Notes from (relative) suburbia.

If, one afternoon while walking home form work, you see an alarmingly red-hued pile of barf on the sidewalk and an empty bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos nearby, keep your wits about you.

If you, like me, leave your butter out (because nothing is more annoying than tearing a nice hot piece of toast with a cold pat of petrified fat), please don't ever place it on top of your toaster oven in haste because you 'need the counter space'. Later, when you are toasting a Pop Tart for dessert, you will return to the kitchen after hearing the faint ding! of Deliciousness Ready, only to find a pool of melted, salty grease all over your toaster, counter, floor; best let it harden back up before any cleaning attempts. Also, if you are still like me, make sure to do this at least 4 times before you learn your lesson.

There is a lovely pair of nesting mallards in our building's swimming pool. An internet search on whether or not this was good for them resulted in thousands of hits about how to rid your pool of these loud, pooping , salmonella-infested flying pests.

Watering the plants on the balcony yesterday proved to be difficult because the watering can would only trickle, even though it was full of water. Puzzled, i sloshed the water around a bit, hoping to dislodge whatever it was, and then i decided to actually look into the spout, which yielded quite a surprise: something dark and fuzzy and symmetrical was peering out at me. Left it for the next day, as the dark was settling in... Upon inspection this afternoon, noticed a pair of antennae poking out. Doesn't take an entomologist to conclude that this is probably the moth that's been laying the eggs that turned into the caterpillars that've been chomping away at Nat's Sarracenia.

i blew on her antennae, and performed a few other cursory examinations, and decided that she was probably dead by now. Using a chopstick, i poked her back down the spout into the can. Filled it up with some more water, dumped it all out, and Nat noticed that there was some life in her yet. i almost cried. She needed to be put out of her misery. One size-13 boot stomp later, and my soul was a little lighter. But not by much. Sorry, little friend.



Red tide has hit San Diego, and there are bats flying around in the courtyard at dusk these days. There have been at least fifteen bees pollinating the flowers at my work every day for the past week. Is this the return of wildlife? If so, it's about damn time.

Elephant skulls are honeycombed, so that the gargantuan beasts may more easily move around their hefty skeletons...




(There is nothing more depressing than a pizza delivery flyer on a dead man's door.)


Worked extra hard for moms this past week. Totally worth it, of course. Discovered a new spray rose, the Mimi Eden:





...ahh, ain't she lovely? Doesn't really come through in pictures, though. Hm, i may need to start a Tuesday Rose weekly post. Plenty more where this came from.

In other news: i'm starting a jar (okay, so it's actually a box), to put money in, toward my dream of someday owning and running a flower shop. Possibly with my best friend. Time to start moving towards what to do with the rest of my days.
Baby steps.