Getting Away With It

I feel like I'm getting away with something--I have escaped Overland, Missouri, and made it to Paradise. I'm living where you, my friends, get to visit on weekends in the summer if you're lucky enough to have the time and money to do so. On Monday, I went to Pomme De Terre Lake and went swimming, just because I could. I shared the beach with a great blue heron and a host of dragonflies. A mourning cloak butterfly flitted on the shoreline while I gazed. The sky was deep blue with fleecy clouds drifting along like my neighbors' horses grazing their way across the pastures.

This morning, my daughter, Melody, and I walked down to my new friend's house to get some breakfast. We don't have a decent grocery store in town, (that's seven miles away in Buffalo), but Sue's got a hen house, and I got a dozen eggs for a buck. I've met the hens that laid them. Sue threw in a bag of tomatoes from her garden. There were more mourning cloaks to accompany us on our walk back home. A buckeye butterfly slipped onto the tall grass as we passed and a tiger swallowtail soared roof top high. After I got the eggs home and put two into the pumpkin spice pancake batter I was making, I sorted the remaining eggs by color, dark brown to white, in the egg carton. No reason, other than it pleases me to see them that way. Last night's dinner was zucchini that I'd bought from Sue a few days ago, (again, just a dollar for a full bag). I told Sue that I wished she would buy a cow.

Tonight, the sky is dark and clear enough that if I want to see the Milky Way, all I have to do is walk ten feet to my front porch. The dogs across the street from me are quiet for a change, all eight of them, and the crickets are singing to one another. My own dogs are snoozing and I am living in a house with people who genuinely enjoy having me here. Melody got herself a tiny, funny little kitten, all eyes, ears and mismatched stockings on her pipestem legs. The two of them have gone up to bed. Towering Cliff is watching a favorite movie, and his daughter, Sam, (who is my daughter-of-another-mother), is in her room with her own cat. Peace reigns.