Today was a strange day. It started about this time last night, when Genevieve threw up and we had one of those horrible half-hours of frantic scrubbing, cleaning her up, and getting her weeping self back to bed.
Things were more or less okay in the morning before and after I left for work, but all afternoon I was the only person in the office, which always gives me a bad case of peopleshock when I have to interact with other humans. Around three, Shannon finally decided to bring an increasingly feverish Gigi to the clinic, an appointment which wound up taking two hours and kicked off an especially frantic dinner-and-bedtime routine. On the plus side, at dinner Julia recited a ten-line poem she memorized, and Gigi seemed okay (though tired and still sick) by six.
Once the girls were in bed, I headed out for a long run in the Arb. I took my usual long route, which is changing now almost day to day. I ran the same trails on Tuesday, but today long stretches were lined with hundred of delicate bright blue bellflowers. Toward the end of my session, I had a close-up encounter with a six-point buck - perhaps the same deer I encountered the other week. I could have almost touched him on the nose with the tip of my ski pole; I could see the individual strands of fuzz on his velvety antlers. He just stared at me and after I passed ambled across the trail and into the brush.