Feeding Animals - Day 219 - Haiku - On Love, Loss and Birthdays and . . .

crescendoofpeace (63)in #haiku • 6 years ago

20181027_222242 - Gorgeous moon behind clouds.jpg

Feeding animals
before the rain really hits.
Goats do not love rain.

Okay, truth be told, this photo was taken a couple of nights after our latest heavy rain, on the night we returned from celebrating my birthday in Nashville. The moon behind the clouds was just too beautiful not to commemorate it's passing.

Of course, the weekend we had planned went completely awry, thanks to being beholden to time schedules other than our own, which is something we hope to be changing in the near future.

The short version is that we had originally planned for Marek to take Thursday and Friday off, giving us a four day weekend together, but the load he took didn't allow that, and his flight Friday didn't get in until 9:45 on my birthday, Friday night, giving us precious little time together.

So the nice relaxing dinner we had planned together had to be postponed, and instead, by the time we got settled in our hotel, and ready to go out and eat, it was already 11:30 and there were few decent options available. The hotel clerk knew of nothing in the immediate neighborhood.

When we checked the closest restaurants in my GPS, on a whim I called Hattie B's, a local institution known as one of the originators of Nashville Hot Chicken, a regional specialty, to find that they were still open and serving, albeit not for long. So to Hattie B's, less than half a mile way, we quickly set off.

One irony is that Hattie B's was actually one of the options I had thought of when planning for our weekend, since it is a Nashville institution, and I was under the impression that it was a regular restaurant; and not what it ultimately turned out to be, a nicer than average fast food joint that serves beer.

That said, they had a nice local IPA on tap, though the name of the brewery escapes me at the moment, and though Marek was underimpressed with the food, I thought it was quite good, though not what I was expecting.

Imagine Southern fried chicken, drenched after the fact with a hot chili sauce, but rather than the vinegary bite of Buffalo chicken, instead it has a mildly sweet taste to offset its heat, and you'll have a good approximation of Hattie B's Nashville hot chicken.

It was good, and I'll probably go there again, but I won't be recommending it as a don't-miss treat for those visiting Nashville for the first time.

As we ate our dinner, the staff was preparing to close, and working to the beat of their loudish hip hop music, began turning the chairs upside-down atop the tables all around us.

This was far funnier to us than it would be to most, as it recalled our first date, when I had suggested a restaurant that had formerly been open 24 hours a day, only to discover that they now closed at midnight. Marek got off work late, so we met there around eleven.

As they prepared to close, they first turned the chairs onto the tables, then turned on loud rap music, and finally broke out the vacuum cleaners and noxious cleaning chemicals to chase us away. And it worked, too! ;-)

There is more to the story, but it is late, and I have to be up early, so I will continue it another time.

Suffice it to say that it was an odd birthday, but got better the next day, and we had a blast in Nashville this Saturday. Lolo even got a bath out of the deal. ;-)

The loss I alluded to I discovered Sunday morning, when I went to feed our small animals in their enclosure, and discovered one of our Muscovy ducks dead in the tall grass near the entrance.

She looked quite peaceful, obviously had just lain down and died, and once more, no predators were involved.

Sad, but a part of life, and as I don't really know how old they were when I brought them home, it is quite possible that she lived a good long life. And life, now and always, goes on.

This post, and all those from now until the end of 2018, I am dedicating to the work of #tarc and #yah, aka @rhondak's nonprofit dog rescue and @sircork's charity @youarehope.

Half the liquid proceeds earned from my posts will be evenly split between the two organizations.

The photo above was taken by me a couple of nights ago using the camera in my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 smartphone. The moon beneath the slowly shifting clouds was absolutely mesmerizing.

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