37 Join a book club

 10/23/2022:  3 candidates so uncovered so far from artist date.  

1.  Spanish book club-- the things we lost in the fire.  Need to read 7-10 pages/day to be ready by the meeting. 

2.  Regular book club facilitated by Chris the Librarian-- just picked up the book today.

3.  Arvida movie screening at Frida book club-- Gaiman's Coraline, but they said they would have more of the title I prepurchased by last Thurs and still no dice (Sunday).  

10/27/2022: #3  Arvida still has not received restock of books.  offered to refund yesterday.  Mentioned to Ms. Lynelle and she offered to loan me her copy which I read overnight.  Prepurchased $10 ticket to Frida to galvanize my momentum even though it is as 7 (and it is 5:40 now, I am making Ramen for kid and no sign of husband to cover for me).  

... That was cool.  I didn't stay for the discussion because I was so worried about drowsy driving.  Introducing the Wybie friend changed the flow a lot, you didn't feel like this was a bored + lonely kid.  I liked what they did with creating button eyed doppelgangers though and saying the other mother used them to spy, the Gaiman version was a little too vague on what was going on there.  Also liked the eye candy of having some of it set in a big garden plot and having the workaholic parents be in the planting business.   

10/30/2022:  continuing to chug away at 7ish pages/day of the spanish book.  These are creepy slightly fantastical stories while also being more earthy in their observations about what it is like to be a teenager/new parent/etc.  Are they loosely related or completely stand alone short stories?  I see some names and professions repeat, but not enough to be coherent.  What is the "fuego" that is bringing all these ideas together?  some have smoking, burning buildings, etc. but not all of them.  

11/10/2022: finished Las Cosas Perdimos en el Fuego.  more macabre than I expected lots of ironic/perverse endings I didn't really expect.  Lots of relatable details-- having a hot girl-friend, hiding salame in the hotel mattresses, stupid teenage pranks.  Like the gradual realization that the narrator was unreliable or had become so (end of the road).  Also need to look up more geography of Argentina and what "lock down" they meant-- not the pandemic, surely?  something about dictatorships?  Some cultural things-- the murga, arana de tela table cloths, etc.  

11/18/2022:  I did it!  I went to the book club last night.  There were about 7 people there not counting me and the librarian facilitator.  The consensus seemed to be that a lot of these stories trailed off and didn't really seem "finished."  They also talked about a lot of realities of the poor part of Buenos Aires that were kind of gross to think about-- human trafficking for organs, drugs, dogs eating aborted fetuses, etc.  But I did understand some of the anecdotes-- about how a mom closed a car door on her kid's hand and felt terrible even though that was an accident and how to make sense of the pregnant junkie that got rid of both her kids.  Next up: el secreto.  

In other news, I went to Arvida to see if the Coraline shipment had ever come in.  It had, they had sold all of it without telling me about my preordered copy.  I got the refund I was angling for but declined the first time, thinking I was supporting a struggling customer-oriented LBS.  They don't know what the book club chose to read next, I should check their insta in the next week (as I was supposed to do to know when the shipment came in....)  I like the concept of community building but there is something kind of wonky in the execution here.  

#35 Trap and Fix Feral Cats

 10/11/2022-- I saw the all black kitten ("panther") alone in the yard after cuddling with mom and her + first litter juvenile (panda) disappearing for an errand.  Kiddo and I snuck out to the yard in our jammies to try plying it with wet kitten food (picked up at petstore adjacent to swim lesson yesterday), which worked.  Proto-siamese kitten ate a little off a stick while hiding in the bushes.  Panda came back and growl-polished off the rest of the can, but I think this was a good learning experience for the kittens and they are almost independent enough to take in.  Kinda want to keep siamese and all black and then that calico thing has a personality on it and then baby panda is has so eerily similarly markings to panda, it is tempting to keep them as a colony (fixed!) than to drop them at a shelter...  

10/12/2022-- find adult/juv cat doing weird gymnastics against the garage door.  Turned out the kittens were napping in there when I closed it and they got stuck.  3 left.  Could not find the 4th (black & white) and assumed it was hiding elsewhere.  10/13 AM found very distraught black & white in the garage (after dreaming of dead cat bodies under the truck).  All black joined adult/juv that morning for wet food.  catty cat grey and the paws siamese twin were missing but Paws brought them back later in the morning.  

10/16/2022-- determine these are 4-5 weeks old after watching some cat week by week development (and trapping videos).  Called for TNR pricing 2 days ago and it is hundreds-- $325-$663.  Was worried mom would move kittens after Rho snuck through the gate during breakfast and the garage incidents.  She moved them, but not all the way across the street as I feared.  I think they are set up in a snag of Mexican creeper/derelict perimeter fence/orange tree.  Hope that kept them kind of dry.  Tiny Paws (the siamese looking cat) has come out with Panda as the sun came out, but the ground is still very wet.  

10/18/2022-- Hubby complains of 7 or 8 fleas on him working out in the garage.  Rage visit to Home Depot to fumigate.  Have they bitten me?  Don't think so, seemed mosquitoes were a bigger issue.  Then again, I'm not in shorts and I'm not dwelling in one area more than a few seconds.  Moms never can.  So I spend most of the time kid is in preschool calling around, finding a shelter for the cats (which claims they don't handle Santa Ana cats but SAPD says they are under contract and do...)  Finding the least expensive spay provider ($260/cat).  Plan to get a carrier at petco today after the swim lesson.  oof.  But I found 3/4 kittens without supervisors and got almost a full tin of food into just them while petting them.  Tux was very wary and dragged the container she eventually showed up for into the shrubs.  PTSD from spending the night in the garage alone?  Or maybe already skittish and that was why it was hard to find when we were chasing them out of the garage.  

10/21/2022-- have fed 3/4 kittens in carrier twice (baby panda is very wiley).  Started a photo album for them and placement.  Someone interested in fluffy blue eyed cat.  

11/18/2022-- ok, so many updates here.  The fluffy blue eyed cat went up to potential owner who made a vet appointment same day.  The update was it had a host of problems (ring worm, fleas, mites, herniated disc that needed to be operated on, etc.) they eventually found a shelter to bring it to in LA.  I loaded up the other 3 the next day (this would be 11/11) and took them to our local shelter that claims not to handle Santa Ana cats, while Santa Ana says they are under contract with them.  Right.  So I picked a street a quarter mile away where the north side is Santa Ana and south is Tustin and said we'd found them there.  I keep looking for them to be posted on the adoptions page, but no dice.  Hopefully they didn't have big problems too and are just getting a little older before they get posted as the youngest ones listed there are 10 weeks.  

I'm continuing to feed Pause and Panda and the earliest the low cost spay and neuter place could take them is mid-February.  Plenty of time to get them on a routine and comfortable eating in the kennels, right?  Pause doesn't wander far but sometimes doesn't show for meals or just waits outside the crate for Panda to finish.  Waitlisted to be notified if spaces open up sooner.  

1/31/2023-- Low cost spay and neuter could get us in a few days early which is fortunate because I was worried the routine might be disrupted during Hawaii trip and not have a reliable rhythm for the return.  The cats had been chased constantly for about a week and a half by an incredible number of neighborhood Toms coming out of the woodwork.  Pause power backed out of the carrier so fast I didn't have time to close it.  Panda, a bit braver went back in for food and I locked her in.  Bribed Pause with wet food and astonishingly got her all the way in.  $480 and about 10 hours later, I picked them up from the low cost spay neuter place in Laguna Hills.  We were charged for Elizabethan collars which both had pried off before we got home.  Got some pain meds that I dressed wet food with so hopefully Panda is getting some relief.  Pause slunk off to hide without checking out the offering and had most of an abandoned can of cat food with her in the crate all day at the vet...  

2/28/2023 Cats seem to have recovered fully outside of growing out the fur on their shaved bellies.  We're continuing to feed them twice daily...  

#36 Kraftskiva

 So it wasn't until I got into my 5 year sentence journal I realized that we had done something Kraftskiva-esque on the same day (10/10) last year.  It involved tacos and Eevie coming to visit and garden with Fallon.  This session was 3? 4?  lobster tails with varying intensities of spice as caught and prepared by hubby for visiting grandma Kathy and grandad Pete.  I kicked in a make ahead scalloped potato (seemed overly garlicy) and a cheese plate (oops, wanted Black Diamond, but actually selected Kerrygold).  Fortunately, my splurge on 2 lbs of limes and strategic placement by our not-yet-fizzy carbonated water facilitated aquavit beverages.  Frequent trips upstairs to raid husband's next-to-desk ice maker.  We ran out of Hoegarden, but I think this had more to do with the amount of thirst-producing effort involved in trenching the backyard for a pool yesterday.  Didn't drink to the point of silly songs (we did muster a "special day" and "happy birthday" song at preschool) and the only hat donned today was when kid wore a crown for her special day at preschool, but I think this is a pretty good family tradition!  

33. Visit Tanaka Farms

 Completed 10/5.  

Class field trip.  A lot of fun although at a detail level, it sort of sucked.  I parked somewhere where my pregnant copilot couldn't get the door open wide enough to get out, embarrassing!  Two classmates really wanted to help with spraying sunscreen, so I ended up ghost white by the time I could hide it.  Super cute sharing sunglasses with kid's friend on the hayride and hearing all her dad jokes.  The baby animals "petting barn" really made me cough a lot.  Good convo with Nova Scotia grandma of a classmate and about the relative strengths of the local swim schools with the treasury mom over lunch.  Almost got to use the first aid kit when a 2 day kid got a cut that actually bled.  The kid saying "I'm bored of walking" early on in the Upick portion.  Then she tripped in the radish rows and had a meltdown about being itchy.  Cool conversation with another mom in the Upick line about which is harder, IM or being a mom.  Then an emergency fireman's carry all the way back to the entrance to use the portapotties again.  We managed to pick a small handful of bolted cilantro, 4 very small turnips (objective was 2).  Skipped the 4 carrots and 1 onion.  She did find an impressive cute 2 pound pumpkin and carry it to the cashier.  I told her to be gentle like a baby because she was tossing it, but its stem was dislocated before she got there.  Another melt down.  Her carpool buddy had wanted a white pumpkin, but since there were only oranges, she planned to paint hers.  Kiddo painted hers, too, predominantly orange.  As well as the funky gourd we bought.  

General takeaways:  Tanaka isn't all perfect produce, there's a lot of ugly in there.  Growing strawberries in what looks like rain gutters.