We've missed you, Miss Sunshine! But it sounds like the people and critters who matter most have your undivided attention, and that's as it should be! We'll take every little bit of Sunshine we can get and we are patient enough to wait right here until you get opportunities to stop in!
I'll tell Beatrice to get at those oyster shells. Maybe if I tell her that her hiney won't hurt so bad if she does that she'll get with it! I guess if she's acting like a normal chicken most of the time whatever is going wrong with her egg wiring will sort itself out.
The chickens are outside carrying on like someone gave them a little bit of paradise. Ken took a block of frozen pitted cherries out to them a few minutes ago. We took them off our cherry tree year before last and they were so sour! I made a pie and put in 5 cups of sugar instead of the 4 it called for and we couldn't eat it. Even ice cream on top didn't cut the sour. So last year we harvested a little later, thinking they'd sweeten up a little (it's a sour cherry tree, but sheesh!) and when I made the pie I wound up putting 8 cups of sugar. No good. So we'll put what we still have left in the freezer out for the girls when it's hot like today and get rid of them. Then the orioles, the western tanagers and the robins can have what's on the tree. I even tried to make cherry jelly with them and that was terrible too.
Still watching the weather and worrying about all the fine folks we know out on the East Coast. Rachel said it's been raining hard non-stop for quite some time. Baby Landyn loves sitting at the patio window giggling when rain runs down the glass. Takes so little to entertain them sometimes!
Kenny, Jenny, Katiebug and Kendra are coming for a barbeque later, then they'll go to their house and sit on their deck so if Kendra gets upset they can just take her inside, and we'll sit in the lounge chairs on the north side of our house and we'll watch the town fireworks. Actually we have no choice - the guy who owns S&L Industries here in town puts on a town wide, free for everyone cookout at his house but that's usually a little too crowded for us. We can see everyone anyway...he lives across the street so there are cars lined up for blocks, and most of them walk right past the house and stop to visit on their way. Then he puts on a fireworks show to rival any in any big city I've ever seen. Last year he had $20,000 - and yes, you read that right - worth of fireworks and he's got people who know what they're doing synchronizing the show to music and the whole bit. Problem is, like I said, he lives across the street. <sigh> The firetruck parks in our driveway for the event. We didn't know about this the first year we lived here - we'd moved in on June 16th - and I lost a valuable teacup. I collect them, and had one from a country which no longer exists. (Selisia) I have them in display shelves hanging on the wall. The concussions were so strong that they knocked several cups off, and the only one that broke was the one I can't replace. We learned....we tuck them all back deep into the shelves and hang pillow cases over them.
Katie has something called "hypercusis", which is common in Austism. We thought for the first few years that she was just afraid of the fireworks, but her reactions far exceed terror. First she'd cry and tremble. As it went on she'd go from trembling to shaking, then she'd almost stand catatonic and wet herself. But then her geneticist diagnosed her with Hyperaccusis and told us that Hyperaccusis makes loud sounds painful because her hearing is so acute and sensitive. Kids with autism process external stimuli differently that kids who don't have it. He explained that it's like when someone puts their mouth right up to your ear and screams - that's the pain she feels. So Ken and I usually took her out of town for the evening. Sometimes we'd go up to Frog Rock (a local landmark) so she could look down on Cowley and see the display but not hear it as much. But that's good for just the big display.....here in Cowley the 4th of July starts June 20th and runs until August 20th. People start shooting off fireworks whenever the mood hits as it gets closer to the Fourth, on the Fourth, and well after, so you never know when to expect it. Then there's Cowley Days the last weekend in July, when the population explodes from about 600 to 2000 with people coming home for it. The Saturday that kicks off Cowley Days a couple of guys drive around town in a pickup and shoot off a cannon - at about 5 am. They stop at every intersection in town so nobody gets "left out." That's really bad - scares the he// out of people when it goes off even though we know it's coming. For Katie it was pants-wetting terror. So the first thing I did when I was elected to town council was make a simple request. I knew as an outsider coming in I couldn't ask the town to give up a tradition that is almost as old as Cowley is - it began on the first anniversary of Cowley's incorporation and they used to do it by setting off dynamite at the spot where the town shop is now - for one little girl. Instead I showed them the geneticist's report and requested that they skip our intersection. Simple as that. They did more than that - they bought her a cute little set of noise blocking headphones (she already had some but it was the thought), reduced the charge in the cannon, and avoid shooting in a four block radius. We still hear it, of course, and Katie sleeps in her headphones on Cowley Days. She usually wakes up, crawls into bed with Kenny and Jenny, and goes back to sleep now. But at our intersection, the kids' house is just kitty corner from ours, so the cannon shot used to be right by Katie's bedroom window. That's followed by fireworks for the Cowley Corn Cookout in late August.
Anyway, last year Jamie and Rachel were here over the 4th with baby Landyn, who was then just over 3 months old. Katie asked me if we could set the lawn chairs out and watch the fireworks, just us two girls. I wasn't sure that was a good idea, but she was determined to try. So we put in her foam ear plugs, then her headphones, a lot of insect repellent, and she sat on my lap with the lounge chairs fully reclined so we wouldn't miss a thing. She shook and jumped a few times during the test shots, and then she asked me, "Do you think Landyn's afraid?" Ken, Jamie, and Rachel were sitting in the living room with the lights turned out watching the fireworks. I told her I didn't know.....but he had his mommy and daddy and they'd make him feel safe. She said, "I had you and Grampa and my mom and dad, and I was still afraid because it hurts." Then she took off her headphones, pulled the foam ear plugs out of her ears, and informed me that she wanted me to take them in to Landyn. "Are you sure, Bug?" She nodded, then told me to hurry. So I ran them into the house, saw that Landyn had earplugs in already, and was sound asleep in Rachel's arms. Everyone was so proud of Katie for being so brave and sharing with the baby. And then I did what any good gramma would do - I went outside and lied to my trusting little granddaughter. As we got settled back into our chairs, I told her that Landyn wasn't too scared, but that he would do better with the ear plugs, and she had fixed it so Landyn could enjoy the fireworks as much as she was going to. When we went inside after the show, Rachel mad a big production out of showing Katie landyn wearing the earplugs and she and Jamie thanked her profusely. She just beamed.
This morning she called me and asked if she could watch the fireworks with me again. "And Gramma," she said. "I gave Kendra a set of earplugs and my old Cowley headphones. She should be fine with Mom and Dad." Thank you Katie, and thank you little tomato plant. Now all I have to worry about is how the chickens are going to react.
