I was astonished
to realize today that is isn’t officially summer yet. Not until Thursday, but
yet it’s been hot for, well, it seems like forever. Today in the late afternoon
we got some rain—not much. I looked at the walkway from the cottage to the house
and could see a clear line of demarcation where the rain stopped. Odd, I
thought, that it rained in the back half of our tiny yard but not the front.
The driveway though was wet all the way to the street, and I figured that it
was such a light, gentle, brief rain that it didn’t make it through the leaves
of the tree that hangs over house and deck. Megan reported it was raining
harder at Montgomery Mall when she took the boys for a treat after camp, and a
friend in a different direction reported that it rained briefly at her house.
We’ll take whatever.
A second day, for
me, of sorting files, doing long overdue office chores. Spent a bit of time
going through recipe files and discarding ones that, though intriguing, I knew
I would never try. Dishes that feed ten or twelve, or things the kids won’t eat
but I discarded the recipes—and the days of big cooking—farewell with some
regret. Then I sorted my out-of-pocket medical expenses since January to submit
them to my supplementary insurance program. All that kind of stuff that you put
off forever and then feel so righteous when you get it done. It’s also part of
my reassessment program—I’m putting my writing on the back burner, where I hope
to heaven it’s simmering but I’m not actively thinking about it.
Maybe the most
interesting thing I saw today was a squirrel trying desperately to get into the
chicken yard. He darted back and forth, scratched, and obviously worried about
the chicken wire keeping him from whatever food he thought lay on the ground. Until
on of the chickens got tired of him and one headed his way flapping her wings. The
squirrel scooted away as fast as he could. I’m sure the chicken, envying his
freedom, thought some critters don’t know when they have it well off. I think
that about people, myself included, frequently. I haven’t seen the predator in
the tree for some time now—I think it decimated the baby squirrel population and
moved on. But I do enjoy watching the chickens. The other morning, I was
alarmed to see two of them on top of their large cage instead of in it, but
they were soon back in place, and I decided all was well. My neighbors might get
weary of my chicken alerts when I don’t really know what’s going on.
Happy hour tonight
with a woman I met because she wanted to write. As we talked, we discovered
that she was a sorority sister of Megan’s at TCU, although a year or two older.
Then she and Jordan met through an entirely different connection. There
definitely is not two degrees of separation in our part of Fort Worth. Her first
book, a children’s book, is coming out tomorrow—more about that in a future
installment.
We had salmon for
dinner, not an unusual menu these days. But this was special salmon—Megan and/or
Ford caught it on a trip to Alaska a year ago. It was flash frozen, shipped
home, and has been vacuum sealed in their freezer ever since. She brought it
frozen, and last night put it in my fridge to defrost. At 10:45, I opened the
refrigerator and was attacked by a solidly frozen hunk of salmon—quite a start.
She and Ford got to telling tales of their adventure with good friends who live
in Alaska—it included an encounter with a bear on a residential street. I
gather in Anchorage that’s as common as deer are in some Central Texas communities.
And we get excited if we see a coyote or fox in our Fort Worth neighborhood.
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