Relax it's Sunday

"My Little Red Hen"

It's so quiet on Sundays here. Very little traffic, no vendors on our street. In fact it's so quiet you can almost hear the ocean. We can hear it at night around 2 in the morning. Then 2 o'clock comes on a Sunday afternoon and we get serenaded. The band at the military complex a block behind us cranks up and we listen to American "oldies but goodies" 'til around 6 p.m. It is a walk down nostalgia lane. I really have no reason to miss home. Two blocks down on our street there is a McDonalds and one block from there on the Beira Mar there is a new Pizza Hut. One block down and one block over is Blockbuster Video. All the comforts of home!! There is even a Texaco convenience store and gas station one block down from us. Texaco is an interesting word in Portuguese. It is pronounced Tah-schock-o. Took me awhile to get my head around that one. I spent the afternoon completing the book jacket commission I've been working on. I will submit a picture of it tomorrow and hope for the best. Not only do I love cats, but I also love chickens. We raised 3 red hens and one giant beautiful rooster in our back yard. They loved Swiss Chard and every time one of us would go out to tend the garden or pick vegetables for dinner they would line up at their fence and "cluck" like mad for their daily dose of Swiss Chard. The next year we planted a row especially for them. They returned our kindness in their kind, big beautiful brown eggs.

I didn't think it would be cost

effective to bring chickens with me to Brasil, besides they really weren't "house broken"! Cats remain my favorite animal. They are incredibly independent and two of my cats are downright snotty! But I put up with them. I got tired of the supermarket always being out of the food they like and the cat litter I buy, so I called a pet store not too far away. They not only deliver the food and litter, but they also have a pet grooming business attached to their store as well as a vet. One day when the owner delivered the food he saw my cats and remarked how beautiful and long their hair was. I laughed and said it was so hot I was tempted to have them shaved, thinking that was a joke. He said that he has many customers who have their long haired cats shaved. So the next day he came and picked up all five cats. They all got shampooed, claws trimmed and 3 of them got shaved. They came back smelling soooo good and all had little bows on them. And Goldie, Murphy and Gabbie strutted around for days showing off their new short haired summer coats. An interesting side note; the total bill for all that came to 68 U.S. dollars!

"Feeding the Chickens"

I apologize for the empty space at the end of each one of my posts. I'm not sure why it is like that. I haven't found any explanation for it yet. Bear with me and if you want to see the previous post, just continue to scroll down. This is a new experience for me and I'm learning as I go. May all your Sundays be filled with an afternoon dance.