Sunday

For a good part of the day I truly believed that this was slated to be a throw away Sunday. You have days like that, no? Nothing really terrible takes place, so there's no reason to complain and yet your hours are filled to the rim with chores and tasks that are hardly pleasant. Maybe you remember that this was the weekend for farmhouse spring cleaning. Well, it took longer than I had planned. Even after scrubbing much of the upstairs yesterday and handing over most of the vacuuming to the robot, I still found myself cleaning for close to seven hours. Toward the end, I was losing all bits and scraps of good cheer.

It was tedious work.

It didn't help that a quick back and forth text with my daughter revealed that Snowdrop continued to be under the weather. Sunday dinner was suddenly a question mark.

And an afternoon hike with Ed? It was hard to muster up enthusiasm for it. Three words describe things perfectly: cold and gray.


That's the downside. But days are never really defined by downsides. They have sparks and twists and funny moments. My Sunday was like that.

So let's forget about the scrubbing, wiping, pulling out shelves and dressers, taking out winter grime from the porch, and especially let's forget about all the time spent on picking out countless poops from the chicken box.

Here are the stellar moments: let's start with breakfast, which is actually more like brunch. It's rather late.






And now you have to let many hours pass before the next stellar moment.

It comes late in the day. We've given up on an ambitious hike.  But there's time for a quick strut through our local county park. It may not be grand, it may be gray...


 



But we do pass fantastic sandhill cranes...





Though remember, it's cold and gray. I mean, it is what it is.


Toward the evening, I get the text that Snowdrop is feeling better. Dinner's on!

There's nothing lovelier than having Snowdrop with parents here, when you thought all day long that all the corn and dessert cakes you purchased for the little girl may have to go to waste.






Afterwards, we pay our respects to the three chicks.






Snowdrop is apprehensive about their sudden moves, but she adores looking on at arm's length.






(Her dad makes friends with Pepper...)






It's all extremely delightful...






... and the farmhouse is so super duper (to use Snowdrop's words) clean it makes my heart sing!

It just goes to show that even a dreary day can have speckles of magic sprinkled throughout.