Happy hearts day.

Young Miss C drove up to spend the day with us today..... she left Clear Lake early this morning and got here at ten o'clock. This is the first time she has driven up here herself-- she has a GPS-thing in her car and she is fearless with that thing. The day was cold and cloudy, drippy and damp, just downright ugly. We spent the day right here in the house, chatting over tea and egg salad for lunch-- Miss C went to the chicken coop twice today to gather the eggs-- three of them, even on this too-cold day. She doesn't really like chickens-- she's more of a "horse and cow girl," as she said, but she does love eggs.

We made a zucchini pie for dinner-- she did the crust, I cooked the zucchini and onions, she mixed everything together and cleaned up the counter when we were done. When the pie came out of the oven, it smelled too good to wait till dinner, so we each had a little sliver of it, with still more hot tea. C said we haven't "lost our touch" in the kitchen.

Between the sliver of zucchini pie and dinner-time, C and I made some Valentines. That girl can sit down for hours with a stack of papers and rolls of pretty ribbon, plus she went through my boxes of buttons and beads, and the hot-glue gun didn't get cooled down till we were all Valentined out. The three of us had dinner together, then C left for a 40-minute drive to see her friends in a college town a bit north of here. They were all going out for country-dancing, then she planned to spend the night up there with her friends before driving back home tomorrow.

I laughed out loud this afternoon when C and I were making the Valentines. She was talking about "young teens" who drive while trying to text and talk on the phone. In her words-- "I don't know what's wrong with the 15-year-olds today... they're too young to drive... they shouldn't have their own cars till they're 18 and they're not so careless." I told her that was a very mature thing for a girl of her age to say. (C will be 19 next month.)

Our dog Gracie got all excited when C walked in the back door this morning, and more excited still when C got down on the floor to play with her, the way C has been doing since she was in the second grade. Mickey Kitty remembered C right away-- and crawled up on her shoulder to play with her hair--- Mickey's favorite thing is to rub his paws in someone's hair, and C has very long hair, so Mickey was in kitty-heaven. Gatsby had seen C over the summer, and again at Christmas, but I don't think he really remembered her because he spent most of the time outside before all this blessed cold weather came our way. C hadn't seen Sweet Pea before today, being that we just found him last month, but Sweet Pea is friendly with everyone and it took only a few seconds before that cat jumped into C's lap and curled up.

When C was here, the house was lively and bubbly..... when she left, everything went back to being very quiet. I love the quiet. But it's hard to beat lively and bubbly at times.