This week, the PhotoHunt theme is orange. To see other photos, click here to tnchick's (our host) site. What Came First: The Color or The Fruit?

Today, I offer you, dear readers, a review of my third entry for the Cozy Mystery Challenge . Four more to go. Actually, I finished Corpse Suzette by G. A. McKevett about three weeks ago. The book has been sitting patiently on my table to be written about for over a week. How time flies! Corpse Suzett e is the 11th book of the Savannah Reid series. Savannah is a 40-ish ex-police officer who turned private eye many years ago. She is based in the fictional town of San Carmelita, which I think could be anywhere on the California central coast.  Originally from Georgia, Savannah loves cooking and eating yummy rich food (think Paula Deen) and is happy about her zaftig size. She has no problem getting around as she sleuths the traditional way. In contrast, Savannah's assistant is a slim, hyper health nut named Tammy, who is also a computer whiz. Savannah's other sidekick is Sgt. Dirk Coulter, her ex-cop-partner who still serves on the local force. Because no one wants to work with

I like it when the husband drives. I hang out the car window, like a happy puppy, clicking away at the scenery. As we were driving home the other evening, the fog was starting to roll over the hills. Click! Today, I'm sharing my photos at Wordless Wednesday and Outdoor Wednesday . Head over to those sites to check out links to photo works by other bloggers.

"Ow-ow-ow-ow-Ow! Owwww!" "What were you doing?" asked the husband with alarm. No, not a clock. Though, I did ask him to time me for a minute. He saw me get down on the floor, but didn't notice what I was doing. He kept tippity tapping away on his computer, after he said, "Go" and then 60 seconds later, "Stop." I did 48 stomach crunches.  I was soooo impressed with myself since I hadn't done sit-ups in several months. But I didn't think the crunches would cramp me up when I sat down in front of the computer. "Owwwwww." "You silly woman," said the husband. See. That's the kind of sympathy I get after 13 years of marriage. Why was I doing the crunches? It was a test to find out where to start my 200 sit-ups training program . Yep, another challenge. And, yep, you heard me right. 200 sit-ups. The goal is to be able to do 200 sit-ups, one after the other, in 6 weeks or more. You only need to crunch up to a 35-degree

Our child is growing. Til today, she felt shy to go to social events. Now look. Two days. Two parties by herself. Before we know it, our 80ish mama will be dating. --- This is a 160 Character Challenge, hosted by the Monkey Man . Give it a try. What can you write in 160 characters or less? You must count spaces, too.

I'm having fun checking out different blog hops and linky parties around the blogosphere. Today, I've hooked up with two new groups of bloggers.  One is PhotoHunt hosted by tnchick.com. This is my contribution to the pack of photo hunters. PhotoHunt has a weekly theme. "Colorful" is this week's theme. I took this photo at a local diner because of the colors. The second blog hop is called "Saturday Sharing," hosted by Say Anything...Cuz Censorship Sux. There, you link up your favorite post of the week.  Take a look, why don't ya, and maybe link your post, too.

Two rambling Fridays in a row. I don't think I'm dedicating Fridays to non sequitur rambles. At least, not yet, dear friendly readers. I'm afraid to make anything be set in stone about this blog, because once I do that I'm sure to sabotage myself. It's like when I pronounce that I shall lose so many pounds by such a date or start walking the Pacific Crest by such an age. Then, I don't. You would've thought at my age I had outgrown the fear of success. Yes, I said it. Fear of success. Not failure. I'm fine with the knowledge that I might attempt something and fail. I just try again, if it (whatever that is) is something I really want or need to conquer. But, then, you may ask, will I continue to fail short because I won't want to succeed? Good question. Maybe because I'm in the middle of doing it (whatever that is), I'm not spinning my wheels thinking about what may happen if I succeed. Hence,  I make my designated finish line. Wanting and/or

Hanging out at two linky parties today— Wordless Wednesday and Watery Wednesday . Click on the links to check out photos of other bloggers.

Burp. Excuse me. It's past midnight. Dinner was over at six this evening. I am still full. Tonight's dinner was extra rich. I didn't realize it was. Until now. We invited friends over for dinner, and  I wanted to serve something that would be easy to put together and eat because we were going to a meeting afterwards. So, I made fried sirloin beef wontons and shrimp and grits. The grits were cooked with gouda and cheddar cheeses. The shrimps, with a bit of onion and chives, were sauteed in olive oil, and at the last second (freshly cooked) bacon bits were stirred into the mixture.  Fried meat bits. Shrimp. Bacon. Cheeses. Tooo, tooo heavy. I was just not thinking, was I? The shrimp and grits dish was delicious. I followed (kinda) the Smokey Shrimp and Grits recipe at the Whistlestop Cafe Cooking blog. The cook adds creamed spinach to the dish. I didn't. Just as well. Did I mention that we had semi-sweet chocolate chip cookies for dessert? And, that I drank a bottle of F

Yes, indeed. I finished reading my second book for the Cozy Mystery Challenge ! Murphy's Law , by Rhys Bowen, had been sitting in the hallway for almost a year. I bought it after I finished Royal Flush , the last book in Bowen's Royal Spyness series, which was published in July, 2009. Because I was so taken with Bowen's story-telling, I decided to try reading her Molly Murphy series. Murphy's Law is the first in the series. It had won the Agatha, Reviewer's Choice, and Herodotus awards. Molly Murphy is the main character. She is a ballsy, well-educated 24-year old Irish immigrant living in New York during the Tammany Hall times. The story opens with her running away from home because the master's son tried to have his way with her. She had kicked him away and he cracked his head when he fell. Molly got on a train to London and ended up on a ship to America. She took the identity of a dying woman who had persuaded Molly to take the woman's children to their

This morning I woke up with a stuffy nose. The husband stirred beside me. The mama scraped a chair on the floor in the kitchen below. She was either about to eat breakfast or she had finished. "What time do you think it is?" asked the husband. "Time to dust the room," I answered. I got up, picked up my glasses, and headed to the bathroom. As I walked by the stairs, I glanced down at the clock in the living room. 9:30. The mama had slept later than usual. The husband had slept his eight hours. I was lacking again. Oh, well, what does it matter? The three of us have not had to answer to a boss's clock in years. Only our own. My self-discipline comes and goes. There is so much about which to be disciplined. House cleaning, for one. Writing, for another. Finding writing jobs, a third.  Exercising, most indubitably, a fourth. And then there is downsizing our stuff that has been in storage for years now. The list of what I need to work on keeps growing rather than sho

The Octogenarian Pruning Mama I've joined the Wordless Wednesday linky party today. Head on over and check out photos of other bloggers.

Were you wondering what the husband and I finally did on our 23rd date last Friday ? Yes or no, I'm here to tell you. Well, actually to show you some photos of different things we saw as we stopped here and there. Wild chickens are continually crossing the streets in San Juan Bautista. Here's a bee that knows a good thing when it sees it! Taggers will leave their marks on anything standing! Can you see the turtle and the chimpanzee sitting on it? In a fancy boot store in Carmel-by-the-Sea, I peeked at the price tag of a pair of cute ankle cowboy boots. Over $1,000! And, they were not as elaborate as these. I didn't even want to know how much they were. Are those golf balls edible? Probably. Up close, they looked real enough not to eat! Cute handbags. Do you think that arm belongs to the bag or an actual human being? How to describe downtown Carmel-by-the-Sea? Drink and eat, see, shop. Or, coffee house, art gallery, boutique. This is the tallest and hunkiest eucalyptus tree

Baby robins in our tree in 2009 This morning I was reading this post at Please Be Edible and came across a comment in which the author said that you can feed cat food to wild baby birds, which have been separated from their mamas. I told the husband about the tip. Said the husband, "Revenge is sweet." "Uh, wait," he said, after a long bit of chuckling. "I was thinking of cat meat. That's different." Uh-huh. I got curious and did a search for more details about feeding wild baby birds. It seems like more birds are making nests in our trees, and well, I want us to be ready in case something happens. If you're interested, check out these links: Orphaned Wild Baby Birds , Winged Wisdom Pet Bird Magazine Bird Babies Baby Starling and Sparrow Care

Our 23rd dates seem to come too soon. Not that I'm complaining, I love getting away for the day with the husband. It's just that I have yet to accomplish things on my to-do list that have been there since mumble, mumble . As I'm writing this, the husband and I have yet to decide where to go and what to do. Hiking is out this time because I'm supposed to let my ankle rest. According to the doctor, I have a chronic ankle sprain. I have no idea when I even sprained it. All I know is that since we walked up that mountain in May, I was wrapping it up whenever it hurt to walk on it. When I finally couldn't put pressure on the foot, I decided to go see the doctor. That only took, uhm, two months to give in. "Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this," said the patient. "Then don't do that," advised the doctor. That joke cracks me up every time. My doctor felt up the ankle, gave me a prescription for anti- inflammatory medication, and said, "Don&#

I consider myself a reader. But lately, my reading matter consists of blogs, newspapers, blogs, web sites, blogs, Facebook, and more blogs.  Nothing wrong with that, but I really should spend more time off the computer. The last book I read was a politician's autobiography. Shudder. Talk about a horrible reading experience. Have you ever read a book and got angry about almost everything that the author wrote? I should've put it down after the first page, but I needed to know about this woman since she says that she talks for the real Americans. I'm a real American but nothing she wrote represented my point of view. Bleah! I finished that book about five months ago. I started three books since then. Put each one down after a few pages in. I just could not focus. Five months is a long time for me to go without reading a book. But, that's about to change. To motivate me back to the book path, I signed up today to complete the Cozy Mystery Challenge hosted by Not Enough Bo

While I sat listening to Saturday's concert , I watched the changing of the light on the mountains before me. 6:47 p.m. 7:13 p.m. I'm having fun at the Wordless Wednesday linky party. Head on over here to check out photos by others: Wordless Wednesday .

Last Saturday night, the husband and I went to an outdoor concert with some friends at a local winery. The evening was extremely excellent! We sprawled out on the green grass under the summer evening sky. We listened to the most glorious music as it joined with the expanse of the golden hills before us. I was in heaven.  The featured band was Dave Mason. Yes, the one and only Dave Mason! I don't know about our friends, but the music transported the husband and I to moments in our 20s. He said he was back at the concerts in Winterland in San Francisco. Me. I was back rocking with roommates as we listened to records, and I was playing an upturned ceramic pot as if it was a conga drum. After the second piece that Dave Mason played, the husband said aloud, "That was almost orgasmic." So true.  P.S. Why is the camera shaking? I was bopping along with music, holding the camera in one hand and banging my right thigh like it was, yes, that upturned ceramic pot of long ago.

"We're having sidewalk weed again." "Oh joy," said the husband. Not really. He didn't say that. He just ate it. Until a few years ago, he didn't know that the weed he saw growing wildly along the sidewalk and on vacant lots was edible. Ha! Then he met me. Specifically, I'm talking about purslane, also known as pigsweed. Portulaca oleracea is its scientific name. The Mexicans call it verdolaga. The Mama calls it kakalangay (an approximate Ilocano spelling to what I hear). Not ngalog, she says. That's something else. Have I lost you? I'm talking about the fleshy, pinkish looking weed that spreads out on the ground. It look anemic and very unappetizing. Water it, and voila, you have what you see in that photo above. It is good to eat. Very good to eat, in fact. Tasty, too. The weed, okay the herb, is high in vitamin C, vitamin A, calcium, potassium, and a whole bunch of the B-vitamin complex. It's also rich in omega-3 fatty acid goodness. Be

The other evening I saw these clouds from the backyard. Interesting formation, isn't it? It kinda looks like a snail. It also looks like the shape of a Valentine's heart coming together. What do you see?