Creepy

I don't know where else to express this sentiment. I still have an active profile on an online dating site. I've paid for it for another couple of weeks, so I'm going to hang in there and see what happens yet.

I know that everyone is free to look at profiles, that that is the point of the site. But I am creeped out by 20 year olds looking at my profile, some repeatedly. I'm not just old enough to be their mother, I'm probably older than their mothers!

There aren't many, and I can't specifically block them because they haven't made contact with me, but there are a handful and well, ew!

Why is my house in such disarray?

Oh, right. It's because I've been out having fun. I'm not to the point where I'm grossed out by the floor or anything, but the clutter around here is getting to "must do something soon" levels.

Saturday Mr W and I joined some friends for swimming at our local reservoir. Due to it being a wet year (for around here) the reservoir is really full. Gloriously full. I guess the rain has made it so farmers (the primary users of the water) aren't drawing down as much water for their needs. It was nice to float and chat. 

I went to a party, we saw a movie, and I had dinner with new friend M. We are both content with seeing how it goes. He's got a different life than I do, much less structured. But it's been fun to get to know someone new and it looks like we'll do something this weekend. It is NICE not to be fretting about it. Nice indeed. 

Something has shifted in my outlook/confidence, and I think it's due to my starting this jogging thing. I started, ostensibly, for Mr W's sake, so I could help him establish the habit of running and then get something out of his participation in cross country this fall. We were two weeks into the C25K (couch to 5K) program (an app on my phone) and I was so sore, I didn't think I could do it. I could feel his interest waning if I was going to quit, so I kept at it and figured out that I need to stretch, daily, to feel good. 

And here we are, about three months into it. He wants to just concentrate on getting faster and faster at running 20 minutes (which is something like the 2K they do for CC races), and I want to do my shuffle (12 minute mile - woot!) for 25-30 minutes. So, I've been going out just with the dog, and riding my bike when he does his run. It works.

White flowers

I've never been a fan of white flowers. I'm not enough of a designer when it comes to choosing plants to appreciate them for their accent value, and it seems to me that if one is going through the trouble of planting flowers, color is an obvious reward for doing so.

So I don't knowingly buy white flowers.

Earlier in the spring, I started some Zinnias from seed and was looking forward to the pinks and purples of this particular variety (whose name escapes me at the moment). They have large, almost Dahlia-like flowers and I really liked them last year. The package clearly shows them coming in three colors: white, pink and purple.

When they were big enough, I tucked four in the alley garden and four in the raised bed out front. As an aside, I have been very pleased with converting that from veggies to flowers (thank you farmers and grocery stores from whom I can buy food).

Here's what I got:

Funny, they've grown a lot since I took these. But you get the point. Two white ones above, two white ones below...

And here you can see two more white, plus the two pink ones that were in the mix.

A friend gave me a few Calendula seeds a couple of years ago and they've gone bananas in this bed. I've pulled a bunch of them, but not enough. I wanted to have a few amongst the other things I put in there. I bought three Dahlias and planted a couple of specialty sunflowers that aren't blooming yet in this photo. 

They are all nice, and the bees love them. It feels good to plant stuff for the bees. 

We've gotten a lot of rain this summer. And not a lot of the scorching heat that can happen in July in August. Good for us, as it hasn't been enough to cause flooding and it keeps the threat of wildfires down. 

In other news, I've been in contact with new friend M, he of the blind date a few days ago, and we're going to get together this weekend for dinner or something. I've finally matured to the point where I realize that it's too soon to tell anything. Too soon to project about what might happen, so I might as well just enjoy the ride.