Goats on Dog House

My youngest son texted some photos to me late this afternoon from his hunting trip in The Okanagon in northeastern Washington state, and I felt relief ripple through through me, felt a pent-up breath release. A week without any communication from him + back-country camping + rifles does not a settled-and-content-mom-make.

I came home from a full (and extremely) busy day at work to the necessity of moving a load of plants to a safe place, as the construction of my new deck supports begins sometime this week, whenever the rains stop.  (The deck which is literally ripping my house in two, three, four....) It was less than pretty outside — nearly dark and an onslaught of precipitation. And despite a weekend of intense rain, the soil proved dry and impenetrable only about an inch down. Nonetheless, I went at it (with the help of my oldest son) and it took less than 30 minutes to relocate a section of my garden to a sheltered spot, beneath the quince.

Back inside I shed my gritty outer layers and began chopping kale and apples, checked the yams roasting in the oven (whose fragrance, enhanced with brown sugar and cinnamon, was piped outside via the kitchen fan), and finally sat down to dinner with my two best people: my sons.

We've always been a boisterous trio — at once argumentative and jovial — and after several weeks of pondering unbloggable issues from the past, this was just what I needed, just the balm my agitated self required/desired.

 I commented on Nelson's nearly manic consumption of pulled pork, and he said, "Well, there's something to the notion that food made with love tastes better."

Reilly groaned and rolled his eyes. "I can't believe you actually said that, Nelson!"

Meanwhile, I was aglow in the compliment, and mentioned that there are few things more gratifying for a mother than feeding one's children. And for Nelson, whose conversation is nearly 100% science-based, this was indeed his supreme compliment to a mother, who, well, loves nothing more than to feed her sons.

I can't even begin to recall the paths our conversation followed, but it was impassioned and spirited, and veered from politics to the science of sleep to the history of religions (as well as the etymology of the word religion) to venison to the question of whether or not one could purchase a hill on Amazon, and, if so, would it qualify for free shipping? And what if I wanted to buy an organic hill? (Nelson said he wanted a free-range hill.)

Disintegration lead to collapse by laughter, and we knew the evening had reached its denouement when we began to argue whether or not goats liked to hang out on the tops of dog houses. What better than You Tube to settle this?

Here's my answer (the first hit, incidentally, when I typed "goats on dog house"):



 It doesn't get much better than this.