My Take
DiVoran Lites
I appreciated my caring family’s offers to drive me to our son’s and wife’s house, but I knew I was perfectly capable of driving myself to Orange City. It turned out to be the best vacation I’ve had in a long time. Because we are all busy, active, and productive, we have not had much time to talk lately. Now we did and it was glorious. I see my daughter because she lives closer, but my daughter-in-love and I have enjoyed conversations since we first met, so we were glad of the opportunity to catch up.
The evening of the storm we three sat and talked after supper. That night in my absent granddaughter’s beautiful room, I heard the wind and rain and something flapping, but I had my earplugs in and I felt loved and safe, so I didn’t have much trouble going to sleep. The power went out the next day, so we had no electricity, but the shutters were off and we did have plenty of water. We made up a hurricane casserole, using cooked wild rice layered with spinach and turkey-roast chunks. The man-angel cooked it on the outside grill with the lid down. It tasted delicious and the man-angel finished it off after we two ladies were full. It was a meal to remember. Every light in the house went on after we finished it.
On Friday afternoon people began coming out of their houses and driving by in their cars. We heard chains saws revving up and trees protesting as the half blown-over ones came to rest on the forest floor. I talk to myself sometimes, so I asked myself: “What shall I do now?” I had some writing to do and a good book to read and daughter-in-love had a puzzle. But she came right into my self-talk and made the wonderful suggestion that we go for a walk now that the storm was over. We got the dog’s lead and ventured out. It is a semi-rural neighborhood and the pastures were green and the fresh air smelled of cedar and pine. We discovered we had two more miles worth of talking to do.
Laika
We saw a large herd of domestic Alpacas that came right up to the fence, to say hello to Laika.
Alpacas
At another property, something ran down a small incline from the house to greet us. We thought, from the way it trotted, that it was a small black and white dog, but it turned out to be a little pig instead.
Tuxedo pig
We then saw two sand-hill cranes in a field and our menagerie felt complete.
To be continued
Old Things R New 