Keeping the Faith

Fans.  We did not abandon you.  No, we've just been shoveling snow, because as we have noted here before, we do spring like winter here in Minnesota.  Now, to be sure, the six to eight inches that accumulated here in the Twin Cities last Thursday night was not so terrible when one compared it to the events that unfolded in other parts of our nation last week, but around here, well, it felt like another log on the fire all the same.  And it's snowing AGAIN right now, Fans.  AGAIN.  (Do you remember, three years ago this week, when Our Birdie burst onto the scene?  The apple tree was in bloom and we brought her home on a perfect, blue-sky spring day.  Now that was a spring!)  So we've been sort of glum--trying to remember all that is beautiful in this world while we watched terrible things happen and tried not be scared, and slogging through snow, cloudy days, and colds.  (Birdie has been sick, and so has Ted.)  But, we are told that this winter storm is our very, very last and it might reach 70 this Saturday when we celebrate Birdie's third birthday here at Raleigh House.  Birdie is well enough to be getting into trouble with her erstwhile sidekick again, and Ted is well enough to be entering that fray again.  So we keep the faith, we keep the faith for brighter days.

As it happens, today is Earth Day.  When Julie arrived home with the bambini and they settled into read for a bit while Ted finished making dinner, Clara selected Hug Time from the shelf.  Clara calls this book "Heart We Love You" because the cover features its main character, a tiny cat named, Jules, hugging a large pink heart.*  In Hug-Time-Heart-We-Love-You, Jules embarks on a quest to give the whole world a hug to make it feel better and learns that "The world is so big. . .And yet so small, It's time that we embrace it all.  That's something that we all can do.  Start with the one who's closest to you."  And that's when you holler "HUG TIME!" and wrap your arms around everyone who's around you.

As we say, we are keeping the faith, holding on to those closest to us as we wait for a new spring.

*Fans of the comic strips Mutts would recognize the illustrations of Hug Time's author, Pat McDonnell.

Flowers, blue skies. . .

And Birdie.