Throw me some good weather, a spring landscape and a free morning and you can rest assured that I will be outside working.
Unless the day proceeds like this one: full of the small twists that cause it to veer in different directions.
Let's start with the sweetly predictable breakfast.
It's prompt and ready at 9, since Ed has a morning meeting to go to soon after. He promises he'll lock up Oreo so that I can roam freely and work without a rooster hanging (quite literally) on my heels.
We do take a few minutes to pick some weeds (Scotch watches, hoping for worms)...
... and, too, to wash a chicken.
That may sound strange, but we've noticed that one of the white hens has been slumping lately. It could be the heat. It could be a nibble at a indigestible plant. I offer another explanation: her butt is so dirty! I tell Ed that maybe she can't push eggs out in all that mess. Since she is lethargic, Ed picks her up easily and I work the hose on her rear and scrub her (almost) spankin' clean.
And then Ed takes off for his meeting and I note that he has forgotten to lock up Oreo. Since I have no intention of messing with his moods, I spend the morning inside paying bills and doing the type of general accounting that one does on a rainy day. Except that it is a very very lovely day and here I sit, trapped indoors because of a rooster. At least the view out the kitchen window is a good one.
The second part of the day, on the other hand, is plenty nice -- I proceed to Snowdrop's home.
I walk into her bedroom just as she is waking up from a long morning nap and I note right away that she has turned the corner: she certainly knows how to quiet her anxieties (if such there be) with recourse to her thumb. It's such an important step toward independence!
And what else might she show you today? Oh, you know she'll be practicing sitting and standing, with her usual energy and determination...
Realizing that this is my last week with her (I'll be taking off this weekend for a little while), I revel in all of it -- the walk around the lake with Snowdrop and her mom, the smiles, the bounces, the stroller face...
... all of it!
Toward the end of the afternoon, the little one grows tired. The thumb comes up once more to soothe her. She sighs, like you and I might sigh when we've reached that point in the day when nothing can go wrong anymore.
Into her mom's waiting lap now...
...and off I go.
Later, much much later, after dinner, after the sun gets mightily close to the horizon...
... Ed asks -- want to go to Walmart?
He knows I dislike the store, even as I cannot resist a trip there with him. He wants to pick up a half dozen t-shirts (I'm hoping his torn ones will be retired now, but I doubt it!) and he wants my help in picking out good colors. At $3.69 a shirt, I think you can't possibly have good choices, but it turns out I'm wrong. As he picks up one, then another, I ask -- Pink?? You're going to wear pink?
Why not? -- he responds, in that tone that lets me know that he is beyond gender stereotypes.
There had been a splatter of rain and now a swirling low mist rises from the road. A pair of baby raccoons bounces just before us. Infants! Must they always be this adorable?
Unless the day proceeds like this one: full of the small twists that cause it to veer in different directions.
Let's start with the sweetly predictable breakfast.
It's prompt and ready at 9, since Ed has a morning meeting to go to soon after. He promises he'll lock up Oreo so that I can roam freely and work without a rooster hanging (quite literally) on my heels.
We do take a few minutes to pick some weeds (Scotch watches, hoping for worms)...
... and, too, to wash a chicken.
That may sound strange, but we've noticed that one of the white hens has been slumping lately. It could be the heat. It could be a nibble at a indigestible plant. I offer another explanation: her butt is so dirty! I tell Ed that maybe she can't push eggs out in all that mess. Since she is lethargic, Ed picks her up easily and I work the hose on her rear and scrub her (almost) spankin' clean.
And then Ed takes off for his meeting and I note that he has forgotten to lock up Oreo. Since I have no intention of messing with his moods, I spend the morning inside paying bills and doing the type of general accounting that one does on a rainy day. Except that it is a very very lovely day and here I sit, trapped indoors because of a rooster. At least the view out the kitchen window is a good one.
The second part of the day, on the other hand, is plenty nice -- I proceed to Snowdrop's home.
I walk into her bedroom just as she is waking up from a long morning nap and I note right away that she has turned the corner: she certainly knows how to quiet her anxieties (if such there be) with recourse to her thumb. It's such an important step toward independence!
And what else might she show you today? Oh, you know she'll be practicing sitting and standing, with her usual energy and determination...
Realizing that this is my last week with her (I'll be taking off this weekend for a little while), I revel in all of it -- the walk around the lake with Snowdrop and her mom, the smiles, the bounces, the stroller face...
... all of it!
Toward the end of the afternoon, the little one grows tired. The thumb comes up once more to soothe her. She sighs, like you and I might sigh when we've reached that point in the day when nothing can go wrong anymore.
Into her mom's waiting lap now...
...and off I go.
Later, much much later, after dinner, after the sun gets mightily close to the horizon...
... Ed asks -- want to go to Walmart?
He knows I dislike the store, even as I cannot resist a trip there with him. He wants to pick up a half dozen t-shirts (I'm hoping his torn ones will be retired now, but I doubt it!) and he wants my help in picking out good colors. At $3.69 a shirt, I think you can't possibly have good choices, but it turns out I'm wrong. As he picks up one, then another, I ask -- Pink?? You're going to wear pink?
Why not? -- he responds, in that tone that lets me know that he is beyond gender stereotypes.
There had been a splatter of rain and now a swirling low mist rises from the road. A pair of baby raccoons bounces just before us. Infants! Must they always be this adorable?
