AprPTEX - Cari's Idea to Angie

Angie decided to give the exchange a try in April. Thomas (who has exchanged previously) belongs to a guild in Texas and alerted his fellow guild members to my exchange. There were 7 new people from Texas in April. I recognized Angies's name. We were both part of CyberScribes - 20-some years ago. I saw this idea on Cari Ferarro's blog. Cari is in my list of blogs that I follow. Cari was probably on CyberScribes, too. Anyhow - I loved this idea and thought it looked easy - but it was much harder than I was expecting. It's on my list of ideas to keep working on.

See that dangling preposition. I just read an article about how the rule about not dangling your prepositions is bogus. So now, I am awaiting an apology from all my English teachers. I wonder if any of them are even alive. Probably spinning in their graves at the sorry state of writing/texting/emojing/communicating. The thought that we are incorporating pictures into our written words makes me very happy. I'm not good at it - I don't know how to find the good ones. But, I love that you can speak volumes with a little yellow dot that has eyes squinting shut with a tear on the outer corner of each eye. 😹😹😹
See - I could not find a regular dot.
This time it only offered me a cat.
But, I'm fine with the cat.
You get my point.

*There is nothing relating to envelopes or lettering or art beyond this point. You have been warned. Unless you are looking to kill time, just move on with your regularly scheduled day and skip the rest of this post. Seriously. Move along.

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Also, this post seems to be the first mention of my diary - even though I mentioned it yesterday. The way I add things is random. I make no effort for the blog to be orderly. I think the racoon incident was back in April.

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You might be asking - what's up?
Why such a long post today?
Coffee too strong?
Yes - I make cold brew and on the day that I drink the first batch, while waiting for the second half-strength batch to brew, which when combined will make normal brew - I am wired to a dangerous level.
Plus - I discovered that this blog is a secret diary.
I went back looking for something and found information that I was happy to discover because it had slipped my mind. So, while the blog has been very strict about not mentioning anything personal - today is the day that I start mentioning things that I might want to remember.
Starting with ---
my husband asking me -about a week ago- if I had noticed a funny smell in the garage - and I don't even want to ask him how long he had been noticing it ---- and his solution was to leave the door open so it could *air out.* What a dreamer.
Anybody want to make a guess?

When my intuition tells me that an animal decided that our garage was a hospice and I say things like, "I suppose some animal decided to crawl up there on that nice cozy shelf and have a litter of babies and then all of them died,"I actually do not want to be right. I would prefer to find something that is just moldy. And I would rather clean up every single piece of exploded Pyrex in my house than deal with another raccoon hospice situation. That's right -- another. I live in a regular neighborhood in a small city and this is not the first incident.
Vermin.
Large vermin.
So, the only advantage to being the non-dreamer who says out loud - "Hey, check that shelf. I bet some vermin climbed up there, had babies and then they all died," is that then I can be the one who just retrieves the plastic bags and researches proper disposal of animal carcasses online and the *dreamer* has to do the actual dirty work.

Today is the first day that I am using the label [diary] - just for my own aid in finding the diary entries. I'm not sure how this is going to work....but you have been warned. If you see a warning that you are at the end of the envelope portion of the post - just skip the rest of the post.

If you are still reading, you might be wondering, "What kind of people choose to remember stories about dead animals?' It's the *Be Prepared* people. Some of us like to warn our kids about everything that has ever happened. I know that's pointless - but we do it anyway.

WARNING: If you smell something really awful, don't just open the garage door and think that, "It needs to air out." If it smells really awful, it is a dead animal and you better deal with it sooner, rather than later. The only place where you might avoid wildlife invading your living quarters (this includes insects) is really tall high-rise building. Otherwise, be prepared. There are more of them than there are *us.* And they do not have jobs. They only have one job. Survive and try to wipe out humans. We do not provide anything that they need - except maybe being an actual meal. They want us gone.

Plants are equally intent on wiping out humans.

And if you are wondering what it says online about dead animals - it says double bag it and then make an appointment to bring it to one of two inconveniently located locations. Should I turn this into a filming expedition. I've had some pretty exciting trips to dispose of *items.* Note to self - write out the story about disposing of fireworks. Several of these stories are for my kids. I'll be leaving them directions to find my stories. They currently have minimal interest in my writings. Except for the recipes. And -yes- I am putting all of them online, too.

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Add the trip to the dump story