You have to admit..........

....I'm getting the hang of it.  This is a pretty complicated design.  It's messy in places, but basically I am achieving what I wanted to achieve.  This is the point at which I will likely lose interest, although I'd like to be more sure of myself so the paper wouldn't be manhandled as much.  The progression from the upper right corner around the design shows the progress of my understanding the folds.  By the time I reached 9 o'clock I was hitting my stride.

Yesterday I had the idea of doing origami using fabric, which is not original with me by any means.  I got a piece of cloth that I imagined would hold a pressed pleat well.  As soon as I began, I realized making a grid by pressing folds presents some significant problems.  As you might imagine, once the horizontal pleats are pressed, ironing the vertical ones destroys them.  I abandoned the project with uncharacteristic resignation.

Since it was a relatively mild day (probably in the mid thirties) I spent some time changing the bedding in the chicken house.  After I put the girls out this morning I wrestled the new bag of shavings out of the car and back behind the house.  After removing the old stuff with rake, hoe, and shovel I dumped the pristine stuff.  The chickens showed their usual irritation at my redecorating and refused to go back inside.  Later, when it started to rain-snow, I went back to close them up, only to find them hovering under a small platform in the yard. I tried to threaten them with the handle of the hoe, but they know from experience that I wouldn't  really touch them.  They've never experienced a hunger pang in their little lives, so bribery with food is useless.  Finally my exuberant and cheerful "come on girls, come on, come on" finally enticed them out, but they were still having nothing to do with their clean house.  Eventually I went inside the coup and called them repeatedly until Bonnie, my boldest girl, tiptoed through the door.  Once she was in, the others followed.

How I love my dogs and my chickens.  I think I could have been happy spending my life taking care of farm animals.  In a way it's a selfish kind of happiness, because it comes from knowing that I provide everything for them, that I give them the happiest little lives they can have.....the other side of that being that they have no knowledge of any other way of life and therefore have no responsibility to feel gratitude. To them life is just what is.  They take food and shelter and comfort for granted. 

I wonder if this pleases me so much because I have never lived up to expectations, never achieved the goals set for me, never accomplished what I was supposed to.  I am smart and talented, yet a failure at everything our society expects of such a person.  I never really wanted to be that person except for my insatiable desire to please.  Wanting to please is a terrible, crippling, degrading thing. 

These are two boys who seem to have no interest in pleasing me, and I love them for it.