Friday I slept in until 8:00 AM and consequently did not get much done in the morning. In the afternoon I walked up to Starbuck's and then did some further walking, a total of around 6 miles. It was a beautiful balmy day, with a slight damp haze which reminded me of being near the ocean.
I saw this gorgeous specimen of a cactus on my walk, I think maybe it's actually a euphorbia:
And the Palo Verde trees are still in bloom:
I really felt that I had gotten my energy level back, which was so nice.
Saturday morning I woke up with the list in my head of things I had to get done. It was quite a list: 1)walk the three miles left in my "nine miles within 24 hours" weekly March goal, 2) get to Starbuck's by 9:30 AM half an hour early for my beading meetup so that I could commandeer three tables and put them together for the group, 3) have the beading meetup from 10:00 to noon, 4)get to the bank, 5) go to the library to make the form I need for drama club and print out the Migrant Trail registration packet, 6) come home so that I could sew litle bean bag ammo for the catapult I was giving Ethan for the birthday party the next day, and 7) practice the two songs I'm supposed to learn for when I attend to the "Valley Acoustic Group Meetup" which will be in Mesa, tomorrow, after Ethan's party. Whew!
On top of all that, that evening Dale and I ended up attending a "Mad Hatter's Tea Party!"
I took Ziggy with me for the three mile walk, and he absolutely loved it. It was a beautiful morning. Unfortunately I was so concentrated on getting out the door in time to walk the three miles before I had to be on to my next thing, that I forgot my camera.
The beading meetup was a lot of fun. The conversations have been fun at every one of these get-togethers. I don't know if the cause is that people who like to make things are nice people, or if it's because when people are working on a project which takes part of their concentration, their minds relax and they forget to be nervous with eachother.
I forgot to take photos during the beading meetup. But here's a photo of what I was working on, the beginning of a many stranded necklace.
At the library later on, I enjoyed looking at the desert which surrounds the library parking lot:
I encountered the two animals in the following photos, whose owners were taking them out of the library. The animals had been the guests of honor at a "read to the animals" program, in which little kids read their favorite books allowed to animals.
The Vietnamese pot-bellied pig seemed happy to lie in its little wagon. People came up, some of them besotted with fascination. When the pig was stroked and petted, it would start snorting with enjoyment, in a very comical way. Isn't the macaw gorgeous? It was tame enough that the owner was inviting little kids to pet it, also.
When I got home, there was a call from Cam, the guy who made the doors for the pizza oven. They were having a "tea party, mostly girls, my daughter's got it all decorated up like Alice in Wonderland".
As you can see, she certainly did!
(She even had little flasks with "Drink me" painted on them.)
I've been into their back yard a couple of times before. It's hidden behind the "two story trailer" down the street from us, which our kids used to point out and laugh at when they were little, every time we drove by it, which we did any time we went anywhere
On top of a regular motor home, Cam added a bedroom and an observation deck, with a welded metal circular stairway, made entirely by him, going up to it from the back. Here's a photo of part of the circular stairway (it doesn't usually have paper flowers on it).
I have always called their back yard "fantasy island". There is a circle of trees in the middle with vines growing up everything. There is only one place on the back wall where the original motor home is even visible.
Here are a couple more photos of all of the decorations. The daughter had so much enthusiasm for the whole creation, and her friends (all friends since elementary school) were all excited about it also. Beverly, Cam's wife, and the daughter had scoured second-hand stores for much of the stuff, and they'd put it together for two days. It would take almost that long to take it all down.
Cam and Dale Sr. played pool while I chatted with the women.The daughter is 28 and an elementary school teacher, and some of her friends have the same kind of job I had, in our local school district, so there was lots to talk about.
The daughter lives at home with her parents. The three of them go rock-hunting (the "island" circle of trees is surrounded by a low rock wall built entirely without masonry) and do other things together.
It seemed so wonderfully serendipitious to me, that on a street of trailers in a lower-working-class street of a town like Apache Junction, to run into something as wacko as anything you'd find in Beserkeley....
At the end of the evening, "Alice" was playing ping-pong:
Sunday was Ethan's third birthday party. When we arrived, he said, "Come see Bounce House" he was really excited because a "bouncy castle" had been rented for the party. He had to show us how he could crawl in and out of it, and jump.
Here I am holding his little sister Shayla, a very easy-going baby:
In the next photo, he is opening presents. Dale Jr. had tried to warn me off of giving Ethan the catapult I bought at the Renaissance Festival. I figured it would be all right if I made little bean bags for the ammo. He jumped in and tried it so fast and it pinched his thumb. I feel so bad about it and cringe to think about it.
The offending catapult is dead-center in the above photo.
We left there at 2:00. Dale Sr. was going to meet John Ducette at his man-cave, and I had rsvp'd "yes" to the other guitar meetup I'd been hearing about. I was so upset that my grandson had gotten hurt by the present I gave him that I wanted to scream, and I figured that singing was the next best thing.
I had a good time, it's very organized but that's okay. They rent a space to meet in, a historic building in the Main Street area of Mesa, so they charge dues of 5:00. My only complaint is that it would be good if all the rhythm guitars would play more quietly when someone was doing an instrumental, so you could hear it better. But the people were friendly and enthusiastic to each other. I liked the songs they picked, and I liked the leader.
Well, that's about it
Love,
Lennie
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