Celly

Celly Cow is for a friend's daughter. I used to work with this friend ages ago in a cafe that was in a bookstore (a decade ago? Sheesh! When did I become able to measure my life by decades!?). She was so much fun, she slowly climbed up the ranks and became manager, but before that we used to play entire games of Scrabble in the back kitchen in between customers. It was my first job, and my favorite. I miss my clothes smelling like espresso and cocoa powder. There were huge windows there and I loved working in the mornings before the sun rose----baking cookies at an unseemly hour while the doors were still locked and then opening up and serving coffee to the same senior citizens day after day. It was great. So Rebecca (Celly's mom) has an amazing blog full of amazing recipes and useful information if you have ever been inclined to grow a vegetable garden. Plus, she is really witty so it' a good read (she wrote me the funniest letter after I gave birth and it made me laugh so hard that my weak bladder had me running to the bathroom every other paragraph).

Celly once went to a farm with her mother. Though the goats were cute and the pigs were pink, the cows were who stole her heart. She liked the black splotches scattered all over their ginormous bodies. She looked at the cows for a very long time and even imagined their splotches to be different objects from real life. She saw a splotch that looked exactly like an Easy Bake Oven. Celly wanted to lie down on the hay and stay over-night at the farm to see those tubbies jump over the moon. She wasn't able to, but when her mother gardens she gives Celly some alfalfa to munch on (a cow's favorite food) and Celly paints splotches on her clothes with mud. Then she lets out very loud moos and her neighbors peek out their windows to make sure their street hasn't been invaded by cows!