Wackadoo Zoo

I was worried that I was running late this morning but I managed to make it to the cafetorium at Maggie's school with time to spare.
Cafetorium really does crack me up. They just call it the cafeteria at the school but I think we should use the proper name for it, don't you? Such a sturdy, fancy name. 

When I got to the school the entire parking lot was filled. I couldn't believe it. I had no idea this was such a big deal. I thought it was just Maggie's class that was putting on a little play. But NO. It was the entire third grade which is a bunch of kids. I had to park on the side of the road but that was fine. I checked in at the office and got my visitor's pass and then I found Lily and Lauren and Jason. They'd already watched the 9:00 performance but were watching it again because Lily was going to take Maggie home with her after it was over. 

This was quite a professional production. Well, sort of. I could definitely tell there had been a lot of work put into it by the music teacher, the classroom teachers, and the kids. 

The theme of the show was that we are all different and that is okay. Not exactly what they taught when I was in third grade which was basically that none of us should be different because being different was definitely not okay. All the kids were vaguely dressed as different animals and the problem was, none of them made the right noises. Maggie's class were the cows and they meowed instead of mooing. 
And so forth. 
The names of the songs they sang pretty much tell the story.

I tried to take a tiny video. Let's see if it works.

Anyway, thank y'all for getting this far if you have gotten this far. I suppose that the only thing less exciting than watching a kid you know in a production like this is reading a description of a production like this where no one you know is involved. I mean, you kind of know Maggie. But not really. 

We went to lunch a little later and that was fun. Maggie cracked me up when she told me that she deserved to have her mother take her out of school for the rest of the day because she'd had to stand up for an entire hour! 
Now you know Maggie a little better. 

I told her that wasn't really how it worked. She just gave me a look and continued to eat her chicken-on-a-stick. A little while later she said, "I'm living the dream!" 

Yes. Yes she is. 

I was going to run into Publix on my way home because of course I had forgotten a few things when I went earlier in the week. And I did eventually get those things but just as I was parking, I got a call from my best friend from sixth grade on. I had nothing I really had to do so I just reparked in a shady spot and we chatted for over an hour. In the Publix parking lot. 
It was lovely, though! How incredibly cool is it that we can pick up all the threads of our lifelong conversation and just weave the next part of it as we go? Fifty-eight years of friendship. That is one hell of a long time. We caught up and we laughed and we commiserated and we laughed some more. It's sort of hilarious that we are both seventy years old and I do not think that either one of us really believes it although the evidence is overwhelming. 

So that was my day. Okay, I did some other stuff but not much. Mr. Moon is, of course, over there in Georgia, pressure-washing and god knows what all. He's going back tomorrow with Vergil to see if they can figure out how to get us internet and cell service. That would be a big step in the right direction. 

We seem to have a resident hawk here now. I've seen it several days in a row. It flies in and appears to nibble at something on the ground and then takes off to perch on a tree or the old part of the kid fort that still remains after the rest of it was smashed by a tree after a hurricane. I believe it is a juvenile. I haven't seen it obviously catch anything like a mouse or small squirrel. I have such a love/hate relationship with hawks. They are beautiful and I can't help but admire them but I also remember how they took off with baby chicks back when I had my flock. I can't judge them for that but I wish it hadn't happened. 

I picked four more squash today. I'm going to go cook two of them with onions and make a little pot of field peas, frozen since last summer. They'll still be good. We haven't planted any of those yet this year. We may or may not. They are so delicious but a lot of work to shell. 

Ah shit. Maurice just bit and scratched the hell out of me. Why, why, why do we have this cat? She was lying right by my laptop, snuggling up against my arm and I hadn't even raised my hand to pet her when she suddenly just reached out, grabbed my arm and bit me. Here I am, bleeding profusely, and the last gashes she gave me haven't even completely healed. 

Do hawks eat cats? 
Mmmm...
That bitch would probably end up eating the hawk. 

Love...Ms. Moon