Today

Gaz colored the bottom of her right foot with a black marker and went for a stroll all over our beige carpet. I was more than a little angry, sent her to her room without the markers, and thankfully the Atlantis cleaner thing removed the marks that I found. (I think I just found another one, but the light is strange this time of day.)

I checked on her in her room, and she was busily and cheerfully coloring me a picture (with nice, washable crayons, I might add) to help me feel better.

Then we made a pot of Montana Gold tea (which is, incidentally, the best tea in the world) and drank tea with milk from her groovy 70's plastic teacups. The cucumber sandwiches didn't go over quite as well with the Gaz, who prefers her cukes and her sammich to be prepared and served individually. I sure ate well, though.

Now she's sitting next to me, buried under all the couch pillows, sighing heavily. "I'm having a rest because it's been a hard day!"

"What was the hardest part of the day?" I ask, expecting the morning's drama to figure in somewhere, or maybe all the coloring. Or maybe even all that patience that had to be exercised while waiting for tea to brew, waiting for me to finish some phone calls I had to make. Something like that.

"Drinking all that tea today was REALLY HARD WORK, Mom." Of course.