As everyone in
Fort Worth knows, the heavens let loose last night. I sat at my desk and
watched sheets of water blow across the deck—and deluge from the new gutter
installed only yesterday. And therein lies the beginning of my tale of today.
Jordan and
Christian both separately treated me to their opinion of the new gutter, and
though now they both disclaim this, I got the distinct impression that they
held me personally responsible for installing an inferior product. Today all is
smoothed over—five inches of rain in a really short period of time is more than
any gutter could handle. The couple of remaining small leaks can be fixed. As
my contractor said this morning, “I’m not going to think about the gutter anymore.”
Well, that turned out not to be true…but close.
I let Sophie out rather
early this morning, because she seemed to feel it was urgent. But within
minutes, she was barking so franticly that she drew Jordan and Jacob out on the
deck. Jordan turned, went into the house, and returned with a broom, which
confirmed my suspicion that Sophie had cornered something. A lizard, I thought,
or possibly a small snake. Not so. It was a baby possum. She trapped it under
the patio table and only gave up when Jordan swatted her once, gently, with the
broom and then dragged her inside.
That solves
another mystery though. Something has been digging dirt up out of the tiny
strip between the house and the sidewalk by the deck. In all the time three
dogs have lived here, none have ever done that, and we were puzzled. Besides
Jordan was tired of sweeping the dirt back where it belongs. So now we know that it’s the mama possum, though
we’re not sure why she’s digging there.
Fortunately Jordan
has listened to my lecture about possums being our friends, and she treated the
baby gently and seems glad we are hosting a mama and her babies. After all,
they eat thousands of bad insects a day—mosquitoes, which are a problem in our
yard, as well as ticks and fleas which threaten our dogs.
With the gutter
problem solved and Sophie safely back inside, I thought the morning would calm down.
Not so—today was garbage day, and the kids had put the bins out on the street
last night because who wants to do that at seven in the morning. But this
morning, they were gone and an inspection of the neighborhood all the way to
the foot of the gentle slope that is our street did not turn them up. Jordan
asked me to put the loss on the neighborhood email list, and all I learned was
that half the neighborhood had lost their bins in the storm last night. Some collected
at low spots and some just never turned up. Ours were so neatly aligned in
front of the neighbors’ house that Christian thought they were the neighbors’
bins—until he saw them bring theirs down to the street. So another mystery solved.
For me, it was a
stay-at-home and read day, so I punctuated it by fixing myself three good meals,
instead of picking as I usually do. Scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast; a
BLT for lunch, because I got organic tomatoes with my imperfect produce last
night—and was that ever a good sandwich. Tonight I went all out—made a summer
squash casserole and doused a chicken thigh with soy, salt, pepper, paprika and
garlic powder, and baked it in the toaster oven. So good.
I expect to have
another stay-at-home and get-lots-done day tomorrow, but I surely hope it gets
off to a calmer start.
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