Posted in Daily Life

Thanksgiving was perfect. Nothing went wrong! Hubby's sister and her family came for dinner bringing half the meal, which made ten of us in all. A lovely table was set, laden with all the traditional foods. My mind did a funny thing as I was standing at the bountiful candlelit table ready to sit. There was no representative of the older generation there, neither my mother or hubby's, and I suddenly thought: "We did it all by ourselves!" Like we were playing house or something! We've been preparing meals, even holiday meals for years, decades! Don't know where THAT thought came from! LOL!

Happy Thanksgiving all!

Posted in Daily Life

Kids are so refreshing.

I recently colored my hair. I just didn't feel old enough for gray hair! And after watching my girls changing their hair color whenever the mood hit them, it seemed a doable thing. They went through a pink phase, a burgandy phase, a jet black phase...... So I took the plunge and went... brown.  Not a shocking color, no, but it seemed a dramatic difference to me, going from salt and pepper with a bad highlight job on top of it.

So did anyone say, "Your hair's a different color."? Did anyone ask, "Did you color your hair?" No. Were they embarrassed? Did they think I would be embarrassed, because I had gray hair and wanted to cover it up? Because it looked bad?

My girls would point it out. "My mom dyed her hair." "I noticed that. It looks good." So why didn't anyone SAY anything??????? Are we adults that stodgy? Was it supposed to be good manners?? I wanted to be able to say, Yes, I just don't feel old enough for gray hair. Or maybe, like my sister has said, A change is as good as a vacation! But, no. Sigh.

It was a 14yo girl who finally said to me, "Did you color your hair?" And I got to say, Yes! Thank goodness for the honesty of kids!

Posted in Daily Life

Yesterday morning at 6:15 a.m., I was outside in my skimpy nightgown (brrr!!) throwing sticks at a racoon! (What?!) It was digging under the fence of our chicken pen and I wanted it to go away. Now this was Saturday morning and I was planning on sleeping in at least another hour. (My kids are teenagers now.) The only reason I was up was to turn the coffee maker back on so my morning coffee would stay hot until I did get up. And I glanced out the kitchen window and saw this HUMONGOUS racoon!

The chickens themselves were quite unconcerned. They had gotten habituated to cats prowling around their pen. But I was not comfortable with it there; racoons are traditionally predators of chickens. This one was very well-fed and not really very afraid of me at all. I think it was just after the food scraps we had thrown inside the pen for the chickens. I managed to scare the coon a few feet away, kicked the dirt back into the hole it had made, shoved a drawer from our disposal pile between the fence and a log, and went back to bed.

I think there must be a lesson in this somewhere......