Foul Weather

No chance of gardening today due to miserable wet, cold, dark weather. I went out and fed the hens, they looked a bit wet but not completely distressed. I share their feelings.

TGIF

It's Friday night. Friday night smells like accomplishment. Work well done and stopped, to acknowledge the end of the glorious work week. It doesn't even matter that I will be getting up at 6am on both weekend mornings to get 2 or 3 hrs of work done on various projects, all due on Monday morning. My reward; on Monday I will garden. Right now I am worshipping Friday night.

Wednesday

It's Wednesday. I have migrated north for a few days. The land of hi-speed and buck pizza. I learned today that my cholesterol is high. Fuck. Will have to ease up on the spray cheese and cured meats.

Pancake Wednesdays

The nicest thing about keeping chickens is that you are rarely without eggs. On wednesdays I make pancakes for Pearl and this morning there are no eggs in the house. Not to worry, I will throw on my boots and trundle out to the chicken house. It's still dark but I can hear Gloria and Oscar Sanchez crowing.

Topic of the Day

It's hard to pick your blog topic for the day. There are so many things that run through ones head during the day. ESP for example, I bet I spent 20 minutes today wondering if I have actual ESP. I think I do. I had my pupils dilated and it was snowey which made the effect of having my eyes unable to adjust to the glare a real pain in the ass. I wore one of those pieces of dark film shaped like glasses behind my own glasses. I bought 3 bags of layer mash for the hens. It occurs to me that it's weird that I feed my two roosters layer mash along with the hens. I wonder what it does to them. Perhaps it explains why one of the roosters has been attacking people (except me). A friend got a stuffed dog for christmas and now I am considering having the rooster killed and stuffed. I will call my neighbor who is a taxidermist and discuss this with him. I wonder if he would off the bird as well. He seems like he might. I couldn't work most of the day due to the pupil dilation so I watched some daytime TV. I spoke to a really nice guy at immigration. I got 3 books out from the library and bought Pearl some new toothpaste. We are trying to wean her off those candy flavored pastes. It probably doesn't matter a wit. I am now watching my third Christopher Guest movie. All in all it was a good day so I guess that is my topic.

The Great Outdoors

Winter in Washington state can be described as gray. But it's more complex than that. I think of it in terms of percentages of black(K). A normal day is about 40K. A bad day when the clouds are practically touching the trees is 80k. Today it was actually sunny, I call it 10k. Residual gray still clinging to bare tree branches. I worked out in the garden for awhile and it's miraculous what I found. Brave Sedum emerging from the icy ground, hydrangea buds deeply red holding their own until gray gives way for green.

Vancouver

We drove into Vancouver today. Eddy stayed home in his chair watching the Discovery channel. The homecare we ordered never showed up so he was on his own until 6 when we got back. He was cheerful when we got home. Before we left around noon Mark put Eddy's Montreal Canadians touque on which is too small for his large melon. I bet Mark that the hat would have inched it's way up Eddy's head as the day worn on and would be off by the time we got back. I was right.

The Adoption

Sooner or later the conversation comes around to the adoption. You meet people, you talk, you connect and pretty soon you are knee deep in birth mothers and birth grandmothers, and birth great aunts. All the details of this curious arrangement that is complex and basic as holding her small hand as we trudge up the driveway. We are not a regular family but somehow the irregularity of it is what makes it all work for us. My daughters birth-mother visits us a few times a year and we spent time meeting her whole family last summer. It's a strange thing to raise another persons child. To watch her from a slight distance turn into herself, to see her as an individual and to also have such strong protective feelings for her. I feel so lucky to be a part of her life, of her emergence.