Summer Doldrums

Hi, friends! We've had a couple of very television- and computer-game-intensive days around here, but I don't mind that at all! It feels like there's been a lot going on, and when Mal complained about having to take D to banjo lessons on Monday (he'd been to meet a friend at McDonald's earlier, and said, "I only want to go one place per day!"), I promised him we could stay home for the next two whole days... so far, he's mostly wanted to veg. We've played LEGOs and Disney Cars and Numberblocks, too. But he is in no hurry to leave. I don't blame him. It's been really hot! In fact, although I'm speaking with D's therapist alone tomorrow, I was going to take Mal with me, because he could just play in her office while she shows me some test results. However, he asked that I have my parents come stay with him, because he's all about being a homebody at the moment.

I'm glad! He usually loves just running around, which is fine. But I remember giant swaths of time when D was little that we'd be home all day for days. It's a nice change!

Our chickens are about 19 weeks old. James told me today that egg color is sometimes related to earlobe color (there are exceptions), and that's cool. I was noticing the other day that one of the chickens has very green ears, and another lighter green/yellow ones. They haven't really shown until recently, so maybe they're getting close. We're in no hurry. They're great pets, even without eggs.

See the yellow/green tint? But also, most of them seem to have red earlobes, which means brown eggs. The two "puffy cheek" ones should have some kind of pastel eggs. I can't see their earlobes. They're pretty obscured by fluff.

It was markedly cooler yesterday than in the past six weeks or so, and I could tell the chickens were feeling it. They had a great day roaming the yard under cloud cover, instead of avoiding the sun. Also, we used a lot of non-solar-generated electricity, but whatever. It was a nice break. Here are the chickens taking evening "baths" on the fence.

And the other day, out in the back part of the yard. They've been getting over the fence more and more, but they're understanding how to get back without my opening the gate. They look like wild birds!

Our grass is pretty much shot, and they go over the tiny patches of green first thing in the morning, so it's good for them to have other places to forage. As long as they don't cross the street or make it back to our neighbor's yard! He hasn't started building yet, and I don't want them to get into the habit of going back there!

When I lived in Sherman, one time I came home on a Saturday and there was a guinea sitting on top of our opened garage door. Interestingly, I still have a picture of it. It was October 13, 2007.

We were confounded until a few hours later, our neighbor from two doors down knocked on our door. He asked if we'd seen one of his birds, and we took him out to the garage, but it had moved on. He said it was his son's birthday, and they were getting ready to make his birthday dinner with the guinea, and he thought that the bird knew, so ran away. What's funny is that I didn't even know he had these birds, and they're really loud! Oh well. Wonder what happened to it.

Anyway, I don't want our neighbors here to have a plump, juicy chicken show up and think, "Hey! Free lunch!" Our chickens are friends, not food. I haven't gotten to the point that I can't eat other chicken, but D's been there ever since the pigeons got killed. I think it's permanent.

I'm super excited, because I love planning stuff. And I love traveling. But travel is kind of expensive, so it's not something we do a whole lot of. However, since our Hawaii trip got called off (boo!), it's allowed us to take a couple of smaller trips, and then also both James and I have a single-parent weekend with Mal in the works. I mean, of course, I'm planning both of those, too, but that's just how I like it.

We're going to see James's parents for his birthday (kind of like Mal and I did last year, but with James this time... and we're going late enough that we'll miss the Christmas parade, which stinks... but we'll hit the premier of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, so that's something), then next spring, we're going to go ahead and take Mal to LEGOLAND, like we'd discussed visiting on our way to Hawaii. We found amazing deals on two different hotels there, one of which we had to prepay, but we'd taken out travel insurance when we'd booked our flights, so we felt okay doing that. It's such a treat for me to now watch the prices on the same rooms we've reserved go up, little by little. I'm always on the lookout for deals, and am ready to change the reservation we didn't have to prepay, but it really seems like we got an amazing price, and I'll end up being super glad I do stuff as early as I do.

They're finally starting on building a house across the street from us. They cleared it at the beginning of the year, and it seems like it probably just took a long time to get permits. It's kind of noisy, and a contractor parked in front of our mailbox earlier this week, so we didn't get delivery that day. But it's fun to watch from the comfort of our air conditioned front rooms. Yesterday, we got to watch some workplace rough-housing as three guys were filling sandbags with gravel and a fourth drove the Bobcat over, got the scoop close enough to one guy that he hopped up on the form wall to get out of the way, then the driver raised the scoop up just under his neck! It was precision driving. Pretty impressive, but I might not have the same sense of humor if it had been done to me. Mal laughed, though, and wanted an encore.

By the end of the year, we should have houses on both free corners. The caddy-corner from us is a neighbor's back yard. Unless he sells it because of property taxes, it should remain undeveloped. He has it set up like a park; it's so beautiful. I hope he doesn't. If so, though, we'll always have our back yard!

You might have realized that I will turn 47 in a mere two days. "What?!" you say. "You can't be older than 32!" But it's true. I'm old. I feel it in my reflection and pictures, but I don't care. And I don't feel any older/more decrepit than when I was 18. That's good. I need reading glasses. There is only 1.5 years more difference in my age from my younger child and my sister's age from her only grandchild, but... well, that one kind of makes me want to take up drinking but otherwise... no complaints. Having lunch with a friend and really hoping for a cool cake. That's about it. I don't want for anything else, so am pretty lucky. Actually, I *did* tell James I'd love to have the back porch power-washed. Love those chickens, but they're pooping up a storm out there. So I guess you could say, I have it really great. Happy birthday to me.