HALF DAY

The fog this morning was a rarity. I long to live by the sea just so I can have a great collection of fog-filled photographs. I ran inside to get my camera and walked past the construction site to capture this moment of mystical vapour hovering above the canyon trees.

A half day of school for the kids meant a restructuring of my day. The children were finished with school by noon instead of the normal 15:00. Three hours they did not get to burn off the energy of childhood - the one we as adults would love to harvest and use for ourselves. Silliness ensued by late afternoon.

Without a yard at my place, my children are confined indoors every other week. A "good" thing in Austin as you cannot let your children play outside for fear of someone calling the police or Child Protective Services on you as in the case of this Austin lady. Absurd, I know, but what can you do.

"I like sporks", exclaimed Cinnamon at dinnertime.

"That way we don't have to have forks and spoons", she continued.

I wasn't able to find the bag of plastic spoons for her applesauce this morning, so she was given a spork at school. She found it quite amusing.

For dinner, I revisited an old recipe of mine from last spring - red lentil soup with honeyed onions and yogurt. Instead of scaling it down to a dinner-for-one size, I opted to make the recipe as is and have the soup for the next two dinners since the children refuse to eat it. I'm hoping one day their taste buds expand beyond penne pasta with Greek feta - the same dinner tonight as they had last night minus the Parmesan. Dessert was sweet red raspberries.

For the most part, my son and daughter played well together today. They first went to Bunny Land - where they pretended to ride on a plane and subways, following a map to get to a place where their stuffed animals lived. Then they played with their Ravensburger game.

More than anything, they enjoyed being silly. Even during story time when we started a new book I am having a difficult time reading due to the writing style. I simply cannot get into it - must we say the aunt's first and last name so often and use every adjective imaginable to describe things. Since it arrived in the mail today, I will make my way through to the end. Silliness is welcome in this case...as is wine.