What's on my mind? Honestly -- food. I am still not going to grocery stores to shop (habit and caution are a powerful partnership) and so I have to weigh the size of the fridge (small) against the availability of core ingredients (uncertain) and the time I have to pull it all together (varies), in my stocking of foods in preparation for the upcoming holidays. I'm on top of it! -- I tell myself. But that's not really true. Until a the final dish is scraped clean after the last holiday meal, you're foolish to think you're anything but trotting along, with zigzags, faltering steps, setbacks and uphill climbs still before you.
Adding to my load, Dance is "mysteriously" let into the farmhouse this morning, waking me up with her sudden lumpy presence on the bed. Ed!
Morning walk...
Morning breakfast...
And then it's back to getting foods together for the week ahead, while Ed proceeds to paint the interior of the farmhouse.
You heard it here: he chose this moment to touch up big water marks in various rooms where the roof (ultimately repaired by him) sprung water leaks into the house. He's been meaning to do it and, well, it's cold outside, so this is seemingly good planning on his part. Me, I'd grown so used to the water marks (they're all on the ceiling), that it's like the ugly wallpaper you found in the house you moved into: after a few months you don't even notice it. I'm sure it will look great once he's done, or at least it wont look bad, but in the mean time, with ladders and paint cans everywhere, the house very much feels like it is in a state of chaos.
I turn my back on it all and mow down fallen leaves with the tractor-mower.
To this chaos I bring the girl, who notices some things with the precision of a Swiss horologist (like the presence of infinitesimally tiny spiders) and other things (like the presence of paint cans and ladders) not at all.
We read, we play, and now it's time to head out again.
Home. Where Sparrow is just coming in from his day at school (only he is more bundled; Snowdrop can ignore the cold and skip the jacket on her walk to and from my car).
(Sandpiper - happy to have both sibs around again!)
("I'm hungry! I want some cashews!" "I'll wait until you ask nicely.")
For Ed and me, it's getting to be chili weather out there. Beans and tomatoes and bits of this and that, bubbling in my big yellow pot. The cats are content (all seven of them -- another came along for the ride tonight), we're content. What more could you possibly want! (Ed, can we put away the paint cans by the weekend? Thank you!)
