zoralee's month back in montana

- getting reacquainted with the chickens -

just after this photo, Z broke into a high squeal of fear;

enclosed spaces aren't very good for reintroductions

but she loves the eggs!

a cool speckled one

This red rocking chair belonged to my Grandpa Gene when he was a baby.

Z is the fourth generation to play with it. How special is that?!

Zoralee LOVES Grandma Rena. She's saying "Gah-ma" with ever-increasing clarity,

and she'll nearly always choose her over me (HER OWN MOTHER). It's a bit ridiculous.

Here, despite Grandma's protests, Z knows she's got milk-making goods somewhere in there.

Zoralee is a phone talker. Boy, howdy. A phone yeller is more like it, just like Grandpa Larry. Some imaginary conversation partner somewhere in the cosmos is getting an earful. Z talks on whatever cell or cordless phones she runs across, as well as remote controls and calculators. Perfectly reasonable. Smallish, plastic squares with buttons. But she also talks on toys, balls, dishes. Recently she held a pair of pants to her ear and said "Ah-lah," her hello. Is she imaginative or confused? How can I blame her for not knowing which household items are embedded with electronics when she found her birthday card from Nana the other day and opened it up to hear Nana's voice? It's one of those recordable cards. I tell you what - kids these days are going to grow up thinking absolutely anything is possible, anything is believable. Let's hope they put that no boundaries mindset to good use solving world puzzlers like poverty, disease, and convincing people to drive in the right lane unless they're passing. I mean it.

double-fisting

trying to figure out who is this clean shaven guy in a suitstory time with Crazy Uncle LukePeek-a-bowlI'm not sure how frogs end up in our bath pics - it's not planned that way.fingers

cardamom (this does not refer to IDing your ma for alkeehol)

I had an English instructor in college who talked a lot about cardamom. I mean, a lot. If you're like I was back then, not knowing what cardamom is, let me save you the google step: it's an Indian spice used in everything from curried dishes to baked goods to coffee. So anyway, this instructor was in love with cardamom. Her grandmother had used it all the time in family recipes, and she planned to write an entire cookbook featuring it. By now, maybe she already has. Any of you fellow Warner Pacific-ites remember her? I hated to print her whole name online, but at the moment I can't remember any of it anyway.
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But speaking of spice, she got engaged to another professor, a guy from out of town who wrote a human sexuality textbook, in use at Warner. It was all the scuttlebutt when he came to campus to visit after their engagement. A scandalous development for a Christian college, even a liberal arts one, because what could a single man possibly know about sex ed?!
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So for the past decade plus, cardamom has caught my eye. It appears in the darndest recipes, and I usually have some on hand, though I've just read that it's better to keep the whole seeds available to grind as needed. Not sure whether or not I'll Martha Stewart up for that one (kind of like cowboying up).
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All of that is my intro for the photo you're about to see. You can bet your bippy I bought this gum.

One Sock Z, Fastest Cowgirl in the West

(too fast to even get a good picture)

sneeze, freeze, threes, my main squeeze, & tease

SNEEZE
I saw one of our hens sneeze. It startled me just how classic a chicken sneeze looks. Its neck was stretched out, its head nearly frozen, and all the world paused for those few seconds before the release. It sneezed four or five times in a row. Sounded about like you'd expect. I wonder which critters don't sneeze. Bugs? Do bugs have noses?

FREEZE
Our big freezer in the garage quit working sometime over the last few days. We were fortunate enough to find out before everything had thawed completely. An entire 1/2 cow is in there, hundreds of dollars of meat. Ughhh. The internet says this model was last made in 1976. That could have something to do with it. Dad joked that surely we could squeeze a little more use from it, and we actually tried the old electronic trickery of unplugging the device, plugging it back in, and waiting for a day. But, nope. So we loaded all the meat into the regular refrigerator freezers, one upstairs and one down, and took a load into town for my grandparents to freeze.

THREES
Last week I dumped a load of dirty diapers into the washer and heard some unnatural thudding. I looked in to see three eggs nestled about the diapers. I instinctively blamed Jason. Why would he do something like this? What a waste of good eggs. I asked him about it, and he instinctively thought I was crazy for assuming he would put eggs in the hamper. He did remember something though - seeing three eggs on the bottom stair a few days back. Ohhh, right! I'd set them there temporarily as I came in from outside, because I'd needed hands free to take off my coat. Then I'd forgotten about them. It seriously took us that entire line of reasoning to recall that we have a mobile toddler who loves to find and move objects. It made me so excited to introduce Easter egg hunts to Zoralee. Oh man. I am getting short of breath thinking about how fun that will be! Note to self: you wouldn't have to wait until Easter.

MY MAIN SQUEEZE
Jason has been working out two times a day, strength training and cardio stuff, for the start of his upcoming job. We have another week and a half with him before he leaves for several months of training. Boooooo for that. I'm trying to pre-adjust mentally. Like, if I go to bed before Jason, I envision him just not coming in after me. Then I get a real big knot in my stomach and change the mental subject. Every moment of time together is now extra precious. I guess each season is always precious, but you don't necessarily value it as such until you see it ending. We bought a computer camera to get set up for Skype. It was cheap. I already have a grudge against it, for one because it'll be my best link to Jason for days and nights and days and nights, and for another because it feels like cheating. I see the round ball of a camera - haven't even had the inspiration to take it from its box yet - and I know how lucky we are to live in a time when we can communicate that way. But it's not fair to the people who haven't been able to do that for ages and ages. Does anybody know the name of the psychological malady whereby you constantly feel horrid for living such a privileged life? I think I've got it.

TEASE
Pics of Zoralee are next on my agenda for blogging. Ooh, I may be able to get one on now, real quick.