Two More Days

Happy Independence Day! For some reason we weren’t really focused on the holiday today, but we did put our flag up. Fireworks starting going off at midnight last night. I didn’t know that “Independence Day Eve” was a thing like New Year’s Eve.

After feeling very fatigued and “off” all day yesterday, I was glad to get a good night’s sleep and wake up feeling better this morning. Today was kind of a crunch day on the packing. Walter had to surrender his everyday shoes so I could pack them and is now wearing his new “Sunday” shoes.

Meanwhile, I made a batch of special-order cookies for Jasper to have while we’re gone. Normally, I make the cookies according to Walter’s preferences, but he and Jasper don’t share the same tastes when it comes to chocolate. Jasper likes dark chocolate—the darker the better. Walter can barely tolerate chocolate at all anymore, unless it’s a very mild milk chocolate. So when I make chocolate chip cookies, I have to use the milk chocolate chips to make my husband happy.

Not this time. I got the highest-quality dark chocolate chunks I could find, and added a lot of coconut also, per Jasper’s request. I froze half of them so that when he finished the first half of the batch, he’ll still have fresh cookies in the freezer.

I mostly down to packing odds and ends. I ran into an unexpected obstacle today, though. Weeks ago I bought some GPS trackers for our luggage, and today I planned to activate them and place them in our cases. I made sure to get trackers that are specific for Android phones, because that’s what I have.

Well, it turns out the trackers are made by Samsung, and only work with Samsung phones—unless you download a workaround app. The problem is I can’t figure out how to access the workaround. I am going to beg my tech-savvy neighbor Kevin (Kim’s husband) to help me tomorrow. I know there’s a way to make it work.

I did make some pasta salad to go with our supper, and fired up the grill that I wasn’t able to use yesterday so I could grill the burgers. There were enough coals left for Walter to roast a couple of marshmallows afterward.

I felt yesterday’s post was full enough, so I didn’t mention that when we were with Lina yesterday, I was finally able to give her the rest of her birthday present. We had special-ordered a mug for her, but I also made her one of my bags:

She is my fellow Trekker and sci-fi buddy, so I put some effort into finding some attractive Star Trek themed fabric (a real challenge) for the pockets, and then stuck with the space theme for the whole bag. I am hoping she finds it useful.

However, she is also an absolute boss at making bags herself, so she presented me with my birthday gift:

This lovely bag that she made for me out of African fabric! It’s got three pockets on the outside and two pockets on the inside and I absolutely love it. It might have to come to Zambia with me. I won’t be wearing all those pockets every single day!

Parting Shot:

The giraffe lilies are in full bloom. I call them giraffe lilies because they’re six feet tall.