Last of three, and starting with the most important stuff.

I'm grateful for: Pepsi in cans; a new arrangement in my room, which gives me a comfy chair and more room to come and go; spending time in our farmyard.

A long time ago, days at least, (*grin*) I thought since I couldn't possibly catch up and life had gotten so out of hand, I just wanted to write all the nice, wonderful, Good things that have happened while I've been busy running around losing my mind.

It came to me first when, one night quite late (after midnight) I was sitting in the family room and it started to rain. People who live in a desert know what I am talking about. It wasn't a loud rain or a hard rain. It didn't last very long and there was no thunder or lightening. It was just a quiet, pleasant rain with sound of the raindrops, and the lovely smell of the rain blowing in through the window. It changed everything. For a while I could sit there while the clean, fresh air blew inside, and shared the wonder of a rain that took the heat away for a while, cleaned the dust out of the air, and allowed our sinuses a brief break from the terribly dry air. It was lovely.

Another really great thing that happened is that our neighbour gave us three chickens. We needed more chickens anyway, our hens have been dying or wandering off, and we had wanted to grow the flock, you know, not just lose all the birds to attrition. They are two hens and a rooster. The rooster is less than a year old, with a perfectly unpecked comb and wattle. The hens are large and quite pretty - a white one with brown on her wings, and a speckled hen. A genuine speckled hen. Like in the fairy stories. We put them in the small metal lul (lool, chicken coop) to isolate them for a few days. Quarantine. Our Moroccan neighbours couldn't understand why we would do that, but shrug as if to say 'what can you do with these Americans?'

TH and I locked ourselves in my room Monday night for our official one evening a week without children. Something we've been doing almost every week for more than two decades now, I strongly recommend it to all married couples regardless of how difficult it might be. But anyway. And we played a rail game which was really terrific fun. We were very close the whole game. A whole lot of exciting setbacks and so forth, and at the very end I won buy by just a small margin. It was so much fun it wouldn't have mattered if I'd lost, but winning was good.

Then came the somewhat unexpected. We talked a little bit about sex. You know, about having sex, and that I'd like to have more of it, but that he needed to grow up and not be such a selfish git. We talked about what we might like to do and what we could do (limited so drastically by what my body can manage these days), and ended up having some very satisfying marital relations. I won't say fireworks went off or the earth moved or anything like that, but it was such a far cry from, well, what I've come to expect for the last twenty plus years. Good stuff. Really.

Tuesday had nothing in particular to recommend it except that - after the lo-ong day was mostly over, and I had moved into the family room to spin on the exercycle while watching With All Your Soul, a documentary about Roi, an IDF soldier who threw himself on a grenade to save the other soldiers of his unit in the latest Lebanon war - well I was able to spin for a good five minutes longer than I ever had before, and I wasn't overdoing it. It just happened naturally. And I hefted the 8lb. weights and did the exercise with the resistance tube (just one) and did it all a little more or a little longer or a little harder. Which was totally satisfying.

Today I put on a skirt I haven't worn for a while. It's a lovely long straight brown corduroy skirt which the last time I wore it was quite skin tight (no problem, I mean that's the way it's meant to be worn), and today it was rather less skin tight. I don't know that I have lost any weight, and none of my other clothes are fitting noticeably differently, but it makes me happy. Maybe it's a good sign?

And I put on that skirt in order to go outside and open the second lul. The one with the new chickens in. That was really great. The weather was good, a little cool even. We put the goats in the shed, so they wouldn't climb into the open lul (they like to do that for some reason), and opened the door and sat back. The first to come out was the new rooster, and he and our older rooster immediately approached each other and started out by jumping over each other. Then they bobbed a bit, fluffed up feathers, and jumped in place, each one trying to jump higher. It was hysterical to watch. No blow-by-blow, enough to say that in a very short time the new rooster was running away at high speed with the older rooster chasing - not very hard, just to let the younger one know he was on his tail. It was terrific fun.

The kids joined me, and I got my camera (kids brought it out) and I tried to get pictures of the rooster and hens meeting, I don't know yet with what success. There were little chicken confrontations all over the yard - roosters facing new (to them) hens, and the hens from the two groups meeting in ones and twos. The new rooster tried to mount some of our old hens and got chased and chased off, our smaller dog got into it, she figured out that chasing him was okay if everyone else was. :-)

Both dogs joined us and our orange cat Sprite. One of the nicest things about a barnyard is all the different sorts of critters living together in relative harmony. Dogs and cats and chickens a goats. All interacting and being part of a larger group. And us people of course.

The boys got into throwing a couple of tennis balls around, which the dogs chased for a bit and sometimes D3 joined in. The sun was just starting down which gave the best light and colours to the whole scene. I was outside for probably more than an hour, which is pretty amazing for me. Afterwards I had to lie down in bed, but it was good. And all that fresh air and laughter and silliness and love shared. Those moments are too rare (not the laughter and silliness, thank goodness). I want/need to be outside more, even if it wears me out, even if I can't actually do anything while I am out there besides sit.

S3 wasn't here. He got to visit his friend NS who had another friend visiting. It must've been quite a successful visit as my friend MS said she never saw them from the beginning to the end of the day. They played happily, creatively, actively, three young boys together, homeschooling, learning, and just very, very happy.

S3 and TH got home while I was still outside. He helped bringing me bread for the birds, I shut up the new lul, I just found out TH never went out and shut the old one. Oops. Fortunately S2 is still awake and is dashing out to take care of that. Must shut the chickens in because of snakes and other critters that want them as much as we do.

I don't know if I ever mentioned the truly huge black snake we found dead. More than six feet long, ten or fifteen cm in diameter with a large triangular head. Fortunately it was dead. If I'd found it alive, I think I would've freaked, even though I like snakes generally. This one was just really creepy looking.

But anyway. It was a really lovely time.

There were other things, the problem with not writing them down as they happen is I have no memory. Nor much mind. But all-in-all it's been a week full of a lot of special and happy things.

I'm listening to Cheap Trick: I Must Be Dreamin'

:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
I'll be moving on - 2010-10-10
Gold membership and stuff - 2010-10-10
Decisions, decisions - 2010-10-07
Days to go - 2010-10-06