A few seconds after the doorbell rang my son Aaron knocked on the bathroom door, “Mom, there’s a state cop at the door”.
Although it was only the middle of October and not yet seven o’clock in the evening, I had been taking a bath because I was cold. “I’ll be right there,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. Continue reading
I was doing the dishes late one summer afternoon when I spied a furry face looking at me through the window over the kitchen sink. Startled, I pointed at the window and shouted, “It’s a…a…” Dang it! My mind couldn’t think of the right word. I knew what I was looking at, but I couldn’t say the correct word so instead I started over and blurted out, “It’s a coonrac!” Continue reading
I was upstairs putting laundry away one summer afternoon when I heard a loud commotion in the backyard. I heard my husband Steve, our son Aaron and the neighbor Bud yelling and our dog Kelly barking like crazy. I ran to look out of the window fully expecting to see some type of catastrophe, but what I saw was a pig running up the middle of our driveway. Continue reading
At some point my husband Steve decided that having our two kids raise lambs would be a good idea. He thought that it would be a good experience for the kids and that the lambs would help to keep the weeds down in the back yard. And so the plan was hatched. I wasn’t convinced that raising lambs for six months only to sell them at the livestock auction was that great of a plan to hatch but of course when Steve mentioned it to the kids, they were all in. Continue reading
The first house my husband and I purchased was an old two-story farmhouse that was over 100 years old. Like many older homes, it had its idiosyncrasies, including a small hand dug basement that a tiny creek ran through every spring, window panes with old warped glass that made the outside world look wavy and wonderful, and lots and lots of tiny cracks and crevices for the field mice to enter. Continue reading
Every evening, just before dusk, the mockingbird would land on the roof outside of our bedroom window and sing. When he first began showing up, he only sang bird calls. He sang a variety of them, repeating each a few times, always in the same order. After visiting our roof, he would fly to the neighbor’s barn roof and do the same bird songs in the same order before flying off again. Continue reading
When your children are finally old enough to stay home alone after school is both a liberating and terrifying time for parents. Like most parents, my husband and I made sure that both of our children, Kinsey and Aaron, knew what to do in an emergency. Continue reading
Our German Shepherd, Kelly, did not understand the concept of weekends. So that summer Sunday morning when she woke me at 6:00 a.m. I got out of bed, took her outside and put her in her kennel. Kelly had a morning routine that consisted of announcing to the entire world that she was happy, that she was outside and that it was a glorious day. Continue reading
On Easter Sunday in 1991, a friend of the family came to visit and brought two tiny brown dwarf rabbits; one for each of our children. To say my husband and I were taken aback would be an understatement; we had no idea our friend intended to give our children rabbits and we were just as surprised as the kids, but not nearly as delighted. Continue reading
Our neighbor Judy had two dogs named Bigfoot and Danny and a goat named Rammy. Every morning before work she would get Rammy out of the barn and walk with all three in the field between our homes. The dogs and the goat would play and run around together with Judy following behind. Continue reading
Splendippity 