Few of you know how small my patio is. If you knew, this story would be all the funnier to you. Let me try to do some measuring for you. … Okay, my patio is about 10 feet square of cement. There is grass surrounding all of that, but the cement pad itself is relatively tiny. The other morning, I grabbed a cup of coffee and came out to water my plants before I left for work. I saw about two houses down a little old man working up a sweat, pumping his arms, power walking. But the part of it that made me laugh was that he was power walking in a circle on his little cement pad. I wanted to watch and see how soon it was before he got dizzy and fell over.

Yesterday morning I had a slight attack of rage come over me when I discovered that the Japanese had landed…beetles, that is, on my plants! You can be assured that I swatted those things right off of there as quickly as I could. I salvaged some tea that hadn’t been eaten by them yet and made another batch of fresh mint tea. I tell you what, those nasty little boogers don’t know when to quit. They are vicious and stupid. When they are flying through the air, it’s almost like they can’t see because they’ll just smack into something (like, sometimes my face!) and think that it’s a friendly territory. I have one word to say about them: ugh!

Jewel and Ramona stopped by my house Thursday night. It was so nice to see friends from Iowa again! We went out for supper at 9 o’clock and then stayed up laughing for quite a while once we got back to my place. It is a good thing Ramona is a nurse because we had some issues to discuss…ha!

I got new nail polish that I am particularly excited about because it is h-o-t pink. It’s Barbie pink. It goes with the summer trend quite nicely and I love it. I have been sporting it for a few days now. It reminds me of my niece, Kenni, and I think that she would love to have matching nails.

Tonight I bought myself an adorable little patio table with two chairs. It’s so tiny, but it’s the cutest tiny thing you’ve ever seen. One of my kind neighbors helped carry it in from my car and then I set it up and went to work making a nice little dinner of salad, grilled chicken with lettuce on toast, and iced tea. For dessert, I had cherries, a lot of truffles, and a glass of wine. All in all, it feels lovely to sit out here and see the fountain shooting up water and the ducks are settling in with their heads awkwardly tucked under their wings…OH, and the little old man two doors down is starting up his circular power walk. Ha, if only I had a video camera for this. Well, kudos to him anyway for being active.