Another Day In Paradise, Part Twenty-Seven Hundred And Eight

 I laughed like a drunk chimpanzee when I saw this on Jeff Tiedrich's "Everyone's Entitled To My Own Opinion" substack post today. I learned about Tiedrich from Ellen at Stuff From Ellen's Head. I read Tiedrich everyday and there is no one in the world better at coming up with profane paragraph-long descriptions of Donald Trump. 

It's been a slow day here for me. I spent a great deal of time this morning re-wrapping Lis's birthday present to mail. The woman from whom I bought the gift on e-bay gift-wrapped it for me and I, thinking we would be taking it with us to give to Lis personally, unwisely unwrapped the mailing wrapping because I could have just slapped some new address information on it and sent it like that but no, I had to see the gift wrap and it was so sweet and pretty. 
I have said it before and I will say it again- I am the world's worst wrapper. Not just of gifts but of anything. It took me forever to wrap that box this morning. I'd gone to Publix on Saturday specifically to get two brown bags to use and I got those and scissors and tape and packing tape out this morning and proceeded to do a terrible job of covering the box and, hoping to somehow disguise my ineptitude, I started cutting up one of my old Virgin of Guadalupe calendars and taping those to the top and sides of the box and so now the whole thing is covered in a layer of packing tape, looks like it was mailed from the Vatican, and will probably need a scalpel of some sort to get it open. 
Oh well. 

And of course the post mistress said absolutely nothing about my box decorations, just asked me if it contained anything perishable or potentially dangerous or hazardous, told me how much I owed her, and gave me my receipt and the slip with the shipping number on it. 

And then, because it has been such a beautiful and cool day, I took a walk. 

That is the midpoint of my walk when I go to the county line and back. Those trees knock me out every time. I never get tired of seeing them, never lose my appreciation for their beauty. Unfortunately, the house and yard you can see on your left is the place where there is so much trash strewed around that it's always been a mystery to me how it manages to get so spread about. They also keep some hens and a rooster in a tiny net-tent sort of thing that is barely big enough for the chooks to stand up in, much less move about and that always hurts my heart. 
There may be good reasons that these people live like this but it is a curiosity to me. The contrast between those graceful, spreading trees and what lies below and beside them is so stark. 

I just lost about five paragraphs of what I was writing. Now how in hell does this happen? I have no idea and yet, somehow it does. I was talking about a book that I started listening to a few days ago whose main character was so completely unlikeable that I just could not get very far into it and sent it back through the cybersphere to Hoopla. 
Now I am listening to a book that I found via a New Yorker (or was it a NYT's?) article about the funniest American novels. It's another book by Percival Everett- I Am Not Sidney Poitier. I had written down the titles of some of the books in the article that sounded as if I would like them, and this was one of them. I am not sure if it's one of the funniest books I've ever read, but I am certainly enjoying it. I am so glad that I have finally discovered Mr. Everett's work. It is filled with absurdity and beautifully written. I highly recommend it. 

The rest of my day was mostly spent outside doing more yard work. It is so easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of it that needs to be done. But I was cheered by the presence of Maurice who came out to be with me, making her purpose quite clear instead of pretending otherwise. 

Oh, our crazy sweet girl. 

My husband has been at work over at Lily's new house since before I got up this morning. 

Sigh.

He is so determined to get everything done that he can to make that new house a sweet home for our baby and her babies. 

He is such a good man and a good daddy. We talked on the phone this morning and he made me laugh so much. As I told Jessie a little later, "Your father is a character." 
And he is. 
He is a character of good character. Hard to beat that. 

Love...Ms. Moon