Today (which has only just begun) has been one of surprises. Some surprises are good – like finding a flower growing determinedly in a parking lot surrounded by pavement, as in the photo. Some are not so good, like hearing fire engine sirens at 7am. Or some are weird, like the time my brothers wedding caught on fire. Someday I’ll tell that story.

This morning, I was trying to find my husband to say goodbye before I left to drop my daughter at school. As an aside, about this husband: one thing I absolutely adore and appreciate about him is that he constantly reminds me how much he cares about me. He is, in fact, relentless in his devotion and it frees me to be me without worrying about us. He is fabulous. Every morning, the first thing he says to me is “I love you.” He never leaves the house (or lets me leave the house) without a goodbye kiss. At first I thought it was weird or inconvenient, but now I am rather dependent on it and I return it to him.

This morning, he was outside by the pool, which he often is during fall when leaves are stuffing themselves into the skimmers and clogging up all the pipes, but he kept going out the gate to the driveway, which was annoying because I was trying to get his attention and couldn’t. He can also be very focused. Eventually, I gave up in frustration and went back inside. He came inside before my daughter was ready to leave for school, flabbergasted because he had just removed 8 frogs from the pool. We’ve had one or two from time to time, but 8??!! It’s a plague of biblical proportions.

He disappeared once more out the door to the backyard and came in a few minutes later and declared he had just removed 4 more frogs from the pool. This makes 12. 12 frogs all in there at once. That’s a lot of frogs. It’s like a convention. Is there a word for a group of frogs? An army. An army of frogs. Hmm..that’s a rather violent image for our backyard oasis. He is very kind to animals and has a big heart, so he rescues them and releases them to hop off to their next adventure.

Then, after dropping my daughter off at school, I was driving to work and came to a traffic light which turned green but the red was flashing. What is a solid green light with flashing red at the same time? I didn’t learn that one in driving school.

So this day feels a little off kilter. I don’t know where that will lead, but I am strangely filled with excited anticipation. Anything could happen.