Sez Who?

So it's the day after Memorial Day and now we can wear white. 

Just who said we couldn't until Memorial Day??? Who makes these rules???  Who made them boss of us?

My sister-in-law once told me that women over the age of thirty-five could not wear their hair long. Again, SEZ WHO!!!


I don't know who comes up with this stuff, but I don't listen anyway. I'm a free-thinker, y'all! I dance to the beat of my own drum, and all that stuff. But jokingly I asked my LA daughter about a month ago, after I had bought the first pair of white jeans I have bought since my college days, if I had to wait until Memorial Day to wear them.

Her answer:  Why would you wear white jeans?

Well, so I don't wander around in just my underwear. And because white goes with, oh, everything.

And even Prince William wears white, and BEFORE Memorial Day (although I realize this rule is only for Americans).

What is he doing?  I have no idea.

And if it's ok for the Prince, future KING of England, it's ok for me.

SEZ I.

Oh Deer

In my mind, my garden is beautiful. In my mind, the rose bushes are four feet tall and covered with roses; the butterfly bushes are six feet tall and covered with blooms. All the perennials are healthy and flowering.

In reality, the rose bushes are one foot high and obviously nibbled, the butterfly bushes are two feet high, the perennials, most of them, are chewed to the ground. I would swear that, based on the damage, I am planting things FOR the deer.


So I am fighting back with everything I can find. When I went to the garden center, I asked for netting to put over the plants and the saleslady suggested that I also go to the dollar store and buy helium balloons; she has heard they might frighten deer away. 

Then I went to the most gorgeous nursery I have ever seen, Scottsdale Farms, and in addition to beautiful plants, I bought a deer deterrent product.


Now my garden looks like this:

Netting over the puny rose bush

My arsenal: netting, deterrent, helium balloon. There are THREE rose bushes in the photo. THREE! You just can't see them because they are so PUNY!!! Thanks deer.

My new garden boots!  Aren't they purty?

Elmo says "Hi!"

In my online research into discouraging deer, I read that they don't like the odor of garlic and that sprinkling garlic powder around in a garden might keep deer away.

That's my next weapon. 

Oh deer my %^Y&UI(OP.

Hudson Bay Blanket Socks

I don't remember when I started these---a couple of months ago maybe, but I've been obsessed with blanket knitting. I finished these yesterday.

I'm quite happy with these, made from Jan Stephen's basic pattern, using Fishknits Strong Heart yarn in Canadiana colorway.

After I finished the first sock, I unwound the yarn so that I could re-wind it from the other end and have the stripes in the opposite color order in the second sock. Apparently Fishknits anticipated craziness in knitters and meant for the knitter to knit from both ends; the colors are in the same order in both socks.

Oh well....

Love them anyway.

Exteriors

Disney, LA

The Petersen Automotive Museum, LA

I love wandering around LA and looking at the buildings.  These are two of my favorites.

The Future Might Be Here

from The New Yorker

Yesterday, Sunday, my husband ordered a new router for our computers from Amazon: same day delivery, free. Last night as we were getting in the car to leave for dinner, a long, shiny black limousine pulled up in front of our house.

The driver got out, I walked to the street to meet him, curious about his being in front of our house at all.

He was delivering the router. No joke. Amazon's delivery vehicle was a limo with a limo driver. He told me that his car is, in fact, a limo, and that he is, in fact, a limo driver. But when demand for limo service is slow, he delivers packages for Amazon.  

Well I never.....



The cartoon is a joke, i.e., not serious, i.e. not real.

I wonder how long, though, before it IS reality.

Back from LA

We just returned from a visit with younger daughter, who celebrated her one-year anniversary of brain surgery! Yay S! The surgery was successful, with only a minor hearing loss as a result of removing an acoustic neuroma on her left acoustic nerve.

Before we left Atlanta, I had tasked asked her to find this house:

It is Harry Bosch's house in the series Bosch on Netflix. The series is based on really good police dramas written by Michael Connelly. And yes, I do know that it is fiction, and that no one named Harry Bosch lives in this great house, but SOMEONE does; it exists and I want to see it.

Apparently younger daughter was not very motivated to find it because she DIDN'T.

She also has not watched (or read) the series because if she had, she would move out of LA.  It's dangerous there, y'all!!!


Anyway, we had a nice visit, even though her plans to keep us busy while she was at work didn't quite work out. She had suggested that we go to the Rain Room at LACMA, but when we looked for the hours it was open on Monday, we learned that it was closed for a couple of weeks, no explanation given.

OK, we'll go see the newly-opened Frank Lloyd Wright house on Monday. On Monday we looked up the hours....not open on Monday or Tuesday, the only days we had left to go there.

Our next stop, the Broad, a new museum of contemporary art, was a no-go as well. Because it's relatively new, tickets were sold out for a month or so in advance. Standby tickets only....

We did go to the Rose Bowl Flea Market and that was entertaining, more for the people there than for the stuff for sale, but the best thing was this:

A friend who saw the photo of this funnel cake topped with powdered sugar and chocolate sauce asked me if the apple dessert was good. Hah! It was Mother's Day.  Who eats good-for-you stuff on Mother's Day? No apples here.

We did also make it to see the amazing cars at the Petersen Automotive Museum. What I loved was the stairway that was designed specifically for the museum:

Sort of looks like a weirdly-shaped hubcap, doesn't it?

We also made it to the BEACH!!! Saltwater, waves, sand, my favorite place to be. But the weather was not ideal...isn't it always sunny in Los Angeles?  (Nope, just in Philadelphia.) We experienced what the locals call "May Gray." The temperature was in the 60's so that was nice, but we only saw sun the last two days we were there, and not until after about 4:30. But that's ok; it was still the beach.

Santa Monica Pier

Now, back to TV (Remember? I mentioned the Bosch series?). There is a new version of Burn Notice on television, but it isn't about a spy and it doesn't take place in Miami and it has a different cast. It's about...hard to say. It is The Catch on ABC.

The plot is convoluted and totally unrealistic, just like the plot of Burn Notice, and it's a pretty show set, not in Miami, but in LA, where it IS always sunny in TV land. The people are pretty; the settings are pretty; the clothes and jewels and cars are pretty. But there is one thing that distracts me:

Mereille Enos's eyelashes.  

Holy Smokes! No one's eyelashes are that long. And we know they are fake because she doesn't have them on when she is in her AMAZING home. 

So, I watched this show and then started noticing all the really, really long eyelashes on other actresses. Real people don't wear false lashes this long, right?

Wrong. In LA they do and I saw some in the wild, so to speak, on a saleslady in a store we went to. It's like seeing a new bird species! I can add them to my life list.


And I can add this:

  
We were stopped at a red light when we saw this man on the opposite side of the light. He rides this, in LA traffic.

Brave man?  Or crazy man? I report, you decide.