“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” -Fred Rogers I was on Twitter yesterday when the reports started rolling in from Boston. For someone to take something that is supposed to be a moment of happiness, celebration, and human accomplishment and turn it into a place of fear and sadness and terror is just...unfathomable.
And so I take these words from Mr. Rogers to heart, and it helps a little bit, the people who rush to help are a little corner of light in a dark event. This is a milk can from my grandparent's farm!
We used to name all the new calves. Not that we ever remembered the names when they grew up to be big milking cows, but going into the barn to see the new arrivals and naming them was an important part of our visits to the farm. I'm pretty sure I asked if there was a new calf to name every time we visited. Sometimes we would get to bottle feed them, and sometimes they would try to wrap their long, rough tongues around our fingers. The adult cows were never neglected, as we would pull weeds and try to tempt them to come visit us at the fence at the edge of the pasture. I can still call up that very distinctive "barn" smell. Musty, a little dusty, the scent of hay (and let's face it: the scent of manure.) But if I had to describe the scent in one word, that word would be "warm." The picture does not do it justice, the sunset tonight was gorgeous, full of luscious pinks and oranges!
Got my notebook, got my adding machine, got my receipts and a big ole mug of coffee. Time to crunch some numbers! (Do I procrastinate like this every year? Yes, yes I do.)
The oldest child is off helping with the zoo's outreach program in the elementary schools today. Apparently your arms get tired rather quickly when holding a tortoise!
Please don't EVER pick up a tortoise if you happen upon one in the wild. It will scare them, and they may pee on you in defense. If they pee, they are losing their water reserves and may have no way to replace them. It will also make them disoriented. They have a good sense of direction, but this gets messed up if someone picks them up and sets them down in a different direction from the one they were traveling in. So, one of the kids made some spaghetti the other day. And the other kid was trying to help. Unfortunately, they had a little mishap and the noodles spilled. Right into the cats water dish. Every. single. noodle. >.<
Of course, more water was boiled, more spaghetti was cooked...but man, it sucks to have to do it twice in a row. I told the kids that (eventually) they would laugh about it. :) I know you say that this is YOUR camera, and you have some IMPORTANT pictures to take or whatever, but I am doing some VERY important sitting here right now, so you're just gonna have to wait, okay?
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