We reached the eight month mark on April 29, and we’re moving at light speed toward nine months. Toren loves to be on the floor, and he rolls, scoots and wiggles himself around to chase his toys across the room.

He loves to grab furry objects, too. The Little Black One exists charitably as his favorite furry object.

We’re just back from our trip up to the Redwoods and Santa Cruz, where we stayed a night at Costanoa retreat center, visited Ano Nuevo State Reserve, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Nisene Marks Forest, Wilder Ranch, Mount Hermon (where I worked as Summer Staff in 1998), and of course the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and lighthouse. We had a great time.

Hello! This past weekend was one of those weekends where I kept saying, “This is my favorite kind of day.” We didn’t do anything really special or anything, but Greg had Friday off, and we spent a lot of time just enjoying the spring weather. We took Toren out jogging (in the stroller) on both Friday and Saturday; on Saturday, we did 8.75 miles on the Fullerton trail, which was terrific. We also spent time laying out under the trees on a blanket reading and playing with blocks. Greg and I watched “To Kill a Mockingbird” starring Gregory Peck on Saturday. Neither of us had seen it before, and we highly recommend it. Stellar book, too.

I have to admit I’ve been feeling rather blogged out lately. I’m totally uninspired by my own tedium, and a short break usually gets me going again. I’ll probably be a little out of pocket here at Ms. Nomer for a while, at least ’til the end of the month. I’ll pop in and out in blogland a bit here and there, just to let you know I’m still around. I’m in the midst of going through some training in Adobe Illustrator, and that is presently demanding all of my free time at the computer. Plus, I have some writing projects underway that, if I can finish them, will make for some worthwhile posts. Those are my excuses, anyway.

Here’s Toren with his second cousin Micah at a family get-together a few weeks ago. They’re riding a little coin-operated stagecoach.

Here’s the b-side version of The Puppini Sisters’ “Millionaire” video. It’s just too cute. I love it.

Our neighbor’s lemon tree is sagging with fruit, and a week ago she told me to please take as many as I’d like. So, we picked some more this morning. They’ve been going in my iced tea and water. (When I was pregnant, I HAD to have lemon in my water, or I couldn’t stand to drink it. It was yet another weird craving I had.)

Luckily, I had a little help hauling my citrus bounty home.

Sorry my posts have been ho-hum lately. I’m dying of boredom just typing this (what kind of a post title is “lemon pickers”?). I have a new freelance project that is taking up all my spare time, and then, there’s been this book I haven’t been able to put down for the past four days. I’ve been up past 11 p.m. reading it every night, if you can believe it. I know. Shocking. I just finished it tonight, so I guess I’ll be getting sleep again.

Anyway. That’s all for now.

Here are some pics of our little garden. Remember the tomato plants? They’re growing!

Greg got me some lettuce…

…so here come salads!

We’ve got some floral residents too. I love spring.

Yesterday I took Toren to get some portraits done at Target, and, while I was tremendously pleased with the results, I had FORGOTTEN TO BRING MY COUPON. So, as you probably can guess, I was faced with paying about four times as much as I SHOULD have been paying for my portraits. Gah. I had to narrow my choices down to two poses and I only bought three sheets, and STILL, I paid about $20 more than I would have liked to have paid. I was so mad at myself for neglecting to bring the stupid coupon. Later, I called the studio back, and said, “Look, I’m staring at your online special, and clearly, I should have gotten a better deal than I did.” So, the manager let me purchase some additional sheets at the reduced price, which helped me feel better, but still…there was nothing I could do to change the cost of my original purchase.

Later, I was out for a jog with Toren when I came across this nice little piece of cash. It was in the middle of the street, and I looked around for anyone who may have dropped it, but there was no one to be seen. So I came out pretty much even at the end of the day! It’s like that Seinfeld episode, where, in the end, everything evens out. I thank God for His cash rebate.

Funny! I guess it’s my month for finding good things in the street.

Here’s a little video of Mr. Serious in his jogging stroller. The soundtrack is meant to be irreverent for humor’s sake, so please don’t be offended. (As he rides along, Toren probably feels like he’s running with some kind of bat out of hell.)

I used to see little kids running around with food stains on their shirts and dried crusties on their chins and wonder, why doesn’t their mother wipe them up a little? How hard can it be?

And now I get it.

Last night as I was driving home alone around 9 p.m., I was heading down the hill on Lemon, right next to Hillcrest Park, and a truck ahead of me slammed on its brakes. In the glare of the headlights, I saw this little dog, confusedly walking around in the middle of the road.

The truck waited for the dog to go to the side of the road and then kept driving, but I had to stop. That dog was roadkill unless somebody intervened. (Lemon Street is very busy, and drivers take the hills way too fast…I’ve nearly been roadkill myself a few times).

So I pulled over to the side of the road and set the e-brake; before I knew what I was doing, I was crouched down in the dark street calling to the dog. Another driver crested the hill and saw what I was trying to do. He stopped in the middle of the road so that other cars coming over the hill would wait behind him. Finally, I coaxed the pooch close enough to grab her. I jumped in the car and we were on our way home.

Once home, I brought the dog in and presented her to Greg. We checked her out: no collar and, lucky for us, tons of fleas. But she was clearly someone’s pet. She was very well behaved, if a little frightened. We gave her a bowl of water and some cat food.

Oh THAT’S right! We own two cats! So, bringing a little dog inside was a little interesting. The dog is not much bigger than Pito, and he approached her pretty menacingly to let her know that he’s in charge here. It’s funny, because Pito’s never had any experience with dogs, so instead of being frightened (as a cat usually is), he just sees the dog as some other creature in his territory.

So, although the dog is very sweet and cute and all, the last thing I need is a flea infestation among my cats and in my carpet, just a few months before my baby starts to crawl. I’m the sort of person who gets itchy skin at the mere thought of fleas. So the dog spent the night in our master bathroom sans rugs and is spending the day out on the porch.

I printed some little “found dog” notices with my phone number and posted them up in the neighborhood early this morning. Then I called the Orange County Animal Care Services hotline to arrange a pick up today (edited to add: so that they can scan her for a chip and put her photo on a website for her owners to locate her.) The operator assures me they’re a “pro-life” shelter that “tries their darndest” to reunite pets with their owners or find the animals a home before they euthanize.

When he woke up this morning, Toren loved seeing the little dog wag its tail and jump around.

And that’s the story of the dog.