Jewels, Tools, Fools, and Drools

 

I believe this to be the best time of the year. All the best days fall within the autumn months: Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. These last three months of the year mean one thing to me, and that is family. I love those times when we are all about being together, caring for each other, and the laughter that flows from those moments. Oh, the laughter.  -- Vicki Macrae

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Thursday, November 7, 2024

Today is the day we have been waiting for! We're going to Eugene to pick up the car. The long-awaited Kia Sportage will return to our driveway, and I can't wait. This means returning to work. Beautiful work. Yes, I said beautiful. 

For a month now, I have had no car to continue my job, which is my saving grace—my sanity. This may sound silly to some, but you have no idea how much that delivery job means to me regarding what it does to help—not financially so much, but just plain old exercise. It keeps me moving. 

My ankle gets a workout every day without me thinking about the motions I'm putting it through. If I leave the exercise routine up to me without supervision, I'm lost. My mind begins to wander, and I never get it done. Put me in a car with my delivery job, and I move. I'm picking up items and delivering them, moving the ankle without giving it thought. Plus, I make money. What better way to exercise?

Yes, there is housework as well and that does help too. But for whatever reason, I seem to focus on the ankle more when I'm cleaning or moving around the house. Maybe I associate it with healing and all the learning to walk again. I did all of that inside the house, so that may be a possibility. Anyway, off we go!

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Terry and I drove to Eugene, picked up the car, and drove to Dawn's house for a while. We were able to visit Dawn, Lorenzo, Kylee, and Zyrah. It was nice seeing all their smiling faces again. After a couple of hours of bugging them, we drove to Brandy's house. She was there with all three of the beautiful pups. 

It was our first time meeting Lila. She is the epitome of a puppy. Bouncy, playful, cute, and just full of fun. She is a pocket pit, meaning a small version of a pit bull terrier. 

Then there's the naked guy. He, of course, is amazing and fun. Toski is also very unique. 

In a flash, he is going from barking at you because he is protecting himself and the household, and the next he is barking at you because he wants to play with you. I find his body language difficult to determine which mode he is in. He is hard to read. He did bring me a nice dog toy though, so I guess that meant he had switched to, "Play with me stupid." 

We played around with all the puppies until it was time we went back home. Since we were driving separate vehicles, we were hoping to do all of this before dark so we could keep each other in our view. If the Kia had any issues, at least he would be there to pick me up and vice versa. 

The first thing we did was lose each other, of course. We both know the way home obviously, but we really wanted to stay together until the cut-off to Roseburg anyway. Traffic was so bad that we lost one another before turning off on the Roseburg exit. Good thing the Kia did not have issues on the way home and neither did the Xterra. 

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Friday, November 8, 2024

Woohoo! I'm back and waiting for deliveries! Terry smoked for a while and took care of his duties at home while I still waited. And waited. And waited. I finally received two, count 'em, two deliveries. I felt deflated. Waiting for this moment for over a month and this is all that I got? Come on, people! Start ordering some food!

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Saturday, November 9, 2024

Same thing. Two orders all day long. Terry relaxed and enjoyed his day off while I waited more. I really wanted to get some baking ingredients to test more finished products for Sweet Mama Macrae's this weekend but I sat in angst that I would start something and a call would come through. So, I sat and waited. After a month of wanting my car back so badly, and this is what comes from it? Ugh. 

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Sunday, November 10, 2024

Today is our celebration of Mallory's birthday. Her actual birthday is tomorrow, Veteran's Day, but we can get her for a while today. This makes me happy. Poor girl has had some issues lately and needs a bit of time away from her house to take a little break. 

Speaking of breaks, Hayden broke his arm at school. He broke two bones actually. Another boy running in front of him in P.E. stopped suddenly, causing Hayden's arm to bash into him. This bent his fingers back, breaking his wrist in two places, including the bone right against the growth plate. Not a good scenario for the child. He was put into a temporary cast and waited for his appointment with the specialist. 

Heading to the store, I grabbed a Boston creme cake for the occasion. Terry ordered her a CD she wanted and I ordered a "bonus daughter" necklace for her. We also gave her a card to let her know we were thinking of her on her special day. 

Terry selected a Kelly Clarkson CD Mallory had expressed she wanted. She was excited when she opened his gift to her. It was great to see her smile after all she was dealing with. 

Next came my gift. I was unsure of her taste in jewelry, so this was a guess of what she would love. 

Mallory has expressed fear that I would leave her at some point if anything ever happened between her father and me. I reassured her that all was well and begged her not to worry. I believe it all stems from her losing her mother about 11 years ago. She loves the family and often has feelings of worry if she loses them as well. Terry and I make attempts to reassure her all is fine, but she struggles with the idea of loss. Bless her heart. 

On a happier note, we chose to take her through Wildlife Safari since she loves it and it is her birthday. Off we went. Once again, here is our trip through the park, shown in a photo dump. We had some great surprises today and amazing moments!

The grayish-colored animals here are blue wildebeests. The brown-colored beautiful baby is another type of deer-like animal, possibly a common eland. 

Next up were the King of Beasts, the lions. 

As Mallory was clicking away, she noticed this big guy had an eye missing or it was closed. 

Terry snapped this super close-up with the fencing framing his face. 

The scimitar-horned oryx. These beautiful animals were once scattered in large numbers across North Africa and Central and West Africa. Now they are extinct in the wild. Thanks to Wildlife Safari and other wildlife parks, there is hope for the oryx to populate once again. 

Handing Mallory my phone to capture animals throughout the park paid off. She caught this hippo in the pond, eating some type of food. She said it looked "gross" if that counts. I didn't ask any more questions about it, but knew the hippo was enjoying whatever meal it was ingesting. Although I do know that hippos devour grasses and other plants. 

Nope. Didn't want to know. Didn't need to know. I just knew it was. 

Around the corner was a gorgeous rhino. Actually, there were two roaming the park today. Big, beautiful babies!

A few weeks ago, Wildlife Safari obtained another white rhino. After more than a century of protection and management, there are now about 18,000 white rhinos in protected areas and game reserves. 

Our next adventure was so special and will stand out in our memories forever. It is the closest any of us have ever been to a hippo. What was truly amazing was how the hippo came out of the hut, walked around the brush and pond, posed for us, and then walked back the way it came. It was so perfectly staged in our minds. We managed to get quite a few beautiful shots of this hippo. 

I stopped the car when I saw the hippo standing outside of the pond. Mallory began to take photos but was complaining of the brush it was behind. But the hippo began to walk further along the path outside of the pond as if he heard her gripe. 

It turned to give us a glance and this is when the action began! Like a model walking along the runway, this gorgeous baby showed everything he or she had. 

Excitement built in the car as the hippo walked closer to us.  

Terry began to snap photos too. 

Photo by Terry Macrae

As if the hippo was being told what to do, it walked toward us, then stopped and posed. Who knew hippos loved photo shoots? Terry captured the pose perfectly. 

Mallory kept snapping photos as quickly as she could to get every moment of this special sighting and the closeness we achieved. 

Literally, as soon as our photo shoot began to subside, the hippo turned gracefully and made an exit back into the hut it came from. It was an amazing experience, with plenty more shots of this gorgeous animal, but far too many to share here. I could fill about four blog posts with all the photos captured. I know that if I were to step out of the car, we could have easily reached out to touch this hippo. Of course, we would have been escorted out of the park in one fell swoop, but we could say we touched a hippo. 

But that wasn't the end of the special time we had at the park today. As we moved through the roads, we came upon another spectacular sighting. One of the cheetahs had tiny cubs! Yes, at this time of year! I was shocked that they were so young and that it was this time of the year. Wildlife Safari's cheetah breeding program is amazing!

Terry zoomed in as close as he could get. Close enough to see the baby's face. 

The mama saw the cars piling up along the roadside, so she immediately sat by the fence to protect the babies. 

In a second cheetah run, Mallory captured this pretty cat waiting impatiently for the food truck. It wasn't Taco Tuesday, so maybe Meatball Monday? 

With all of this, we drove home with smiles on our faces. It had been a perfect day and the best trip to Wildlife Safari in Winston. We have had visits there that have created beautiful memories, but this one would be in the top three. You can never go wrong visiting wild animals when you're an animal lover like the three of us are. 

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Monday, November 11, 2024

Veteran's Day began without a single order for delivery. I'm stunned at how slow it has been. Anyway, this allowed me to spend some time with Terry. We chose to go out for a very early dinner at Denny's. Denny's has a special on Veteran's Day, with a free breakfast for vets. It sounded great and it was offering one meal free, so why not? 

As we ordered, we were informed the vet's meal had ended already. Oh, well. We were hungry and wanted to eat. 

Terry ordered the turkey dinner which was looking and sounding very tasty. I ordered the skillet meal, consisting of potatoes, eggs, spinach, avocados, and peppers. 

The dinner was good, but Terry's turkey dinner was looking a bit better. As the saying goes, things are always greener on the other side of the fence.

I believe some of it is because it's getting close to Thanksgiving and turkey is on my mind. Last Christmas we came to Denny's to enjoy a turkey dinner simply because Terry didn't want me having to cook. The turkey dinner was great, much to our surprise. 

Yum. That's all I could think as I munched my own dinner. 

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Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Ah, back to a "normal" work week. I turned on the app and once again, only one order. This left me with some time to clean the house, put jewelry into Marketplace again, get jewelry ready for pick up, and try out some cinnamon bagels. 

I made the dough. Kneaded the dough, shaped the bagels, and gave them their final rest before putting them into the pan of boiling water. 

The pan of water and a pinch of sugar began to boil. 

Brown sugar and cinnamon were prepped, waiting to top those beautiful bagels. The bagels boiled until their outer skin shriveled like they had been in a bathtub for hours. I sprinkled on the cinnamon sugar mixture and into the oven they went. 

The result was a bagel that tasted like cinnamon toast. I'm not sure I will ever make them for Sweet Mama Macrae's, but I believe I may for Terry and me to enjoy. We'll see. 

It was a bit worrisome to ensure they were baked without burning them, and yet the cinnamon-brown sugar made that difficult. They all looked so dark. This week's project? Blackberry-orange scones. Love the idea of making scones and while I have never eaten a scone, the flavor combinations are coming to me every day. Can't wait. These and muffins. And fudge. And brownies. Oh, and don't forget cupcakes. Then there are candies. Oh, boy. I may have bitten off a bit too much. 

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Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Life goes on. I went out for my first order today. A really nice order actually. Pick up groceries from the store then deliver them to a home. Nice pay and I thought the day would turn out to finally be worth it all. 

I started the car. Drove toward the store. Hit the freeway and oh, crap. The car is not accelerating! I'm going to leave this here as I don't want to teach anyone new swear words, and boy are they coming!

This is our week and weekend. I love the little adventures life gives us. Take advantage of those gifts as they come along and remember that you are blessed. You never know when you will have that chance to dance with a hippo but if given the chance to sit out or dance, dance! 

Until the next post, take care of yourself and shine that light!