Monday mornings are intense here on the farm.  There was talk of continuing the birthday celebrations first thing Monday morning.

Maria wakes up thinking about her Monday morning video and starts mumbling “We gotta get up, we gotta get up,” which in translation means she wants to get up and get to work.

Maria is a very sweet and loving human, being, but not all day of every day. No artist or writer is.

You don’t want to be standing in the doorway when Maria is heading out to work. Over the weekend (my birthday was yesterday) Maria was in a loving and generous mood, she suggested the possibility of taking me out to breakfast at Jean’s Place Monday morning.

I knew she would think better of this on Monday morning, when she would not be so lovey-dovey, in fact, she can be downright irritable on Monday as she is plotting her video and her upcoming week.

I suggested we forget about going out to breakfast, and she could just get to making her quilt, she had done more than enough for me over the weekend.

This just irritated her all the more, she wanted to get to work but she had offered the breakfast, and Maria takes obligations seriously. She really didn’t wish to hear any more about it.

I said maybe we should wait for another day as she jumped out of bed and rushed downstairs to take a shower.

This was not the right thing to say. She had talked about it enough. There was no right thing to say.

I checked my e-mail and back account but in minutes she was back upstairs,'”Hey, move your ass,” she said, “we have to get to Jean’s I want to finish my quilt today.”

Okay, a different tone, but the food would be just as good it.

Well, it wasn’t as sweet as Sunday but  I was thinking about some scrambled eggs and home fries with their homemade wheat toast. She was thinking about pancakes.

The Jon Katz 74th Birthday Festival of Joy, Redemption (and Resentment) was getting at least part of its third day. That would be it.

We had gotten to the “Resentment” portion of the festival, the reason Sigmund Freud had had me slip it in there. I know my woman..

Everything I was likely to say was probably going to get me into trouble, so I mostly kept my mouth shut on the way to Jean’s and her hunger took over, the thought of Jeans’ pancakes was warming her up.

Maria is one of those skinny-as-a-bird people who can eat a whole pie and not gain an ounce of weight. And when she gets hungry she really gets irritable.

When we get there, John Denver was playing loudly on the new music system and Maria got her pancakes and was once again enjoying being sweet to me.

The quilt faded for the moment, but I knew I only had minutes left on my festival, time was running out.

Maria and I have this in common: sweet is not our default position.

She loves to take care of people and animals, but more than that, she loves to do her art. Don’t get in the way. The breakfast was it, the festival over.

We have a lovely meal, brought two muffins home with us (Kelly makes the best muffins on the earth), I showed my Leica camera off to two friends who were there, and the food was wonderful, as usual.

There is no better breakfast than Jean’s Place breakfast and no funkier atmosphere. I love taking photos of their wall menu, it says so much about the place where we will.

On the way back, I could almost hear the wheel’s turning in Maria’s head as she began putting the pieces together on her latest quilt, which was sold before she finished it.

She took a photo of me as a moment of the final birthday celebration day.

I loved the breakfast, but I am ready to move along also. I have to visit my Amish friends on the hill, check on the new barn, and write about my ride to the bus station with John, Moise’s oldest son. I learned a bit about being young from the Amish point of view.

I loved every meeting of the festival. Everything has its time, and people who overdo their stay start to smell like rotting fish. On to next year.

Thanks for the good wishes.