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The Omelettes

The Omelettes

Or

Part 2 of Why I’ve Been Missing for Four Months

Read part 1 here: The Cow

After the cow we called the authorities and we called friends. Kind strangers stopped at the side of the road to help. Kinder friends drove us to the ER and took care of our children. We were bruised and scraped up, shaken and exhausted but most definitely alive and grateful.

In the morning we told the girls what happened and Clara responded by making us the best omelette I’ve ever eaten.  It was stuffed with chorizo and cheese and delivered it to us in bed. As we went through the day it became clear that in addition to the bruises and scrapes, our brains had been addled in the run in with the cow.

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John couldn’t come up with the right words and I couldn’t stay awake for more than an hour. In short, we had concussions. Clara laughed at John’s language slip ups and made us another omelette with fresh garden herbs.

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My mom drove Ivy to her summer camp, Clara fed us omelettes with cherry tomatoes that she picked when she went to collect the eggs with Jane. Friends picked up the girls and took them for the day (but not until Clara made us omelettes with edible flowers as garnish) and dropped off more food. We were extremely well cared for while we rested and recovered.

By the end the of the week, John was more or less back to himself. He could read, he could drive, he tired easily but he was clearly on the mend.

I was not.

And Clara, she expanded her omelette making to include vegetable faces…img_2042.jpg

…and we were all grateful.

nanopoblano2019

It’s November and National Blog Writing Month! My team, the Tiny Peppers, is doing things a little differently this year.  Instead of posting every single day we are all aiming for: 10 days of posts, 10 days of reading/commenting, and 10 days of sharing posts through any other platform.  Happy Blogging! 

The Cow

The Cow

or

Part 1 of Why I’ve Been Missing for Four Months

To be fair it was a much worse night for the cow.

I’m not sure what her plan was that night, camouflaged as she was with her all-black hide blending in with the black asphalt in the black of night on a county highway. She may have had all sorts of plans for her night of freedom or she may just have been dozing off chewing her cud right up until John and I crested the hill in front of her in our little Saturn Ion.

Once she was lit up by the headlights none of us had time to do much of anything while the car barreled on. She didn’t move, John swore, I turned my head to look at him wondering what was going on as the cow slid across the hood of our car, windshield collapsing toward us even as the incline of it launched her into the air. The cow then performed what is likely one of the few three-quarter somersaults with a half twist in the history of cow-dom as she flew to the other side of the road.

And that, sadly, was the end of the cow.

It was also the end of our car.

But not, thankfully, of us.

nanopoblano2019

It’s November and National Blog Writing Month! My team, the Tiny Peppers, is doing things a little differently this year.  Instead of posting every single day we are all aiming for: 10 days of posts, 10 days of reading/commenting, and 10 days of sharing posts through any other platform.  Happy Blogging! 

Apt

I was up. I was moving. I was feeling sassy in my new tank top. And I was late and in a hurry.

I was happily (for morning me) zooming around the house, eating breakfast as I ran in and out of rooms getting ready for the day. Hot tea in hand to wash my breakfast down and finish opening my eyeballs, I was flying through the bathroom when I took a gulp of tea and choked on my breakfast (I know, this is why you aren’t supposed to eat and run around the house at the same time). I reflexively coughed and sprayed hot tea from both my mouth and nose. Everywhere.

I was in front of the bathroom sink when it happened, which in someone else’s house might have meant a good location and easy clean up. Instead, hot tea covered toothbrushes and toothpaste, contact cases, hair brushes, an electric razor, hair ties… you get the picture. I looked up, nose burning and eyes streaming to see that I had thoroughly sprayed the mirror as well.

“But did you die?”

And that’s when I found my shirt to be much more apt than I really would have preferred.

Prussian Blue?

I thought about asking y’all to guess what this is but, honesty, it’s random and I’ve never seen it before so instead I’ll just tell you.

Maybe you can tell me why you think it’s blue now.

This is a close up shot of a shovel that had been at the bottom of a fire. (It was thrown in to burn out the handle that had broken off inside.) When I pulled it out the next day I found this brilliant blue color on parts of it!

John’s theory is that the iron in the shovel reacted with potash from the fire and created iron hexacyanoferrate better known as Prussian blue pigment. He also admits that this is not exactly his type of chemistry (the internet was heavily utilized in the theory making tonight) so other ideas are welcome!

Personally I have no idea why but I can tell you that the color was a beautiful surprise hiding in the ashes!

Validation

There has been a lot of buzzing in the world about the KonMarie method. If you don’t know what that is, that’s alright, the key words are  the KonMarie method of tidying up. Honestly I’m not sure exactly what it all entails but getting rid of stuff, particularly stuff that doesn’t bring you joy, seems to be it’s main priority. Now, I’m not a hoarder, I just like to keep things that might one day be useful (Said every hoarder in existence ever). I like to think of it more that I embrace the practicality and frugality of my dairy farming heritage along with a strong urge to reuse items that might have further use (Dang, I still sound like a hoarder don’t I?).

My house is not piled high with old newspapers but I do have a good collection of worn out clothes that some people call rags and others just call garbage. But I just made a pile of them into a rug.

Validation.

I don’t have stacks of things littering my living room but I do have useful odds and ends tucked away in boxes for “someday”, “just in case” and “parts of it are still good.”

Today I used a drawstring out of a pair of shorts I threw out in college (that was before my rag collecting days but I kept the drawstring because it was still good), and one of those plastic doohickey’s you can put on a drawstring to tighten it up and lock it there (salvaged off a defunct Christmas item) to replace the non-existent drawstring on my husband’s sleeping bag stuff-sack (an item that I’m pretty sure was saved by my parents for “just in case”).

Validation.

You can KonMarie all you like, I’m saving my cast off bits and doodads and springs of all shapes and sizes. Those doohickys and rags really do come in useful, eventually, and those springs, well I’m with Marie on that one. They bring me joy.

 

Disclaimer:  I clearly don’t know anything about Marie Kondo or her methodology. I just wanted to write a blog post to brag about the fact that my ferreting away of “useful” things really is useful. Sometimes. And also so that I could photograph a spring. Because I love them. 

Ninja Moves

This morning I heard an egg start to roll, spun around and caught it as it fell off the counter to the ground.

I was super proud. It was a total ninja move. My cat-like reflexes combined with super fast deductive reasoning as I both identified the sound and the location the egg was headed, all without looking and in time for me to catch it.

No eggs were harmed in the reproduction of this epic event.

It wasn’t just a ninja move. It was a Sherlock Holmes style deduction followed by ninja skills.

A Sherlock ninja move.

Then I went to make my bed.

And in heaving all four blankets up in the air at one time to straighten them (Sorry Granny, just because I know how to make the bed the right way doesn’t mean I do) I banged my shin on the bed frame hard enough that I pitched forward and landed face first on the bed, not even catching myself with my hands because they were still gripping the blankets as I yowled out loud from the pain in my now bruised shin.

Oh how the mighty fall.