Yesterday started at 3AM.  Sleep wouldn't return.  I was bummed.  I did everything that I usually do when I get up around 6:30 or 7, (the newspaper comes at 4) but by 5:30 I was almost three hours ahead of schedule.

I measure my day by doing small tasks that fill up time.  When you are older, you will understand.  I have a routine.  Anyway, when the sun came up in the East, I saw movement over the double doors to the back yard--because I was just sitting in my chair, trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing.  Movement was on the shelf of the transom window above the double doors.

It was a robin.  And she studied the ledge for quite awhile, then flew off and returned with straw in her beak.  I watched her as she struggled to build her nest.  I don't know why she chose that place because there wasn't anything to hold it in place.  She must have been a new mother with no experience at building a nest.  I'm sure it seemed safe, it was high up, but it wasn't secure.

At the first wind gust, all her work was for nought.  Straw flew everywhere and the nest fell apart.  I felt so sorry for her.  All that work gone, right when she is ready to lay her eggs.  I hope she has time to build another nest in a secure tree somewhere--hopefully in the back yard where I can watch her.

It doesn't matter how hard you work.  It doesn't matter if you do the job right.  If you do the right thing at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, things won't turn out like you plan.  Information and preparation are everything.

Bless her heart!  She had a plan.  She was sincere.  She wanted her babies to have a good place to grow up.  She just didn't know what she was doing.

It's better to learn from other people's mistakes than to make them all on your own.  Don't build your nest in the wrong place.  Get your babies in church.