Ambergris

removed to be personal message

These are fun to consider, but I prefer not to warn people. Sometimes they get to find out firsthand.

We just had a brief earthquake here. While discussing it with a friend, I was kindly advised to always keep a bag by the door with cash, copies of my documents, and water. How sweet of him to lay this out for an old lady like me.

Evacuated. Wow. Then went shopping. Am now back home.

https://earthquaketrack.com/p/ecuador/recent says there have been 0 earthquakes in the past 24 hours, so either they haven't listed them yet (why wouldn't they?) or it was just the skin of our mountain slipping. I don't add in "dreaming" because my cat was sitting up and upset both times. Could have dreamed that too, but it seems really unlikely.

Earthquakes woke me up twice last night. Neither shows up on earthquaketrack.com yet. One at I think 2:20 and one, which lasted a good twenty seconds after I woke up, an hour later. I put money, ID, bank card, and phone in my pocket and put on my shoes, and somehow had trouble going back to sleep after. So I don't know what I'm up to today, but I hope it's not challenging.

Thin beach towel or long bathrobe laid down over the nasty carpet. It washes and dries with the normal laundry. Regardless, doing a quarter of the exercises is better than doing none of them. It's not an all-or-none set. I have warm memories of visiting The City of Elizabeth City, although the name seems silly.

Hate to say it, but he was likely smoking something more expensive than Marlboros, and didn't want you to smell it. Picked up a roast chicken with sides (soup, rice, fried potatoes) which counts as fast food here and brought it home to eat. Oh, so good. Cut up the leftovers and froze them. Also picked up some not-quite-ripe plantains and creole avocados (i.e. seedling, not Haas) to ripen over the course of the week. The pottery lady from Cera was at the market selling pots, but I don't want to buy large breakable objects mere weeks before moving. Made an agreement with a guy in a truck to move my potted plants on May 22 and my other things on May 29. This leaves plenty of time to clean up. I hope this is what got agreed to. Planted sunflowers and marigolds together as a backdrop to the red, gold, and red-gold roses. Found that a few sunflowers from a prior panting are ankle-high, which is great news. Gritted my teeth a lot, as my Siamese cat-in-heat has found her voice.

Laundry is on the line. Roses are planted. Bathroom is bleached. Floor is swept (kitchen twice). Bed is changed and made. Can you tell the housekeeper is here? While she did all that, I worked on Spanish lessons and salted down some limes, mixing sweet limes from the tree with key lime type limes from the market and mixing the pink Himalayan salt with sea salt. We're about to head to the feed store in the housekeeper's kinda scary car to lay in big bags of cuy pellets, corn for both chickens and cuy, and mash for the chickens.

I did move the food to the other side of the gate, and that did appear to take care of the problem. You can get cheaper cigarettes than Marlboro. We had couch-dwellers who asked for $7 packs of cigarettes but didn't throw out the occasional $4.50 packs I handed over.

An abandoned teenaged cat was sort of adopted by neighbors on the other side of the hill, who are currently out of the country. So the cat is now ranging around looking for food and comfort. My cats don't want him here, and I am having to hear all about it. The furor has been going on for a good half hour now. I put down food my cats had refused to eat for two days. They might be refusing to eat it, but they are now refusing to let him eat it on their turf. I don't really know where their turf ends.

I would suggest adding the cost of the closet door to his rent, but I know from experience this would likely lead to a barrage of other damage.

Today was the last day of exercise sessions with the super-encouraging and astonishingly knowledgeable D. Am I ever sore--Monday, Wednesday, and again today were each a step up in intensity. Today I had to stop a couple of times because I was getting splotches in my vision. I might take another hot shower right before bed to loosen my muscles. Monday we start with R, and today I downloaded Youtube videos to test out as lighter Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday workouts, which I can build on once I move.

Reconfigure a leg-hold trap or something similar to, when it triggered, open instead of closing, knocking a large portion of snow off to the side of one step, maybe while breaking ice? Then only sweep up what's left while accomplice resets trap for next step down? Or would that be too dangerous? I thought of pouring boiling water, but that would end up being ice, right?

Wouldn't it be nice if a different angle of broom head or bent handle would take care of that? Like a scythe handle maybe?

Mmm... cranberry scones...

What he was trying is spelled S_C_A_M, not S_C_A_R_E. My last ex-husband started going through those kinds of tactics after he got to smoking "K2," which he described as artificial weed and which is apparently a lot closer to ice/meth. Prepare for things to get a lot worse in his last weeks. Cornered rats, you know.

Here and there, remember to take a phone-picture of the mess before you start cleaning. This will come in really handy when they start hounding you again about letting him stay another month (and then another, and another). You know this is going to happen.

Sounds good. One of my chicks ... young hens ... keeps getting in and out of the egg room of the hen house, rearranging that room, and settling into a laying position. The gray hen keeps following her around and mimicking her position, acting kind of like a midwife. Today's groceries: Red bananas, avocado, and salad.

A lock costs and awful lot less than the locksmith's time to work on a damaged lock or doorknob. If you think it might be compromised, you should probably assume it has been, and treat it accordingly. My preference is a deadbolt that is more than one inch long, but not all doors will allow this. Also, they are hard to find and cost more than the standard deadbolt. The kind of deadbolt that requires a key on both sides is more secure, but if you have to leave in an emergency, like a fire or your house filling with poison fumes that confuse you, or a tornado, looking for a key that your confused mind hides the location of can eat up precious quarter-seconds that you need to be using to get outside with. I normally buy the type with a twist lever on the inside and a key slot only on the outside. I ALWAYS buy a deadbolt, even if it means I have to drill above the doorknob to make a place for it. (No landlord ever referred to this as damage against my damage deposit, but I'm going back more than thirty years with this information.)

It ebbs and flows, like all things. Don't despair.

With my housekeeper doing most of the actual work, transplanting out into the garden and generally moving plants around. Also getting three chicken carcasses broken down, repacked, and frozen, moving yesterday's broth from the fridge (defatted) into the freezer, and putting a new pot of broth on to cook until tomorrow evening.

I have another batch of chicken-foot broth in the slow cooker now. Chicken feet come in the giblet bag here. This has feet, neck, liver, back, a store bought carrot, some carrot greens, plantain (the green weed), onions of various kinds, a knob of ginger, a little vinegar, salt and whole pepper, and recycled bones from yesterday's broth.

It's great for onions that are going to be caramelized and then dried

I guess they can throw stones.