Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do. (Elizabeth Bowen)

My daughter and I took a walk in town Monday so she could photograph pictures of outdoor art to fulfill a requirement of one of her Girl Scout badges. After we parked at the library, we strolled; and she shamelessly photographed the lawngerie posing as art on the front lawns of some of Woodbury's venerable Main Street homes.

The weather was unseasonably warm, and the sky grew unfavorably darker as we made our way. We were one image shy of the minimum requirement of five when the heavens burst a pipe and let loose everything they had on our bare heads. We held hands and ran like hell over potholes wide and deep as gorges, around alpine mounds of plowed snow, through muddy medians....Name it and you can bet we stepped in, around, or over it in our haste.

"You know what's great about this?" my daughter shouted as we lept over a puddle.

I had no idea. "What, honey?"

"We don't even care!" She was laughing at the mess we were.

Before we knew it, we were back under the porch of the library, dripping wet and laughing and glad for the unseasonable warmth. We jumped in the car and went off to get that fifth picture--an orange dog, we think. He fits in rather nicely with the naked golden lady whose hair shoots out like the rays of the sun, the plastic fish that swallowed a mailbox, the cigar-store Indian, the rusty chimes, and the unappealing but artsy posts and lintel at the pricey-but-worth-it restaurant.

We were soaking wet, and we didn't care. I heard the words my father would use when he couldn't believe what he just saw: "A work of art!"

Baby, yes you are.