Walking on a Monday

Last Monday was Earth Day, and incidentally also the day where I walked 4.8 miles/about 2 hours, back and forth, to pick up the car from the tire shop because we needed new tires. The weather was nice thankfully. I think it was the most I have walked in years. Perhaps the last time I walked this much in a day was when I lived in NYC and had time, so I'd walk instead of taking the subway or a bus.

Anyway now that the tires are dealt with, I don't anticipate making a similarly long walk for a long while.

Solar Eclipse

On 8th April there was a solar eclipse in our area. I had gotten two pairs of free solar eclipse glasses from the town library the previous Friday, and so was all prepped to see the solar eclipse. When the eclipse started, I was in a playground with my Mum and the kids, and it was cool to see the start of it, but eventually they got tired of the playground and we headed back home. After we got home, I sat outside in the front yard, on a tree stump, and watched the eclipse while reading a book. It started to get very cloudy however, and you couldn't see anything through the solar glasses, so I ended up using a pair of sunglasses to see the eclipse instead. 

Anyway this is a photo I took shortly before the sky got completely blotted out by clouds, close to the peak of the eclipse around 3:20pm local time. It was cool to see.

Dead Squirrel

Yesterday during the car ride home from school, E's mood started to sour, and by the time we had reached home she was starting to have a full on meltdown. It started because I didn't bring any water for her, which is something I usually don't do anyway. I forgot what the rest of her other complaints were, and her mood also wasn't helped when I ordered her to pick up her old garbage off the floor of the car when we got home. Anyway she started having a meltdown and I was getting annoyed and tired, when I suddenly spotted the dead squirrel across the road (not a dead squirrel, because I had already seen it earlier in the day). At a loss of what to do to make her stop having a tantrum, I said to her, "If you pick up the garbage and give it to me, I will show you a dead squirrel. Do you want to see a dead squirrel?" 

I had initially just expected the weirdness of the statement to catch E off guard and just make her pause in her tantrum, but what I didn't expect was for her to immediately stop her tantrum and reply, "What dead squirrel? I want to see it." She then picked up the garbage and handed it to me without complaint, and so I held her hand and we walked into the street to look at the dead squirrel from about a metre away. Its head was relatively intact, and I could see a bit of tongue lolling out. Anyway I asked E if she wanted to get closer and she said no. After that when we entered the house, she started excitedly telling Popo about the dead squirrel she saw. 

Anyway this morning when I left the house to send E to school, the dead squirrel was gone.