Friday

Sometimes a few words can create just the right mood. Add to it a familiar (or imagined to be familiar) scent and you're off.

Here's how the company DS & Durga described their candle, which, significantly, had the name of Breakfast Highlands: top notes: oats, Scotch marmalade, heather honey; heart notes: heart biscuits, strong tea, toast; base notes: hay absolute, smoked things, gorse. Does that not pull at the heart strings of a person who loves the Scottish isles? Hey, you don't have to muck around at airports and take many flights to get that whiff of a Scottish winter morning! All you need to do is look outside (just a slight dusting of snow, always the gray skies)...

... and light your Breakfast Highlands candle and stir up some porridge. 

All that's missing is a slice of smoked salmon with toast. And a dram of Scotch whisky from Islay. 

And Ed.

He does make it down to breakfast, but just barely. 

*     *     *

The afternoon is an ambitious one. I promised Snowdrop that straight from school we would head to one of her favorite coffee shops (Barriques) and from there, we would find an ice rink for skating. 

I had the good sense to try on her skates on Wednesday. They were way too tight! I had the bad sense to have waited that long to try them on! I ordered new ones -- they are to arrive today. By sunset. Well now, that's super quick! Fantastic Amazon service! But it wont help with our planned Friday outing.

And here's another obstacle: it's been warm this week. The daytime temps have risen to just above freezing. That means that most of the park ice rinks are not being maintained.

But will these two obstacles deter us?? They will not! 

I pick her up and explain our choices. We hatch a plan: go to Barrique's on Monroe. Sit and luxuriate over a treat. Check then to see if anything had arrived at the farmhouse. If not -- use the old very tight skates one last time, on the ice rink that is open -- the one by the zoo that her cousin had tried a few weeks back.

(Rice Krispie bars! a favorite!)

The skates aren't yet at the house (they come literally ten minutes later), so we take the old ones and I push them on and lace them up. So many things working against us: it's windy and cold. She needs her snow pants, so off come her jacket, her mitts, her hat. Now she is even more cold. And the skates -- well, kind of snug! The ice is ripply and cracked. She feels wobbly. But she manages not to land on her rear end (always a goal for her) and more importantly, she still likes skating!

I ask her if she dares stand on one foot. She tells me -- yes, but without skates!

*     *     *

Our day ends at the farmette with a chicken hunt: Ed cannot find one of the white Bresse girls. We've been keeping an eye on a few hawks that have been circling this territory, but of course, there's little we can do to keep them away. Too, there is still a lingering smell of the skunk who visited the barn a few days back. So many predators! So much temptation for them! 

But in the end we do find her: asleep on top of an egg which she chose to lay underneath some farmette equipment. A lucky break for her that we went back again and again. She may not have lasted outside the coop for the night. 

A lucky thing... Snowdrop was saying how lucky indeed this day can be, even if so many have Friday the 13th worries. Lucky? Oh, this doesn't even begin to describe our good fortune, I tell her. Warm house, good food, a snuggle with people you love. Or on top of a rosemary bush if this is your wish (why, Dance, why?).

Wonderful, beautiful luck.