It's been a minute but who can tell?

As if there wasn't enough crazy in the world, the platform I've used for the past decade on a nearly weekly basis is forcing me onto a new format. Ten years in tech is like a millennia, I know that, but still. I was unprepared to accept that all the warnings they'd been leaving me to try the new format were actually real.  

It's been almost a month since I posted. No, I haven't contracted COVID-19. There just doesn't seem to have been any great news happening that I needed to share. And honestly, I've been asking myself more and more often: "Does anyone really need to hear my opinion/outlook?" Not that I don't have opinions. I'm just tired. The world has a lot of awful in it and seems harder than usual to find the good. If I can't figure out this new process, and if I can't figure out how to keep my old posts, his could be the end of me on social media. Before I go (if I go) a few updates:

Ali is still working at FedEx. It's physical work throwing boxes around, and sometimes she gets in the way of them. 

She's as proud of her latest bruise as she was her bloody lip that time in Maine when she fell ice-skating. Auntie Jen and I tried to get water to clean her up and through her tears, she wailed, "No, I want to show Grandpa!"

Jeff and Ali bought me a hammock for Mother's Day. It arrived about a month or so late, but we're getting some fun use out of it when it's not boiling outside. It's huge and on a frame as our trees didn't grow sufficiently close enough to go the traditional route.

Ali and I tend to lay head to foot. Jeff insists on head to head, which means  he's THIS CLOSE to me when we're out there together.

I'm looking forward to the return of normalcy when we can have people over again mostly because I want to see tipsy people try to get on and off the thing. It's tall, and I'm short, so even sober, it can be a challenge for me to get in and out. 

I've ended up on the ground a little faster than intended more times times than I care to relate, and I'm glad our neighbors don't have backyard cameras to catch me. I am grace personified. (not.)

Let's see. What else? Jeff and I are still working from home. Tax Day finally came and took a big whack at my business account. But we're doing just fine in all of this continued pandemic madness.

The only somewhat fun thing of it has been the proliferation of wildlife in our yard and the increased bravado of the various critters. The bunnies don't automatically flee when we're out among them, and the neighborhood cats and dogs stop in to visit with more regularity than they used to. Tiger Lilly, the killer cat next door, stalks our chipmunks and seems to be getting better at snagging them.

I accidentally shut her in our garage overnight last week. I usually work on the back porch until it gets too hot, and I heard her mewling when I started my day. I let her out, thinking she'd dart right home, but she refused to leave. I eventually opened up a can of tuna and fed her while she uncharacteristically purred and let me pet her. She finally went home and has resumed her more distant ways. 

Her pacifist roommate, Pearl, remains standoffish, though she does like to bask in the sun on our driveway. 

We've also been trying to entice a hummingbird to come closer. It's buzzed around my head while I've been in the hammock, but we mostly see it near the back porch windows.  Jeff bought a couple hummingbird feeders, which we've placed on either side of the back porch, and I bought flowers to put under the one on the driveway side. There are plenty of flowers already growing under the other one on the yard side of the porch.

Since we went to such trouble: nothing. It's like it was teasing us. We'll see it occasionally, but never imbibing from the feeders. Tiger Lilly hasn't been around much lately, either. Hmmm.

Our biggest excitement these days is when the neighborhood brings in a food truck and our semi-regular after-dinner frisbee walk. When Ali was little, we'd walk with a ball. Or, more accurately, Jeff and Ali would walk and toss a ball around while I had wine. We've graduated to frisbee, which is more fun IMO and because we're terrible at it, means more steps and a shorter walk as we chase after bad tosses.

Jeff occasionally shows off by catching it behind his back or between his legs, and Ali is working on perfecting the moves as well. Me? I'm working more on getting it to swoosh around obstacles like trees and street signs. It's a fun distraction from the pandemic's restrictions, but it's also one of those things we're holding onto with both hands knowing it won't be much longer before she's off and away and frisbee with Mom and Dad will be the last thing on her mind.

Oh! I haven't figured out all there is to know about the new platform yet, but for the moment, the old posts are still alive and here: http://teamreedblog.blogspot.com/  (This is more for me than you; I doubt you want to scroll down memory lane...)