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Gender Confusion
The only place our cat would sit still for me to take a photograph was in the scratching tray. As I’ve written before, we rescued a stray cat at the end of 2021. And I don’t mean we got the cat from a non-profit rescue organization. We really rescued the poor thing. The cat had…
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Stairs
Courtesy of RentCafe The first place Bernd and I lived after we got married was a very small bachelor apartment in Santa Ana, California. It was about 500 square feet and inspired efficiency and organization in all things. It didn’t always work out that way, but we did our best. Courtesy of Apartments.com This is…
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Nobody Told Us: Projectile Car Ramps
Courtesy of Dragzine. Bernd’s car was white like this one but lifted higher in the back. The Chevy Nova of the time also looked a lot like the Chevy II, so it’s hard to be sure if this is actually the Chevy II. Years and years and years ago, when Bernd and I were first…
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Nobody Told Us: Frozen Waste Pipes
EcoClean We are accustomed to cold winters. We lived for almost 28 years in the higher elevations of Arizona. Temperatures could dip into the single digits in the winter and we would get snow. But we never had a waste pipe freeze. We never had to do anything special to keep them from freezing. Didn’t…
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Snow!
This one is from 12/22/22. There is even more snow now but the driveway looks messy so I didn’t include a picture from today. As a child, growing up in Southern California, I loved snow. The few times my parents took us to Lake Arrowhead or Big Bear were like magic for me. I couldn’t…
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Safe Winter Driving
In actuality, the safest thing to do when the snow is falling and the temperatures are below freezing is to just stay home. That was advice that I gave myself and planned on heeding in the future no matter what my husband, Bernd, might have to say. Because we had everything set up for our…
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Sam, or Not Sam
I like squirrels and we have a lot of squirrels where we live. Our neighbors have named some of them. One of them is named Sam. He’s a cheeky fellow who will take peanuts from their hands, but hasn’t yet let me get that close. We have a line of juniper trees in our backyard.…
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I Remember Feeling Adult
It was coming up on Christmas. I was in my first year at college and I needed to do some Christmas shopping. I drove myself to the Whittwood Mall in Whittier, California. I figured they had enough different kinds of stores that I could find everything on my list. In the middle of all the…
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Fourth of July in Our Front Yard
Every year, Dad would put on a real show. He would visit all the fireworks stands (yes you could actually buy them openly in California at that time and did not have to go to Mexico for them). He would select only the best rockets and fountains and whirligigs. There were fire crackers (how he…
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A Cat’s Tale
Hi. My name is Orange Kitty. It wasn’t always that. I can’t remember what it was once. I just know that it wasn’t that. My new people call me Orange Kitty or OK or sometimes Mr. Fuzzy Pants. I don’t really know why they call me Mr. Fuzzy Pants. I don’t wear pants. I sort…
Maddie's Mom Writes 