On Fresh Eggs, Good Neighbors, and a Silly Dog, Indeed

I was awakened this morning by one of Lulu's little friends who wanted her to come out to play. Surely you must think Lulu is a child.  Well, she is, but Lulu is classified by society as a D-O-G, please don't mention this to her as it will tamper with her self esteem.  Lulu is convinced she is a person and even sleeps with her own pillow.  In our bed.

Lulu's friend is Spunky, the guy across the backyard, a hoodling hound of unknown provenance who knows to go toward our bedroom window and holler if we're not in the kitchen when he arrives.

Spunky is often joined by Roscoe, his cartoon-character cautious younger brother, a purebred Boston Terrier so careful that it took him two years to come to the back door.  Amusingly, when he was still unsettled about us, he would bark when we went out back, as if we were trespassers on his turf.  Go figure...

Her other friend is mighty Merlin, a German Shepard, and the dignified older gentleman next door. She will bring Merlin into the house.  Lulu can open the back door.  Merlin is extremely well behaved.  Lulu doesn't let Spunky in.  He's an indoor terrorist.

While Lulu and Spunky got out with Milk-Bones (I should buy stock in Milk-Bones), I had some fantastic double-chocolate infused coffee bought on the cheap at El Lotto Grande (Big Lots) as my buddy Alex of Living the Small Life would say.  Fancy flavored coffee is one of our guilty pleasures, so when we find it marked down, we buy 10 or 11 bags and store the extra in the deep freeze.

I digress a lot.

See those eggs above?  They came from my friend Nancy's chickens and all of them live a block and a half away.  I made a delicious egg sandwich with a beefsteak tomato sliced on top.

Here's my homage to chickens and eggs in  my kitchen.  I picked up this little coop for taking chickens to market in Los Angeles of all places.

There's nothing like fresh eggs.  Bruce knows this having grown up on a farm, but I've just learned their delights from Nancy's chickens.  The yolks are bigger and are almost orange.  Her chickens, depending on their individual breed lay eggs in pale tan, brown, and a blue-green shade that's quite striking.  

Their taste is just, well, "eggier" than store bought.   If I was saying that in Spanish I would call them "huevisimo."  If I was very smart as well as extremely pretentious, I would call her hens' eggs the Platonic ideal of eggs.

One of the things I've learned along the years is to delight in small things, for the small things are more frequent than the big ones. 

Blessing abound all around me; beautiful zinnias planted by the Olde Towne Civic League, a hot cup of double-chocolate coffee in my Starbucks mug with the New York City skyline and a yellow taxi, a silly dog standing on two legs at the back door, homemade chicken salad shared with a friend, and a neighbor who provides fresh eggs and tomatoes better than money can buy.

And the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.  That's a big blessing and not one of the small things.