I like these cookies so-ho-ho much!

Finally found my favorite cookies at the local Kroger store (Fred Meyer).  YAY!

Pepperidge Farms' Brussels Mint cookies used to be available all year 'round, but somewhere in the late 2000s (or early 201x's), they discontinued it.  My favorite cookie. Gone!  

I was thrilled some 5 or so years ago when it returned as a seasonal cookie.  But then...

It seemed to disappear for another year, two, maybe more.  All I know is it seems like it's been a few years since I last saw them, but yesterday at a quick stop in to the grocery store...

Hooray! A Christmas miracle!  My favorite cookie was back this season!  I  had to buy a few extra. I'll treasure them throughout 2024 (and I may go see if they're still there tomorrow to buy more to stock up so I don't have to be as careful about making them last).

Merry Holiday!

I (Really) Like Coming Home

So we (husband, dog, me) made it 1.5 years living back in the desert.  It was absolutely miserable, alrhough sone things were tolerable. 2020 had nothing on 2021 for challenges. I look back on my March 2021 post and marvel at all that has happened since then, so much we had no idea was going to hit, the least of which was my Mom dying unexpectedly. So many changes. When times were tough, my Mom always said, "Just think of where you'll be a year from now and this will all be over."  I had no idea.

At any rate, while the new job was okay, I had to get a different  job so I could get back to the green. The new job is okay so far, too. It's remote and mostly pays the bills.

So in late September, after starting the new job and saying goodbye to the old job and the cursed desert, we moved back to the green.   After much soul searching (and house searching), we decided to be house-poor for a year to try to heal from the trauma of frequent days over 110 degrees and living in the moonscape that is the Nevada desert *shudder*.  Not being able to leave our apartment and enjoy the outdoors for the last 1.5 years due to the ridiculous storms, dust, pollution, and heat has also caused some serious weight gain for us.  It is time to recover and regain our health!

So we're now happily ensconced in a beach house in the PNW for a year of recovery & zen!  Rent is far too much money and it's costing savings, but sometimes, especially after environmental trauma, you just have to suck it up and treat yourself! (YOLO, you know?)

And so we did.  I do so like coming home!

(Photo: Our living room view of the ocean on a rainy day.)

I love the Green outdoors!

It's been awhile and a LOT has happened since I last wrote.  We changed our puppy adoption to a foster (long story), then returned him to the rescue after we gave him loads of love, play, and a little training - along with all his shots and neuter.  And he found a forever home!  He'll always be my puppy baby though.

Since then, we adopted a goofy, sweet, and seriously neurotic Chihuahua girl, and she's been with us for 2 years now.

In 2019, we moved from the desert back to the Green.  Finally!  I have loved every minute of living in this climate again!  It also kept me sane (ish) through 2020 LOL!  But 2020, the bastard,  kept us unable to go out camping, hiking, to the beach, and generally enjoy the outdoors like we had planned.  But at least I can look out my window and see trees, and step outside and smell fress. cool, pine-y air, sweet grass, and flora with that beautiful silvery overcast sky like a soft blanket protecting and shielding us from the harsh sun. Everywhere I look, color abounds, and when the sky us occasionally blue, every plant gives a show rejoicing - it's novel to actually enjoy the sun instead of rue it!  I love this place.  It owns my heart.

And so, here we are in a nearly empty apartment, getting ready to move back to the desert.  I'm excited about why (new job), but not so much about where.

So today, my last day here, I'm just going to commune with nature a bit (although it's freezing out haha), so I can take that Green, securely stowed away in my memories, locked in my heart, with me.

(Pics taken from my little porch.)

I Like My Puppy!

We recently adopted a puppy from a local rescue group. This has reminded us that the word puppy is also a verb!

(Our very sweet and absolutely perfect Peppy boy I wrote about adopting some years ago died last November from old age - we think 18 years old-ish - congestive heart failure.  We will love him forever!)

This guy is Rigby! (His name always has an exclamation point at the end.)  We had his DNA tested.  You can clearly see that he's mostly Australian Cattle Dog (43%) (aka Blue Heeler), but he's also got some German Shepherd Dog (12%), Labrador Retriever (11%), Collie (7%), Cocker Spaniel (6)%, Chow Chow (3%) and 18% Other (we think maybe pirahna).



He's adorable and smart - and an absolute monster (who is super sweet - when he's sleeping)!  Overall, though, he's a Good Boy (when he's not throwing bitey temper tantrums because he's sleepy).  I like him. #puppylove 😍

This is him at 10 weeks.

This is him at 12 weeks. It's amazing how quickly he's growing and his colors are darkening up just as expected (#heelerthing).

And here he is at 14 weeks. One ear is trying to pop up - they might both stand up at some point (Heeler, Shepherd?) - or not (Lab, Collie, Cocker?).  They are rounded and super furry, silky soft!

I like rad hair color

Yup, still alive on this blog, just having some pauses now and again with posts.  And to keep the spirit alive, today's likeable stuff is my iridescent hair color.  Purple is prevalent, but there's also blue, teal and pink.  Also, because I'm old, I think it's rad, which is to say:  I like it. <3

It's been how long?!

So much time has passed since my last post.   It's not because I stopped liking things.  No, it's just, you know, life.  I still need to find and share likeable stuff, though - it makes me happy, so here we are!

Oh, and here's a pic if the Pacific ocean near Eureka, California on a glorious, cloudy, rainy, windy, chilly Spring day.  Loved it!

I Love the Rain

I was born amd raised in the Arizona desert.  The sun is relentless: 360 days a year of miserable scorching, drying,  hardening, blinding sun. 

Just weeks after finishing high school in 1991, on a whim with my (now long since ex-) boyfriend, we moved to Oregon (he had family there).  There was no Internet to research it - the only thing I knew about Oregon was from the month of April in a horse calendar I'd had as a little girl (we do all love horses, after all).  It was a pretty photograph of a bay running in a green field with trees shadowing the forefront of the image.

I got there in July.   It was beautiful.  It was GREEN full of life and vivid colors, (although sunny, but that was a norm to me).  We lived in the country with his family until we could find work and move out (took a few months but we did).  In late August it started raining.  It just rained.  Nothing dramatic too often, just... rain.   Wet.  All the time.  The air was moist and cool.  I was in love (although I could live without the 3 or so weeks of ice and smattering of snow each Winter). The rain stopped sometime in late June the following year.  I missed it and the silvery skies that were a balm to my soul.

I lived in that beautiful, rainy Eden for 20 years until the Universe bade me return to Arizona where I remain still dreaming of the steady, encompassing, comforting rain and shimmering clouds, trying to get my memories to blot out the present horrible, incessant sun and the empty blue sky that is everywhere...

It rains in Arizona briefly during the monsoon season at the end of each summer, but these rains don't speak of comfort and life.  Rather, just as everything in the desert, the rain is violent.  It reviles anything beautiful, delicate, or loving.  It lashes out in downpours and hail to flood, drown, and break whatever it can.  Arizona rain isn't a balm.  It isn't soothing or a comfort bequeathing life to the land.  No, it's a torrential downpour which will kill you if it can from which we must flee and hide.  It is every bit as sinister as the sun.

In my time in Oregon, I met many people who were depressed due to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).  10 months of rain isn't for everyone, but it is for me.  They needed sun.  I always recommended Arizona to sear away their ailment.   I think I have the same -- but in reverse.  The sun is depressive due to being oppressive.

I love the rain. 

I've been back in Arizona for just over 6 years now.  It feels like a lifetime. When my dad for whom I was caring in Az died 2.5 years ago (the main reason I moved back), I thought I could finally escape the desert and return to my liquid utopia.  The desert doesn't forgive, though.  It doesn't seem to be done with me, yet.

I'm still looking for work to get back up there where my soul still lives.   Need min. 80k a year +health ins. in a permanent position.  I'm a fantastic technical program manager, data analyst and project manager with an MS in Info Mgmt & a PMP who admins an SAP system on MS SQL Server platform. I'm not a DBA, but I have skills.  I've had interviews, but no go.  I get nervous despite practicing.  There always seems to be someone who meshes better and I don't make it in all the way.  I'm too geeky often times -oddly enough.  Too much of a comedienne for my own good.  But I like to laugh and play while I work!  Or I tone down and then I make no impression, or something, I guess (I've asked for feedback - I'm always told I was fine, but someone else was a better fit).  

The right thing will happen when it's supposed to, I just wish it would hurry. .. but not in the Winter.  I actually hate snow more than sun and the thought if having to move aka drive through those snowy mountain passes is terrifying.  I don't like to travel (that rules out consulting gigs).

But I'm not really desperate.  I have a great job I like most of the time with a lot of flexibility and benefits (telecommuting isn't one of them, though, so I can't move away), I have a beautiful little home.  I have my love and my life (my husband) beside me. We have our sweet dog, food and air conditioning.  Life is good; I'm actually not complaining.  I just miss the steady rain, the green everywhere, and being coddled and bouyed by the trees -- I'm just in the very wrong geographical location for my spirit. 

I love the rain.