{Virtual Coffee}

Hello April and hello Tuesday! If we were meeting for coffee today I would tell you to leave your boots at the door because they are making puddles already. I don't mind a couple of rainy days because we just had the longest string of sunny (albeit) cold days and the rain will melt what is left of the snow. I also like the way it greens up everything at this time of year.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would tell you that spring must be here because The Eyesore came out and installed itself on our back deck again. Groan. I love to sit in it but I hate how it looks and how much of the actual deck this thing takes up. I had petitioned for it to go on the grass this year but, since I wasn't the one who assembled it, it ended up back on the deck.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would show you the first crocus I saw on Sunday

and tell you that I hung my first piece of laundry on the clothesline this year.

I would mention the mourning dove we saw in our feeder. I have seen these sitting on power lines and hear them often enough but I have never had one this close to me.

And while I was on the subject of birds, I wouldn't fail to mention the Mr. and Mrs. down by the water.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would tell you that I often read about other people finding heart shapes in things like rocks and leaves and even a calf's forehead, but it takes my kind of karma to find a heart shape in bird excrement. Is it a message from the Universe to find love everywhere I look?

If we were meeting for coffee today I would ask you why you think someone needs to put a padlock on a tree. Has there been a rash of tree thefts that I am unaware of?

I would end our little tete-a-tete with a big lemon for the principal at Riley's school who just cancelled his teacher's reading program which had parents in the class first thing EVERY morning to sit and read one-on-one with the students. My day used to be Tuesday and I would spend an hour to an hour and a half there. I got to see the class dynamic and the kids got the kind of attention that is rare in a classroom. I have seen their reading skills take leaps and bounds with this simple act. But you don't want to get me started so I'll give her a little Parsel-tongue and be done with it.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would say let's go over to Amy's Lucky Number 13 to eat the rest of Eric's oatmeal butterscotch cookies and leave crumbs on the carpet!