I'm curious -- what would you do if your smoke alarm, the one right in your bedroom, started beeping in the annoying way that it does to let you know that the battery is failing? Replace it, of course. But what if the noise started in the wee hours of pre-dawn, and you did not have a spare 9volt battery, and the ladder was downstairs, and your dog was sleeping and would need a potty walk should you get out of bed, but why would you get up, given that you know there's not a 9volt to be found in the house? Take out the battery? That would still require a ladder and a dog walk, but okay, you might try that (I did not), though to warn you -- these newest alarms still beep after you take the battery out. Magic. And annoying.
In my mind, I could do nothing at all. Just stay in bed and play games of the type where you challenge yourself to hold your breath, or remember the names of all your neighbors in the Polish village, or count down from 100 by 7 before the next beep. Meanwhile Millie sleeps on.
It's a pleasant enough morning, once we do get going (and I shut the door to the noise). Millie is bouncy today, leaping from one toy to he next...
... the skies are lightly blue, the temps are cool, but not unpleasantly so. True, breakfast is indoors, but I have my book and my favorite morning foods and I am in my bubble of contentment.
(Porch flowers, admired, from inside)
Of course, the priority for the day is the acquisition of a battery. Turns out Ed has plenty spare ones so I head out to the farmette. With Millie of course.
I can restock on the lilies of the valley -- it's their turn to shine!
Ed, Millie and I walk the farmette lands. To the nut trees, the peach orchard, and the new orchard, still in full bloom.
We pull out some weeds by the blueberries, I remove a few more from the flower beds. Superficial stuff, but every bit helps. I hope.
And the lilies of the valley? It's one of those flowers that I truly do love, but only when they're cut and put in small vases, indoors. In the flower garden it becomes a noxious, spreading invasive. Thankfully the farmette has plenty of space for this lily proliferation, so long as I remember to pluck it out of the flower fields when it pops up there. (Yes, it has already killed my Siberian Iris field, but that one was a gonner anyway because of the nut tree that spread its shade producing wings over everything. Oops -- did I say my Siberian iris field? I suppose I'll always think of these flowers as mine... Sigh...)
At around noon, I bring Millie back to doggie daycare. The girl is no longer coughing and I swear her digestive issues will never be settled anyway, but they aren't caused by anything contagious, so back she goes, happy to mingle with her own kind!
I pause for coffee, then pick up the kids. Sparrow first, running high on enthusiasm because "guess what gaga, we were talking about America's independence, and the Declaration of Independence, and the American Revolution, and I made up a country, and a bunch of kids signed up to be in it and here, I'll read you their names, and each one will get a stripe of the color of their choice, and it's called the Kingdom of Kids, and I am the president, but only until the end of the school year. I have to make up some laws!"
Snowdrop has lost some of that youthful zest for the fantastical, or at least she keeps it more to herself, or maybe saves it for her friends, who are by now so important to her that she gets up a whole half hour earlier so that she can get to school a good chunk of time (45 minutes) before classes start. Clearly not to sit in the library and study, but rather to hang out with kids, who must also drive their parents nuts with these demands to get to school hours before the first bell.
(She tells me it was cultural something day, where you get to bring in something from your cultural heritage; I wasn't there in the morning to properly help her with her old, dating to younger years, Polish costume...)
It's a slightly different schedule today since Snowdrop has a Girl Scout meeting at an hour that makes it too early for us to do a trip to Sally's House (and back). I have to smile at this girl and her scouting: she has worked her way from Brownie to Junior and just last week -- to Cadette, even though she has yet to do anything that I would regard as girl scout-mmish -- like have a hike and campfire with a night under a tent. Still, I admire the women who run this group. I did it for my daughter for one year and it was an effort to finish the year, so undedicated was I to the idea of coming up with projects for a bunch of independent (or rebellious, take your pick) girls once a month. We did do a campfire and a sleepaway weekend though no tents were involved. A shame.
I pick up a happy Millie. My silly pup. The kids had called her Silly Millie from the get-go, even before they got to know her and it turns out that the nickname suits her perfectly. (I suppose the nickname Sexy Sadey was more whimsical and Henry was so serious that he did not need a nickname. God, I miss that dog. So much.)
To me, a dog's eyes set the tone of the relationship. Yeah, Henry with his deep gaze hitting me right into the depths of my soul, Sadey with her determined look, and now Millie with her gently questioning eyes that are almost hidden in her furry face. [For those who track these things, I should note that Sadey is back with her foster family -- they had an aha moment and decided they wanted her after all. I got a photo of her lovely face -- she looks, well, determined! Beautiful big girl, saved from Henry's fate, thank goodness.]
It's a quiet evening for Millie and me.
Ed comes over for a few mins, I eat leftovers for supper, yet another good book is in my Kindle, waiting for me, and it's blissfully quiet upstairs, in the bedroom. No beeps! May it stay that way...
with so much love...
