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There’s A Rat in the Kitchen

Time has been moving pretty fast!  We have almost all of our stuff sold most of our furniture spoken for, my Spanish class (clase de espanol) ends tomorrow.  Our garage sale is this weekend to clean out some of the items in the garage.  We are closing up some loopholes at work (training replacements; I am flying out to Chicago next week for that).  We have taken care of some medical mysteries and taken care of some financial goals.   As I write this I see our counter says 95 days to go!

house from pinapple knife rd

Sometimes when we talk about the wood house on the property we joke about the rats that are living in the walls.  Sometimes we tell Kitty that is going to be his job, to chase out all the rats.  The ratones have become a symbol for us that represents challenge that awaits us.  When we joke about it and frame it as an interesting and fun thing it becomes part of our lives in a positive and silly way!

We were sitting in the living room when the UB40 song “There’s a Rat in the Kitchen” came on and it made us laugh so I figured I’d post it:

There’s a rat in the kitchen.  What am I gonna do?
There’s a rat in the kitchen.  What am I gonna do?
Im gonna fix that rat that’s what im a gonna do.
Im gonna fix that rat that’s what im a gonna do.

You can look at the rats as a bad thing that has to be taken care of, or it can be one of the bugs that makes for an interesting chapter in your life’s story.  We prefer to tell interesting stories!

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Coffee Beans in Colorado?!


Schnoodle with some of the various tropical plants in our house -coffee tree is furthest left

Coffee Tree
A Healthy Coffee Plant has Nice glossy dark green leaves

We have had a small coffee plant for the last few years.  In the summer we put it in the humid greenhouse and it grows well. Then in the winter we bring it inside, where it lives..but doesn’t exactly thrive.   But this year we watered it a little more and… it started to bloom.

Cassie played the role of the honey bee and pollinated some of the blossoms by hand by touching the pollen from flower to flower. We hadn’t thought much of it until just the other day when we saw….Green coffee berry beans!


Colorado Coffee Beans

We will continue to let them grow and I doubt we’d have enough even for a single cup of coffee, but it’s still fun and having tropical plants around us invokes thoughts of Puerto Rico.  Of course the coffee plants in PR are a hundred times more fragrant and bigger!  Perhaps if we have enough beans/seeds we will try to grow another tree or two here in CO.  When we get to PR we might plant a whole acre of them!

Coffee Flowers
Little pom-pom white scented puffs of flowers soon turn into the berries

This is a coffee bush in Puerto Rico (makes our Colorado coffee beans look silly)

UPDATE: Click on links to see the red coffee berries turn into beans and new coffee plant seedlings.

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Arrived in Phoenix

Well we are here.  Its kind of nice actually,  I didn’t think I’d like it too much but this time I like it when I am wrong.  The weather is good and I think the high is supposed to be in the 80s.  Not the 110 I was afraid of.

Traveling is always interesting.  The plane was over an hour late due to bad weather in OK.  Also everyone in downtown phoenix charges for interenet access.  The hotel wants $13/day.  That is a bit high seeing how I pay 40 for a month.  I couldn’t get on at Starbucks because they require you to have some kind of Starbucks card.  I guess I didn’t think of internet access as a commodity.   I finally found a free hotspot at the hotel but you only have 45minutes a day to use it.  Lame.

Here is a pic from our room:

phoenix

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