Wrap-Up

It's been a nice weekend. They always go by too fast.
Andrew had a friend over for a sleepover. It went well, I guess. There are few problems that we've encountered, being a family of limited means and sending our kids to a private school. Here's one of them: his friend, in all innocence, said, "Whoa. Your house is small. I guess I'll have to get used to that while I'm here." And he really didn't mean anything by it - yet. So I'm not offended or hurt - yet. In a year or two, we shall see who means what. But they stayed up late, late, late and played video games and did other guy stuff. I think there was a Robosapien and Roboraptor battle at some point, but I was trying to sleep. I'm not sure.
I spent a lot of time this weekend working on my grandparents' anniversary party invitations. A lot of it is in German, so it took some time. I was stuck between a couple of fonts and I ended up asking Chris if he liked what I'd picked. Emma was in the same room and came over to have a look. She said, "Is that Chicken Basket (the name of a font I bought from fontdiner.com)?" And I had to say that, yes, she was right. Just being silly, I told her I liked Cocktail Script a lot too, but I thought Chicken Basket was better for these words, since it was a little more readable in German. She asked if I had thought about trying Edwardian Script. Or Blackladder. She said she liked both of those two.
My word. I have replicated myself. I certainly left that conversation scratching my head, full of strange, fonty pride and chuckling just a bit.
We were out in the yard a little bit later, stalking our baby birds and I heard something moving between our fence and our neighbor's fence. It's hard to explain the set-up, but there's a little space in between then. I thought it was, maybe, one of those evil neighborhood cats who have also been stalking my baby birds. So I sent Chris over. Turns out, one of my neighbor's chickens had dug out of their coop and she couldn't figure out how to get back in. Not real smart, those chickens. This one is Goldie. She's actually very sweet and let me scratch her neck a bit. She lays the cutest little brown eggs. And she was very glad that we helped her get back home. Emma and I may have to write another story - Goldie's Big Adventure, in which she doesn't get very far, but doesn't really know the difference.
The Papa of our little baby birds has been singing very loudly over the last couple of days. I went out on the porch to have a good listen and recognized the songs of a couple other birds, which gave me a clue, which led me to look it up and now I know that they are mockingbirds. Mama and Papa have been teaching them to fly in our yard. Yesterday, we went out the back door and I was talking to Chris, then noticed that Maimie (our harmless poodle) was very intent on something which turned out to be one of the babies. The baby got scared and went under the house. I know this to be where cats like to hang. I was panicking. Since we have a raised foundation, we were poking sticks in at all locations trying to scare him back out. Andrew finally found him. He had come back out between some of the cement blocks and wound up in the laundry room. By now, this little baby was very scared and confused. I had to rescue him. I started toward him, trying to contain my excitement, when the Voice of Reason cautioned me in its deep, be-dimpled voice to get a pair of gloves first. Of course. Brilliant. I did put on some gloves and the baby bird got into my hands and I took him out to safety. Hooray!! He started crying at his Mama who scolded him with a series of "chip"s as they went through the fence into the back alley.
My man picked up his axe and started swinging it at a tree stump for me. That was pretty hot stuff. I want to plant my orange tree (yeah - it's still in the pot from when we bought it, what, a month ago?) in a certain spot of our yard, but the stump is still there from a tree we lost back in the hurricanes of '04. So he is working on that stump. There is something about watching your man be a lumberjack that makes you want to....
cook him some dinner, no?
He does deserve a back rub, though. He's pretty sore today.
Sigh. It's so much work to be me.
Okay. Where was I?
And then Chris saw a black cat leap out at the Mama and baby mockingbirds in the alley. And then, my strong, quick, amazingly limber husband dropped the axe and in one fluid motion, charged, then jumped over the fence (there was no climbing ladies - this was a manly leap) and scared the bejeebers out of that cat! Yay, honey! Hoo boy, these baby birds had better grow up and fly soon. We are getting tired.

DAILY BLISS: good coffee, first thing in the morning, still in bed