Yesterday morning I walked over to a foundation’s office to hand-deliver a grant proposal for the daytime homeless sanctuary I volunteer with, Repairers of the Breach. (Website HERE; Facebook page HERE. Check them out if you’re interested in finding a very worthy cause to support via donation or volunteering 🙂 )

On the way back I paused on the second-floor landing of the Chase Tower to take a picture of the giant ladybugs crawling down the building across the street to text to my daughters. (Sorry about all the reflections; I was indoors and the lights behind me showed up pretty prominently on the glass of the window I took the photo through. You can even make out the guy sitting on the bench next to me who was talking on his phone. He’s right there behind/above/around the lowest ladybug.)

When my daughters were young and I’d pick them up from my brother and sister-in-law’s house in Bay View after work, it was a highlight of their evening, especially in the early darkness of winter months, to spot the red glow of these ladybugs as we drove up Water Street into downtown on our way home. Now that my brother and sister-in-law have moved, we never seem to drive that far south on Water Street at night. I thought my girls might get a kick out of seeing that their old touchstone is still here. You can find’ more background on this unique sculpture HERE in a WUWM story from March 2017.

Then, speaking of stone, as I was walking past City Hall, where they’re currently doing the latest installment of the never-ending construction/restoration this beautiful-but-high-maintenance building requires, I noticed what appeared to be repairs to cracks in the granite base. Oh no, I thought, now the building is starting to fracture. Took me a minute to realize, duh!, that these are natural veins in the rock itself.

I love rocks and took a year of geology in college. But I am so separated from “earth” during the ordinary course of my days that, sadly, I don’t always recognize what I’m seeing. As a result my “aha” moment there on the sidewalk was a bemused cross between chagrin and delight. But mostly delight 🙂