Yeah, Well, Things Goin' Good Here

Yeah, well, things going good at the Gorman house. Marco, who's been told that he's welcome anytime to come to dinner or work or sleep over, but not just to show up at midnight and raid the fridge because that makes me feel used, has been a gentleman of late, coming over in time for dinner, doing dishes, etc. Partly probably because he can't find a job here. He's in a tough spot: Nobody at the local burger joints will hire him because he's too smart, and the regular jobs don't want him because he got into a spat with his last boss and wound up getting fired. I've offered to go there and fix things as only a journalist/dad can but he won't hear of it.
Still, last night, start of a 3 1/2 day weekend, Marco ate, borrowed my newer truck and said he'd be back to go to sleep here.
Then Italo came over to say hello.
And Madeleina was in rare form, victimizing them with her acerbic tongue and I won't go into specifics.
THis morning Madeleina and I used our third ball of string, polished hemp, to complete the spiderweb over the chicken coop that ought to keep the red tailed hawks out--Ha, I'm thinking. They're predators for a reason and the reason is that they're slicker than their prey. And I'd be their prey if they were big enough--and then went and bought half a dozen new chicks. Just as we got back, here came Italo and Marco, looking for breakfast and promising to clean the rug in the big living room after they got through with their mom, Chepa's rug. Turns out, unbeknownst to me, she's left Indiana and is due back tomorrow with the babies. HOORAY!!!!! I can't wait to see the babies! I'll only have a day or two because I guess their dad is due in on Wednesday for a couple of days. Forget that, who cares. Chepa will bring the babies over daily anyway. She's pretty hard-headed when it comes to her men either towing the line or being cut from it.
So I tossed in $30 to the rug cleaning pot and Italo eventually came here while I was visiting with my friend Lynn and then he and Marco cleaned not just the big living room rug but the old Persian imitation I've had for 30 years and then my office rug and man, do we smell like a clean house! And now they're coming for dinner so I'm making hot sausage with onions and peppers--a mix of green and red bell, plus the finest in-season Hatch peppers, with garlic and finely diced tomato, over rice. I already made a good corn and red pepper and onion salad in white vinegar (salt/Pepper and a touch of garlic in olive oil). And Then I put in a rack of ribs at a low temp. I'll make a good barbeque sauce in a few minutes--start with a bit of salt pork, lots of garlic and onion and tomatoes and peppers, then good dark brown sugar and fresh hot red peppers and go from there--for those in an hour, and then I guess I'll make up some veggies to go with the works. I was gonna do shrimp and salmon but I'll hold that till tomorrow.
The gist of this is that there was a lot of noise, all my kids, good work done (I painted the new fencing on the porch again and am now officially freaking done with that), food prep (They shared an 8 egg omelet for breakfast which include freshly pan seared chicken breast, spinach, garlic, tomatoes, onion and good cheddar) along with "Smashed potatoes"--roasted potatoes put in a heavy fry pan, smashed to near flat, salt and peppered and cooked in garlic and oil and a bit of chicken stock till really crispy on the outside and pure white potato meat on the inside. The omelet and potatoes were accompanied by a thick slice of perfect cantaloupe.
And then I sold 3 more books today, and if I can do that all month I'll have sold 90. And I know I'll get a couple of wholesale orders for 10 each, so that would be great.
So things are good here. How nice. It really doesn't take a lot to make me happy. My kids, noise, cooking, a little work, a few new chickens, what else? That's plenty, eh? Don't be greedy, Gorman. That's already a real good day.