If girl friends are for talking, man friends are for bonding in daring feats. Walker's friends are here, and in the 2 hours I left them alone yesterday, they found the feats. They walked down to East Sands, and came back loaded with fish 'n chips to report they had just climbed some cliffs. I didn't remember there were any cliffs.

Today, as he headed out the door to Edinburgh, I was remembering with horror that I'd told him we should climb Arthur's Seat. But I wasn't going now. And there were cliffs. I warned him just under 200 times to please be safe. I'm sure they're climbing again as I type, but I've spared my heart the thumps and stayed home.

For the first half hour after Walker left, I mourned that I'd chosen to miss the castle-topped Royal Mile in Edinburgh and lauded myself for staying home to rescue the vegetables from the driver (and, it turned out, the train tickets from the FedEx agent). But then, a household thrill surged through me and I spritzed soap onto the shower, vacuumed, went out to buy more sponges. I did my daily job searches, and opened the door on some clean, brisk breeze.

I found no spectacular photos on my short walk, but I did find joy, so here it's a-coming at you:

High tide.
Catching high tide seems to be as rare as seeing a unicorn around here. I stood on the jut of cement where Walker and I had our first long conversation and reveled in the waves beneath me.

The flowers are wall-climbing right outside our front door. Our whole garden is a bower of spring scent which welcomes better than words.

The flowers on our wynd are growing out of the walls; how do they do that?!

And these little flowers by the sea are mighty in their own right withstanding the hearty coastal gusts. A little cliff of beauty.

I've already forgotten the shower that I don't want to scrub today. In two months, I won't even remember what our shower looked like. What will remain will be the cliffs, the moments of beauty we searching for and found, the risks that were worth getting out of a rut to try. We'll look back on now as a time when we walked on the beach every single day, where our flat was full of light. I'm trying to let that future perspective influence today. The smudges on the windows might frustrate me right now, but in a month, they will be forgotten.

We'll wish we'd made more time for cliffs of adventure. We're off on a train adventure soon to an undisclosed location that Walker and I might adore. No literal cliffs will be involved, but perhaps some metaphoric ones. Stay. tuned.