Nuthin' Much

Good morning!  I feel like I should post, but I ain't got much (of interest) to write about!  

I'm doing a bit more nannying this month than usual (cash in the pocket & kiddo time for me - double bonus!).  I was at Bundle of Joy's house for 13 hours on Saturday and had a really wonderful time.  Matter of fact, at the end of the night, I told her mama that I thought it was the most enjoyable visit I'd EVER had there!  :)

That morning, My Girl (Bundle of Joy's auntie) came out and we had a much-overdue, great visit.  Then, once she'd left to get on with her day, I got all the (Papa Pea's birthday) dinner prep done during the rest of Bundle of Joy's long, 3-hour nap.  Made four pounds of bison into two DELISH "buffaloafs" (ha!) with all the added, good fixins.  Got my recipe for Deluxe Mashed Potatoes all made up, too:  the entirety of one all ready in a casserole dish and the potatoes cooked and ready for me to throw in the last ingredients when I was back at home for the other.


I love nannying in homes in which I feel comfortable enough to and am invited to cook or bake or putz.  It's a joy to have the mama come home after a hard day working outside the home to discover dinner ready to go into the oven!  :)  And, that's just what Bundle of Joy's family and I did that night, plus one dinner guest who'd come to work on the daddy's dump truck with him.  It felt like a real "midwinter" meal:  buffaloaf with gravy (the mama made that, thank you!), deluxe mashed potatoes, and al dente broccoli with lots of butter.  After dinner, while the dad & visiting mechanic were outside working until it got too dark to see (suddenly SO early in the evening - 8:30 and it's pretty much dark out already!), the mama and I got Bundle of Joy to bed and then just sat and visited.  No pressures to speak until something popped into mind . . . so relaxing . . . the BEST kind of friendship!

Here's Bundle of Joy when she woke up from her nap.  We were outside with the doggies (her one and my two).  There's a white raspberry bush just off the deck, and she LOVES to stand there and eat!  :)

At 20 months old, she's FINALLY getting a little hair . . . but she's also getting LONG & TALL, I noticed!

Even though she can't talk yet more than single words (no stringing them together yet), she IS very excited about potty training!  I'm very proud of her:  she and Bopee shared a lot of quality time - and EACH visit successful! - in the bathroom that day.  ;)

Bundle of Joy's daddy is making the long driveway to their new house-to-be site his focus of the summer.  He took the little one and me all the way to the top on the 4-wheeler earlier in the day, but I didn't have my camera with me.  But, WHAT a view of the lake - even in the summertime with the leaves in full flush!  That is gonna be an AMAZING spot to build a house!  Before dinner, I took the dogs about halfway up the driveway on a walk.  Pretty nice, eh?

Of course, Maisy wanted me to throw her a rock.  I'm trying to train her to only ask for tennis balls to be thrown, but when we're away from home, that's hard to do.

On the way home that night, I came up over a small rise in the road to see something gross, black and shiny, and . . . bloated? . . . on the road that I had to swerve around.  There was a little trail, too, where you could tell it had rolled across the road.  I immediately put on the brakes to go back to investigate . . . but then the 10 PM black night plus my current murder mystery audio book and my imagination got the better of me and I quickly continued on home!  ;)

I was looking forward to checking it out on Sunday morning when I drove out, but, of course, there was no sign of it.  In retrospect, I'm sure it was something from the Master Baiters.  Yup, they're back:  bear hunters.  I've said it each year, and I'll say it again:  hunting an animal that you have to LURE to a site and then wait for it there so you can shoot 'em like fish in a barrel (except EASIER) ain't hunting.  Whatever happened to TRACKING like you do for deer?  It bugs the *#@! out of me.  So, I call these "hunters" Master Baiters.  Get it?  ;)  Baiting starts in August and then the season opens in September.  Baiting usually consists of hundreds of pounds of sweet stuff.  Literally, jelly donuts and gummy bears are favorites of these Master Baiters . . . and, apparently, it works for the bears, too.  So, I think the bigger-than-a-breadbox GLOB I saw in the dark of the night was probably something from the baiting that critters had gotten to and hauled off.

I took this picture of the full moon the week before when I was driving home.  LOTS of people were pulling over to the side of the road to look - which is always something nice to see:  that people still appreciate the beauty of nature once in a while.  :)

Sunday night, Mama and Papa Pea and I celebrated his birthday.  When we all sat down to dinner, I joked to Mom, "Aren't you going to photograph all this for the blog?"  We were all so tired and looked so exhausted that, uh, NO, that wasn't gonna happen.  ;)  Here's the weird thing, tho:  I was SO disappointed in my portion of the birthday meal!  The buffaloaf and potatoes that we'd had the night before at Bundle of Joy's were FANTASTIC, and the mama and I even called Papa Pea afterwards to tell him how good his birthday dinner had been (too bad he'd missed it - ha ha) and how much we'd enjoyed it!  But, on Sunday, after the same amount of time in Mama Pea's oven, the buffaloaf wasn't as hot or cooked as I'd have liked it (I only eat meat if it's W-E-L-L done), and the potatoes had escaped their casserole dish and flowed all over the oven . . . and still were runny and NOT hot!  What the . . . ?!!!  I was very disappointed.  Still, the gravy, spinach with cheese, and Freshy's Blueberry Pie that Mom had made were DELISH.  But, neither the working-too-hard Mama Pea nor Papa Pea seemed to mind.  I just hate it, though, when meals - especially special ones - don't turn out!  Grrrrr.

Okay, that's enough for now.  Gotta brush my teeth and jump in the shower and get on with my day.  There are meetings scheduled for me in town today, and one of the thumb drives I have my main file on (for said meeting) is missing.  I think it's at work.  I HOPE it's at work.  Too many files, too many computers, too many thumb drives.  I need to condense and ORGANIZE!  In my spare time.  ;)