Grapenuts

So my summer is coming to an end.  It seems like it goes by more quickly every year!  This one hasn't exactly been super relaxing though.  And you know what they say about how time flies when you're completely and totally stressed out!  :)  And isn't this always the way it works, *poof* the stress is gone just two weeks before I have to go back to school.  I plan on enjoying my two weeks.  

We have yet another trip to the 405 coming up next week, same song as last time.  El Reno, OKC, and Stillwater.  I've been to Oklahoma more this summer than I have in total the last 3 years, I think!  And I still have one more trip coming up at the end of September for the world debut of one Miss Zoey Grace Miller!  And the official facebook countdown has begun for my step-daughter, Robin.  TEN MORE DAYS til she moves in with us and officially "gets outta town".  I think the real countdown started like a year ago though.  Ah, seventeen and on the run.  How fun. :)  We also have some friends from Stillwater coming down for a mini-vacay the weekend before school starts.  So I guess it's really business as usual at the Cochran house!  Always somethin' fun going on!

I decided to make the most of my last really relaxing Friday with absolutely nothing to do and lay around in my PJ's all day.  Super inspiring, huh!  Then I decided to give the kitchen a thorough scrub down.  Like any good kitchen, it needs it every once in a while.  And while I was standing at the sink rinsing out my washcloth, I saw something that made my heart happy.  

The window above the sink looks out over the back yard and the forest and Hole 13 on the golf course.  It's a pretty nice view.  So I was inspecting my flowers out on the patio and noticed something hovering under one of our Spanish Grapevines.  And then there were two tiny black beady eyes staring directly at me.  After about a twenty second staring contest (that I won, by the way), he popped a big juicy blue-purple grape into his little squirrel mouth and started chomping away.  So I stood there for about five minutes watching him have lunch.  And I know that squirrels are supposedly just rats with poofy tails, and they can be rabid and really mean if you get on their bad sides, but this one was really cute.  He was just chillin' in the shade of the grapevine chowin' down.  And when he finished one, he'd just crawl back up the iron fence post and grab another one with his little paws, jump down into the grass, sit down, and start chompin' away again.  I think he ate about six grapes.  Which considering the size of a tiny squirrel and the fact these grapes are nearly the size of his head, was kind of a lot.  But I guess he got full, because when he finished the last one, he scampered off.

It was really cute.  And I was standing at my kitchen window, watching a squirrel having lunch, and listening to Ellis Paul on the iPod.  Life is pretty good.  I think about where I was in my life ten years ago-- when I was twenty.  I never in a million years thought things would be this good.  I love it.  And I'm very, very thankful.  

For clean kitchens.  And squirrels with full bellies. :)