More Pragmatic Miracles And The Good Smell Of Fabuloso And White Vinegar

 Red daddy cardinal sits on the feeder, his black mask and yellow beak his pride and his joy and he is beautiful. He pecks away in a desultory fashion, taking time between each head-dipping retrieval of a seed to stop and look around. I suppose he could be on the alert for danger but I like to think that he is so blown away by this late afternoon's blue sky and green everything else, fresh breeze that makes the leaves dance, and soft cool air, that he has to stop, look up, and admire it again and again. 

Just like me. 

I can't stop being in wonder at this sweetness. 

Unfortunately, I did not spend much time outside today. And part of the reason for that was because it took the weather all day long to decide who it wanted to be. A windy, fussy bitch with a gray-sky hat or a perfect joy that you'd just like to breathe in, take in, with all of your senses? 
But mostly I just felt that there were things around here that HAD to be done. One of those things was mopping my kitchen and the bathroom and pantry that lie off of it. I absolutely have no idea when the last time I mopped that area was. And there have been spills, of course, and the regular detritus that falls onto kitchen floors. It is a workroom, the kitchen. And ours has a door that leads to the outside which is the door we use most of the time so add tracked-in black Lloyd dirt to all the other stuff and well...

I moved everything that I could out of there and swept twice and mopped twice and honestly, if I had swept and mopped three times it probably would not have been quite enough. But twice was enough for me. 

And last night I fed my sourdough and put black beans to soak and after I made our Sunday morning breakfast I made up the bread dough and put together soup with the black beans. Talk about your slow cooking! Of course sourdough takes all day long and black beans do too. But you know- the best things always take a good long time to come to fruition. 

When I got up today, Mr. Moon told me the wildest thing. Around six-thirty, when it was just beginning to get light, Jack jumped on the bed in a hunting-pounce stance and then, something, he thought a mouse, ran across the length of our bed where it disappeared to his eyes. 
I was aware that Jack had jumped so heavily on the bed but was deep, deep in sleep I guess, because I did not really wake up fully although I did notice that my husband was using his phone as a flashlight for something and I was going to ask, "What in hell are you doing?" but did not. Glen could not find any trace of the mouse he saw, if indeed it was a mouse. He went into his bathroom which is right off of our bedroom, and on the floor there he saw a bullfrog that had been wounded. 
What? 
He swears that whatever ran across my bed did not hop but scurried. Ran like...a mouse. 
But there was the frog. Obviously brought in by a cat. 
Jack, most likely. 
And so he took the frog outside and knowing he could not go back to sleep after all of that, he got up. 
He told me about all of it when I got up and he was still completely mystified as to what in hell had actually happened. I couldn't believe I'd mostly slept through it all. 

When I went to make the bed later on, I found muddy prints on the blanket and sheets as if Jack had indeed brought something in and jumped on the bed to give it to us. 

Glen is still mystified and boggling over this event and as I just told him, "It's like a fairy tale." 

But what it really reminds me off is Lily yelling, "Too much nature!" when she was confronted with several critters one morning before dawn when she got up to go to work. That has become a sort of tagline and we use it only in the most appropriate of situations. 
I believe this would be one of them. 

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Thirty-four years ago right now I was pretty sure I was about to go into labor with my last baby who turned out to be Jessie. I was right. The anniversary times of my babies' births are a sort of holy thing to me. I remember all of those moments- the feelings, the pain, the ecstasy, the joy. 

And so it is now. 

Love...Ms. Moon