An Important Day

Yesterday was an important day.

I woke up to another beautiful day and said, "I want to go for a ride."  I had been farmbound with a bronchial thing for 3 days.  John said Ok.  He had worked all day, the day before, repairing fences.  So we decided to take the back roads over to Eagle Rock.

These rides are very important.  We are inspired by things we see, this house for sale, for instance.



The  house needs a little work but the location is great.  The James River runs behind the house and there is an easy place to put a kayak in.

Then there are all the ideas we come up with to pay for the Villa in Italy.  Yesterday, John came up with the idea of wire coating, of some kind, for automotive wiring. The idea would be to sell it to high end car manufacturers to offer as a $1000 option (similar to getting  undercoating).  This idea, of course, is to keep mice from chewing through wire and causing thousands worth of damage.  John's dentist bought a new Mercedes or BMW of some kind and the mice destroyed the wiring in no time.  It wasn't covered by warranty because it was not a defect.  I think we would pay for this option for all of our vehicles.  My van has had major issues, John keeps the hood and truck open on the Alfa (sometimes with a baited trap).  He was at the gas station the other day and a dog was barking at his truck.  The guy with the dog said a mouse just ran out from somewhere.

We find new places to show visitors when they come, we haven't had visitors in awhile.  We often have lunch somewhere along the ride.  Yesterday we went to Maw and Paw's in Eagle Rock.  What a busy place and the daily special was meatloaf.  Does it get any better? The one thing I don't like about M&P's is that on the bathroom doors it says Maw's room  and Paw's room.  This has always been one of my pet peeves.  In New England the doors say Buoys and Gulls.  What if you were finally old enough to go to the bathroom by yourself and this is what you found. Not the kind of thing you want to figure out when you really have to go.

Besides the ride, and all the thoughts it provoked, it was an import day because I talked to one of my sisters.  Gail is living with the word "patience" this year.  When I was putting everyone in for the night, after hanging out for an hour or so, I thought about Gail.  I wondered if holding a gate open,  for a chicken that couldn't decide if it wanted to come in, or waiting for a chicken, standing in the doorway to the coop thinking about if he/she was really ready to call it a day, would help teach her patience or drive her insane.  The act teaches me more than patience.  The chickens do so much for me.  When I had no energy to do my morning chores, John let everyone out and gave the sheep some hay and the chickens freshened up the goose run.  I didn't discover this wonderful gift until I was getting ready to put the geese in for the night.  I thought maybe John had been the one but I could tell by the way it looked, it was the chickens.  They had spent a lot of time cleaning up and it looked beautiful.

As I walked back up to the house at dusk, I thought, "what a gentle place" (not the farm but that place where I was right then).  Most people would have used peaceful when they took that breath, but the word that came to my mind was definitely "gentle".  I didn't think too long on what that meant because by that time I had exhausted my mental quota for that day.  I just knew it was an important day.