Goodnight moon

I was coming back from a QuikTrip run a few minutes ago when I noticed a dazzlingly bright star or planet or something twinkling near the moon. It was so bright that I decided to try to shoot it. I don’t have a zoom lens for this camera, so I couldn’t bring it as close as I would have liked, but the fact that I got anything at all should tell you how intense it was.

I spent most of today painting the house. I still have to paint the trim, but at least the white is on there. I’ll eventually paint the garage to match, but the important thing was just to get the house painted white so it would reflect heat instead of absorbing it. It’s already making a difference: When I put my hand on the wall this afternoon, all the white parts were cool to the touch, and all the dark parts were hot.

Here are before-and-after shots of the back wall:

Before:

After:

Admit it: You’d love to be sitting out there on my awesome deck. I need to get some more fuel for the tiki torches and maybe buy a smallish chiminea to set out there and some firefly lights to hang off the pergola. It would be nice to burn pinon wood and watch the lights twinkle and listen to the fountain and the frogs and hang out with the dogs out there. If I were about 20 years younger, I’d take a sleeping bag out there. Maybe when Jamie gets bigger, I’ll get him a tent, and we can have campouts on the deck and toast marshmallows over a buddy burner and stuff.

Here is a thing I love about Red Fork: It’s the kind of place where you can do stuff like camping out in the yard with your nephew without having to fear for your safety. Every yard contains at least one dog, so nobody can sneak up on you, and people tend to watch out for each other.

Speaking of dogs, my next-door neighbor had the cutest puppy in his yard this afternoon. It’s a little buttermilk-colored pit bull. If it were a horse, you’d describe its coat as “buckskin.” I forget what that color is called on dogs, but it’s very pretty.

I saw a big bluejay on the back fence as I was putting my paint and stuff away this evening. It was really pretty. I also saw a mockingbird attacking some kind of bug in the middle of Frankoma Road this afternoon on my way back from lunch at the Happy Burger.

I think that’s all for today. I have to work in the nursery at church tomorrow, and then I’m going to come home and spend some time painting trim. I ought to lay out the Oklahoma Route 66 Association newsletter, but what I really want to do next is figure out how to make a sock monkey. I don’t know why, but I have decided that I need to learn to make sock monkeys. I think I spend too much time looking at Craftster….

Emily