A helicopter went over about half an hour ago. I think my house sits in the flight path between Surprise Valley Hospital—kind of a triage unit, actually—and Mercy Hospital in the city of Redding 200+ miles to the west. These flights go over once or twice a week bearing the critically ill or mothers-to-be experiencing difficult labors.

I forgot to close a window, so the house got very cold overnight. But we slept late today, and by the time we awoke at 8:15 the sun had broken over the top of the ridge to beam against our windows and thaw us out. My brother sits at an angle to the sun as he plays cards downstairs and waits for me to get things going.

The dogs have been out and back several times and now lie sleeping here (Apple on the bed, Sally on the rug) without a trace of anxiety. I've already had my moment with Greta on the sunny side steps. Her favorite fair-weather morning ritual, to writhe on her back next to me on the steps in the early sun while I scratch her under her arms.

The frogs disappeared from the office for almost 24 hours, and I was feeling wistful, believing they'd gone away for the winter. But last night I went around watering plants before going to bed and when I poured the very cold water into the thicket of long spider plant leaves out one popped, alarmed, onto the kitchen table; I had moved the plant there temporarily the day before to get it out of the way of an office shelf we were carrying to the truck.

B&B for the froggies, it turns out.

I captured the little guy and carried him to the water dish on my desk. When I returned to watering, it occurred to me to look under the other spider plant leaves, and sure enough, the smaller, paler, more nervous frog blinked up at me.

So they do hang out together!

I snatched up that one, as well, to transport back home, but it was much more active and harder to hang onto, kept leaping from between my fingers onto the hard wood floor, but I was finally able to put her alongside her mate. [Now why would "smaller, paler, more nervous" mean "female frog" to me? For all I know males frogs are the smaller jumpier ones....] Then I moved the spider plant back to the office where it belonged, and marveled that the frogs hadn't emigrated to other rooms, but had stayed right with the plant for a whole day.