First Day Alone...Settling In

This is where I'm sitting as I write this post. It's rough duty but someone has to do it and I'm a most willing participant.  

Warm enough to write outdoors

86 lovely degrees

This is the outside temperature on the patio right now.  It's a lot better than the 40+ degrees back home.  My attire today is shorts, sleeveless top and sandals.  

This is my first day alone as the pet/house sitter.  I started it out, after feeding the animals and myself breakfast, by participating in a Total Body on Ball exercise program at the community gym and it felt pretty good.  Most of it was pretty new to me and I know that I'll go back next week because I enjoyed it.

I belong to 24 Hour Fitness and changed my membership before I left WA so that I could go to the Indio gym for Silver Sneakers.  Turns out they don't have Silver Sneakers so I'm paying to participate in something that doesn't exist nearby.  Bummer.  Obviously, I didn't do my homework.  Doesn't it seem rather strange that a gym, located within blocks of a retirement community, doesn't offer a program for seniors?  At least after two months I can go back to what I originally signed up for.  I'm thinking I might go to the Indio 24 Hour Fitness tomorrow and try out Zumba.  

Returning to the house after exercising was a challenge, even with a map.  This community is huge and all the houses are basically the same color.  I drove and drove and drove, finally making my way back to the community center after not being able to find the house.  I decided to go in the other direction since I couldn't find the street I needed and that turned out to be the right decision.  I don't think I'll make that mistake again, but ya never know.

I desperately needed to go grocery shopping because what I ate yesterday was not good.  I found a bag of potato chips and the left over wine from when the owners were home and that was dinner.  Yuck. Not at all healthy.

For some reason, I've been famished for about a week or so and want to eat everything in sight.  At home I had plenty of healthy food to munch on so it wasn't really a problem.  It was a problem here at first, because I hadn't gone shopping or done any healthy cooking.  That's why the potato chips and wine last night.  

Candace, the mom of the animals I'm caring for, took me to a grocery store my first day here and I bought just a few things to tide me over, which was ok, but my famishness got in the way, hence the scarfing down potato chips, followed by wine.  

I couldn't remember the name of the store we went to so I went searching online. What I remembered was the name began with an H. I found it, wrote down directions and headed off for healthy food.  

I commented in yesterday's post how little traffic there is here.  Well, that changed overnight and it now looks like Seattle traffic followed me down.  Turns out there's a music and arts festival in Coachella Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  I remember reading about it and reminded myself to stay away from the area.  What I didn't know was that I had to drive right through where the festival is going on to get the grocery store.  It also turns out that what felt like half the festival was at the same grocery store!!  I survived, bought healthy food, so no more potato chips and wine for me.

This is the pool at night and it's my favorite color.  

I love the shadows I see in the pool and I've been taking pictures to try and capture what I'm seeing.  I'm not sure that I've really done a good job, but here's what I've come up with.

I really like these cacti and I've included the non-shadow picture below.

These are right next to the spa and I really like the look of them, shadows and real life.  

Someone asked me if I rented a car. The people I'm sitting for are letting me drive their Prius.  I'm being yelled at by Tai Chi to feed him dinner so I'll write about the Prius tomorrow.  That could be a  post all by itself.

I also noticed I have two new followers and I'll thank you tomorrow.  

Loving the weather,

Jeana