Photo Roundup November 24, 2013

Many of you have been missing my blog posts--I've been missing putting them up as well. These past few days have given me an incentive to want to get one up for all of you but especially for my Mom.

Mom fell and broke her hip on Thursday (not to worry, she's a tough woman and is doing fine) then had surgery to repair it on Friday--her birthday. As my middle sister said, "What do you give a woman who has everything?" Well, I'm giving her a blog post. It's a little late but here it is.

By the way, she went home from the hospital today and rumor has it she's ready to take on the world--well, maybe not the whole world but at least her little corner of it.

The raffle afghan our needlework group, Loose Stitches, has been working on is finally complete! There will be a whole blog post about it but here are the photos to start you off. I took them when I was kitty sitting and Little decided there was no way I was taking photos without her Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval in full evidence.

While we're talking about animals, these guys looked so cute up on their roof. Dogs frequently live on roofs here, especially when the family doesn't have a back yard for them to play in. Thus they are called roof dogs. These two were keeping a close eye on the folks walking past on the sidewalk below them.

We'll move on to the kids--of course there are kids:

I love this one because of the backpack with the bunnies attached to it. All children wear uniforms here, even in public schools, but indigenous children are only required to wear part of the uniform. In this case, she's wearing the sweater from her school.

As I was walking down the street the other day I saw an entire blocks with grade school children four abreast. On the far right you can see them in line at the tiny store. On closer inspection I discovered the car behind the kids in the foreground jam packed full of small bags of chips and other snacks. I went up to the man in the front and asked what was happening. He said the kids were going to be playing futbol (soccer) next week and they would be practicing a lot. I asked if they were each being given a special treat and he said they were.  I haven't quite figured it all out but that's fine--it was just an interesting sight.

I was in Quito about a week ago and saw this woman walking along with her heavy bundle of stuff tied to her back. The quality's not great because Angela took it out of the window of a moving van but I was impressed she did so well.

I've put pictures on here before of "my" lady who lives down the street from me. She doesn't like having her picture taken so it's hard to show you much about her but this is how I often see her. She sits out in front of her apartment, covers up with her shawl, and takes a nap. She has no windows in her apartment and I think she likes the fresh air.

I love this one. It looks like a pair of pants but when you look down at the bottom you can see the ropes for tying it up. It's a pair of hammocks hanging next to one another. I had to chuckle just a little over that one. I don't know what they cost from this vendor but I can get them from the "factory" for $12-$15, depending on how colorful they are--more colorful thread is more expensive.

This last one is kind of unpleasant. You'll have to scroll down if you want to see the photo. I was able to put screening up on my kitchen window and I have screening hanging in front of my door. It does a great job of keeping all manner of flying things out of the house. I also have some magic stuff that kills flies. One brand is called Agita and it has pheromones to attract the flies and when they get over where it is, the poison kills them dead! I rarely find a dead fly around the container I keep by the kitchen window. The flies always head for the window, thinking it's a way out. Anyway, I have absolutely NO idea what happened today but suddenly I was inundated by flies. They were swarming around the window in the kitchen and sometimes a few would come visit me on the couch They were swarming around the outside of the window as well. About an hour after they arrived (I have no idea how they got in), I went over to see what was happening. There were dead flies everywhere around the container of Agita! I'm going to have to rewash my dishes and wipe down everything over there. It's disgusting.

Ah, the picture. The picture is taken right by the little basket-covered ceramic container where I keep the Agita. There was a small container on the window sill next to it and when I went to move it out of the way I discovered at least 10 more flies in there so I dumped them out and took another picture. I counted over 60 dead flies and there were still more flying around--not many but a few. As I look over there about two hours later, I still see three flies at the very top of the screen. They won't be around long. There are no more live flies in the house, other than those, and there are none swarming around the outside of the window. It's a mystery. Scroll for the ugly evidence of the wonders of Agita.

Have a great week everyone and again, Happy Belated Birthday, Mom.