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Song of the day: “Blame it on me” by George Ezra. Cute little song, even though I like “Budapest” better.

Approaching onto my birthday, yep, less than a day and I’ll be (brace yourselves) thirty six. Oh. My. Gawd!!! My, my. Does time fly. To celebrate the occasion a friend and I are going for a hike up on the mountain, and I have a tentative plan to take Knight II along, but it remains to be see whether I can take him or not. He has not been well lately, his feet troubling him to the point that I’ve had to start him on antibiotics once again. I hate putting him on antibiotics, in particular since I know that they are only a temporary solution, but then I remind myself that he is old already, and that any week, or month that the nasty things can give him is a good thing. For a while there, I feared he’d die, these past couple of weeks. Now he’s doing well enough under the circumstances.

If he can’t go along on the walk tomorrow, I’m thinking of Tadaika instead. Our fat girl needs the exercise for sure.

So what’s been going over here. Plenty, yet completely insignificant things with which’s highlights I’ll bore you.

First off, I made a rather wonderful strawberry/physalis/kiwi yogurt cake yesterday, but something was wrong with the gelatin I used, meaning that it didn’t set during the night in the fridge, much to my regret, in particular since the taste worked out so well. So rather than eating that cake, we were forced to make due with semi-smoothies. A bothersome task that, but we suffer through it. Hah.

So to make up for that little error, I made a couple of delicious apple pies today. Yay. They worked out awesome. Because I was short on apples, I added dried apricot pieces, raisins, coconut shavings and some almonds, which made for a sumptuous combination. Spent about four hours in the kitchen today. Not only for the pies, but also for patties (want to take some on the hike tomorrow) and a rather wonderful mix of red beets with sweet potatoes. I’m thinking of adding the latter to the food blog.

Which reminds me, the food blog isn’t doing bad, all things considered. Am rapidly approaching the triple digits for readers over there. Makes me curious if any of the recipes have been tried, and what they thought of it. Ah well, until someone posts there, we can only guess, right?

Spent a nice afternoon writing down some recipes, by the way, including a rather nice stir fry I experimented with during yesterday’s lunch. An explosion of taste, I tell you. Ah well. It was fun to try something different for a change, and since big brother had gorged himself on the left over macaroni from yesterday, I didn’t have much of a choice.

Oh, oh, we had this rather splendid idea of a pasta restaurant the other day. Can you imagine. I had this buffet image of a whole array of pastas with in front of it a massive selection of veggie sauces. My mouth watered at the idea, I tell ya. The marvelous thing about it is that you can probably have folks come in for 5 bucks per person and still make a nice little profit. Ah well. Thoughts like that are fleeting. Hah.

Spent a couple of afternoons working on both cars. First the Trooper, since it’s got carpet inside and therefore needed to be vacuumed. Then the Land Rover out of which we’ve started taking out the first excess bits and pieces in preparation of the pimping we’re planning. Quite a bit will have to be done, but it should be nice challenge.

Set up a new bed for grandpa. Like for me, his corner of the porch is small too, so he decided for a single rather than a queen. Luckily we had the supplies we needed to set one up with four drawers underneath, which should be handy for him. He’s a bit wary of there being too little space with his dogs, but like mine, they’ll get used to it.

Had some good moments working on cutting dog food. Figured that I might as well give Grandpa some free time, so there was bread to cut, veggies…everything the dogs need, except for the meat, because I really dislike the smell and feel of meat early in the morning.

Had some splendid workouts these past couple of weeks. Have been sore maybe seventy percent of the time, which tells me that I’ve been doing something right. Did the kicks, the punches, the stretches and even some jogging, so I’ve been a good Sammie. Even had meat a couple times. Yay.

Had a short term job last week, where we painted and furnished a shop in town. A friend recommended us, and I think we did a good job. Took a full day, mind you. First emptying it, filling up holes in the walls, then spending about three hours painting everything while big brother worked in the old store putting together shelving units with mirrors. The rest of the day was spent setting up the units, counter and cleanup, all of it in a single stretch (skipped lunch) because we had to be at the garage before 6 PM.

Added to that we helped a friend move house. Went from all over in Calahonda to a spot right at the bottom of our mountain, so going over every now and then will be way easier…first she needs to get settled, though, and will need a hand every now and then getting everything in the new apartment in order.

Had a bad cold once I got back from the UK, meaning I was a bit under the weather, but in the days that passed I had some naps…heck I even had a couple of three hour naps, which were wonderful…my dogs fully agreed with them too, crawling under the blankets with me because the temps outside have a tad nippy. Did have a lot of sunshine, too, though, which is grand.

As to the rest…there is of course the normal stuff. Laundry, as always. Cleaning up, cooking dinner, changing Knight II’s bandages every day, going to town and getting groceries, picking up some donations…for some reason the days are extremely full.

Which brings us to the end of today…well, it’s tomorrow already, so technically that makes it my B-Day, doesn’t it? Gotta go. Got an early morning planned tomorrow.