welcome, March

March, we're ready for you. You bring a lot of good into our everyday. You usher in my favorite season. You're not exactly predictable, but the trend is healthy.We spend more days outside, we're likely to spot the first spring flowers in your embrace.

Today, however, I barely noticed your presence. I spent my morning doing my taxes.

Now, I am not a complicated tax situation. I have a pension and a modest IRA. I move things around a little when I spend too much on my grandkids. Otherwise -- yawn.

Well, maybe "yawn" for you, but it takes several schedules and many sheets of paper to put all that down in a way that's acceptable to the tax authorities. Moreover, for many years I took the easy path and worked with Turbo Tax (a tax filing program that charges and arm and a leg, but does fill out your forms, with a lot of feel good prompts and delightfully cartoonish questions throughout). Ed convinced me last year that I am wasting my money. He's right, of course. Good bye Turbo Tax. It's back to just filling out the darn forms. With a lot of sympathetic if not quite cartoonish comments and prompts and useful hints from Ed.

All that happens after breakfast, of course.





(Yes, at the kitchen table today!)

And there you have my first half day. I could, I suppose, admit that I did switch from tax work to medical insurance for a brief while, as I had to wait forever and then speak with an SSI rep about the threatening letter I just received about an absence of proper documentation for my Medicare application, but why bother. Let's just say I spent the better part of my day either filling out forms or trying to understand what forms still needed to be filled. Hello, March!


In the afternoon, I am with Snowdrop.

How might I describe her day... Hmmm....

Well, she is a bit tired. Up early, no nap. I propose a proper rest time. In her bed. She is agreeable. We go upstairs. She asks me to stay in her room. Normally I would never do this, but this time I stretch out on the adult bed in her little room. Not bad, I'm thinking. I could use a little rest myself.

Twenty-four seconds later she sits up with a smile: I'm rested!

There's much good that can be said about our time together, but perhaps you find that repetitive, so instead I'll point out that we went through many hair changes today. (Ed later tells me -- she seemed bossier today, don't you think? I smile indulgently: no my dear, she simply seemed more in control of her own wonderful three year old world.)

There was the pony tail. (Grandma, can I wear your hair ribbon? Not that one. This one. Well, maybe I want that one. Not this one.)






Happy girl...






She then dresses up to play the adult. She slips on her necklace, bracelet, puts on her flower wreath. It's become a routine. I know what follows: a game of shenanigans with her babies. There's a lot of laughter, bossiness, scripted story lines.






But each time, there is a novel twist. Today she is focused on all my Polish wooden statues and carvings.






How they relate to her tale of motherhood woes is unimportant. I just so enjoy her telling of this tall tale. I love that she is so animated, so full of expression. I love the intricacy of the plot.






And most of all, I love that the whole play makes her so happy.






But eventually she will have had enough. She carries over her smile to a drawing session (oh yes, the hair trimmings are removed now)...






And finally, she finds her hair clips and insists I put them in just so for her last minutes of character play.






So, happy March to you! In Wisconsin, the sun set at 5:46 today. That's a whole hour and twenty-four minutes later than in December.

And it's a pretty sunset at that!