Confessions of a Grandma

 As a reminder that Easter is near and spring is in the air, I had two little visitors. This little one hopped around the driveway and then hid himself in a flower bed. This one was very spooked and stayed huddled behind the hose pot all day. Cuteness.

 I have been harvesting cherry tomatoes every day. I'm thrilled because chipmunks ate all my tomatoes right off the vine last summer. I bought this pepper at the farm market. I was just mesmerized by its colors. I think I annoyed another customer by standing there holding it my hands and just admiring it for probably longer than an ordinary pepper might warrant. Of course it won't last so I sautéed it with mushroom. onion and tomatoes and had it with a sprinkle of melted cheese on a pita bread for my supper. So fresh and yummy. ****** You know how you buy something at Costco that you really like but then it disappears? I will shed tears if they stop selling this snack: I know nothing about a keto diet, but this stuff is delicious and satisfies the crunch craving for me. ****** I baked this Florida citrus pie for PI day (3/14). It's lemon and orange curd with meringue topping. I distributed it to neighbors so as not to sit in front the the tv with the pie on my lap and a big...

 I had heard of Robinson Preserve as a safe place for hiking and biking. I decided it was time to check it out. I thought I had a pretty good idea of where it was and how to get there but I managed to miss a turn and get kind of lost. When I was sure I was back on track I was getting discouraged because I was not seeing any signs indicating the location. Finally, I said to myself this is just not meant to be. I might as well turn around and go home. But I absolutely could not bring myself to turn around here: I drove another half mile and the next drive off the main road was the entrance to the preserve. So it was meant to be! This old house was scheduled for demolition to make way for citifying Bradenton. It was moved by barge to the Preserve and serves as the greeting and information center. It's called the Valentine House (after the family that owned it). I did wish I had a kayak. I climbed the tower. The sky bridge to Tampa is in the distance. The preserve is not a working salt...

 Recently I received an email thanking me for shopping at Home Depot and letting me know that I was the lucky recipient of a valuable prize for filling out their survey. Then I got a very similar email from Lowe's. I had bought a new garbage can at HD and a quart of paint at Lowe's but I don't usually fill out surveys. The prizes were compelling--anybody would find something they wanted on the lists. All that was required was to pay a shipping cost by entering a credit card number. Hmm. Nothing comes for free. If it sounds too good to be true . . .  These are old sayings so someone trying to part one from their money is nothing new. Still, it's sad that we have to think everything is some kind of scam. No, I deleted the emails.

 Biden's speech from last night, his approach to handling the virus as well is other issues confronting the country, is being contrasted to the Trump approach. We are all in this together so we need to work together to solve problems versus I alone can solve this. Sadly, it occurred to me that the "I alone" was a large part of Trump's appeal. How lazy are we as a society that we look so readily to someone else to give us the answers and to solve our problems? Don't care how you do it or who you may hurt in the process, just don't give me anything to do. Lazy or helpless and hopeless. Either way what a sad state of affairs. Leadership should be about shared responsibility not control. At least that is my opinion and that's how I plan to roll whenever I vote.

 I am taking a Buddhism study class on Friday afternoons (through the miracle of Zoom). Yesterday after a small group discussion the leader asked for people to share what they may have learned from that discussion.  We were talking about patience and resilience. I was just starting to share that my take away was from what one person said about how we may have to start by learning to be patient with our impatience when something happened and I just got booted off Zoom. When a tried to log back on I just got the loading circle of this is not working. Then a message would pop up that Zoom did not load. It happened several times. I went to get a glass of water and decided I would try one more time before just moving on to something else. That time I got right back to the meeting. So obviously, patience was exactly what the universe had to teach me yesterday!