Thank You!

Thank you so very much for your well wishes. I am doing much better now, I have a new appreciation for y’all as each day I looked forward to reading blogs, it was better than having a stack of really good magazines by my side. Thanks for that.

I’ll be away for a bit, I’m certain I will return with a memory card full of pictures so check back with a glass of wine in hand and lots of head nodding…I am sure to ramble, it will require lots of patience on your part.

Before I go though I want to wish you and your men a Happy Father’s Day. I have been lucky to have such wonderful father figures in my life. There’s my Dad who brought me here, my Grampy who taught me to bait a hook and go after the moon if I wanted. And what about UJ? He instilled lots of stability and traditions. There’s also my brothers who are each fathers now. That’s kind of weird and gross, eh? They reproduced? Good thing they have really cute kids.

A special Happy Father’s Day wish to the father of my kids… he’s a really good dad and I am so very grateful for that.

Every year as part of his gift I try and take pictures of the kids when they are clean and nongrumpy. It usually ends up with me sweaty and making threats.

kid #1

#2

#3

#4

#5

Enjoy your summer dear friends. See you around the bend!

under the weather and a vacation

If only you could hear the amount of complaining I have done lately. It must be some kind of record!

These are things I have learned while coughing and hacking the last couple weeks:

I am not tough enough for Texas.

It is hot here.

Complaining really doesn’t help... but I all the same I cannot stop.

Watching hours of TV is really disgusting.

Being sick makes you realize how much love He has for you every day. All those days you run around with bounding energy to do laundry and jump rope outside with crazy kids, I miss that and never want to take it for granted.

Lemonade popsicles are delicious.

Properly working lungs are very helpful. I have never puffed on a cigarette and it makes me nauseous to think people pay money to do that.

Some of our kids flew to Grammie’s house today. While it feels absolutely ridiculous to send them alone on a speeding plane high in the sky I know they are thrilled and having fun. I will join them later on and we will hang our feet off the dock and they will sit and tell me things because they will be older and wiser for their new life experiences…and I will love every minute of this.

This puzzle is hard, even though it looks easy. See what I mean? I can’t stop complaining!

blackberry season makes everything better

My first choice on what to do with a bowl of fresh blackberries would be to sit on the front porch with a good book and eat them slowly one at a time while maybe dipping them into a saucer of sugar before popping them into my mouth. But that would be selfish and for no reason at all I decided not to be selfish and instead make blackberry cobbler for Sunday night dessert.

Whenever I make a dessert with in-season berries it feels almost ghastly to pour them all in at once like that. Six cups of blackberries baked in crust? Two months ago I would have shaken you by the shoulders until you came to your senses.

It also felt ghastly to eat it with crème fraîche. As it is bathing suit season and crème fraîche n'est pas bon pour mon rear end.

The recipe comes from Lee Bailey’s Country Weekends cookbook. It’s a few years old, it was among the first cookbooks I really connected to and I have always liked it.

This picture (from his cookbook) makes me homesick for New England. I think a picket fence trimmed garden would make breakfast taste very good. In Texas you might be eating outside like that and get bit by a black widow or a rattlesnake. Okay, so the chances are slim but truthfully when I was setting up our party last weekend I killed a black widow under the patio table. Did you hear me yell as I whacked it with enough force to knock out a large farm animal? Can you tell I am very much in need of a trip home to Connecticut?

This is Lee Bailey’s cobbler. I would share the recipe but after finding the same cookbook on Amazon (used) for 54 cents I suddenly find myself too lazy to type it all out. But if you really want me to I will.

I put this recipe on the menu this week. Too bad you’re not coming over for dinner, I’m sure it will be très délicieux.

The post in which I talk a lot but don’t say much

Though the kids are out of school and it will be 100 degrees today (That’s one hundred D-E-G-R-E-E-S and zero cents) I am having to convince myself it is indeed summer. Nothing I could tell myself was working so after lunch I tried to take a nap.

But there I was laying in upon my bed watching and listening to the ceiling fan whirring round and round. Feeling guilty I wasn’t gluing bits of colored paper with Molly or listening to Sam tell me another snake story he heard at school.

All winter I collected books that I would read during the summer. I started my first one and while it is okay, it just wasn’t feeling like a lazy summer read kind of day.

Will it feel like summer soon?

We had a big party here on Saturday night. It was kind of crazy, there was a boatload of kids. Luckily it was outside as some of the kids were really, really bad. It made me love my kids very much when everyone went home. Truthfully the whole thing made me very tired. By 11:00 Molly and Henry were floating around on energy they sucked out of a soda and my dear daughter Hadley gave them bath without me even knowing. If you have ever been responsible for overtired bug spray encrusted children who have black fingernails and sweat grime behind their knees and ears you surely must know how much I appreciated that she did that.

I haven’t told any of my local friends I have a blog. I didn’t ask anyone if I could put their picture up, b/c then they would say Freckled Hen? What is that? And I don’t have a good answer. I mean good grief today I wrote about not being able to take a nap. What exactly is my blog? It’s something I often think about. I suppose my blog is a maternal representation of my thoughts. I love being a mother and wife and sharing my love for gingham and old bobbins. Oh and chickens and old kitchen junk and how my horse passes gas. It all makes sense to you, right?

I hope you are starting Summer off on a good foot. Thanks for reading all my words, I shall go and read some of yours.

Tootleoo!