I wasn’t going to write tonight…it’s almost 1am.  But I didn’t want to forget:

a) we had a really good day after work, and
b) a big part of that was a nice walk around the block, for which both girls got dressed up in princess dresses and fairy wings, and Lily brought her little princess umbrella, but she got tired of carrying it almost right away, so guess who gets to carry it…yup…me, and I closed it, but she told me, “No, Daddy, it has to be open, because it’s raining on the castle,” even though the world was crystalline sun and pleasantness, so I walked the whole way around the block like this while they walked slowly, poking and prodding at the world, and on no fewer than 4 instances I heard people passing by in their cars laughing at me while I twirled a princess umbrella, I heard them clearly, their windows down on account of the weather, but it was a good laugh, a springtime laugh bereft of any malice or sneering, and it is that sort of thing – plus a dazzling bouquet of bright yellow dandelions that I was enthusiastically urged to put behind my ear – that makes a day like this a day like this.