Nimbus, Nancy, Nature, Gnocchi

Nimbus

I'm not sure why, but I was compelled to take a crap-ton of pictures of the sky at various times throughout the day on Friday...

This probably-not-actually-a-nimbus cloud rolled through around sunset and made it look like some sort of blight was taking over Morrisville and Trenton—which is weird, since there seems to be a pretty effective blight in place here already. It's redundant—like putting a band-aid on top of a cast on someone's arm.

But the blight continued to expand its territory. In a few more minutes, those poseurs in Yah-dley wouldn't know what had hit them... like a Bostonian trying to boogie-board on a molasses wave in 1919.

Taylor was supposed to come over for dinner and homework help; but she ended up getting a mild touch of food poisoning from the free lunch at a school function she had attended earlier in the day.

But, this left us with a change in dinner plans; and I thought, hey, we should use that pizza dough we've had chilling in the fridge for two days now since the last time we changed plans... because, who knows how much longer it'll be good?

So, I left Athennia to roll out the dough—and told her to let me know when she was finished so I could build the rest of the pizza—but she came and got me a little while later with a quizzical look on her face.

So... apparently we have no pasta sauce whatsoever.

How do you want to play this?

We basically made pepperoni stromboli, just shaped like a pizza instead of being all rolled up. And it was actually pretty awesome!

Then, with an unexpected free evening, I suggested we drive to my parents' house and surprise my cousin Nancy who was visiting from Hanover for a few days.

Imagine our surprise upon discovering on the way over that the blight had already spread as far as Langhorne...

Those hapless schmucks won't know what hit 'em either!

Talk about a perfectly good Friday—and an okay year so far—taking a dark turn!

Nancy

But for now, we were able to surprise Nancy and my parents; and we got to visit with them for a couple hours before we decided to head home again :)

We found this on our porch when we got back...

You've heard of The Grapes of Wrath; but, these were the grapes of Ruth—our dirtball upstairs neighbor who parks like a jackass, makes a big commotion every time she comes and goes (like a jackass), leaves garbage all over the stairwell and the parking lot like a jackass, and...

...steps right over her own UPS delivery to get into her apartment, like a jackass.

Once we had checked our own doorstep for conspicuous packages and made it back inside, Athennia and I kicked off our shoes and watched the last two episodes of the first season of Reacher before bed.

Saturday afternoon, we had actual plans to go to my parents' and have dinner with them, Nancy, and Kelly's family.

It seemed that greater Bucks County had managed to repel the wild Trenton for the time being; so I snapped another pic of the sky on the drive over...

My parents made chicken, corn, potatoes, and broccoli for dinner, and my mom baked Nancy a birthday crumb cake...

I had an impromptu photo shoot with Liv at the table, and it was hard to whittle down all the pics to just nine of my favorites :)

But, here ya go...

Then we adjourned to the living room...

(I guess Hannah found us boring through, since she excused herself soon thereafter.)

Liv asked Taylor to do a crab dance with her...

And then she and Hannah ran around and tired themselves out...

I ducked out to check on the progress of my garlic—and Nancy came out and asked about the house and property; so, she got to hear that entire saga. (Such a long story to convey the eight months of nothingness that have gone by since August.)

While we were outside, I noticed a giant branch that had come down in the backyard: The thing had literally skewered the ground and lodged itself a good five or six inches into the earth. It definitely could've killed someone with the swiftness and cunning of a rabid Trenton, if anyone had been around!

Then, back inside to hang out again. And my mom got some pictures of Live with Taylor and me...

Nature

Sunday afternoon, I wanted to get outside for a walk—even if it was only for an hour or two.

Surprisingly, Riley wanted to tag along as well; and so she, Athennia, and I headed around the corner to Five Mile Woods...

We discovered that spring has sprung, kinda... and kinda not...

Things were definitely on the spongier side; so we got ourselves onto a nice boardwalked path...

Here's Kitten realizing she's in a photo—and attempting to duck her way out of it ;)

Aaaand, the stream was still back here too (in case there'd been any doubt—or any drought)...

I thought this was an exceptionally cool pic...

Kitten got a few artsy shots...

I only took two—but one was of the Spike-a-Tron 3000, which is so awesome that I think it should count as six or seven shots just by itself...

Then it was back home—where, as always, we were reminded that animals don't always live in the forest. There are tons of them living in our apartment complex as well—like this dipstick who makes up her own parking spot, which then affects the entire row...

It makes me wish the three of us carried butterfly knives on us...

Gnocchi

After we got back from the woods, Athennia went to pick Taylor up and brought her back for some homework help and homemade chicken gnocchi soup for dinner.

It sounded like the downstairs neighbors were bowling all evening, and I told Athennia I was going to start jumping if they were still going at 11:00 P.M.

Fortunately they stopped on their own around 10:45. Perhaps operant conditioning even works on single-point-IQ'ed inbred rodents, and they're finally seeing the pattern of every time we make noise, he makes noise.

Ugh.

Guess the blight has been lifted everywhere but here... in L'il Trenton.