I HAD planned to go to the grocery store today, and drop off a pile of boxes and envelopes at the post office. However, a phone call shortly after Jake left for work informed me that my car would not be happy going up the driveway, so I've hunkered down for the day. We played in the basement breaking down some boxes into shipping stiffener for coloring books and packing up orders, and then made fresh granola - this time without raisins or dried cranberries. She just picks them out to eat separately anyway! Then there was some playing outside in the melting snow. Some children have sandboxes. We have snowbanks!



Most of the grubby look to the snow is birch seeds. I don't think I've ever seen as many as we got this winter. I vacuumed twice yesterday because they are EVERYWHERE.

I also worked on the trench at the bottom of the driveway. It's been a good thaw so far, with controlled runoff and sort of a settling out of all the ice pack, but we'll see how things go. Crossing fingers we don't get heavy rains before the ground thaws again. That got ugly last spring.

Now I'm going to be doing some scanning, some painting, and then some writing. I've gotten some loose ends tied up on freelance things, cleaned up a few emails, and am ready to be creative.

I will probably have some painting energy and daubs left at the end of my session today - if you leave a prompt in the comments, I will paint you an abstract! They will be ACEOs on canvas, $5 apiece. (No obligation to buy, of course, but you'll get first dibs.) If I don't get to your prompt today, I will do so next week, and I'm capping at 20 in case something crazy happens.