Friday

We are today twenty degrees below where we should be. I am not amused.

Too, last week's kitchen table flowers have come and gone and though my orchids are putting on a spectacular annual bloom, still, I feel this morning that we have no spring threads to hold on to while we tough out today's cold spell.

Which room is breakfast? Ed wants to know.
I give a shrug and he rewards me with an indifferent expression and a half eaten mango pointed toward the morning camera.






This beautiful meal of ours turns sulky today and I blame the weather.

I also blame myself. Where is that honorable cheer? The smile in the face of bad weather or tedious chores? The steadfast and deliberate calm that I espouse so much here, on Ocean?

I know what the problem is: I've been reading too much. Grumpy people with their grumpy blogs, criticizing and shaming everything and everyone who doesn't buy into their worldview... it's all so unpleasant to read and I know it's time for me to go on an Internet diet again.



It is my shopping day and I am pleased to see that tulips are on a $4 per bunch sale. There's a good reason to smile!

Friday also means that I bring Snowdrop to her own home after school. In good weather, this means that I take out her stroller and we walk to her house. But it's only 20F (-6C) and the occasional wind gusts bring tears to your eyes. And yet, Snowdrop is relentless: I want to go on an a'venture, gaga, I want to go on an a'venture!
Okay, we'll walk home and have a wee little adventure.

She seems satisfied with this, but as we approach her house, she starts balking at giving up so soon. So I offer her a choice and, using the clever strategy suggested by a commenter earlier in the week, I ask -- would you like to go to the park down the road, or would you like to go inside where it's nice and warm and where I have a croissant waiting for you? I'm fully aware that yesterday she had both, but today she has to choose. So, park or croissant?

This is her answer:






So much for trickery. I pull up my zipper snugly and remind Snowdrop that unlike her, I do not have a cap on, so this park adventure must be on the brief side.

On the swing, we have the following conversation -- I dare say one of the sweetest ones of the day (though truthfully, I'm choosing to read into it more good than was intended!):

It's cold. I wish I had taken my cap.
I have a cap. And my coat. And my nose. And my fingers. Gaga gas fingers and a nose, and a camera!
I smile at her: I always have my camera, Snowdrop.
You always have your Snowdrop, gaga!


Inside again. Oh, how one appreciates a good furnace after a walk to the park. Snowdrop, of course, is thrilled to find that there is indeed a croissant waiting for her. A bite and a dance:






Meanwhile, I check my computer to make sure the world hasn't imploded in the last few hours (even as later, I resolve to not check it so much during the day, because if the world implodes, finding out sooner rather than later wont make life any better for me or for anyone else). Snowdrop insists then on checking hers.






Kids say a great many disarming things, but I swear, today Snowdrop is on a roll. She tells me she has to bring her penguin to the table.
Bis (her nickname for penguin still occasionally pops up) is sad, she tells me.
Oh, that's too bad...
She turns to the penguin -- it's okay, little penguin, it's okay. She gives him a hug.






My week with the little one -- well, let me correct that, because she tells me repeatedly that she is a big girl now, so with the big little one, ends with a cold spell outside, but the warmest of feelings indoors. How good is that!






(At the end of my time with her -- with mommy home from work, coloring...)