Barn Babies

Babies are cute.  Baby mice and squirrels are no exception.  Perhaps I should qualify that:  pink, blind, hairless, wriggling newborn mice are not cute.  By the time they are old enough to come out of the burrows and join the elders for breakfast, they are darned cute.  There is a whole crop of youngsters down in the milking room, from kindergartners to middle schoolers.  The mice kids have a combination of terror and bravado, daring each other to go to the grain pile first, leaping in fear if a goat stamps her foot.  Squirrel babies play tag in the big room, kicking up dust until scolded by one of the moms.  The goat barn has become one big nursery.

I like eggplant, Craig likes eggplant.  I like anchovies, Craig likes anchovies.  Deb likes neither.  (Is it any wonder he is my favorite son-in-law?)  So as not to contaminate our shared pizzas and ruin them for Deb yesterday, he and I got anchovies on the side.  Lingering over lunch, we watched the Olympic games on a big-screen TV, talking all the while, in the comfort of an air-conditioned restaurant.  Even though it was a few degrees cooler than the day before, it was still in the nineties in my house and it seemed like cruel and inhuman punishment to make them sit in that heat.  Any time with my Kids is never long enough.  Oh, my gosh, it was a good day.

Awoke this morning to the scary smell of smoke again.  Finally located it over on Perry Creek or coming down from Slug Gulch; either is too close for comfort.  No fire trucks came roaring up and the smoke appears to have dissipated, so it must have been some idiot trying not to get caught burning a brush pile before daylight.