The snow is gone!  One day of 55 degree weather yesterday---and this morning I let the dog out and there was no snow at all on the ground.

All the buried dog toys have re-surfaced, and it reminds me of a terrible time many years ago when my then 16-year-old daughter had a birthday party for herself, inviting just her good friends, and her father and I went off for the evening to play bridge with some close friends of ours---until we got a call from the police suggesting we come right home.

Word had gone out, as it apparently does, on the teenaged grapevine, that there was a PARTY, and so kids---strangers to her---came from all over, even nearby towns---and crashed into our house.  It was she, actually, if I remember correctly, who called the police.  When we got home, the police had gone, and all of the party-crashers had been removed (and some had stolen some small household objects on their way out) and our daughter, weeping, was still cleaning up the mess along with some of her faithful friends.

But the reason I thought about it just now is because her birthday is in February. The party was in February, in Maine. Deep snow on the ground.  And when it melted, a couple of months later, our yard was strewn with revealed beer cans---I want to say hundreds, but it probably was many fewer than that---tossed by the party-crashers eluding the police.

That same daughter, ironically, now has a master's degree in criminal justice, and just yesterday emailed me that she was thinking of going on for further work in forensic psychology.

She is also an artist, and here is a self-portrait she did a few years ago, which I love:

Probably all those beer-guzzling party-crashers are now lawyers and doctors and clergymen and parents.

And while I'm at it, here is a wonderful folk-arty sketch my daughter did once, of the view from her childhood bedroom window in Maine (she now lives in San Francisco):

*****

I am supposed to leave tomorrow morning for Sarasota, Florida.  And guess what I just heard for a weather prediction here: snow.  GEEEZ!  I just hope my plane gets out of here okay.