If it's black, my hair is on it. Don't worry about yellow. Or red, or white, or pink. Even blue somehow escapes it. But, black? Black is a hair magnet.
If you have thinning hair, consider wearing something other than black.
Also, stay out of the bathroom. Bathrooms collect more hair than any other room.
You're welcome.
We came across a woman who was wearing a face mask. Nothing out of the ordinary. It looked like she was a worker at our neighborhood restaurant. She was leaving as we were arriving.
Hubby said he thought she looked happy. He gestured at his face, trying to indicate a smile. As if she might be smiling under her mask.
She didn't understand and removed her mask. She was embarrassed. She said, "Soy muy fea." I am very ugly.
"No, " I said. "Él dice que tú parece feliz." He says you seem happy.
She said, "Mi cara marca." My face marks. She pointed to the skin on her face which had some discoloration. I imagine she did her best to cover it with makeup (in addition to the mask) but they weren't ugly. Not even close.
"No!" I said. "Tú eres bonita!" You are pretty!
There were moments of silence as she gazed at me with beautiful blue eyes, almost on the brink of tears. "Thank you," she said.
As we parted, I made the sign for beautiful saying "hermosa." Beautiful.
She said, "Tú también." You as well.
We came across a beautiful woman.
I got the flu vaccine and dreamt that night entirely in Spanish.
Makes one wonder. . . .
I guess it's how you look at it. 1,500 miles is longer than the distance between the southern border of California to the northern border of Washington (state). It would take about 500 hours to walk. Or a year at an average of four miles per day which was my average daily walk in 2024.
So is that a long distance - 1,500 miles - or a short one - 4 miles per day?
I hope to walk farther in 2025 but I'm off to a slow start. I do most of my walking in the cooler months of October through April although it can get hot even then. And while I trained for a half marathon in the early months of 2025, I never completed one. And then, I didn't walk for much of the summer because it was too hot to go outside much less do anything. My daily average for this year is only 3.2 miles per day for a total of about 830 miles. I'd have to do more than six miles per day to reach 1,500 miles by the end of the year. Now, 1,500 miles looks far.
All that being said, it's time to replace my walking shoes so I went shopping last weekend and came home with two pair. One is the (women's) Altra Experience Flow that I purchased from REI. The other is the (men's) Nike Run Swift 3 purchased from DSW.
You might wonder why I bought both a women's shoe and a men's. I typically wear women's shoes but I have run in men's shoes before. They give me a little more room in the shoe, particularly in the toe box.
So far, I've walked three miles in each pair on a treadmill and while I wanted to like the Altras more I'm not sure I do. The Nike pair are closer to the style of shoe from New Balance that I've been wearing the last few years but when I ordered a pair this year, they felt clunky and stiff. I did some research online, decided on some metrics that I wanted to focus on, and went shopping.
I'll do another few miles in each pair of shoes on the treadmill before deciding but either way, I'm getting motivated to get out there and get walking. The weather is starting to cool down providing much needed relief to those of us in the southern California desert but it needs to be much cooler for me to do distances of 4, 6, 10, or more miles. I would love to do a marathon this year and even if it's something I could do, do I really want to? A marathon would take me six to seven hours to walk. And even if I wanted to do that, I have to consider all the time that training to walk that far would take. I've run two marathons before and while that was hugely satisfying, the main drawback was the sacrifice of time.
To be determined.
Whichever way I go on the shoes, I must mention that the customer service and return policy of REI are above and beyond. Even if I rule out the Altras, I won't rule out REI. No matter what you're looking for, if you're looking to get outside, start with REI. They have a lot to offer.
In the meantime, walk on.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was bored with summer. Nothing to do, too hot to go outside, I started looking for a job. That's how serious it had gotten.
Now, I can't seem to keep my desk cleared, the emails from piling up, keep up with my diary, or post to my blog.
Although, I am getting pretty close to finishing this . . . .
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| Modeled by the beautiful and elegant JW. |
"Why do you put your bread in the microwave?" my grandchildren ask, looking for signs of dementia.
"Because I don't have a breadbox," I answer.
They stare blankly, then ask, "What's a breadbox?"
I can't help but smile at the obvious answer, "It's a box you bread into."
They think I must be crazy or from another planet. "But why?"
Frankly, I don't know. "That's how my grandmother kept her bread."
I suppose I could just keep it on the counter but that would look messy. Breadboxes, if they exist at all, are rare and would make my kitchen counters appear cluttered. (Keep in mind, I keep my coffee maker in the laundry room for this very reason.) Other people keep bread in the refrigerator but aficionados argue that dries the bread out while keeping it in the pantry can potentially promote mold (if there is enough heat and humidity).
Meanwhile, the microwave is a cool, dark, and airtight place to store bread and recommended by King Arthur Baking Company in "The Best Way to Store Yeast Bread." In fact, that's all I use my microwave for: storing bread. Ditto for the oven in my RV back when I used to own one. I never used the oven for cooking and it made the perfect place to store bulkier items like bags of chips in a kitchen without much storage space.
So that, dear children, is the reason I put my bread in the microwave.
It just makes sense.
By the way, "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" was a standard question in the game 20 Questions back in my day. Which is to say, we are old enough to know what breadboxes are. (Also, the game of 20 Questions.)
If your husband is like mine, he has trouble remembering what day it is. Usually, all he has to do is take a look at his pill box but if he's forgotten to take his meds, then he's thrown off and he has to ask me.
That's why I recommend Day of the Week Boxer Shorts. Of course there is a downside. You may find your husband occasionally looking down the front of his pants to figure out the day of the week. I can think of more than one circumstance when that might be awkward if not inappropriate. Think about dinner with your mother. Or passing by a schoolyard.
But there is an upside. You can mix up his underwear drawer for April Fool's Day.
That will really mix him up.
