Monday once again

It's remarkable how much I have to do in preparation for even a brief trip (I consider one week to be brief) and even more so -- how much I have to do upon my return. I mean, apart from not washing his dishes as carefully as I would like, Ed maintains the place well in my absence. Nothing is ever broken, for he will have fixed it. He hasn't a lot of stuff and so his clutter is a modest (if a tiny bit annoying) affair. And yet, as we pulled in last night from the airport just before midnight, one glance told me there's stuff for me to do.

But here's the dig: my tasks in preparation for a departure are peanuts compared to what Ed has had to do in preparation for his trips.

Wait, what trips? Ed never goes away!

Except when he does. In the fourteen years we've been together, he has only left this place without me once -- to sail a boat for his friend last summer. It was a short trip -- in the range of a week or so. And now he is about to do it again -- sail that same boat for that same friend, only this time, if all goes well, they'll be sailing it into the Atlantic, taking it east and south. How long will he be away? The sailor's gorgeous must never ask. A sailor is a slave to the ocean and the weather systems that pass along during his journey. He could be back in a day. Or two. Or two weeks. Or many multiples of those. The sailor's gorgeous hopes only that the boat stays upright and that in his absence, one of the million things that can go wrong here, at the farmette, from fallen trees to broken water pumps, from clogged septics to burst pipes, choose not to go wrong in the time that he is gone.

And because I just came back last night and he is leaving in a couple of days, you can imagine how overwhelmed with chores we are today.

Instead of enjoying a romantic moment of reconnecting with my sweetie, I clean and clear and shop and stack and trail him with such annoying questions as "did you remember to do this or that" and "if you have a minute could you also check on the that and this."

A morning in bed, thinking about museums and croissants seems very very far away. And yes, as I grocery shop for the week, I think -- was I really in Paris yesterday?

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You may be wondering what's up with the cats. (Perhaps you could not care less what happened to the cats, in which case you might want to skip this section of the post.) Well, a day after I left, a small pack of teenagers and baby Yo-Yo disappeared. Within the next few days, the wandering teenagers came back, but Yo-Yo did not. We have no idea what happened. Perhaps she was run over, taken hostage, aggressively attacked, lost, bewildered, confused. One thing we do know is that she is gone. It's been nearly a week. There's not much hope that she will return.

The teenagers and Dance are doing fine, sleeping now in the sheep shed, greeting us mightily each morning as we come out to feed them.

Stop Sign is spending more time on the porch and she sometimes brings a couple of the kittens here as well. We can never quite count them, because the minute they see us, they skidaddle. These are not going to be tame, domesticated kitties. They make an appearance with the Tough Mama every day or two, sometimes staying for the night, or for a nap...






In sum -- seven in the sheep shed and four or five occasionally, on the porch.





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As for the farmette lands  -- well, they're getting into that last phase of autumn: there's a lot of gold still out there, but there is, too, a lot of brown and bare branches creeping into the canvas.





What a difference a week makes!

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Of course, we have our routines and we stick with them. Breakfast!






And in the afternoon, I head out to pick up Sparrow and Snowdrop.











Ed helps me carry the big loads these days. Today it's Sparrow.
Gorgeous, let me bring him in.
Do you know how to hold a baby or toddler?
Of course I do!
























So, like any other Monday after a return: confusing, somewhat hurried, and ultimately -- terrific!