Hey guys!

Just a quick hello and check in. Holy moly has it really been 45 days since my last post?!? Well like most things lately, you keep telling yourself you’ll get to it in a minute and then… well, you don’t. I have sooooo much stuff piling up and it’s overwhelming, so obviously I avoid it rather than tackling it like an adult. Even at 48 years old, adulting is hard. Ok enough of that… let’s talk show and tell…

Penny in the back seat of the car ( a very lucky angle of the phone camera!)

Duke being cute with his dinosaur

So I have a pile of art that I’ve done from May 29-recent, it’s not as much art as it should be in that number of days, but I don’t exclusively do drawing so I’m gonna give myself a break on that. I also put my Nikon camera in a quick to grab location so that I might get cute pics of the pups, I need to go thru those and see what’s good. And of course, my phone camera is always on me, so I probably have some cute pup pics in there too. This right here is actually why I haven’t blogged in so long… trying to carve out time for post processing hasn’t been attainable for some reason lately.

Well, I think I know at least two reasons why… one, I’ve been learning Spanish on Duolingo for the last 70 days (thanks to the nudging of my mother-in-law). The second reason, is that Penny had to have surgery.

Penny recovering at home from surgery

She’s doing great, and she gets her stitches out tomorrow. She had a fatty lump that she’s had for years that was no cause for concern suddenly grow a blister-like bump on top of it!! The vet wanted to remove it with surgery and then send it for a lab test. The test came back benign — woohoo! It was a trichoepithelioma (if you want to look it up). She ended up getting 8-9 stitches on her rump/hip and it was a bit of a shock to see her after surgery, given that the bump was smaller than the diameter of a dime on the outside, but the surgery site was 2-3 inches long. But the swelling went down, the bruising healed, and her hair is growing back. And like I said, the stitches will come out tomorrow. So yeah, I’ve had my head elsewhere the last 6 weeks. And by the way, curbside vet care is weird, am I right? But I have a great vet and I trust him, so it’s all good.

Is anyone else learning a new language on Duolingo? I’ve learned more in the last 70 days than I did in the three previous attempts at language in high school and college.  I think it also helps that there is YouTube and multiple internet sources for help, not just a boring old text book (I’m so old). Plus if I’m honest, I didn’t even try to go to the listening lab in college.

According to Duolingo I know 657 words… a four year old knows about 1000 words… so my current goal is to understand Cookie Monster in Spanish (El Monstruo de Galletas). Yes, you read that right, I am still unable to understand a show for preschoolers! Hahahaha! There is a Spanish Sesame Street (Sésamo) and I am not quite able to follow along yet. I’ve also found a great source for answers at Butterfly Spanish.

The night before last I had a dream that I was talking to a Spanish-speaking ghost named Gina, and I could communicate with her by selecting the Spanish word tiles (like in Duolingo).

But Gina only spoke in we past tense and I was just learning we present tense (Nosotros [verb-stem]emos/amos/imos –>> Nosotros hablamos[we talk], Nosotros comemos[we eat], Nosotros escribimos[we write])… but somehow I was able to communicate with her. Hahahaha!  When I woke up, I looked up we past tense and it’s almost the same conjugation (Nosotros hablamos[we talked], Nosotros comimos[we ate], Nosotros escribimos[we wrote])!  It’s funny how the brain tries to work through problems while you sleep.  Oh one more thing, my husband has been suggesting various Spanish songs for me to listen to, because speaking and hearing a language are the hardest for me… so I now know the words  and can almost sing with Oye Como Va, and La Bamba 😀

Oh I almost forgot the night I tried to take pictures of Saturn and Jupiter! (Don’t worry, I have better ones on my Nikon, I just have to comb thru them)…

Now I just need to carve out some time to do some culling and post processing of photos for the next post.

That’s all I have for now.
Stay safe everyone! And wash your hands! 🙂

Until next time…
~nic