The games people play

Those evenings when it just wouldn't cool off we ate dinner at the patio table with a sprinkler at our feet. And this time, there were no bad children making up reasons to leave the table so they could stomp on the hose "by AC-cident!" (Actually, someone did kick the hose about two more times than I think could qualify as accidents.)

We celebrated my birthday by doing a butterfly hike up Horsepasture Mountain with an very pleasant group of strangers. Even though we knew the terrain, the birds and the plants, it all looked completely different from the point of view of butterfly and moth ecology.

The mountaintop only has a few remnants of the lookout my parents manned during the summer of ‘42. They packed all their supplies in by mule and weren't resupplied all season. It's hard to imagine having to anticipate everything you'd want to eat, wear, read for an entire summer! I have trouble remembering keys, debit card and grocery list for a simple trip to town!

I'm watching tractors, trucks, cars go by these days and trying to figure out whose is which. It's a matter of waving, see. When I ask whose pickup that is, I swear he just picks a name at random. Then I'll say, "But Merle's pickup is blue, isn't it?" and he'll laugh. "Yes, it was - ten years ago." I think he can actually see the driver, which gives him an unfair advantage.

We're watching five kittens to pick out a couple to make housepets of. They're such lumps at first, but a couple are starting to see a little, and their ears are popping up, too. Some of them hiss like little snakes when I come talk to them, which is just silly - as if they could carry out that threat! The mother, who wasn't much interested in us until this litter, has decided I'm her very best friend, and she'll hang out with me when I'm weeding, so I can talk to myself out loud and pretend I'm talking to her. Who am I kidding?