Beachtime (finally!), game time (Yay!), + work time (but the fun kind!) Also a new animal visitor. Plus Toby + Blanca

Even at the ends of the earth, just the 3 of us isolated on a little patch of desert together, days can go by when we don't really have time with each other.  One moment we all come together for daily is the sinking of the sun.  I arrived late to the above moment and was touched to see M + L wrapped in a blanket and chatting about their day.

We've also been playing more family games.  Luca got these huge dice for Christmas and they are great for Farkle in the sand.  Thank you to my sweet and creative friend, Noel-Beth, for the customized 5 gallon bucket - which has come in handy in dozens of ways on this trip.  Helping us roll the dice might be my favorite use so far!  (PS Max kicked our butts + humility was not his first choice of reactions 😜 ) 

LZ also got D-Day Dice for Christmas and here our family tries to figure out how to keep our soldiers alive and cooperating to storm the beaches of Normandy.  We played the most basic beginner version and it was enough to give me total anxiety as I made decisions about advancing and resources.  The game can be made so much more complex and varied; I see it being a lot of fun for a long time.  Now just to get the wire run to the lights in his bedroom!

We have been making more time for the beach!  Finally!  I mean, Luca + I come down for almost daily walks + occasional trench digging - but we have yet to make time to actually play in the water.  It is an event because the beach is not particularly swimmable in most places.  It can get steep with a strong undertow and large waves.  But there are places that are a little calmer and one can have an absolute blast getting spun around and churned at the edge.  It does something to one's soul to spend an hour laughing and squealing like a child in the salty ocean tides.

Luca wanted to go for another hour but the silver sun was warning me that my dinner making window was closing and there is nothing like water play to make a person hungry!

LZ is continually reminding me to just breathe.  At least once a day he will put a hand on my shoulder or give me a hug and nudge me to just be and just breathe.  This moment on the beach minutes after sunset was a particularly sweet one.

Clearly some of us enjoy going to the beach for other reasons. 🐟  She's so timid + almost apologetic about scavenging.  She has food security issues going on and we're giving her time to understand that the meals and the love are constants from now on.   

LZ would like to buy this mudflat and live here with all his friends.  If only it weren't part of an extremely expensive piece of beach front. 😉 For now he convinces me to visit with him + while it was less gloppy than our last visit, he still managed to get into sticky mud up to midcalf.

Plus it is cool to see all the salt formations from when the ocean water evaporates out of puddles.

So, here is our newest nocturnal visitor.  Sorry about the blurry photo - turns out it is tricky to take pics of invading pigs in the wee hours of the night after being startled awake by Blanca's furious barking.  I think she was less defending us and more defending her precious compost pile.  For 3 nights she held her ground until the night after we took her to be spayed.  Wanting her to get a good night's sleep (+ keep her stitches intact) we made her a little nest in our room and let the pig have his 2 am buffet of food scraps.  Only to wake to truly great news!  When I went to dump the coffee grinds the next morning, the S blade from my mini food processor - that I'd been missing for a month! - was there at the top of the pile where the Evil Dr Porkchop had snuffled it up! Thanks, Porky!

I've had the pleasure of seeing this beauty on quite a few occasions, but only once while I had my camera nearby.  They were totally nonchalant about me coming relatively close; giving me that "you are just a mere mortal and are of no concern to me" look.

Couldn't not take a few photos of the mountain while paying homage to the magnificence of nature.  

May he always be this sweet, caring person.  May he know the gift that he is.  

Okay, I did mention that we've been working - and we really have been getting a lot done!  Our current project is brightening up the bathroom and getting the shower hooked up.  The first step was hand mixing a bunch of wheelbarrows full of concrete to get a properly sloped bed on the shower floor.  I am glad I have been working on core strength because mixing cement is a beast!

Of course the shower is not square and the drain is off center and we spent an inordinate amount of time calculating slopes to the nearest 1/16 of an inch - as if concrete is such a delicate and exacting material.  When we watered the cement that night, it all ran toward the drain - good enough for me!

Now to try to run rustic, warbly, mismatched Talavera tile in straight lines according to a meticulously calculated 'random' pattern.  I'm not twitching, you're twitching. 

So to soothe all of us, I will finish this post off with moments of joy + zen + Toby (...+ perhaps some Blanca too 🐕)

☯☮🕉🤍

Lazy end to the day

A boy + his dog.

A dog + her boy.

A rare treat.

I told LZ I may need to start studying poetry to inspire the words in me to describe such humbling and awe inspiring beauty.

I am glad that Toby has made it clear to Blanca that we were his family first.  But I am also grateful to see a peace grow between them.  He continues to bring us comfort and to make us smile (and to try to balance the unbridled mouse population.)

It is already May!  I hope that flowers abound in your world.  And that you or someone you know has seedlings sprouted and ready to go into warm soil. And that you are healthy and able to connect more with people you've been missing so acutely this past year. And that summer feels like a promise on the horizon.  Much love to you.