I am sitting here in my kitchen – laptop on the table, working from home. Alongside the table is a window, looking out onto the side of the house, where I have two bird feeders set up. It is a beautiful day, full of warmth and sunshine, and I’ve been lucky to watch as the birds have been visiting the feeders non-stop. Plenty of finches, both gold and purple, cardinals, a downy woodpecker, several catbirds, a tufted titmouse. Pesty mourning doves, sparrows, and grackles; a Downy woodpecker and either a white breasted nuthatch or black capped chickadee, I’m not sure since it flew away too quickly for me to get a good look. A red squirrel leaped nearly 5 feet from the ground to get to the finch feeder, which prompted me to go outside and raise it higher. I was even treated to the neighbor’s cat climbing into the dogwood tree to try and catch said squirrel
The kids are home – Will’s last day of school was yesterday, and Katie graduates tomorrow from pre-school. I don’t understand how, on such a gorgeous day, they are not in the backyard – or at least out on the porch – but they’ve been inside more than out.
Days like this truly are a gift, and we need to thankful for them. Days like this allow for meditation, to slow down, to examine, and reflect. I worked all morning on a note to send to Susan, from last night’s exchange, but the process of writing, of crafting forces me to carefully consider what it is I mean to say, to try and transcend the words into feeling and emotion; it also forces me to find my own answers to my questions. In the end, I discarded my original note. She was right – she has told me the truth. She is perplexing, but sometimes I am too dense to recognize, other times I need more time to figure things out. I’m sorry for being such a jerk lately. I’m an analyst, I figure things out, I break them down into understandable components, and I get caught up in details. No excuse – she is free to slap me next time, I deserve it.