end of a waiting, talking to the trees, bones

Yesterday, I sat through a 5-hour Zoom recording in half the time. Doncha just love 2x speed playback?

It was a semester kick-off tutor meeting, and thankfully, the bosses recorded it so we could watch it on our own time if unable to attend live via Zoom. Honestly, I could've managed to make the meeting live, but when we were told the recording would be available, I opted for that.

• The semester begins on Monday, and I've had a nice 2-week break since summer finished. This week, I managed to sort through a few items to donate or trash and also $$old a couple things we no longer need but have good resale value. That felt productive.

• Got the mammogram off the to-do for another year.

• Met another of our neighbors at Helms Deep. He told us they bought their property after the 2012 fire, then built their house and now live there full-time. Betcha he got a good deal on the land. They still had a house in town at the time, and also lived in a shed - like the kit kind from Home Depot - while building the house. 

We're still in early brainstorming stages of some sort of shelter for us. We just have a windowless tool shed, and we would need to evict the mice if we want to move into it. Maybe we just dig a hole in the ground, like the hobbits or Teletubbies.

• On that note of living primal, I will give a product shout out. For the first time in my life, I bought one of those devices for women to stand up when nature calls.

Once I got past the cultural paradigm shift, because it was weird at first, I realized I wished I'd have gotten one years ago for camping and hiking. Not gonna post a pic, it's basically a flexible [funnel].

When I was a kid, growing up in a neighborhood full of boys, my playmates would often head into the woods to "talk to the trees". Well, now I'm making up for lost time, having some good conversations. 

• Lastly, this week, we met another marriage milestone. 36 years?? I googled to see the gift material of choice for year 36. The answer: bone china.

"Bone china is a type of soft-paste porcelain made from clay, feldspathic rock, and a minimum of 30% bone ash derived from cattle

Well, seems fitting. Since we've got them cow neighbors.