SIXTEEN

I've been devouring books this week "These is My Words" and then "Caddie Woodlawn." When we went to the library I lost Vera for a few minutes. A laughing old man pointed behind this couch and said, "She's over here Mama." And then he instructed me to take a photo of her. 

2015 week sixteen

What Texas lacks in a proper autumn is made up for with the many numbered delights of a perfect spring.

I love to see our house when we drive up. The flowers and strawberries and blooming lavender and creeping sweet potato vine give me feelings that can only be described as through Anne's beauty loving eyes as a "thrill." 

Our raised beds are also coming along nicely.  V loves toddling around the garden while I weed. Sometimes she'll briefly enter the house and return completely naked. Enjoying nature the way God intended or something...

Happily scribbling away. Matthew was gone this week but brought back an assortment of crayons and finger paints (spoils of going to an arts and crafts convention) to a very delighted V. 

When I make Chinese food that tastes like this I wonder why I ever go to Panda or Pei Wei. RECIPE but I added celery instead of bell pepper (because I can hardly stand to say bell pepper without gagging during this pregnancy and the last one) and broccoli. It was so perfect. I wish I had more now. 

Yzma hurt one of her back legs and has been limping all week. So now she only lies down like a cat mermaid. 

Hardly 80 degrees and she cannot even control herself around water -ice cold or otherwise. She sees it and immediately asks for her clothing to be removed so she can play in it.

Happy Sunday Broken Toe. Vera was really disappointed that she didn't get to go to church -I'm disappointed that no one got to see how cute she was. 

So I guess I should just write about how I broke my toe, even though V was really cute this week and I'd rather rhapsodize over her making snakes with play-doh or the silly things she says to make me laugh all day long, or even the fantastic books I read that I loved to death. I really want to write about that. But here's a silly story that ends in a broken toe. 

It's our week for family dinner and we're also nearing the end of our grocery budget for the month well in advance, so I thought homemade chicken noodle soup would be satisfying and cheap (we calculated it out to be about $6 in total to feed 6 people hurray!) I was so industrious this morning. I made beautiful bread. The dough was so satiny and thick I had to pull Matthew in to look at it -to which one can only reply, "Yes, very nice..?" No one could have cared as much as I did. And then I made chicken stock from our building cache of scraps and carcasses in my freezer. And it was absolutely perfect. My plan was to make homemade noodles as well because I had a bit of semolina flour. Everything was going along swimmingly and Vera was asleep early so she would get a good nap before church!

I went outside to throw our food scraps on the compost and to empty the buckets and containers that filled with water during the "flood warning" rainstorm last night. We have a very handy table cover to protect our outdoor furniture, because I am determined to prove Matthew wrong that not all outdoor furniture turns disgusting. I will take care of ours, and we will eat outside EVERY NIGHT! Well, the rain cover was full of water. The cover covers the table with the four chairs pulled up to it and at each chair the seat was full of about 5 gallons of water where the cover sank down and pooled. Matthew was going to empty them for me but ran out of time on his way to a church meeting. So I decided to just finish up emptying the water pools. It's kind of an awkward job maneuvering the cover to let the water flow out. As I lifted the cover and tried to pull it up, I knocked a hidden (very) heavy outdoor pot in which we keep our citronella candle off of a chair the edge landed in the middle of my second to last toe. 

I immediately started screaming. I'm sure I used every ounce of scream I had. I don't know what I'll do if I am ever attacked, what kind of scream could I possibly muster if something falling on my foot elicited the worst scream I had? It made me pause to think that perhaps I was being a little dramatic and also I screamed just like this once when a cockroach ran over my hand. But really, maybe that one was warranted. I didn't want neighbors to get worried so I went inside but really could not stop screaming. So I went back outside and jumped in place crying. My first thought was, Vigo Mortensen broke his toe during the filming of Lord of the Rings. How on earth did he just keep on acting? Then I tried calling Matthew. Thank heavens that a) he did not have his phone on silent or turned off, and b) that he didn't turn it off on the first call but was able to receive my text that read, "Emergency." He later told me that perhaps this didn't qualify as an emergency. It was at the moment though sweetheart. I could feel myself starting to panic and I knew immediately it was broken. I didn't want to go into shock but for some reason I took my shirt off? Then I realized what I did and put it back on. I'm still not sure about that one. I did, however, have the presence of mind to pull the bread out of the oven when it was done. (Matthew called me a true pioneer with somewhat of a sarcastic twinkle in his eye.) 

Somehow V continued to sleep through all this crying and shouting. And when Matt got home he helped me ice and elevate my foot. Tylenol really did help. As did a bath and just sitting with my feet up. And I called 3 different nurses I know to make sure we did everything the right way. Matthew is a great nurse. 

And in the end, only Matt's dad was able to show up for family dinner, but Matt made the homemade noodles and I felt well enough to make the rest of the soup. And it was a complete success. 

Bonus Photo: V touches a dove that was released at a funeral. She then had to go touch all the doves and try to pry open their little holding chamber basket. "My touch the birds!"