Keepin' Calm and Fraggin' On

Friday Fragment Time!

Oh, how I love the fraginess that is Friday!

If you want to write a post about the bits and pieces of your week, do it and link it up at Half-Past Kissin' Time so we can all see what you've been up to. Because we're a bunch of nosy mothers.

Frag #1

Menopause makes me snarky. That's all I have to say about that.

Frag #2

My daughter, Sis, who is 22, went to Portland, Oregon a couple weeks ago to visit a close friend who moved up there. Sis was so taken with the place that she's making plans to move up there too.

Apparently, it's not against the law to walk around the town naked. There's even a lady they call "Naked bike lady" who rides around town naked, then parks her bike by the local bank, puts on a dress, goes inside and is the teller.

It's quite an open, accepting town, Portland is. On the one hand, I'm excited for my daughter embarking on an adventure...on the other, I'm worried she'll be "Naked Dog Lady" or "Naked Loud Girl" or some other such thing. She's a free spirit, my daughter. It's something I admire about her. I just want her to keep her spirit clothed, that's all.

Frag #3

My other daughter, The Girl, invited me to something at her Church called Cardboard Testimony. I guess it's a thing many churches do. She wanted me to go because she was participating in it. 

I'd never been to one and it was so inspiring and moving that I cried from beginning to end. I know it's silly, but it inspired me to post a comic about it (not that the service was silly, but the wanting to make a comic about it was). The signs in the comic are a few of the real signs that I saw during the service.

Faith, no matter what it is that we have faith in, is a powerful, powerful thing.

(Click on the 4-arrow thingy in the lower right corner of the comic to make it bigger, then to scroll it up just click and drag)

Frag #4
My sister and I decided to go on a girl's camping trip to Zion, Utah. We're going in a couple weeks and I can't wait. There won't be any fishing adventures this time. Just her and me tubing down the Virgin river, tooling around the lovely Springdale town right outside of Zion and where we'll be staying, and going on a hike or two inside the park.

The only thing I dread is that my idea of a hike and my sister's idea of a hike are quite different. I want to sort of, moderately stroll, and she's like exercise Hitler. I might have to put some booze in her water bottle to slow her down. Of course then she'll get chatty. Damn. I can't win either way.

Frag #5
And speaking of camping and travelling and such things...I made another comic featuring my little trailer. Have you ever looked up "Vintage Trailer Interiors" on Pinterest? Oh, My. Gosh. I could look at those cute little decorated trailer pictures all night.

Anyway, my comic site had a contest to make a comic about your dream home, so of course, I had to feature my trailer. Here it is:



Someday.

Frag #6
My last frag is just to say that I actually wrote more than one blog post this week! I know. I can't believe it either. We visited my mom and her husband in California over Labor Day weekend and I took some lovely pictures and did a quickie post about it.

If you want to take a gander at it (because I don't think anyone has read it yet, besides my sister-in-law - Hi Trish!), you can read it here. And here's a picture of my lovely mom and her sweet and supportive hubby:

Well, that's it for my frags this week. Hope you have a fun weekend and remember, "Not all who wander are lost."  - J.R.R. Tolkien

How to Pretend to Be Retired

I didn't do a Friday Frag post last Friday, but I have a very good reason. They hubby and I went up to Hesperia California to visit my mom and her husband for the long weekend.

We love visiting my mom because she lives in a semi-rural area in Hesperia and has a large yard filled with a garden and birds and squirrels and other wildlife. We like pretending we're old retired people with nothing too terribly important to do.

So, what do you do when you're visiting your mom for the weekend in a somewhat small town? Well, I'll tell you:

First you get mani/pedis, of course. I forgot to take toe pictures.

Then you visit a bakery called Bodacious Buns ( I know, right?) and look at the cute cakes on display and wish you knew how to do cake decorating.

It's a couple in a hot tub. Isn't that adorable??

Then you split a scrumptious lemon bar with your mom and talk about how delicious the shortbread crust is and the lemon curd filling and the cream cheese frosting. And you and mom chat with the shop owner about Garden club and organic food and religion.

Then you move on to an antique store that just opened up that your mom's been wanting to go to. And you ooh and aah over all the cute vintage-y things like these jars that have been decoupaged and embellished until they're just too cute for words:

Decoupage, beads, lace, tiny flowers and a glue gun. Couldn't you see your makeup brushes standing up prettily in this?

Love the shape of this one!

After browsing for an hour at the antique store, you go back to mom's and take pictures of her garden:

An old ladder with a few old, worn birdhouses sitting on it makes for cute garden decor, don't you think?

I love Mexican Bird of Paradise. Mom has several of these bushes in her yard.

Then you take pictures of mom drinking wine in her garden:

My beautiful, happy mom.

And you can't resist taking pictures of the sky at dusk because it's so beautiful and every single dusk looks different:

Dusk from Mom's yard

The next day you sit in mom's garden again and you and mom decide that the side of the chicken house needs some paint. You have no mural painting skills whatsoever, but decide to start painting then and there:

Planted myself in the dirt and decided to paint me some flowers on the chicken house.

Then you make your husband take pictures of you and mom painting the chicken house and you make sure and pose like an idiot.

Add caption

By then it gets hot, so you go inside and decide you want an agave margarita (of which my step-dad makes delicious ones), but he gets out the blender and you say, no, they were on the rocks last time he made them and he says no, he blends them and you say no, you're sure they were on the rocks, and he says fine, you make them.

So you do. You mix tequila, lime, agave, ice, and a little water in a cocktail mixer and shake it up real good and oh, they are delicious. Then you all laugh about how you bickered over how to make them. Then everyone takes a nap because you made them too strong.

After passing out napping, you finish painting the chicken house:

You can't see it real well, but the left side and the right side are painted tree trunks. Those green things on the top are leaves. Mom had a bunch of old birdhouses, so we nailed them up like they're hanging on the branches of the tree that you can't tell is a tree.

After another beautiful dusk, you help cook dinner and you have delicious homemade ice cream for dessert. Ice Cream made with homegrown figs and peaches:

There's fig ice cream with bourbon sauce, peach ice cream, strawberry ice cream, and carmel ice cream. 

Of course, you have to get up early the next morning to head home and you must take a picture of the pretty sunrise which you can see from your bed:

No filter on this one. Can you see the little sliver of white moon off to the right?

 On the way home you must take pictures of the cloud formations because they are so clear and white:

No filter on this one either. Doesn't it look like a swan, with the neck to the right and the body on the left?

I did put a filter on this one. The sky was just beautiful on the drive home.

And that's what you do when you visit your mom in a small-ish town over the weekend and pretend like you're a retired person.

I can't wait to retire!