Sunrise

Wednesday morning:
My thoughts...  This has to be a better day than yesterday, right? Yesterday I was dealing with a poor night's sleep, was battling toddler diahrrea at home, and then had to be at work at 6:30am, which meant leaving home by 5:30am, which meant the alarm going off at 4:30am and that just plain stinks. I can get up at 5:00, but 4:30 is pushing it for me. I laid in bed until 5:05, blowing any chance for a shower before heading to work. Headed out the door 8 minutes later than planned. 5:38am. Didn't have time to stop and wash the nasty February salt off my bright blue dull and dirty Saturn Vue like I wanted to, and got to my desk at work at 6:38. Had a full day, two simultaeous leadership events on opposite ends of the building. One of the presenters completely tossed the agenda out the window, took the lunch break an hour and a half after it was scheduled (and two hours after the food was delivered), and then ended the session two hours early. Whatever, not a big deal, right? All in all, the day wasn't terrible. I decided that since I was at work at 6:30 (ish, I mean 6:30-ish, not yuck-ish) I was going to try to leave around 3:30 and hopefully get a short visit in with my Mom and Aunt, who were at my house watching Gavin and my nephew. Well, I was busy and ended up leaving work at 4:15, still way better than staying until 5:00 or 6:00 and missing the opportunity to see my Mom and Aunt. I was excited as I crossed the puddle-covered street to the parking ramp.  There was only about 4' of pavement exposed in the center of the street, the rest of the street was under water and the deep part of the puddles where the road meets the sidewalk, were about 4" deep. The air temperature was warm (36 degrees), but there was a bitterly cold wind that whipped and slapped my hair against my face, flipped my coat-tail up against my back, and made me squint as I checked for cars. I was toting my purse, my lunch bag, and my laptop bag. I got to my car on the fourth floor of the parking ramp and looked for a dry spot on the floor of the parking ramp to set my bags while I dug through my purse for my keys. Hmmm, not in the key pocket - must have slipped them into another pocket of my purse. Nope... there they were in the ignition of the car, cackling at me as I half laughed at myself and half wanted to scream at myself. I had JUST chatted with someone a week ago about locking the keys in the car one day when I almost thought I had done it and then realized they were, in fact, in my purse, just at the bottom. Anyway, this time I really did lock the keys in the car - I guess that's what happens when you're tired and it's early! Thank goodness for AAA Roadside Assistance. I can't say they were speedy - it took them almost an hour to arrive, but when they did (it was Bobby and Steve's Auto World), they had the car open in less than a minute. I'll spare you the details of the driver actually trying to find me and then trying to find a place to park his tow truck, which was currently towing a car. (yeah, not gonna find a place to park that big rig very easily). Anyway, I finally got home at about 6:00. The evening went okay, but I went to bed mad. Cliff and I had butted heads on parenting at bedtime - he was doing the bedtime routine and I was interjecting from the comfort of my bathtub. I know - my fault. Then when I got out of the tub and went out to the kitchen to say goodnight to Cliff, well, I don't really know what happened, but it wasn't what I was expecting and it wasn't good. Maybe it was silly, but I got cranky really fast and went to bed mad.

Back to Wednesday morning...
So, now it's Wednesday morning, 5:00am and I wake up thinking "This day HAS to be better than yesterday, right?" At 6:00am I'm finally about to crawl out of bed and the phone rings. It's Cliff's mom - she's got a terrible cold and feels miserable and can't watch Gavin today. Okay, breathe deeply. Wait until at least 6:30 to call daycare to see if he can go to daycare today. If not, I'll be waking up my favorite babysitters (my nieces) via text message to see which one of them wants to get their stay-up-too-late tails out of bed and come over and watch Gavin for me. I know neither of them would complain about it for a minute, but I hate to wake them. They stay up too late. Wait, did I say that already? They do.

Thankfully, Jo (daycare) said, "Sure, Gavin can come today" or maybe it was "Oh my gosh, are you really calling me at 6:30? The first kids don't come until 7:30, I'm still waking up. What? You want to know if Gavin can come today? Why? I don't know. Let me think. Yeah, I think that would be okay"   ...nope, it was definitely "Yeah, he can come today" and I silently cheered inside! I actually just said, "That would be awesome, thank you, we'll bring him over at 8!"

Then, like a Godsent, Cliff offered to take Gavin to daycare so I could go in to work earlier rather than later and therefore, be able to pick Gavin up from daycare at 5:00, since it was Cliff's night out. Somehow now that I type that out it seems more like he was doing himself a favor than me, but really he was doing me a favor. He knows I hate to work a less than full day at work and was making sure I didn't have to.

So... I'm feeling wary of the way the day is starting out, but not so sure I should file it away yet as another crummy day. Afterall, it was only 7:00-ish.

...and then...

I pulled that dirty, salty, nowhere-near-bright blue car out of the dirty puddle-laden driveway and I saw this...

   
Pardon the power lines in there. I could have cropped the photo to leave them out, but the inage was so magnificently large and amazingly gorgeous I just couldn't take any of it away. If I could have backed up another half-mile to capture more of it, I would have. It was breathtaking.

The only thing more beautiful was when I turned the next corner and saw in my (salt covered) side mirror, the silhouette of our neighbor's old barn and silo against this color-rich backdrop. The image was breathtaking (although dotted with salt-spots in the mirror). If another car hadn't been approaching, I would have stopped and gotten out of the car to take a photo for you, but I thought I'd stay safe and keep driving. I hope this photo is enough to fill your day with color. It was enough to fill mine. It did turn out to be a good day after all.
.