Hippos & Birdies!

It's Froggy's birthday today. She's older than I am, but she'll still never be as OLD as Toadly!

I just realized as I was typing that my family has a lot of animal nicknames. Like bordering on an obsessive amount! I'm Cricket (yeah, I know it's a bug and not an animal!), or Ottermom, my sister is Froggy, our brother is Toadly, his grandkids call him Duck (and he's also known as the Monkey's Aunt - long story), my daughter is Otter, or insane kitten, or Monkey. It's our mother's fault. Not fault as in a bad thing, but I think she's probably responsible. She loved animals and she passed that on to us. Which I think is a good thing, by the way!

Speaking of Otter, she and I just got back from walking the dogs. She rode her bike, I got dog detail. She probably got more excercise than I did, since she had to keep circling back to me because walking is slower than biking. She has driving class starting tomorrow, but she will probably always enjoy riding her bike. I certainly enjoy mine.

A few simplifying thoughts: When I run out of paper table napkins, which might be a while considering that I just stocked up - I'm going to switch to using cloth napkins. Less waste, less trees cut down. No, I'm not turning into a tree hugger! But I am trying to make some wise choices. Same thing about plastic, we're going to be using less plastic to store things in and more glass. I'm not going to completely stop buying baggies, for example. But I'm going to reduce the amount we use. I have a boatload of tupperware-type storage containers, which will last for a long time and they usually just sit in the cabinet. It's so much easier to just grab a ziploc instead. We've been working to reduce the amount of trash we produce, and we've also been recycling what we can for several months. I have a few other things I'm thinking about.

Otter's eBay stuff is starting to get bids. Very good sign, bids this early. She's hopeful that she'll have a good final price like she did the last time she had mold-a-rama animals. She put them on eBay and they went very high.

It's still warm, but not as hot as the last couple of days. It's in the 90's and will be for a couple of days, but the weekend is supposed to be back over 100. Just in time for the major shop-a-thon!