such a day

As always, let me focus on what is before me, here, in the Midwest, just a little south of Madison. In so many places around the world, terrible and wonderful things happen. I do not write about that. Others will step up to that job, I hope. Me, I continue to describe the wee things. Because (thank God) this is what is before me.

So here's a small thing. A wet, cold small thing: sleet, on and off throughout the day.





Lovely. (Note sarcasm, please.)

Breakfast was disturbed. Ed had to go off earlier than we had expected. So if I am to display breakfast photos, they'll be of the solitary kind. Like this:





I did a lot of house cleaning today. My little one is coming up from Chicago and as usual, I want to have the freshest finest farmhouse ready for her (and her fiance). Ed tells me -- she's already seen it clean. Why impress her again and again? I shoo him away. What does he know.

I do wish I could offer more of a spring palate for her, for all of us this weekend. Driving home from work, I saw the usual: brown on brown.





I stop at our local garden center (where they're hiding all annuals until some meteorological miracle happens and we cut out the cold already). I pick up my beloved summer alyssum for the pots (and more pansies and dianthus and trailing pelargonium,  and even, in a moment of optimism, potted lavender). To be planted when the gods are willing.





At home, meaning in the very clean farmhouse, I am just throwing foods together.





My mind is on the next two days. A deliciously protracted celebration of a birthday, of daughters, of life as I know it now.

Ed has been less insistent on repeating, as he did in the the first years we were together -- everyday is your birthday. Maybe he has figured out that everyday is not like a birthday and besides, my fixation on a birthday -- his, my daughters', my own -- is actually so very innocent. And so joyful.

There is very little harm in birthday joy.