weekend, coming up!

With the weekend, comes a small lull in Ocean writing. Oh, I don't anticipate a total break -- just a slowdown. I suppose you could compare it to the slower pace you take on after you've just run a marathon. But there's a more immediate reason for my slower stride. Early tomorrow, I'm catching the bus to Minneapolis. It's been exactly a year since I last visited my younger girl and her husband in the Twin Cities and even then, it was only a fleeting stopover. Since then, they themselves have made the trip to Madison repeatedly to see Snowdrop, to celebrate various holidays -- down that long stretch of highway, at least five hours each way, back and forth they went, again and again. It's time for me to put in my travel hours.

Because I'm there only until Sunday, I don't want to take chunks of time for Ocean work. I'll write, but briefly and I'm getting into that pace already today, even though I am with my normal routines still.

But are they ever normal? At the farmette, the view out the kitchen windows, past the porch, is never quite the same. Here's this morning's:






We do eat a very normal breakfast...






And then I am at my early Thursday hour at Snowdrop's, but that girl is never completely predictable. I expected a thumb-sucking pout after the bath and before breakfast, but get a giggle from her instead.






After chasing the little one all morning (stand up, sit down, stand up, watch out! sit down, stand up, careful! sit down...) I think maybe I should avoid the afternoon thunder showers and go out for a stroller walk in the earlier hours. She is agreeable, though she does want to make sure that I'm still there, that this isn't some kind of a strange game where I wheel her off into the great unknown and disappear.






After, we play, of course, but I wont swamp you with photos. In fact I'll leave you with just these two -- and they will be the last of her until Monday, when I next see her. In the first, she is interpreting what I am telling her...






In the second, I just want to remind you that even if Snowdrop may seem entirely serious here, on Ocean, she has her goofy moments each day. Here's one from today:






In the evening, Ed and I do our own lovely Thursday routines -- market, take-out, home. Beautiful hours, regular hours, the familiar hours of farmette life.