This is what Dearie and some of her babies looked like this morning, scratching in the bright sunlight and yes, there were blue skies again.
I hung the sheets on the line and found three eggs in a nest in the hen house and a fourth in the little coop where Dearie and her chicks sleep at night but I assure you that it was not Dearie's egg as it was green. She will not start laying again until she has fulfilled her chick-raising duties.
I texted Lily and Hank and Rachel to see if they wanted to go to lunch. Rachel was in a car accident this week, hit by a guy in a truck and she's all right and it wasn't her fault but I hadn't seen her since it happened and I knew she was sore and that this has been very stressful and I wanted to see her with my own eyes to make sure she was okay. So we met up at Pho Me!, a Vietnamese place that specializes in Pho which is such a perfect food for a chilly day. The noodles and the paper-thin beef, the sprouts and cilantro, the Thai basil, the jalapenos and delicious broth. We dined like royalty and Maggie experimented with different ways of getting noodles in her mouth and no one fussed at her and she was happy.
The sudden drop in humidity loosened her curls and I told her she looked like Marilyn Monroe. Rachel took that picture. I had been feeding her mung bean sprouts, one at a time until her soup got there. There is something just so familiar to the very bones of me about this little girl. She is the essence of soft and of sass. I love how she talks and how her vocabulary and conversational skills are growing by leaps and bounds. I love how she holds one little finger up and says, "I'll be right back," and goes off to follow her mother to wherever she has stepped away to. I love how she's as full of kisses as her brother Gibson is. I love how she has the curls of a cherub and the eyebrows of Frida Kahlo. I purely love her and could smush her with my love if I didn't restrain myself.
We all sat and sipped and slurped and talked and laughed for well over an hour until Lily and Jason had to go pick up the boys. There's a Goodwill across the road from the restaurant and I went there and looked at stuff and actually found a dress I can take to Mexico. One small treasure but it was good and I heard no one talking about guns at all.
By the time I'd finished up all of the errands I needed to run, it was getting on after four. I came home and got the sheets off the line and made up the bed, and my house just seems so cozy. Warm and safe and beautiful to me in its age and its strength and the way it so gracefully holds the things I seem to need and love from books to cast iron skillets to my grandfather's old lamps to all of the toys my grandchildren play with.
Tonight would be a good night to sit on the couch and begin a knitting project and watch something good on Netflix. Or perhaps just get in bed early to appreciate those clean, line-dried sheets and read, cuddled up to a cat. Whatever I decide to do, it will be fine.
I've just texted my husband to see if he is safely out of the woods yet. It will be a sort of anniversary for us, a week from today. It was thirty-five years ago on the Friday after Thanksgiving that he asked me to dance in a bar where I was with my friend Lynn. I think about that and how he kept dropping very unsubtle hints about how much he'd enjoy a turkey sandwich after the bar closed but I pretended to ignore them and went home alone.
He was persistent, though, and that persistence paid off far more quickly than a good southern girl would care to admit and although he did not get a turkey sandwich, he did get turkey flautas and well...here we are.
This time of year I seem to fall in love with him all over again. I think of how young we really were, how unburdened and free his life was then. He was stepping into a situation which he really had no preparation for but he has proven himself over and over to be more than strong enough to accept the responsibilities and very real difficulties that came with loving me.
That's what I'm thinking about tonight.
Happy Friday, y'all.
Love...Ms. Moon
Happy Friday! So much sweetness. I love your new header picture!
ReplyDeleteXoxo
Barbara
Isn't it great? I have used other work by Rubio before as headers. I love him.
DeleteJesus, mary and joseph, I'm jealous of your life. Oh how I wish I could see my grand whenever I wanted. And your life! So blessed. I have the melancholy and the sads, like you and sometimes it's a struggle, but your posts lift me up. You always find the light, love, and the reason to barrel through.Thanks so much. You help me.
ReplyDeleteI try, Dianne. No matter what I do try to find something to be positive about, and sometimes I feel stupid doing that but I also feel stupid complaining when my life is so beautiful. Eh, none of us is perfect and none of us have a perfect life but we try, don't we?
DeleteGorgeous header image. Tell us about it. And I am pleased that your day was so fine in all matters.
ReplyDeleteWhen I'm at a loss for a header picture, I just google-image German Rubio and I always find something beautiful.
DeleteThat was one of your best posts, so full of joy. Though my life is very different, you always remind me of what goodness can be. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteWe CAN find goodness, can't we? It's generally out there somewhere.
DeleteHow beautiful that you write of your husband this way after so many, many years. You and he are such an inspiration.
ReplyDeleteWell, I often say that love is like the tide. Sometimes it's in, sometimes it's out. It sure is lovely when it's in.
DeleteBeautiful memories. I’d love to see a picture of you lovebirds from when you met. I bet we could see your future in it plain as day.
ReplyDeleteI'll see if I can find some old pictures. We never have looked like we belong together. He's so much taller than I am. But somehow...it works.
Deletei love hearing the adventures of you and mr moon before you all were you and mr moon <3
ReplyDeletexxalainaxx
We've had some adventures. And I'm so glad of that!
DeleteComing here to read about your day is comforting. You write about chickens and grandchildren and family and I think that's what makes it so wonderful to sit here and just enjoy. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome, Ms. Lily Cedar. I am so lucky to have such things to write about.
Deleteit was so hard to leave my old house that sheltered me and my family for so long, that withstood 3 direct hit hurricanes with nary a shiver. I loved that house built sometime in the last quarter of the 1800s.
ReplyDeleteand I really don't get the whole gun fetish thing. people who feel the need to carry one around with them all the time. I wonder how many of those people have ever been in a situation where needing a gun for protection was even a remote possibility.
I know it must have been terribly hard to leave that house. Unless I just keel over and die here before too long, I have a feeling that we'll have to move at some point. I don't know. But I hate to think about that.
DeleteAnd yeah- your point about "needing" a gun just in case is ridiculous. It's like having an ambulance follow you around just in case you have a heart attack. Which, the odds are probably a lot higher of that than of being in a situation where a gun is necessary.
Beautiful chicken eggs, and beautiful Maggie! Isn't it great to love your own home? I can't imagine living somewhere I didn't enjoy.
ReplyDeleteMe either, Steve! I have literal nightmares about that!
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