7:50 a.m.

Behind me sits my 10-year-old son, reading a cookie-recipe book aloud, energized and excited about the ingredients lists.

“And the filling in it needs one container — 16 ounces — of Duncan Hines cream cheese; red food colouring (optional); and one-half cup semi-sweet chocolate chips!”

[turns the page, to a photograph]

“Whoa!” he exclaims. “Oh yeah! Cookies for kids!”

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I hopped in with Millie to go to the potluck, and just a few miles from here we saw a little doe on the other side of a ditch. Beneath her belly stood a tiny, spotted faun, sucking. The doe was startled and bounded away into the bush nearby, and her baby looked like a large rabbit as it made its way through the tall grass, following her. Naturally, I had forgotten to take the digital camera.

Six women sipped on a succession of herb teas. We walked around our host’s yard, looking at her flower garden, her new rooster and his two girlfriends (our host was so pleased when she got two eggs for breakfast yesterday morning), and her “secret place,” a lounge chair tucked back into the trees where she can escape the sun on a hot day, surrounded by some favourite flowers and serenaded gently by a set of oversized bamboo chimes.

We ate a potluck supper consisting mostly of salads, had lemon pie for dessert, and more tea. We threw the I Ching (always very telling, for me), looked at and drew Sacred Circle cards, Medicine Wheel cards, tarot cards. I did a one-card reading for everyone (there were six of us there); we talked about healing and how as practitioners we can take the credit neither for success nor failure to create the hoped-for outcomes.

When we got home later and Millie stopped the car to let me out at the end of our driveway, she said “I hope you weren’t too bored.” Bored? I looked bored?

Later, snuggled up next to Farmeau on the couch, he asked me “What’s the matter?” and repeated the question several times, and again in bed. “You look bothered/ you seem to be looking right through me/ you seem deep in thought.” There was nothing bothering me; once, I’d been pondering the possible meaning of the dream I had the night before. And I was tired.

Maybe it’s all part of the aging-face phenomena, where your appearance no longer matches what you feel like inside.

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Farmbeau said, after I’d replied to his question about what we had done at the potluck, “That’s a lot of tea-drinking; six hours of drinking tea?” Then he added, “Sure you don’t have any mosquito bites?” Our host’s spouse calls the group “the witches.” He has heard my “dancing naked in the trees” concoction too.

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I must remember to make sure Farmbeau knows how much I appreciate him letting me sleep in four out of five days a week lately, while he supervises the boys as they get ready for school. Sometimes he makes them breakfast, even. And while this makes perfect sense because he is up early anyway and Don independently answers the call of his alarm clock at 6 and goes on about his business, including waking Barney at 7, I still feel I am being allowed a great luxury if I get that one extra hour in bed.

The boys might prefer me, (Don frequently asks “Are you getting up with us tomorrow, Mom?), but it appears they are getting accustomed to Farmbeau doing it. I like it too, because it’s the only time they actually spend doing something with my sweetie. Farmbeau is never around after school, rarely joins us for supper, and when he is here in the evenings is mostly downstairs while the boys are up here getting ready for bed.

I am always up before they leave, and kiss them goodbye and see them out the door at the very least.

This was Don this morning. You can almost see the purposeful stride, can’t you? The little bugger goes down that step without hanging onto the railing Farmbeau built especially for his safety, and every time I see him do it I cringe, imagining him falling face-first onto the cement. Yeah, he’s wearing protective headgear. But still.

Today I was awakened by Barney crawling into bed with me and saying “I had a bad night, Mom.” Why? “Because I didn’t get to watch the end of Chicken Run.”

Farmbeau had sent him to bed at 9:30, just as I was walking in the door. He’d immediately complained to me in hopes of having Farmbeau’s decision overturned; instead I said we’d tape it and he could watch it another time. He was sorely disappointed and went to bed tearful.

This morning I said “Hurry up and eat and dress and you can watch the last half-hour before the bus comes.” He was thrilled and did exactly that, with plenty of time remaining to come upstairs and recite ingredients lists.

He said this weekend “You are adorable, Mom. You know why? Because you are always kissing and hugging us. And you’re so soft.”

xoxo
~etc

1:23 p.m.

Since Easter, I have been taking elk-velvet capsules. A friend, who raises elk with her spouse, and sells the velvet from their antlers, was a great saleswoman. Customers have told her it reduces the frequency and intensity of their migraines.

My friend used to have terribly painful periods. Since taking elk velvet, she is free of the cramps that made her miss work every month.

I bought $100 worth, to give it a fair try. I’d rather take herbs than an animal product, but what the hell.

A couple days later, my sister told me she and her husband (they have a couple hundred elk on their ranch) also sell elk-velvet capsules, but my friend is a better marketer. No kidding!

I haven’t noticed any difference. Yet.

The herbs Don’s been taking for his acne have cleared it up miraculously. I won’t be replacing the special soaps, astringents, and ointments I bought him, once they run out. Those things helped for about a month, then his skin went back to normal. So why not have him putting something healthy into his body rather than something chemical on it?

The boy will be 15 years old in two weeks. FIFTEEN! I look at him and think wow, outside of my parents and siblings, that is the longest close relationship I have ever had with someone.

It’s time to buy him a razor.

In one hour I must leave for the women’s potluck. I made a marinated carrot salad to take, and don’t feel one bit like going. Nope. Much rather stay home with my kidlets. But I suppose the socializing will do me good.

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Dreamed last night that I was being courted by a wealthy older man, who looked like Izzy Asper, the Winnipeg millionaire. When I woke up in his mansion in the morning, he’d already left to attend a meeting with some business associates, and I wandered around the house. The interior was large and filled with beautiful collectibles, but quite run down and shabby.

I needed a housecoat, so took a short, silky one off a rack of clothes. A maid said “No, no, that came from some callgirl-type at a hotel. You don’t want to wear that.”

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I’ve often thought that if I was a published novelist, I would avoid reading any and all reviews, whether positive or negative. I am much too sensitive and thin-skinned to cope with them without changing the way I express myself, and they would be sure to influence my future writing.

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The photo above is Barney in a costume he decided to wear one night, rather than covering up in blankets to sleep in.