The best thing about marrying into a Polish family is the sudden appearance of pierogies: doughy dumplings stuffed with potatoes, cheese, meat, fruit or other deliciousness and then sautéed in butter. I mean, my husband, Mike, is nice, too, but he gets cranky if I try to sautée him in butter.

Spoil-sport.

2021 seems MUCH better, eh?

Well, for what it is worth, I've made some New Year changes. I'm not approaching work with a AAAAH GET IT DONE FOR THE DAY!!! attitude -- allowing myself to get up from my desk and putter around a bit here and there instead of trying to get all my work done by lunch (I get up at 4 am). I'm one of those people who usually like to eat all the cake first so I can enjoy the icing at the end, but my "save the best (all my leisure time) for last" attitude was causing me stress. Plus, my hips apparently don't like sitting for eight hours straight the way they used to...

Hopefully, the neighbors don't mind smelling like hot dogs for six hours.

We waited a year and for the black Friday sale, but we finally bought a grill. (Now that we're in Florida, it's a law. We have to get a tiki bar soon or it's three years hard labor.) We're terrified of combustible tanks and don't like the toxic nature of charcoal, so we went with a Traeger smoker.

For Halloween, I went full Dr. Frankenstein and created a monster cinnamon bun. I'm not sure my hand on it here (with the tip already gnawed off --- of the bun, not my hand) really drives home how large this thing was. It begged me to eat it and put it out of its misery. What could I do?

A land crab sneaks up on gopher tortoise...Hoping I don't see this  tortoise show up on Dateline...my CritterCam stopped before I saw the ending!

Today is the last day of summer and my personal zoo is still hopping!

Over to the right there is a Knight Anole (invasive species from Cuba), much larger than my baby local anoles! I can't get over his eyes -- totally looks like someone painted on his eyelids while he was sleeping.

We chased him from one side of the tree to the other to get this shot. I'd go to snap the photo and he'd shuffle to the opposite side...So I'd go to the other side and he'd shuffle back where he was... needed to get Mike to limit his options and get this shot.

It's summer and I live adjacent to a preserve in Florida, so it's a lot like living in a zoo. Every day we wake up and scoop the fiddler crabs out of the salt water pool...Watch the video of the critters walking past our security cameras...

I was supposed to get a new puppy, which I was beyond excited about (I'd already written him into my new book!) but it fell through.

I'm SO BUMMED.

But, it's been quite the critter-filled summer, so I thought I'd share some of my local friends with you. I had a really good armadillo movie, too, but once again when I thought I was filming I wasn't so... big sorry to the armadillo fans out there.

This isn't a paid advertisement --- I just thought I'd let you know about some things I discovered that I love and that might help you, too! My new years resolution was to SOLVE PROBLEMS - if something bothers me, now I take the time to find a solution and move on, instead of putting up with whatever it is and putting off looking for a way to make it better. Saves time in the long run.

Mike and I finally got around to adding a back yard camera to our Nest system and the very first night we heard the most ear-shattering wailing coming from just outside our bedroom. We both shot up and then remembered we had a camera there now! Turns out it was a whiny bobcat strolling through our back yard. Who  knew they wailed like that??

Now that I've moved to Florida and actually have some counter space and a place for all my paraphernalia, I've been cooking a lot more. For Christmas it was just Mike and me, so instead of doing the whole turkey-hoo-ha, I made perogi (pasta stuffed with mashed potatoes/cheese) with a recipe I made up as I went along, and it turned out so well I thought I'd share it! They're time consuming but now I have three dozen frozen (after eating at least two dozen), so they last forever...

We've been having a ton a fun with our security cameras... but it was hard to tell WHAT was scurrying across the driveway. This guy finally stopped and posed long enough that I could see the trademark bandit mask!