Seek and ye shall hide.

A beautiful day after so much cold and snow. Leila almost catches a rabbit after a long high-speed chase around the back yard. I repair the kids' slide, which had mysteriously detached itself from the rest of the swing set and found a new function as an escape chute from the deck.

As the sun goes down, Tertius and I are the last ones still outside, and he demands a game of hide and seek. He hides first while I solemnly count to twenty and immediately spot his red shirt behind a pine tree. But I maintain the fiction of not seeing him, probing a nearby euonymus until his giggles are impossible to ignore.

Now it's my turn to hide. I put the cover from the barbecue over my head and stand prominently in the middle of the deck, legs together, feet splayed. He gets to twenty, and I expect more giggles when he sees my pathetic attempt to conceal myself. All I hear, though is approaching footsteps and a wry comment of "Nice lamp" as he passes.