Obla-di-Obla-dah!

   Thanks to a writing prompt from Momma Kat, a slightly frustrated craving to see exactly how the heck I have been spending all of this abundant time and energy, and fully charged camera batteries,yesterday I decided it was time for another day-in-the-life entry. This is how Monday went for me. Prepare to be thrilled bored.

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6:15 a.m. Good morning! Coffee for me, coffee, breakfast and lunch made for Handsome, checking progress of my windowsill bean sprouts, chat, chat, chat, kiss, kiss, kiss, promise to mend a shirt, listen to the woodpeckers, cardinals, horses, and Oklahoma breezes... Dark, moody morning. Cannot even tell where the sun is, it's so cloudy. 

These soaking lentils have finally grown tails! 

   I love that feeling of suspense before weather arrives. Wonder if I should write early this morning or move on to work first. Then I hear all at once a goose, a chicken, and the buffalo, begging for breakfast, so my choice is made for me. Work first.

7:35 a.m. Consciously choosing to pray for the girls today rather than just hope and worry. This may be easy for you, but it takes a lot of energy for me lately. It is hard, until that moment when it finally happens. Then love and relief  wash through me. 

These are wild budding branches collected during a fated hiking trip last weekend.

7:44 a.m. I release the birds, start laundry, strip sheets off of the bed, empty the fridge of leftovers to fill the chicken bowl, give Pacino some TLC, tidy up the downstairs, etc. Think to myself, Wow, two exhausted people can really do some damage to a clean house! And then I am instantly happy we were able to relax so deeply this past weekend.

Good morning Mia! 

Good morning all the other birds!

Good morning Daphne!

Behold the reason why I don't take pictures of things while I am doing them.

Thankfully Chunk-Hi is cool with a little fluff scuffing 

to let his breakfast fall to the ground.

Our egg count has been suspiciously low this week, and I think I know why...

the hens think it is Easter and are hiding their eggs everywhere again!

Public Service Announcement, with help from the very attentive Mia:

Always, always always hang your rake out of your walkway.

Away, always, always. Not doing this is a painful, expensive mistake you guys.

8:35 a.m.  The animals are all happy for a few hours, so I attack the kitchen which was damaged by Hurricane Weekend. Scrub fridge, rotate laundry, etc.

8:52 a.m.  Discovered hay in my bra. 

9:20 a.m.  Breakfast looks good, but the milk had turned blinky. This is important news, believe it or not. The potability of milk is a real hot button topic on our home. I think milk is almost always good and fit for human consumption; my guy begs to differ. In a big way. So anytime I discover milk I won't drink, I am pretty much obligated to announce it. This milk was baaaaad. More on that drama later tonight.

9:35 a.m. Upstairs to iron shirts for the week, add clean sheets to our bed, clean bathroom, etc, etc. 

10:50 a.m. Caught up on work for a while, I decide to have a little lunch and write. Which really means I am reading. Which means I get in the mood to write again, so I do, resulting in the hay story and some other stuff. 

1:00 p.m. Continue the laundry rodeo, check on animals, gear myself up for some scooping work.

This is horse manure and Oklahoma red dirt. 

This proved to be too heavy for one load.

It almost popped the front tire of my wheelbarrow.

This is Dusty, the girls' horse.

He is such a sweetie, and he was

beyond-words curious about the manure removal.

Love you Dusty!

Love you Joc & Jess!

1:30 p.m. Noticing the future site of my herb garden is looking pretty spiffy, thanks to the chickens' hard work! I take a much needed water break and head back to the raised beds.

Dreaming of a curved line of monkey grass, herbs galore, and blooming cannas...

The day lilies are convinced that spring has sprung!

The guineas had convened at one of our raised beds.

They were debating the republican Presidential bids, 

the deregulation of phone companies, and 

whether to relocate their nighttime perch based on the storm predictions.

They never once solicited my thoughts on any of these topics.

2:25 Final laundry details, cuddle with Mia, three more loads of soggy ashes from the fire pit to the garden, and a little more day dreaming and praying for the girls.

3:12 p.m. Sweep floors again (because of the hay), put away clean dishes, etc.

3:24 p.m. Extra hard cardio exercise and some stretching, toning, etc, felt GREAT after a sedentary weekend! Showered, relaxed a bit before Handsome made it home, brewed some fresh sweet tea.

5:40 p.m. Welcome home!! So good to kiss his face, listening to a few hilarious stories from the office, then greeting a family at the driveway who has come to look at an item we have for sale on Craigslist. They are a husband, a wife, and two young girls. The wife and children have taken a shine to the animals and are full of questions and willingness to feed treats, and Mia has chosen one of the little girls as his own. He climbs her, kisses her, and messes up her feathers with his muddy beak. It is magical. As they are about to leave, the family's Ford truck keys are discovered inside their locked Ford truck. So we all watch the sun set as the husbands fiddle with that problem. At some point the mom good-naturedly blames Mia, thinking he must have delayed their departure on purpose to enjoy extra cuddles. We all agree. They eventually get it unlocked and drive away, smiling and waving. To Mia and the horses and buffalo, not to us. This happens a lot.

6:30-ish Handsome and I race back to the house from closing our front gate, I try not to wet my pants because he is chasing me screaming, and we lock up the birds for the night. Then we retreat inside for dinner, a little television, and zipping up the kitchen one last time.

8:14 p.m. Remember the blinky milk? Well, my guy, unwilling to let this go, shrouds his lactose victory in a veil of chivalry and offers to take me to the store to replace the rotten grocery item. I reluctantly agree, because this means I have admitted defeat. But seriously I might want cheerios again tomorrow, so I find a sweater and we drive to Braum's. Where I buy a lot more than a gallon of milk. That'll teach him!

He more or less forbids me from showing his face. 

So this is his muscular shoulder, on which I am known 

to cuddle, cry, lean, and sleep.

   Shopping at Braum's was an event unto itself. We switched register lines three times. The nice woman who finally took our plastic money wanted lots of explanations about why we switched lines, which was difficult to provide since we had just come to terms with it ourselves. And there might have been both zombies and hidden cameras in that store. It was an odd shopping excursion. But seriously...

I firmly believe that Braum's dairy products are superior to all others. 

And not just because I worked there in high school. 

That is my second public service announcement from yesterday.

Somewhere around 10 p.m. Handsome had drifted off to a half sleep on the couch, so I grinded up some Costa Rica coffee beans for the morning (thanks M!!) and we headed upstairs...

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   Overall it was a really productive, happy day, hemmed up with love and prayer. Feeling very blessed and hopeful. Mostly because of the fresh milk in the fridge.

Redeem your Time & be Happy

xoxoxo