Yeah from what I've seen Keith seems really into it again right now, so that's good. It'll be nice if the site does wind up being more stable in the end or feels in a way more modern that it attracts new users.

I had a friend who lived near Phoenix. He is a police officer out there. Went camping, and discussed trees and it blew my mind because I'm an idiot and thought all of that area was just desert for days. :) I miss fishing. I used to do it a lot when I was younger. I grew up as a giant tom boy. Spent most of every day outside. Fishing was something I didn't get to do a lot though, even though I'm in Florida and the land of a thousand lakes. Dad took me a few times when I was younger. My favorite place to fish though, was the beach. Oddly enough I was never fond of the beach (don't understand why people want to cook themselves under the sun or swim in salty water) but I loved fishing there. We would go on vacation to a place not too far away, rent a condo, and I would get frozen shrimp and walk out there alone and just fish off the beach before the sun even really came up much. I always felt this immense sadness when people started waking up and going for a swim so that I had to quit. I caught quite a bit in lakes... but I don't think I ever once managed to completely pull up even one fish on that beach, but somehow it never mattered. Probably just sitting there and slowly feeding fish shrimp was more my speed anyway. :)

I had to laugh when you said you killed the cactus. You wouldn't believe the amount of succulents I've killed. I keep reading they're like the easiest thing to grow and I simply cannot do it. I think it's for the exact same reason - I water them too much. We had pineapples and I remember struggling for years to keep one going, and finally got it. Then randomly we had a huge patch of them under this tree, and I was like.. I'll just let nature do what it wasn't. Never touched them and they grew about 10 times as well as the one I tried to take care of. I do best with a garden that I can plant and then mostly forget about. Otherwise I get too invested and try too hard and smother the poor things with love. I have a few that are doing well on the front porch thankfully, but yeah.. my more wild areas that I don't do much with are definitely thriving more.

I like mutts best. :) Have you always been a dog person? I was always the type that just preferred to be the adopted mother of whatever animal wanted me to adopt it. Hence our cat population. We try our best to fix all the cats in the neighborhood but our neighbors have some females we can't seem to get ahold of and they have babies and then the next thing you know, those babies decide our house is their house. We can at least fix them then. The racoon is even crazier than I thought! I saw it eating the other night and it was running out of food I put out for it and about to eat the cat's more expensive stuff so I went to put some more out and I opened the door, expecting it to kind of shimmy away and it did a bit, but then it turned around and looked at me and then came back. I thought it was going to go to the food bowl again but it came to the door! I... am not the most dainty of ladies in any capacity but the squeal that escaped me as it arrived at the door, woo. I shut it so fast. I am sure it's lovely but I try very hard not to let my immense desire to try to hand feed it succeed because I think if I did, it might try to come in and make itself at home. I just wait for the day it realizes that the cats know how to get me to the door and starts doing it too. I do love animals.. and do wish I was like Snow White in that one regard. I can at least feed the squirrels by hand and I was so close once in getting birds to land on my hand. They were like... 6 inches away from me and I just stood there so steal and trying not to freak out. Man.. if I could do that one day, that would be great. I can assure you though, if I ever started singing, they'd never come back.

I'm so glad your father could come out and that he can stay a while and really enjoy himself. It's really nice you have a balance in that, taking him places but also giving him time to recharge. That way he doesn't need a vacation from his vacation when he gets back. :)

Deviled eggs are really simple (if the eggs cooperate in peeling at least) so if you do attempt it, I'm sure it would go great. Are you and your sister really close? You live together... or at least at some point, right?

We do indeed finish earlier than the public schools, we also start earlier. I quit in mid April, which is about a month before kiddos start in public schools and we start about a month and a half before they do. My kid also gets like no real holidays or vacations like they do. I... overplan the curriculums, every single year. I think he realized just how much this year when he took two classes online with the public school. He finished them in just like.. 3-4 weeks, as opposed to the months it would have taken us if I had done them. I felt it also really important before he graduated for him to get some experience with other instructors and too... in having another opinion about his writing and work. I didn't want to be viewing it through a mother's lens by accident. But this summer.. no school planning for me.. he's officially done. I do have at least the paperwork to do. I need to finish the transcripts and course descriptions and those kinds of things ready for him when he needs them. Oddly enough, I'm going to miss the planning. It feels fun to become sort of.. obsessed with things and explore them deeply. Hopefully now I can do that with my own things though, at least slowly.

Ermagersh, I can comment! You asked about my navigation and page loading and stuff and honestly.. this site has been SO broke for me. Every time I come and try to use it, it just.. refuses to work. And it feels like it's broken in a different way every single time. Sometimes you get the squirrel error things, sometimes it just refuses to load anything, just sitting there.. stewing. Sometimes things don't load right. Mostly it's usually in a state of just not wanting to do anything I ask it to do. Don't even get me started on all the new stuff. I don't know if I'm getting old or getting stupid or what but.. my brain just feels.. overwhelmed here in a way I never used to. Chances are if it did though, I would probably have been slowly using it again and until the site got me, so maybe that's a blessing in disguise. :P

He didn't do as well as he wanted to on the SATs, mainly in that he didn't score above 1400 like he did on all the practice tests, but he got higher than he needed for his 100% scholarship, so he decided his ego can take the hit and he'll accept his first score so he doesn't have to take it again. :P I think he's honestly not even sure if he's going to use the scholarship. He's taking a gap year to try to figure out where he goes after that. Right now I think with everything going on, moving out of the country is looking tempting.

Co-ed softball sounds like a ton of fun. Do you live in a pretty... kinda chill place? What kind of fishing do you do? This year I was meant to plant a big garden but I decided to give it up for the year. We had this.. weird crazy winter weather that killed so much in our area. Yeah, nothing handled it well so this year feels for everyone like a... what that was already established is going to be able to be coaxed into recovering? Except for people with far more money than most people I know - I see them rebuying what looks like whole gardens worth of plants and flowers. It's bittersweet though, watching everything grow and working out there. You feel sad because this thing that was nearly 10 foot tall, is now barely a foot, but every time you notice more green it just reminds you how resilient it can all be. My white bird of paradise was one of those tall now short things, but it was so sweet to see besides bouncing back it also shot off a second plant so I can divide it too. What kind of doggo do you have? We have... so many cats. And now a racoon seems to think he's also one. I really wonder if someone around here has been feeding it because he's weirdly not scared. I was worried at first he might have rabies or something, but nope, he just doesn't care about humans. He comes up and eats with the cats, hangs out in the backyard and watches me hang up laundry, sits in the trees nearby and scares the crap out of me when I randomly notice him. Fun times. :)

I'm so sorry to hear about your grandmother having a stroke but it's so lovely she recovered like that. I know when my father got really bad after his heart attack, his doctor told him that the hospital was one of the worst places for sick people to be. And it was really that way for him, he declined in ways from just a few days of a stay, that he never really bounced back from. I'm really glad your father was able to make the right choice for himself too, and that you all seem to have so much support within each other, that's really great. How was his visit, if he's come already?

The holidays have been really nice. I just made the Easter menu, and look forward to eating about 5 pounds of potato salad. I'm sure my son will be wanting 5 pounds of deviled eggs. :) I definitely got him way too much candy put back. I also wound up finding a boxed gluten free carrot cake muffin I'm going to try out... so that maybe I can have some dessert that my hips definitely do not need me to eat. I didn't even know snickers eggs were a thing... those look amazing. I can't eat peanuts anymore but boy oh boy if I could... woo. Might buy them for my husband and try to live vicariously through him. I do that sometimes, Not sure if you ever saw the show Killing Eve, but there is a creepy guy in there who buys this one woman food and he never eats anything, but he just watches her do it and asks her to describe it. I am now that creepy guy. :)

Hey lady. :) Thank you! I appreciate it. This week has been rough on the ol' noggin. My kid is 18 and taking the SATs for the first time tomorrow and he's about 20,000 times more calmer about the whole thing than I am. He's doing great at the practice tests but... I don't know, my wittle baby is growing up....

How've you been? How's your family??

Top notch holiday HA, haha.