Little silver lady

Seven-thirty in the morning... Patience stretching with friends in a frigid ballroom waiting on the judges panel...

Swishing through soft shoe... stomping through hard shoe... Miss E meets her at the end with an “I am over the moon about your dances! That was beautiful!”... Patience appreciates this... then is quickly distracted in a “SQUIRREL!” moment by fingering her teacher's set of handmade leather Mz. Frizzle earrings, wondering why one of them is a storm cloud with rain drops while the other is a rainbow...

An hour later she's gliding out reels and pounding our hornpipes on another stage...

Upstairs waiting results... a wild swing in opinions from two different judges tables sends Patience and another girl to nearly the bottom of the rankings with the first panel... then both surging to the top with the second... yet Patience tucks on another 2nd place sash and another 2nd place medal with another glass vase before jetting home for the afternoon...

The boys back from church and Puck returning from J's... claims it's too hot to step out again except for some tinkering on Presley with Francis who stops by to borrow a pickaxe...

...but the rest of us drive out under towering cloud to St. Charles for the little Peruvian festival at Los Incas to celebrate Yali's roots... Patience – sporting a face somehow lightly stained and/or crusted with chocolate, blood, and Doritos cheese dust – falls in love with a handmade cloud-soft alpaca toy... she names him Kevin... Oxbear insists on buying me a pair of earrings in the bright colors of the Andes... Yali is happy to observe a live alpaca munching clover-ish weeds in a small pen... and there are balloon creatures for both kids before leaving under crackle of thunder in the north...

Then with the Peruvian restaurant too packed and the Colombian cafe and the Mexican restaurant both closed... we opt for something less correct to Yali's cultural heritage and throw back fat quesadillas and loaded Texas nachos at Global Quesadilla...