Sambuca Smile

My parents had 5 grandchildren. At some point they decided to give each a substantial gift for use after high school. My mother told me years later after Daddy died that the biggest discussion about giving the gifts was me. My brother and sister would benefit from the gifts being given their children and I'd get nothing. Mom said she was fine with that (hahahah Mom!) but that Daddy had really wrestled with the fairness of it. Thanks, Dad - you were always my favorite. Not true, really, Mom.

Anyway... that shit apparently is in my DNA. I have two nephews. One is getting married and I zelled him money for a wedding present this weekend and then thought that was not really fair to his brother who just bought a new house and got no house warming present. So this morning I zelled him. Except. It didn't work. No reason given. Just didn't work. Zelle said he has a valid account but just no send. I checked the limits and I was well within. I have money in my account. I tried sending $5. nope. I finally got him engaged. He sent a QR code which linked to his account successfully but still didn't send the money. Fuckme. The wedding money zelled perfectly the first time. Wild.

So... finally... I called the credit union which is usually a major PIA only this time wasn't too horrible. I explained the issue and was transferred to a guy who knew his shit. He said he could see the attempts and could see that all was fine. "basically, you just hit a zelle glitch". He waved his magic wand And, after a few more log ins and log outs, it worked, he said but I couldn't see it and would not let him go until I did. He was very kind and patient and finally I could see it and so could my nephew. So all's well that ends well.

But a very exhausting way to start the week!

The Annual Window Washing starts next Monday. Right now there are three window washers down in the plaza looking up at our dirty windows. It's quite the endeavor, this window washing. Apparently they have tried it via rappelling from the roof a few times and that was not as good as going from apartment to apartment. This latter is how they do it now. They open the windows and remove the screens and then hang out that open one to clean the others. Move to the next apartment. It takes about 3 or 4 weeks to do them all. The most painful part is listening to everyone conjure on how they are doing it wrong. As a group, old people know best. And those with no real knowledge of the situation, know best of all.

But, it will be fun to have clean windows again.

And it is beyond marvelous not to have a single piece of skin in the operation.

We broke heat records yesterday and probably will again today. I have no reason to go outside and so don't intend to. All is lovely and cool in here.

The new litter box situation seems to be fine except, I got the wrong litter box. It's an inch too wide. Skinnier replacement arrives today. Biggie seemed oddly reluctant but he went in the morning and did his biz and that's all I can ask. Julio, of course, thinks it's his new play house.

The sun is blasting this morning and my new shades are all 'not so fast there Mr. Glare!'. I love my new shades. They are also giving me the gift of Amazon Prime. Amazon uses a special process that makes most of their shows very dark. On my television with the shades up, in daylight or even at night with lights on, a night scene is just black. Just black. With audio. But with the shades down and the lights off, turns out, there is actually something to see. So I'm catching up on Prime stuff.

Today is menu day. And Tuesday is the 10th. Last day to use up this month's meal money. Depending on what the menu looks like for next week, I may make another food bank donation.

I am enjoying the Trump/Musk breakup - the two best were 'It wouldn't be Pride month without two queens breaking up on social media' and 'SLOW DOWN! or we're going to run out of popcorn!'

No big plans for today. I am doing some reorganizing of my utility room now that there is some space. I need some more command hooks to and I need to mount the hand held vac. So probably I'll get all that done today. And knit more Pride monsters. I'm still photographing each one but they all look the same some no more posting anywhere until I get back to dolls.

It's supposed to be hot hot today and this weekend - 80's - which is hot hot for us. So for sure, I won't be going outside. But, that's not exactly breaking news since I rarely go outside anyway.

However, the Timber Ridge staff has been working all week on cleaning up and arranging the patio furniture and getting the outdoor cookers (that anyone can use) ready for action. There will be old people in the sun this week, I'll bet.

I pulled the Litter Robot out and disassembled it and still the pieces where too big for our shoot. I found a dumpster down in the garage and a push cart so I came back up here, loaded up and unloaded down there. Done. Probably broke a dozen rules but fuck 'em. It's done. I cleaned up the area in the utility room and the rug that catches the litter spills is now in the washer.

Then I went to aqua fit. I did not want to go. It was better than those damn machines and, honestly, I knew Martha would check (which she did since her yoga class is in the gym at the same time). The water was very cold when I got in but, really, it was very lovely in less than a minute. Invigorating. I last took the class a year and a half ago. Now they have music which makes such a difference. And it was good and it was hard. And I thought it was 30 minutes but turned out to be 45! My arms are going to be very mad tomorrow but I'm going to do it again next Tuesday.

I bought a Litter Genie from Amazon and it came with a giant dent in it. So I returned it and bought the plastic one which isn't arriving until tomorrow. PetCo didn't have one but, hey, Pet Smart does AND if I order online and go get it, I save 20% - plus it's cheaper than Amazon anyway. So score score score. Cancel Amazon. Now I'm going to get dressed, take my two Amazon returns and go to PetSmart.

The utility room looks so much nicer and tidier without that gynormous Litter robot.