical garden, it was in a park near the university where I had lunch with a new friend the following day.
It looks like a desert willow…? We have those in Albuquerque – nice sized bushes, slow to leaf out in the spring, with cheerful pink flowers for the birds & bees. This plant looks the same, except this is no bush! Is this huge, gorgeous tree really a desert willow? Wow!
On Monday morning I found a poor dead lizard at the bottom of the pool. I fished it out with my skimmer on a long pole, and set him on the warm rocks in the flower border. I knew he was dead but I still half expected him to warm up and run off. I was sad when he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He had probably been dead for hours.
It got me thinking about whether there were any tricks to keep lizards from drowning in pools. We already have somewhere else for them to drink – we have a little, plug-in recirculating fountain in our front yard. But maybe the backyard lizards don’t venture that far, and we should put a fountain in our backyard too.
Lizards don’t belong in pools. Either do iPhones. This morning I went on a short jog, fairly early in the morning before it got too hot (yes, it is now officially hot in Tucson). As soon as I got back from my jog, I started my daily task of cleaning the pool (which I currently enjoy, although I suppose it may someday get old and tedious).
Today was a special day because I had invited my new friend and neighbor, Tish, and her sister Marcia, over to use our pool in the afternoon. I first met Tish when we got home from our trip to Florida. She stopped by and told us she had unplugged our fountain in our front yard while we were gone. We had neglected to turn it off before leaving for Florida for an entire month, and eventually all the water evaporated – at which point the water pump started making a horrendous noise as it tried to pump dry air. Tish is the sort of person who does what needs to be done, and our fountain needed turned off! This was before she even knew us.
Since the fountain pump incident, I have frequently run into Tish and her dog Basil while out walking or jogging. We’ve gotten acquainted, and earlier this week she told me her sister is visiting from Mexico. Tish’s pool isn’t heated and the water is still quite chilly, so I invited them over to hang out in our pool this afternoon. It turns out Tish is a champion swimmer (literally), so now I get free swimming lessons!
Anyway, because I had company coming, in addition to simply skimming the pool and plopping in the robot, I got the big pool vacuum out. The robot vacuum does a great job with leaves and debris (and is very cute) but it doesn’t get the silt. For that, I need to connect vacuum hoses so that the pool pump will send the silt through the pool filter. I was just getting it set up when suddenly the pool vacuum handle got away from me and slid down onto the top step in the pool.
I stepped onto the first step, just up to my ankles in water to retrieve the pool vacuum handle – when suddenly the vacuum rolled another foot and the handle scootched just out of my reach. So I stepped down onto the second step, now knee deep, and the dang thing hopped down to the third step, heading toward the deep end one step ahead of me. So here I am playing hop, skip and jump, chasing a runaway vacuum leading me down the steps into my pool. I did not want to let it roll any further, all the way into the deep section, because then I’d have to go diving for it. I was in my jogging clothes – shorts and a tank top – so I figured, what the heck, I don’t mind getting a little wet, it’s already hot at 8 AM. So I waded in.
And that’s how my iPhone went for a morning swim. It was in my pocket! I had just walked into my pool with an iPhone in my pocket. Not my best moment!
Luckily it was a very old phone that I ruined in about 5-10 seconds early this morning (after my first cup of coffee but before my second cup of coffee). John and I had been planning to buy new iPhones, but we’re also planning to go boating in Florida again soon, and we thought, “Huh. Brand new iPhones on a tiny, dingy-sized sailboat – not a good idea.” So luckily, I didn’t walk into my pool with a brand new iPhone. Instead, I walked into my pool with my old iPhone.
But I now had no phone. John is currently in Albuquerque, so I couldn’t even use his phone. I will not bore you with the rest of today’s technological headaches. Let me just say that it’s much easier to order a new iPhone if your old one is still working. It’s not possible to compete security code text verifications with a dead phone. At one point this morning, John was talking with me on Facetime on my computer while he was simultaneously talking with Apple or ATT on his phone, when all of a sudden I spotted a lizard in the pool!
Another lizard had fallen into my pool! This one was alive and on his back, struggling. I did not want him to drown! I ran over there with my computer still in my hand, and grabbed the pool skimmer with my other hand to fish the lizard out as fast as possible. I leaned over the pool, with my computer waving around out over the water while I tried to scoop up a panicked lizard. All of a sudden I had a clear vision of my computer falling into the pool, OMG, I’m going to dunk my computer in the water. On the same morning as my iPhone. That would have been a story. How would I ever have explained that? Losing both an iPhone and a newish Mac into the pool on the same morning?
But never mind the computer, I was determined to save that dang lizard. I scooped the lizard out of the water and set him on the warm concrete. He sat there on the skimmer and looked at me for awhile. He must have been too cold or scared to move. But his head was up and I could see him breathing.
John was apparently so focused on the conversation with Apple or ATT that he had not noticed my video footage clearly indicating that my computer was at that moment waving around in the air like crazy in the vicinity of the pool. In fact, if he had glanced at the video feed, he would not have even seen me; instead, he would have had an alarming view of an expanse of pool water, only inches from the screen. However, he was intent on getting done what we had to get done with Apple and ATT. So that is why he never knew the drama that was occurring on my end of the line; how close we came to losing the new Mac and how I saved the life of a lizard today.
I also managed to navigate across town to an Apple store without a navigation app (because, no phone) to buy a new phone. Turns out my last backup to the cloud was in December, so I lost a bunch of recent Tucson numbers, but at least I was able to download most of my contacts.
And I made it home in time to have a great visit with Tish and Marcia!
The moral of this story is: backup your phone before you take it swimming.
I’m trying to catch up on my posts and I can’t remember if I posted this or not – we have another new name – Callan! Serenity (previously Darren), is now going by the first name “Callan” for anything professional, and still using the nickname “Serenity” with family. Their pronouns continue to be they/them. I’m not sure if I’ll use the name Callan or Serenity on this blog (Callan says either one is fine with them).
For this post today I’m using “Callan” because I want to get used to using the name. It’s also a less confusing name to use when I’m talking to new friends and acquaintances who have never met Serenity and haven’t been following the story of them identifying as non-binary.
The name “Callan” is a Scottish/Irish name that means “Rock.” It’s mostly used as a man’s name, although it’s not common in our country and doesn’t have a strong masculine connotation for most of us. In addition, one of Laura’s best friends during their childhood was a girl named Kehlen, so we are familiar with variants of that name being either gender. At least that’s what it reminds me of. If I’m not careful I’m going to accidentally call them Kehlen instead of Callan.
In other exciting news, Callan now has a girlfriend, whose name is Chirstina. (Her name is with the “i” before the “r”, similar to the name Kirsten.) Congratulations to them both! I’ve never seen Callan this happy before, which is wonderful to see.
Chirstina lives with Callan in Boise, but has been temporarily relocated by her company to Colorado during this extended tax season (she is a CPA). While Callan was visiting her out there a couple of weeks ago, they encountered a surprise spring blizzard on the way to the hotel from the Denver airport and were in a car accident.
Thank goodness they’re both doing fine. Unfortunately Chirstina broke her ankle and Callan was all bruised up, so they both got to enjoy a not-fun ambulance ride to the emergency room. Luckily neither required hospitalization. Callan has since safely returned to Boise, and hopefully Chirstina can come back home soon too.
Last month Callan & Chirstina and their roommates, Heidi & Kylie, adopted our dog Kai, so now they have both Kira and Kai. I hear the dogs are doing very well there.
Here is a recent picture of Callan showing off their bandage from their covid shot! Under that bandage is a partially-done tattoo. It will eventually have color and shading, but I rather like it as an outline. It’s a big dragon.
I’m so happy that both kids have now had both shots!
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