Macies Monday

macies ~ atrophy, emaciation

Yawn. I have to say, there’s nothing much exciting going on here. The highlight of the week was the quick trip the hubby and I took to Costco on Wednesday. And because things were a little more open than they’ve been, we also hit the Peterborough Mall and Chapters. But even with those additional stops I think that was the quickest shopping trip we’ve ever made (pre-COVID).

There were a lot of people in the mall and Chapters not wearing masks, which really surprised me. Chapters had someone standing at the door making sure we used their hand sanitizer, which annoyed me at first but then I saw the sense of it, seeing as customers would be handling their books. It was almost comforting to get to Costco where if you don’t have a mask they give you one.

I still don’t like wearing masks, but when I am I want to see others wearing them too.

We’ve had a cardinal visiting our back yard from time to time, and a few other interesting birds, so I finally broke down and filled the feeder. And then I spent the day watching the grackles systematically empty it out. *sigh* At least it wasn’t the squirrels this time.

And I learned something interesting about blue jays. I put peanuts out for them on the rail of the deck if it’s not too breezy, and on the patio table if it is. When the grandbaby is over I let her do it because she’ll call out to them, telling them to come get their peanuts, and they do. They’re pretty smart birds because they even figured out where she lives (not too far from us) and followed her home to squawk for peanuts at her house too.

But I digress.

I was in my office and I watched out the window as a blue jay took his sweet time picking out just the right peanut from the patio table, and then hopped over to one of the planters we have surrounding the patio. I thought he was going to use the edge of the planter to break open the peanut but no, he buried his peanut in the planter!

Here I thought the squirrels were responsible for the peanuts we find in various gardens and planters. Looks like they’re not the only ones who like to stash food for a rainy day.

Speaking of rainy days . . . We haven’t had too many of them lately, and we’re under water restrictions now. But the hubby faithfully waters the gardens every other day, which is a good thing because they need all the help they can get. Especially now that we have visitors of the insect kind.

These are Japanese beetles, and you see them here doing what they do best – defoliating plants. I don’t have them as bad as my neighbour does, but it’s still a little annoying to have all your hard work end up in a bug’s stomach. So far it’s just the leaves, not the actual produce they’re attacking. And we’re still getting plenty of peas and beans.

But touch my tomatoes and it’ll mean war!

Manubrium Monday

manubrium ~ any handle-like structure

I was talking to one of my sisters on the phone yesterday and I said our weather lately has been crazy all over the place, like Mother Nature has been using a roulette wheel to pick what the day is going to bring. One day it’s hot enough for a tank top, the next it’s cold enough for a jacket, with wind and rain and overcast skies in between. You just never know what the day’s going to bring.

Take today, for instance. It’s a little windy, a little overcast, a little chilly, but it’s supposed to warm up and be sunny later. And by the end of the week we’re supposed to be back up to 24 Celsius (75 Fahrenheit). Maybe I was a little premature in putting away my summer clothes.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned we had a family outing to the CNE, but I forgot to mention that one of the traditions is that I pick up something . . . frivolous. This is why you’ll see a variety of weird things around my house, like a voodoo stick, wooden chest, dragon holding a plasma ball, etc. This year it was a mask to add to the collection in my office, which is where my story starts.

It’s not that I didn’t have room for another mask, it’s just that we had to rearrange the masks on the wall to make room for it. And then the hubby suggested I might want some of my other keepsakes that sort of went with the masks in my office – things like the didgeridoo, voodoo stick, and rain stick.

Which seemed like a good idea except the only place I had room for them was behind my reading chair. But I also have a pole lamp behind my chair that kind of took up more than its fair share of space because it was too short for the height of the chair so I had it up on a wooden stand.

I managed to wedge the rain stick in behind it, decided it looked stupid and pulled it out again and in the process knocked the glass chimney that covered the light bulb and held up the lamp shade which shattered all over my head – the glass chimney, not the lamp shade.

But I digress.

Once I had the masks rearranged, I realized I had space for one more mask. So on the weekend the hubby and I went to Primitive Designs (a seasonal import store that’s just crammed with really cool stuff), and I bought yet another mask. It’s not the mask I had in mind, but the more I stared at the one I was going to get, the more it creeped me out. There was no way I wanted that thing staring over my shoulder when I was working in my office.

So . . . now my wall is filled and the glass chimney has been replaced and all is right with the world.

And is that the end of my mask collecting?

Probably not.