My happiness

When I went house hunting in 2003 I had a short list of items that my house absolutely had to include - arched doorways, hardwood floors, a fireplace, a full room upstairs and room in the yard for flower gardens - or I wouldn't buy it. To this day, I adore my house. I love that this view is what greets me when I walk into the kitchen.

These make me happy now too. I went to an estate sale around the corner from my house at 10 minutes to close on the final day. $12.50 for service for 8? (She scores!) There are 4 different sizes of plates, 4 sizes of bowls, coffee cups, a serving platter, vegetable bowl, a divided bowl and creamer and sugar. I know you're jealous. I would be too if I weren't me.

This little charmer sits on the window sill over my sink. I snicked him from Keith's dad's back porch, but only because I was rescuing him from certain doom. He makes me smile when I work at the sink.

This is dumb, but this darned duck makes me happy too. Her name is Dolores Honeybump Wetpants and she's so tame right now that she tries to jump in the window if we don't feed her quick enough. You can see she eats out of our hands. We can pet her and she sort of talks to us (mostly in her very loud bossy voice). She hangs around the pond where I work.

This is enough to make anyone happy. A surprise flat of flowers outside my back door when I came home. Stumped me for a bit until I realized my back door was open. Ahhh, must be from F.Y.S. Sure enough, they were. He certainly knows how to make mom happy.

This is what I call my walking lily because every year it moves to a different spot in the garden bed. I think a mole is shoving it out of the way, but I can't be sure. It's a treat to see where it will show up next.

Love. Love. Love this heart sculpture. F.M.S. saw it and said, "you really like your rocks, don't you mom?" He supposed that's where he gets his love of rocks. I suppose so.

The continuing duck stories?

I've written about these guys a few times already so I hope you aren't bored reading about them. They are a never-ending source of entertainment for our office, the other offices in the building, for our clients, and even visitors from nearby businesses. They're demanding and noisy and funny and charming and lovable - each with their own unique personality - seriously! And I won't even start on the various quacks they have.

We have a new girl who shows up at feeding time whom we've affectionately named Pocahontas. Bet you can't guess why.

This is how we do the daily feeing: Walk out the back door, clap your hands a few times and wait. The ducks come quacking and running (or swimming or flying) from all over. They have learned what clapping means. It turns into a feeding frenzy and you better be quick about giving out the food or they'll peck at your hands and your pants to make you notice them.

They used to be afraid of the camera. Not anymore. Now, I think they expect it to spit out food or something. These two certainly seemed to be expecting something.
Many of them can be hand fed and today, while I was passing out pieces of food I felt a duck pushing between my legs from the back. It was Dolores barging in for her 'preordained' portion. She's so funny now. She'll drive the other ducks back so she can get her food and sometimes, if she feels like it, she'll even let us pet her.