Soft days, small joys

I look over the cameras every morning, and Cowboy’s reflective tape pops up and startles me every time.
All you see coming out of the pitch-black darkness is something glowing that seems to be floating in thin air.
You can’t even tell it’s a person till he gets right up under the porch light.
You'd think I'd eventually get used to it, but nope, not yet.

Lately that little black stray cat is waiting for me on the porch when I open the door in the mornings.
She'll mew and mew and mew, but she's still wild enough she won't let you get close enough to her.
She quickly darts under a car.

I wish we could bring her in, but she’s still wild and skittish.

There are at least two other cats, a raccoon, and a possum that come out at night.
Since she probably doesn’t get to eat much anymore, I’ve started giving her a spoonful of wet food mixed with dry food each morning.
She doesn’t care for the wet food, but something eats it probably rats or birds.
She'll nibble the dry food off.
I'm hoping that she still gets enough off of the dry food to give her extra calories.

My new routine is wet food for Imp and peanuts for the blue jays, bright and early every morning.

Since we never know when Cowboy gets paid, the birds only get fed every three days. They're not very happy with the change. Luckily it’s spring, so they can go out and dig for worms.

Badger was up early this morning. 
She let the cats out of the laundry room, shut the laundry room door, and opened the back door.
She took Duffy out to the porch, tied him to the rail, and let him sit out there in the fresh air while she got the cleaning done.
Then she gave the litter boxes a really deep clean.
It's that time of year you have to clean them before it gets too hot to be outside.

I came back inside and just played my games on the computer.

Cowboy was up at 11 am this morning.
He ate his breakfast, and I figured he'd do like always, take another nap.
Nope.
He goes, “You want to go back to that school.”
I'm sitting there like school? What school? Oh, the yard sale.

So we headed back up to the school. 
He must’ve had his eye on something yesterday, but whatever it was wasn’t there today, because he walked out without buying a thing.
Badger, on the other hand, bought a lot of art supplies, a wooden whale, and an Aboriginal mask labeled as being from Australia. 
Yesterday, there were four of them. 
Badger looked at them but said they cost too much.
There was only one left today, and it was dirt cheap, but it’s broke, just not in a way you’d notice right away.

We got home and just quickly tossed one of those frozen bag meals into the crockpot for Cowboy’s dinner.
Although now that he eats at 3 pm, perhaps he eats supper.
We'll just keep calling it dinner. 
It comes after breakfast.

Badger and I headed to our rooms, Cowboy headed outside.
I know he mowed, took care of his chickens, picked squash, and loaded the trash in the truck to take off.
He came in, ate dinner, and finally took a nap at 4 pm.
He got a little over a two-hour nap.

Badger and I sat outside for a bit.
The deer showed up again today, right around the same time as yesterday.
He was better hidden today, though.

My tablet just up and died on me right when the story was getting good.
The killer was about to be found out.
So Badger and I headed back inside. 
She went to her room, and I plopped down to play on the computer.
It was nearly time for Cowboy to go to work anyway.

It was 7:30 p.m. before Badger came out of her room. 
She went in and made me some macaroni and cheese.
I found a box that was supposed to taste like chicken ramen, but it didn’t.
I appreciated her fixing my supper.

We watched television until 8 p.m., then we took a walk down to the seal dog house and up around that curve behind Pappaw’s house.
I’m going to have to find a new name, I think.
Seal dog is long gone. 
The man who did live there with him moved.
It’s a younger woman with two pit bulls living there now.
I sort of miss seal dog.

Then we headed back home and settled in to watch television.

I think Badger has fallen asleep on me. 
She didn’t want to sleep on the couch tonight, but I’m not about to wake her up.

I’ll be heading to bed myself soon.

I have no plans for tomorrow.
Looks like it’s going to be another laid-back day around here.