Friday

I associate decoratively used bright, vibrant colors with southern climates. Coral pink and Caribbean yellow. Spanish red. Moroccan aqua. Greek white and blue. As for northerners? The best I can come up with is pine green against a wall of gray. Women in black dresses, men in somber suits. Winter puffies in black, olive, navy. Charcoal gray roofs against a charcoal gray sky.

Shouldn't it be the other way around? In the south, flowers bloom year-round. All the places I mention -- the Caribbean, the Mediterranean basin -- have more days with sunshine than us northerners do. They've got color everywhere you look! And why do we, up north, hide in the shadows, relegating pink to a little girl's wardrobe or aqua to, well, not much anything.

We're facing a handful of cold and drippy days. All I can think of is bringing in flowers for the kitchen table and putting on the brightest most colorful clothes from my closet.

(Ed thinks about none of this. After breakfast....






... he gets on his motorcycle and, despite the drizzle, scoots of to his techie meetings.)


(The cheepers are less indifferent. Excessively wet feathers, I hear, are uncomfortable for a chicken. They do not secrete the protective oils that duck feathers do.Put a wet duck on a pond -- she'll swim. Put a wet cheeper on a pond -- she'll sink. On the other hand, the feathers protect the hens from feeling cold. So quit complaining, cheepers!)






The farmette, soaked and working on bleak...






With just a few flowers hanging in there...






Is it a surprise that I am very much looking forward to my afternoon with Snowdrop? I need a smiling face and a touch of pink in my life right now!

(Pick up at school)






Since it is wet and cold outside, I have to say no to her requests for playground and a walk. And at the farmhouse, I stick to my guns on the video issue. No, not today. I reach into my cache of special projects. How about building a Lego (small scale) castle from the movie Frozen? Snowdrop hasn't seen the movie but knows it well from playground conversations and songs she's heard on long drives to Chicago. She is excited!

I'm a tad apprehensive. The age range for this particular Lego set is high. Still, if I do most of the building, we can get something credible up and standing, don't you think?

Yeah!






We embark on this deliciously complicated adventure.






We're not even a quarter done when Ed returns from his meetings. I coax him into the project. You're an engineer, for Pete's sake!






We work with the teeny tiny pieces. Ed gets up and tells me I'm better off without his help. Snowdrop encourages him to persevere.






In the end, Ed retreats, I persevere and Snowdrop dances up a storm of stories.

It is a beautiful day to be with my pink loving grandgirl. She knows what's at play. Grab color while you can. Life is too short to stay in its shadows. It's pink, or bust! Or at least go with Moroccan aqua, or Caribbean yellow.