what looks like art

It seems funny to post these snowy pictures today when outside, we wore T-shirts to play in the mud, but this is Minnesota in spring.

Wait, spring. And this is still technically late winter. Yep, this is typical of maybe April, even early May, but such an anomaly for this time of year. I remember a few of Ryan's birthdays (he's a St Patty's Day baby) where I was doing the first of winter's major pooper scooping (ah, my friend calls it "poop soup," and that is so, so horrifyingly apt), but we did it in February of this year.

Either way, Friday was a big day: a big meeting at the school and that night, the book launch for one of my press's first books. (Ventriloquy. So, so good.) My energy was all over the place--thinking about the future, thinking about being a publisher at an event for the first time, trying to get my kids to stop climbing the walls, and I realized this one thing would just help all the dust settle around me.

Clarity, breath, outdoors.

Here we are: snow etchings, trunk climbing, don't go near that ice!ing, trailing limbs to see the paths behind us'ing, paw printing.

Maya was so thrilled: "Look at the birds! The big black birds!" We'd gone to the wildlife sanctuary the weekend before and she knew them to be crows.

She also found this little blip of oil spilled onto the walkway and asked about it. In awe, she told me the splotch "looks like art."

I love her so. Have I mentioned that yet?

We saw, then, leaves encased in Friday's ice, bald eagles filtering through trees.