One of my favourite stories from when Margaret and I stayed on the Island of Cozumel came from a couple from the southern U.S. They said their young son received an iguana when it was just a baby and then he and the animal slept together for the rest of its life. The dad said his son had that lizard for years before it finally died.

Margaret and I both felt sick as we had kids that slept with cats or dogs, but not reptiles. A few days earlier we’d been offered a chance to pet an iguana and said no thanks. Recounting that story to another person at the Cozumel condo he said his son had kissed an iguana in Mexico and once home found himself filled with parasites.

Then the other day I had written how I’d kissed Jennifer, one of the new chickens, and my friend Eve sent an e mail saying “Please, please do not kiss chickens.” I don’t want to find myself full of parasites, or perhaps with a brain worm, so I’ll definitely take Eve’s advice, especially since she’s a pharmacist with decades of experience.

Now that I have Okay, I’ll Bite for sale on Amazon I’m working on a romance novel for seniors. I wrote a romance novel 20 years ago and am now revamping it to feature oldsters and will see how that goes. Writing is a hard slog, but I have to do something to keep my brain from withering.

On that note, I went to Vernon again for 20 pounds of frozen chicken feet for Jan. She reports they’re delicious, but I keep thinking about the claws. Do you just spit them out, or are they removed prior to cooking?

And of course, for real stimulation there’s treasure hunting. Elsa and I went last week, and I found the perfect towel rack for my bathroom for $8.00. I said to her I could’ve used that when my German visitors were here as I have just one rack for towels which is awkward for guests.

We both bought masses of things and justified it by saying we hadn’t been in over a month. Once home I did manage to find four or five tops that could go back to thrift in order to make room for the new items. But there’s still a very large volume of everything in this house.

To celebrate how wonderful it is to be alive I bopped into the Mission Thrift Store today and had to buy a cute pair of vintage Japanese geese and a lovely soup bowl. The bottom of it said Black Knight Hohenberg, Bavaria and at $2 I thought why not. When I googled it, I was happily surprised to see it’d be ten times that on e bay. Manufactured sometime between 1921 and 1946, and in mint condition.

You know how I fear and loathe change, and it appears two local institutions are gone for good. One is the old BC Tree Fruits company that was founded 88 years ago but is now in bankruptcy and closed. The other is our local news station, formerly called CHBC, then it became Global, and now bye bye.

To deal with these stressors I’ve just made those date balls everyone goes nuts over, and will now make some chocolate chip cookies and a batch of brownies. When the going gets tough, the tough put on an apron and start softening butter.