Galloping to the Galapagos

You might have to read this entry in your hotel in Quito. Or you can just skip this mundane rhetoric altogether. There’s too much for you to take in where you are to even look at a computer until you get home.

Things are very quiet around here. I’m spending much time in my house alone these days and to prove how dull my life is, I even watched Bonnie Hunt. I also read her biography to get some details about her life. Apparently my humorous, exaggerated statements complaining about the mess the little boys leave in my house is leading the parents to keep the boys away from here. It’s either that or my loss of recall and frequent repetition.

I am loafing as I have accomplished so much lately. My windows are cleaned, the closets have all been reorganized and piles of items sent to the homeless, my mom’s belongings are entirely contained in three bankers boxes, and the basement is very clean and organized. I have new Christmas lights put around the eaves and a live tree in the stand. All the gifts are purchased and all but 3 are wrapped.

The last week we had 5 people in our walking group. For 19 years three of us have walked together every morning. One friend who lives 8 blocks away asked to join us one day and I said no as we just wanted to keep our group small. I mean when we have something to complain about we just get it off our chest and then we give suggestions to one another about how to solve problems and we agree that what we talk about stays in the lock box. This summer a new neighbor moved in and suddenly we were picking her up as we walked by her house.

Last week an acquaintance asked if she could please walk with us for two weeks so I suggested she meet us at 6:30 a.m. and she actually showed up so we now have 5 walkers in our group. This number will never work because we can’t unload our daily dilemmas and confidences to so many. I hope we don’t have to break off half the group and start walking at 5:30 a.m. I did propose that we add everyone who might be interested and just go for a large group but Janet voted me down on that one and she’s our leader. Carol and I don’t know which way to walk without her direction.

It is great that you have the visit to Bonnie Hunt all arranged. Nancy and I aren’t exactly eager to see Bonnie but we do like to visit with you so we’ll go along and give the entire excursion our best enthusiastic effort. It is also nice that Jane can join us. Now we still need Hanna and we’ll have our old high school group. I’ve been wanting to get us all together for a long time just so we can see what we remember from the past and fill in what others remember.

Here are the grandsons with Santa and his reindeer. The reindeer handler is prominent in the photo only because she is handling her own reindeer. Santa is in there somewhere. We had breakfast with Santa the other day also so I think we have the Santa connection covered.


Hope the animals are all that you expect and more.