Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real

A spool of twine and a darning egg in my studio’s windowsill.  I got the darning egg a few years ago at an antique store as an impulse buy.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll want to darn a sock someday.  So far I’ve had no such desire, but should I ever be overcome by that desire…I’m ready.

Heavy cream swirling in my coffee in the morning.  I’m not a morning person, but this always makes me smile.  Heavy cream doesn’t mix in as well as half and half as it all rises to the top immediately.  I’m okay with that, though.  I will survive.

The farm has a bunch of fields, and many of those fields are edged with trees.  For firewood the last few years, Knut has used the naturally fallen trees behind our house, but last year he started “branching out” to other woods on our property with fallen trees.  He pulled these trees out of the woods, and into a field, but that’s when the snow came, and so he left them there all winter.  So last week he thought that enough snow was gone to get these logs out of the field and over to our house before spring planting begins.

For now they’re just laying there in the yard, and he’s slowly starting to chainsaw through them to start a stack of firewood for next year.  In the meantime, Missy has declared it her favorite place to lounge around.  We’ve dubbed it her “perch,” if an enormous Great Pyrenees dog has ever owned such a word.  Every time we look out she is at the top of this huge log pile, surveying the horizon.  She likes to see everything, and I think this pile makes her feel like she’s queen of the mountain.

This is the real reason that Knut is so often late for work.  He goes to tie up his boots every morning, and at least one of the kids (most often Solveig or Ingrid) takes that as their cue to get as close to him as they can, lean way into him, and wait for an opportunity to jump into Knut’s arms.  He has the worst time getting his boots tied each morning because of this attack he gets every time he leans over.  He complains, but I think he secretly likes it.

“OK, just one book.”

“See Mommy?  I always win.”