Totally lit a fire last night (and yes it is 65F in Cali but I couldn't wait) 

You know how most people (or, rather "most people on Pinterest"; not "most real people") do an annual spring cleaning? I always forget to do that because I'm so excited about actually doing spring-type things (like being outside as opposed to on my couch). Trying to get my house under control in preparation for the colder months simply makes more sense to me: winter - even in not-so-wintry California - is when we spend tons of time at home...so shouldn't we make that home as cozy and pleasant-to-be-in as possible?

Get off my fancy new bed, Virgil. 

Kendrick is freezing.

This makes no sense, because our house is not, but apparently our internal thermostats are set to Opposite. All I want is a nice, gentle gust of fresh air, but it turns out that what I think of as "a refreshing cross-breeze" translates to "arctic blast" in Kendrick-speak. In the summer, what this means is that I sleep with no covers and six fans pointed in my direction while he huddles under the coverlet to guard against the 80-degree evening chill. In the winter, we are at an impasse. Because fiiiiine, I'll close the windows and shut down the whole spectacularly lovely, breezy situation that our bedroom has the potential to enjoy, but even with the windows closed and a comforter on our bed, I routinely wake up to discover that my husband has pulled two or three extra blankets out of the linen closet and is ensconced underneath them as if he's preparing for a new Ice Age.

Little girls are apparently way more interested in goats than antiques.

I LOVE it when you go to a flea market/swap meet/antique store with zero expectations and then accidentally stumble upon a treasure that just so happens to require exactly the (small) amount of cash that you have sitting in your wallet. 

Right?!

There are many drawbacks to living in the Age Of The Internet. Among them is the fact that I can no longer have a phone conversation where I sound like a marginally well-functioning human being as opposed to an awkward, stuttering person-bot programmed to focus solely on how quickly the interaction can come to an end (apparently this "condition" is increasingly common nowadays thanks to the fact that emojis let us LOL without actually risking another wrinkle).

So, okay, the fact that people can now communicate without actually seeing each other is potentially problematic, and a bit of a bummer. But it also means that people like me, who live thousands of miles away from many of the people they love the most in the world, get to occasionally feel like those people are a part of their lives in the present moment, not just in occasional "so what have you been up to?!" bursts.

Take Francesca, for example (who lives only about 400 miles away, in Los Angeles, but still: I would very much like to see her every single day, so the example holds). Every once in awhile we get on a back-and-forth text or email marathon about nothing especially important - and it's those kinds of conversations I love the most, because you skip all the "catching up" and just...talk.