`
With us all diligently slapping hand sanitizer on our hands to kill 99.99% of everything that might make us sick..... where do all the killed germs go?
These have nothing to do with dead things on hands - I just thought they were pretty. Taken on walk around the neighbourhood next to ours on the weekend:
.
~
I am scared of squirrels. Irrational I know and I'm annoyed at myself for being afraid of such a cute looking little thing.
I'd
never seen a "real" squirrel until my first day here and when I saw
them I raved over their sweet little faces and bushy twitching tails.
My second day here I met a kamikaze squirrel. Instead of running away from me it ran straight at me and stamping feet and noise did not deter it. It only stopped when I ran away and then, looking over my shoulder, I swear I saw it smile.
This fear is especially pathetic as I come from the land of more than a few of the world's top 10 deadliest snakes, the small Funnel Web Spider and the Blue Ringed Octopus. I have a healthy respect for these but am not particularly terrified of them.
But squirrels... I give way to even if it means walking onto the roadway; I give wide berth to trees where I spot a squirrel and I never stand still in a park!
We don't have any squirrels in our little yard; I suspect because of all the pepper (chili) plants we have around but yesterday I noticed a neighbour is actively encouraging them .... I would never be able to leave the house if this was at my front door!
This little girl was having a feast. Of course this was taken from well back on the sidewalk!
Today I celebrate my independence from the British...
Whilst tossing away pretty much everything I own (CDs and DVDs... you're next!) I found a box full of stuff pertaining to that Guy-Who-I-Hope-Chokes-on-an-English-Muffin. Pictures, gifts he'd given me (including a pair of shoes that were not my style), etc. I went through the pictures and laughed as I went along... he really was a goofy dude... but it was sort of surreal, because while I know I dated this guy, it was like looking at someone I never even knew. Even looking at me was weird, because I really don't recognize that person. I pulled out a few pictures that had some other friends in them and tossed the Brit into the trash bag. I found another stack of stuff from the Blood Seller and tossed most of that as well.
Shaniqua came in and said she never would be able to toss pictures. I told her that these people are in my past, and frankly I don't care or think about them any more, so why hold onto these things? To me, they're just taking up space.
Maybe that makes me cold hearted. I don't know. But I do know that hanging onto items from the past has never meant much to me. Whether good or bad, the experiences I had with these people have shaped who I have become now, and really, that's all the reminding I need.
So, goodbye to the Brit, and goodbye to the Bloodseller. You've been cleared out.
I do kind of wonder, though, wherever you are, do you somehow know you've been tossed?
I guess that's a question to which I will never know the answer.
-K.
A nice little hiking trip in Purgatory Chasm...
We left my mom behind at the beginning, which was a shame because it was really neat, but she couldn't make it, especially with the shoes she was wearing.
~Nikki
These cute little candy bites are a recipe that I found in the fun cookbook entitled "You Made That Dessert?" by Beth Lipton. The recipe calls for only four ingredients to make around 35 tasty candies. The candies are sweet and crunchy with a nice peanut butter butterscotch flavor. I added a little sea salt topping to mine for some extra flavor. The recipe is pretty basic and calls for rolling the candies into little balls. I decided to take it a step further and dress them up a little by using a candy mold and some melted chocolate. I think they turned out nice and would make a fun gift! Here is how you can make your own candies: You can find the basic recipe here. After you crush the cornflakes, add them to the melted peanut butter and butterscotch chips and mix in some vanilla extract. I used an organic unsweetened peanut butter because I wanted a true peanut flavor and not a whole lot of sugar as the butterscotch chips are very sweet! After the mixture is well combined set aside. Because I wanted my candies to have a more uniform shape I used this handy-dandy plastic candy mold that i got at the hobby store for around $2. I wanted to use up the left over candy melts from my caramel apple post, so i melted the chocolate in a squeeze bottle and poured a little into the mold. Next I used a small paint brush to brush the chocolate up the sides. The chocolate filled mold went into the fridge for 5 minutes to set. When set, I scooped out a small mound of peanut butter butterscotch mixture into the mold and then topped it with more melted chocolate. I sprinkled a little sea salt over the top of the chocolate and chilled the candies again for around 15 minutes. When completely chilled I popped the candies out of the mold and drizzled a little melted white chocolate across the tops. I placed the finished candies into individual mini-muffin cups that I found at the grocery store (73 cups for 99¢) and set them into a box for gift giving. You can also by-pass the chocolate and just scoop some of the peanut butter-butterscotch mixture directly into the molds and top with some chocolate sprinkles. Chill and unmold. Or even skip the mold by rolling the peanut butter-butterscotch mixture into small balls and then rolling the balls in chocolate sprinkles or chopped salted peanuts! Voila, you've got lots of yummy candies for you and your friends!
Continuing on from Lincoln's Cottage we wandered into an area that we might not have been authorized to enter given we did not have visitors passes.... The Old Soldiers' Home. Written under the clock is SHERMAN
The entrance to the Home is guarded by miniature cannons:
We saw things we might not meant to have been photographing (Yes, it was fully operational). The grounds are really lovely: We found an amazing tree propped up on one side A WWII vet out for his morning stroll asked where we were from (this is when an Australian accent comes in handy) and talked to us at length about this tree which he called a Missouri Hedge Tree (though I couldn't find such a tree in a quick Google search). After telling us it was the largest hedge tree around he wandered off: We found an interesting tower: - the sign says DO NOT USE LADDER We then left the grounds and walked to the nearby US National Cemetery which will be the final resting place of many of the men in the Old Soldiers' Home: So many graves:Some people vote the same way every time: Rs for Rs, Ds for Ds. Then you have the wildcards. The wave. The pendulum. The moody middle swayed by who knows what -- "Dancing with the Stars" perhaps or McDonald's dollar menu? Who knows... I don't... Ask the people at Pew.
Anyhow, if I had to venture a guess, I would bet that some fussy pendulum-riders were already skittish about health care reform (i.e. they fear change -- they can't love the outrageous health care bills that are bankrupting them and their families) and they got a few too many e-mail forwards from wackadoo friends about Obama trying to take over private businesses (I guess we should just funnel tax payer money to big business to save them and not takeover?) and then the White House got pissy about Fox News and then somebody got too meddlesome in gubernatorial elections (when there's a country to be running) and there are a fair number of folks throughout the country who arent sure about whether that dude in the White House is Muslim/born in the U.S. -and/or- just they're just plain racist/ignorant/fill-in-the-blank and there you have it...
[extended run-on sentence for your reading pleasure... I hope it helps someone's superiority complex. Maybe I should make this post public to infuriate the masses. You're welcome.]