Monday, June 08, 2015

Monday

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.


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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)...


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... 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.


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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!


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And what else might she show you today? Oh, you know she'll be practicing sitting and standing, with her usual energy and determination...


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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...


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... 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.


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Into her mom's waiting lap now...


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...and off I go.


Later, much much later, after dinner, after the sun gets mightily close to the horizon...


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... 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?