The little neighbor girl, who's about four, sells us eggs from her peripatetic chickens so that she can save up for a $25 pink dress for Halloween. We don't have a doorbell or knocker but I know she's at the door when like a lilliputian Tennessee Williams character she tilts her head far back (as I imagine) and yells for my husband at the top of her lungs: DOOOUUUGGG! Pause, silence, big inhale. DOOOOOUUUUUGGGG!!! She did that a few afternoons ago and I went to the door as D was occupied. I haven't really encountered her close up or directly since the Boob Pop incident years ago when she was an infant in her mother's arms. She stood at the door cheerily and when she saw it was me and not my husband she looked quite taken aback. She froze, frowned, and looked up at me with doleful eyes (don't eat me). I was a little flustered myself, I don't know the whole egg drill, D keeps quarters someplace for her (where?), so I got my wallet out of my bag, opened the screen door, and gave her a dollar. She handed me a basket. Of tomatoes. Okay, so I bought tomatoes. "Good job sweetie," I heard her mother call from the next yard. Yes, the little one survived mysterious Baba Jaga!
The next day D reported to me that he'd chatted with the neighbor who said that the little girl had been instructed to simply drop off the tomatoes, not sell them, so I had completely made her day by giving her a whole entire dollar bill. (Doug makes a point of giving her a quarter for each egg, so that she gets a sense of the arithmetic of the exchange.)
Awwwww. So maybe I'm not such a Big Bad Witch after all. Cute kid! I don't bake gingerbread (not after Gingerbread Boy - don't eat me! no, no gingerbread -- ice cream, ice cream!!) but maybe one day I'll lower a basket of banana bread out the aerie window.
Love to all this gorgeous afternoon. Good excuse to run - Stella the Artist is on. XOXOXO, whoever.
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