Category: Mushrooms.

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It was still rather cold when I went out with the nights catch and also a bit foggy but the fog was gone by the time we went on our morning walk. The cold weather was still on though but that is changing now. The snow has already started to melt and my guess is that it will be gone in a few days. After that however it’ll be pretty cold again so in a way it had been better if the snow had stayed for a while. Then again we might get more since winter isn’t especially old yet.

Alma behaves very different each time we’re out on a walk, yesterday she was a pain for a while but today she behaved so good that it surprised me. Almost no whining or pulling the leash!! I always wonder in what way she’ll punish me the next time we’ll be out for a walk 🙂 🙂 Since that walk was so amazing I’m almost afraid to go out with her tomorrow morning 🙂 🙂 🙂

If yesterday was the big day at christmas here today is the day people to other relatives meeting the same people they met the day before and tomorrow (boxing day is a holiday here) will be much the same but in a different place 🙂 🙂 Also the food will also be the same, Ham, pickled herring, beetroot salad, herring salad (truly one of the most horrible things we can eat, I’d rather eat pigs feet again than having herring salad 🙂 🙂 🙂 ) and if there is any rice porridge left we’ll make risalamand as dessert, lots of whipped cream is mixed with the porridge plus in my family also lots of berries mixed in to it, some prefer tangerine wedges.

I didn’t make any porridge plus I’m not a fan of too much whipped cream so I just had leftovers from yesterday and since I bought so much of the christmas food it feel like I’ll have leftovers for at least a week 🙂 🙂 🙂 I will however make rice porridge tomorrow 🙂 After all it is often called yule porridge over here. I had planned to make an oven omelette and cover it with a mushroom stew but I can do that for new years eve instead, I like that because I don’t feel full for several days after eating that 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day, I actually have the cup beside me 🙂 No more food today though. I’ll actually watch tv tonight, the Swedish version of Task Master, the Christmas edition 🙂

I wish You all a good continuing of Yule!

So tired.

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I’m a bit tired today because a certain big dog decided to raid the peanuts that was supposed to go to the birds. Of course this created chaos and havoc to her stomach. If I’m saying high pressure diarrhea due to huge amount of gasses sort of ruined the night 🙂 🙂 🙂

I wish I could say that we had morning mist here but it was misty rain instead, the nastiest kind of rain.

Today my home smells of an oddly mix of shit and air cleaner spray 🙂 🙂 🙂 She isn’t the dog that tells You that she needs to go outside, she just sneaks down the stairs and waits to have the door opened. To be fair I think she only thought it would be a fart but so much more happened 🙂 🙂 🙂

So I’ve boiled a lot of rice and she’ll have some fish in it as well. I have Malkolm on the same diet since he has been a bit sad in the stomach as well because the previous food didn’t really agree with him. He will however have some of the new food I’ve ordered in his rice.

Besides that I’ve had a calm day. I’ve been to the supermarket and bought rose-hip soup and Orange ice cream with lots of strings with chocolate 🙂 The cold isn’t any worse than before so I don’t think it’s any of the three flus going around that I’ve gotten. I do try to avoid humans as much as possible but today it was tricky because I was later than usual to the supermarkets so lots of customers walking around but to my surprise no line at the cashiers.

I think it is time to give the dogs something to eat and I’ll have ice cream and later on most likely some of that rose-hip soup 🙂 Some people love to put vanilla ice cream in hot rose-hip soup or a layer of whipped cream on top of it but I prefer to have it by itself.

Have a great day!

I guess he was hungry.

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So it is warmer but instead we got a wind that makes everything feel colder. The dogs and I have been in the forest mostly so we haven’t felt much of it to be honest. Nights can still be a bit chilly so the ground is frozen when we get out first thing in the morning.

I drove to the supermarket in Skara this morning, the big road was just fine but the smaller one just outside my village was a bit scary to drive on 🙂 I always do a test brake when I drive out on it now when it’s  cold in the morning and even though I have really good winter tires on the car still slid around as if it was drunk 🙂 🙂 So all the way to the big road I wished no hogs or deer would jump up on the road 🙂 🙂

We haven’t seen much of the sun except for when the clouds were so thin it shined through them. We walked down to the bog and out to my favourite island and walked in the forest there. I could hear one hunting dog bark in the distance , last time they were all over the bog. I couldn’t find a single track from wildlife oddly enough, not even from the wild hogs that I know are plenty out there. I guess the wind and generally cold weather made them stay in the thickets until they really needed to eat something.

Now when all the leafs have fallen down we can hear the traffic on the big road but out on that island it’s totally devoid of traffic sounds. Mostly because most of the trees there are spruces and they’re so thick that not even sounds go through. It is a nature reserve so no one has cut a tree there since I don’t know when. The thought is that when these trees have fallen more “natural” for this area trees will start to grow there instead. I guess the idea is nice but since 70 years back nothing than spruces have grown there there will also be lots of spruce seeds just waiting for a chance to grow up 🙂 🙂

Every time I see this old tree I start to think about the monsters in the movie Miss Peregrine’s home for peculiar children 🙂

There was a small Sparrow hawk sitting on the table in front of the bird feeder this morning just waiting to have a small bird as breakfast. Well the small birds were nowhere to be found oddly enough 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think it must have been a young male (because of the size, males are smaller) and that he hasn’t figured out that being seen by his food is not a good thing 🙂 🙂 Beautiful bird and even though I like the birds by the feeder I do hope this one will survive the winter.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and then watch some tv if I can find anything that interests me, which I doubt.

Have a great day!

The photo was taken with my phone camera through a not so clean window 🙂

Tiny, tiny snowflakes.

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Yes they fell yesterday evening but they were tiny and I think all of them melted away as soon as they hit anything because of all the rain we had just before they started to fall. When I say tiny, imagine misty rain, drops just slightly bigger than fog drops becoming snow instead.

It want cold during night though so I was happy I had bought new studded boots so I could walk anywhere even if it was mostly ice. -4,8C (23,36F) as coldest and just before we went out on our morning walk. Lots of frost everywhere so I must admit that the world did look rather pretty and it even gave me some Christmas feelings 🙂 We walked down to the creek and I was a bit hesitant to walk on the road over the creek. Last time we had this much water in it I fell down in to a sink hole created by water flowing beside the concrete pipe that usually leads the water. I was lucky that time because I happened to fall so my feet hit the concrete pipe and I also still had my shoulders high enough up so I could get out from there 🙂 🙂

The little metal bridge isn’t especially visible any more 🙂 I really didn’t want to try and walk on it so we followed the field until I found a place where we could pass and in to the forest.

All worked well this time but it was impossible to cross over to the forest on the other side of the fields so we had to walk quite some distance before the ditch that follows the edge was dry enough to walk over to the forest. The reason by the way that the water level is as high is because of beavers, they’ve more or less plugged the entire concrete pipe with sticks and mud 🙂 🙂 🙂  The rest of the walk wasn’t that exciting 🙂 🙂  and I never saw any beaver. Just as well because it happens that they attack people if they get too close and there’s also that beaver that for some reason walked up to a bust stop in a bigger city here in Sweden and bit a woman (I think it was) that was waiting for the bus. Just imagine those huge, yellow sharp teeth cutting in to Your leg!

Normally however beavers are very shy so no reason to be afraid to see one close by 🙂 I also went to a grocery store in Falköping today. I had bought what I wanted when I realised that it was a really long time since I had eaten reindeer, back in the days those packages were rather small. just enough for one or perhaps two dinners. Have You ever eaten it? If not You’ll either hate or love it. Reindeer with boiled potatoes and a mushroom stew is delicious according to my tastebuds. Anyway, I noticed that the price is nasty high now, even more expensive than filet of beef and the package was almost a pound so I had to skip it. To be honest, anything tastes great with a good mushroom stew 🙂

The reason I want to Falköping to buy groceries instead of Skara like I usually do was because I was going to pick up a small package on my way home. I had ordered some Narcissus bulbs and seeds to a small banana plant with edible bananas (if they ever would like to show up) and another seed I can’t remember at the moment. What looked like a good idea last week when it still would be fairly warm (when it comes to the bulbs) is now a slightly less good idea 🙂 🙂 Bulbs can be planted as long it is possible to make a hole in the ground and it will stay pretty chilly here for a long while it looks so I’ll most likely plant them in a pot and keep the in the cool cellar during winter and plant them when they have flowered next spring.

Now I remember what the other seed bag is, an edible passion flower species, Barbadine I think it’s called in English. I already have the common passion fruit flower seeds and thought that now when I have a greenhouse I’ll try them in there during summer. They usually germinate quite easy but to get fruit one need two different vines. By that I mean You can’t take a cutting from one and think that it is another plant because it is the exact same one that You took the cutting from. So two seed sown plants are needed and they will not give any fruit the first year. Passion flowers grow like weeds to be honest so as long as one treat them as they like they’ll never die 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is already (5:13 pm) almost as cold outside as it was this morning so I don’t want to guess how cold it’ll be tomorrow when I wake up 🙂 Sunny all day though so it might be nice anyway. It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and after that, later tonight, watch my favourite quiz program On the Tracks.

Have a great day!

Still raining.

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We were lucky today to have our morning walk before the rain arrived, well sort of because it did start to drizzle on our way home but drizzle doesn’t count 🙂 It has continued to rain all day and still does. Now even all those wood chips seems to slowly sink down into the mud beneath so even if I’m not happy about colder weather coming it will at least freeze the ground some so that it is walkable again.

There are two mushrooms on that tree stump and they’re both well over 30 cm (a foot) long.

Today the second package with an aquarium arrived and this one was actually not broken by our postal service 🙂 I was pretty surprised about that 🙂 🙂 🙂 They always wants us to grade how they did and possibly write a comment as well. So I wrote that perhaps they should teach people not to put other heavier packages on the ones having stickers saying Fragile on them 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think they truly dislike me at the postal center in Falköping because I once threatened them by calling the police on them if they didn’t stop placing my packages anywhere where I don’t live 🙂 🙂 🙂 That is however a non existing problem now days 🙂 🙂

It’ll be fun for those driving to work tomorrow morning when all this rain that has been falling turns to ice. We will have below 0C (32F) in the morning and it will not be that much warmer during the day. I’ll need to drive to a grocery store (and also a petrol station) tomorrow but I can do that later when the ice is gone. I could wait until Saturday but even if I don’t have a job to go to it still feels wrong to do that on a Saturday or Sunday 🙂 🙂

I have forgotten to make any dinner today 🙂 🙂 I was thinking of making pancakes but I’m just not hungry. So I’ll make them tomorrow instead. Yesterday I thought I went to be at normal time but I must have seen wrong when I walked upstairs because I had a text message that I thought arrived after nine but today when I checked the time it says it arrived at 8:30 pm 🙂 🙂 🙂  I did think it took some time to fall asleep 🙂 🙂 🙂 It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and after that perhaps watch a dvd.

Have a great day!

So dark and dreary.

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Even darker today even though it did light up some every now and again.

Rain all day except for in the morning plus strong winds blowing so we’ve mostly been indoors today. Still rather warm for this period of the year but what good does that make when we can’t be outside enjoying it 🙂 🙂 Still, the morning walk was nice since the wind hadn’t reached us yet.

The aquarium I had ordered arrived yesterday and as soon as I saw the package I guessed that it was broken. Too bad I was right. No real damage to it but one could see that they had placed other heavier packages on it because that is what one does when the package is more or less wrapped in red Fragile stickers, well that is at least what the Swedish postal service think is the right way to do it.

Lots of glue and tape and it might become a mini greenhouse 🙂

So I mailed the business I bought it from and they shipped away a new one as soon as they saw the photo of the damages and it will arrive tomorrow!! They didn’t want the broken one back so with some glue and tape I guess I will be able to use it as a mini greenhouse 🙂 I do wonder about our postal service though, back in the days even if a letter had the wrong address they still managed to get it to the right person but that a package marked fragile isn’t supposed to be placed at the bottom with other packages on to of it seems to be a mystery for them 🙂 🙂 🙂

Also a couple of years ago the constantly placed my packages at the wrong places even though they said they used the GPS. In the end I had to threaten to report it to the police as a harassment if they missed one more time. Haven’t had the slightest problem with that since then 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is so muddy now in places we walk all the time in the garden that I started to pour out those wood chips I got after I’d cut down all those branches from the trees.
It works really well and I have more chips to use in other places 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea and after that I’ll watch a dvd I think. I have so many but no place for them 🙂 🙂 Storage units is nothing I really have in this small cottage. I have one closet and mice went in there and chewed on all my clothes 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

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A grey and dull day but since we didn’t have any wind it actually turned out to be a rather nice day even though the temperature never rose above 7C (44.6F) and as it looks it will not fall especially much during the night either.

The hunters were out in the forest today and I doubt they had any success, turns out they had hunting dogs  but I couldn’t hear any barking until they were about to jump in the the cars again just before they left for the day. To be honest I’m a bit worried about the wild life here because it looks like we have very few of the bigger ones at all. I hope it is because of the wolves being here for a while and that they will come back when the wolves move back towards the south again.

I haven’t see a single hare either in a very long time. I really don’t like hares (or bunnies) to be honest Those front teeth can bite through anything and I’ve felt this way since, when I was a kid, my best friend had a pet rabbit 🙂 I can’t remember it ever biting me but it is enough to see those teeth to be honest 🙂 🙂 🙂 I do have the same feeling about water voles, they can grow pretty big to be honest and their front teeth are even worse (and very yellow with looks pretty nasty 🙂 ) and if getting too close to them they’re pretty aggressive 🙂 🙂

No sights of any animals more than some ravens and woodpeckers when we finally could have our walk but there are lots of rather tine mushrooms growing up in the forest. Usually pale grey or sometimes the same brown colour as fudge. Actually quite pretty where they grow in dark green moss and it feels sort of christmassy 🙂 One of our Christmas ornaments, especially in our advent candle sticks but some also have them in their Christmas trees are red toadstools. Have no idea why but I guess the red colour helps with that.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and since there’s nothing I want to see on tv today I’ll need to find something else to do but can’t come up with anything, not because I have nothing to do but because I really don’t want to do any of it 🙂

Have a great day!

The sunshine is still warm.

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Dryer and colder winds will fly down over the country and I could feel it early this morning. 0C (32F) when the dogs and I went out for our morning walk. All the cars were covered in frost and the ground was slightly frozen so we weren’t especially muddy when we came back home.

Two male Bullfinches.

Sunshine all day long though and the heat from the sun was so strong that I could have the kitchen door open as long as the light hit the south heading wall. I can’t say it felt like early spring but it was really nice. This was however most likely the last sunshine we will see for at least ten days if the weather sites have guessed it right 🙂

The temperatures will fall so from tomorrow it will be a bit chilly here. Not below 0C (32F) during the days but perhaps during nights.  I took a look at the Kaki fruit kernels (an Asian relative to the Persimmon fruit) in the fridge, It does look as at least one might germinate so hold Your thumbs and cross Your fingers for good luck 🙂  This time of year is a bit boring when it comes to gardening and sowing. Well some plants need a winter or two to be able to germinate so I’ll start with those but not until January.

I bought myself a big Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) bulb when I went to the grocery store in Falköping after our walkThe ones I’ve seen has been ridiculously expensive but these were manageable in price. It says this one will have red petals with a white string in the middle of every petal. I don’t care if it is or not (usually lots of those bulbs are wrongly marked but who cares just as long as they flower 🙂 ) Have You ever sown the seeds from the Amaryllis? It is quite easy but it’ll take around three to four years until they flower and the flowers will most likely not look the same as the parent plant, sometimes one get the most amazing flowers from seeds.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and later I’ll watch On the Tracks on tv, it’s really the only thing I watch now days 🙂

Have a great day!

It could have been so nice if it wasn’t for the biting cold wind.

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This could have been a really nice day if it wasn’t for the wind that has been blowing all day long, a cold biting wind that made it hard to stay outside for any longer period of time. Not even the dogs wanted to stay out for especially long and kept coming to the door to go inside again.

Cold and frosty in the morning and despite the sun hitting my car I still had to scrape ice from the windows at 9:30am, not a favourite thing to do 🙂 🙂 Still the morning walk was quite nice because the wind hadn’t arrived yet and the sun still giving some warmth. We walked out to the bog and while we stood at the end of the peninsula we could hear something walking towards us. We never saw what it was but it did sound relatively big, like a red deer or perhaps a moose.

The dogs didn’t really react to it more than that they stared in the direction the sound came from and looked curious 🙂 It was impossible for anything to walk silently in the forest because of all the frozen leafs on the ground, it sounded like we all were walking on cornflakes spread on a hard floor 🙂 🙂 🙂 I went to the supermarket after we had come home because I had very little to eat in my fridge.

It was a costly trip, much more than I had expected 🙂 I did buy everything on the list but I also went in to the pet shop (can one say it’s a pet shop supermarket because it’s really big that store?) I found a prefect food for my aquarium fish and it costed a fortune but then again the fish are few and will eat very little so it might last for the rest of my life 🙂 🙂 Also I bought two new ceramic food bowls for the dogs, Malkolm seems very unwilling to eat from his old one made from some kind of metal. Those weren’t cheap either but oddly enough didn’t cost more than the fish food 🙂 🙂 🙂

After that I went to the Dollar store just around the corner and bought seeds for the wild birds in the garden. They also coast a little fortune but compared to any other store they were cheap 🙂 🙂 I don’t want the birds to stop eating what they can find in the nature so I’ll only feed them when I know nights will be frosty. They still need to know how to find food if I for some reason can’t help them. They have noticed that birds who live in areas where lots of people feed them forgets how to find food elsewhere and even what things they can eat. I also only give them seed mixes even though they all most likely would love to just have sunflower seeds for much the same reason. We have very few sunflowers flowering here since those who do comes from either what we sow in our gardens or from bird seeds that birds brought with them from the feeders and dropped them on the way to where they can eat them safely.

It is time for a cup of coffee I think, it’s way too early for that last cup of the yet. I actually bought peanuts for the bird feeder by my kitchen window, I know mice climb up and eat those peanuts but that was before the little monster moved here 🙂 She’s outside most nights and I’m pretty sure the mice soon will stop eating the peanuts because she’s a really good mouse hunter 🙂

I have now two bigger and four smaller apricot trees in my garden and this is the only one giving me autumn colours.

Have a great day!

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It has been a meh day weather-wise. The sun didn’t show itself until now when it is about to set for the day. Ok it has been around 10C (50F) all from morning to now so at least there was no need for any radiator to be working.

Malkolm is now refusing to eat anything in the morning but after a walk there’s no problem what so ever to give him the exact same food from my hand 🙂 🙂 🙂 I guess this has to do with the chemical neutering slowly is giving up, he’s also normally a sensitive dog but at the moment he’s even more so, so if I sound the least annoyed he looks like the world is ending 🙂 poor guy. No problem what so ever to eat his food in the afternoons though.

I’ve removed the fence around the vegetable garden now and it looks quite funny with a circle with no vegetation (well there are my tiny leeks, they never grew to anything really since I mistreated them from the start but I can say they taste really good) and a sort of border with higher grass growing around it 🙂 🙂 I’ll take a photo of it tomorrow. I also moved the chrysanthemums I had planted outside the fence to new and hopefully better places for them climate-wise. They aren’t as hardy as autumn asters are.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day. The sun is down and I can see ground fog slowly flowing out in the pasture I can see from my window here by the computer. They say we’ll have fog again tomorrow and I hope it stay for longer than it did this morning.

Have a great day!

It would be a lie to say it was warm today.

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Well to say that we had a warm day here would be to lie 🙂 the temperature barely reach above 10C (50F) but the sun was shining almost all day and it did feel really nice when being in it. The long side of my cottage is heading south so I could have the kitchen door open for a big part of the day anyway.

No hunters in the forest but lots of moose flies but since it was as chilly as it was they were easy to remove and kill. Wild hogs had left just before we arrived at the bog so that could be the reason we had so many moose flies. Lots of birds tweeting and we did see a roe deer out in the fields.

I’ve decided to not use the fenced vegetable garden next year, I did fence it because back then old Albin still was around and he loved to dig up and eat vegetables 🙂 🙂 especially garlic and he also tried to eat onions 🙂 🙂 🙂 and since he not is around any longer I might just as well remove that fence and start growing the vegetables around the greenhouse instead. Also since I have two different potato diseases in that soil (nothing deadly for either the potato or me, common scab and powdery scab) I’ll only grow potatoes in buckets or big pots.

I also dug up a lot of Ball thistles, the few Hostas I have and a peony. I wasn’t sure if I would touch the peony but it was much bigger under the surface than I thought it would be so by mistake I managed to cut it in two pieces. All but the ball thistles are now replanted, the thistles I just tossed in a corner of the garden because they tend to survive no matter what one does to them 🙂 🙂 🙂

Every time I’ve been going down the stairs to the cool cellar both Alma and Malkolm has been standing outside the open door whining and refusing to follow me down. Old Love followed me despite that her first year in life was being starved and tortured in a cellar. Alma and Malkolm just continued to refuse 🙂 Malkolm could follow me three steps but then turning back while Alma refused to do even that. That was until Malkolm one day realised that he would get a treat if he came further down 🙂 Still he could walk almost all steps down but never step on the floor. When Alma understood that treats were involved things started to change 🙂 🙂 🙂

Today she ran all the way down to the floor and when she got a treat I could see how proud she was. Malkolm was still a bit anxious but a piece of cheese made him change his mind 🙂 🙂 Now they almost run down the stairs before me and expects me to give them a treat 🙂 Their eyes grow big and tail wagging 🙂 🙂 Perhaps it was better before after all 🙂 🙂 🙂 It is time for that last cup of tea and today I’ll have crackers with blue cheese on 🙂

The flowerbed just beside the vegetable patch, I removed half of it because there were too many wild raspberries growing in it plus that, if I ever come around to that project I’m thinking of I will need that space.
I’ll have the vegetables growing close to the greenhouse instead. I do have two roses though that will be staying where they are. This one on this side
and this one on the other side. This rose have been growing in this garden for very long, perhaps already from the beginning 115 years ago. Has been moved around though so that’s why it is as small as it is.

Have a great day!

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I wouldn’t say that they has a sale on blue cheese in the store today but when comparing the price to the smaller packages it still was pretty cheap (well that’s a lie nothing is ever cheap, especially not blue cheese 🙂 🙂 ) so I’m now pretty sure Malkolm will love to eat breakfast again 🙂 🙂  Alma eats any crap but she’ll have some blue cheese as well of course.

We had a chilly morning but since the hunters were out we couldn’t have our usual morning walk. By the time I came home again the hunters already were gone and it must have been less than an hour I was away. Anyway during that short time most of the grass had dried up so it has been a rather warm day even outside the little hollow I live in.  I met another hunter sitting in a hunting tower and it turns out that he had fallen asleep in the warm weather 🙂 🙂 I know him well so we had a little chat before the dogs and I continued our walk. Both he and I had had a rather bad night and we think it’s because we both have that small cold when the nose is stuffed but not much else than the normal tiredness happening.

I want to have a new project. I actually have one that has been waiting for years but I don’t have all the materials I need and I must be careful with my economy since I don’t have a job. One never knows what might happen so it’s always good to have a an emergency fund just in case and not touch that until it is absolutely needed. I’m far from needing that but buying a lot of things not absolutely needed is just stupid even if I would have fun doing it 🙂 🙂 🙂

As usual there’s nothing worth watching on tv so I’ll make myself a pot of tea and most likely snooze in the recliner for the rest of the night 🙂 🙂 🙂

Have a great day!

This is not the monster but most likely her sibling 🙂 If he/ she ever comes here I guess I’ll just let it stay 🙂