Wednesday

Not all days are free of frustrations and wasted hours -- even retired people, I'm learning, can feel the rug of time pulled from under them so that at the end of the day, all they have to show for it is a plate of leftover zucchini sticks.

But, conversely, all days have glorious moments in them, even if, as in my case, these moments may be rather concentrated. Toward the morning, for example.

So let's talk about the morning!

Ed slept in again and so I went out to set the cheepers free. Isis made me do it. It's an animal pact that they have: Oreo starts crowing, which causes Isis to start meowing, and Oreo just keeps on going, so that Isis wont let up either until someone lets him out. Sometimes he'll want breakfast too. You have to get up, have a conversation with him and only then -- go out to release the cheepers.

But the fact is, the rooster crows oftentimes before sunrise. And whereas some of the hens are ready to get out and scratch and peck and search for chicken gold, others (take Scotch for example) look at you quizzically and appear to be asking -- what? so early? what are you thinking?

So you have rushed to set them free, even as they're perfectly content to stay in the coop until the sun really does rise.

The second problem with getting up and out before sunrise is that you're too early for that beautiful morning sky, all orange and pink and gold that accompanies the moment when the sun greets the world around you.



(Oreo, waiting for the sunrise)


So you wait a while, but of course, the predawn hours are not a good time to hang out, unless you relish the company of mosquitoes... Wait, did I say the morning gave me my set of good hours??

Well, it did. The sunrise, in the end, was pretty, in a calm, over the-field-and-through-the-woods sort of way...








(Oreo, satisfied, walks away)


And then I managed to snooze a little more, so that breakfast was late, but lovely (please do not frown at the repetition of the t-shirt on Ed. Let's pretend he just pulled it on for breakfast to annoy me).






And then chores and petty snafus and frustrations followed, culminating in Ed asking if perhaps I'd like to refrain from cooking tonight, to which I gratefully answered yes, resulting in us having the only fast-food take-out that I ever agree to eat -- Chipotle's. All this, while reading a book on the French eating habits which, BTW, never include fast-food take-out. At least not if my generation has anything to say about it.

I'll leave you with flowers. A late set of day lilies. On fire, in their loveliness!