Yesterday I worked on a set of placemats, mostly pressing and cutting.  Also got some mucking done on my sewing area, organizing piles of fabrics that have been sitting out for months now.  

Mary couldn't join Brownie and me for our walk yesterday morning because she was baking raisin bread.  In the afternoon she dropped off one loaf on her way to drop off others, and I had some with my dinner.  It was yummy! 

In a bit Mary and I will take Brownie for his morning walk. He got really excited when she showed up at the front door yesterday, possibly because he thought we were going for a walk then. 

I raked up another can's-worth of leaves for tomorrow's trash pick-up, and any day now Tom and Alex will drag all my piles of branches out to the 'curb' for bulk trash pickup.  After those piles are gone I might be able to keep up with yard debris... though of course once the cottonwood and mulberry trees drop their leaves that will create an entirely new "crop" to deal with!

Yesterday I left a message with Deb to schedule the additional tree trimming marathon, so now she and I will play phone tag.  

It could be a while before we see them again; Paul had mentioned that they are busy, busy, busy, and Deb's recording said that they are pretty booked for the next couple of months.  The biggest issue is scheduling around irrigation that far out.  We never know when they will adjust the schedule for rain (it will rain again here at some right, right?)  And just as another example, even though we're technically on a 3-week schedule now, because of Thanksgiving they moved the next cycle forward a week to avoid the holiday.  

Once the weather cooled off I raised the bamboo shade outside the family room to let the sun shine in.  That gave me a much nicer view of the yard... at least once I cleaned off the very dirty arcadia doors!  We are expecting record heat next week, with temps 10-15 degrees above normal.  In fact there's a run of three days with predicted highs of 88.

Lisa called during her drive home from a routine covid test yesterday, and turned me on to an interesting site.  Christina is a speech therapist, and has taught her dog Stella to 'talk' using a button board.   

 Hunger for Words is for anyone interested in dogs, speech therapy, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), animal psychology, or new ideas.  Watch, read, and follow along on this exciting journey of teaching my dog to talk!

https://www.hungerforwords.com/

Someone noticed that the upcoming Inauguration Day is a palindrome:

1-20-21