On The Road Again...

I love to drive.  Tomorrow I'm heading down to Springfield, Illinois to visit my daughter.  She's been begging me to come visit.  Why?  Well, she does miss me and her little brother.  She also knows that I will take her shopping.  She may get a home cooked meal out of it.  But most importantly, I will clean. She may take a few swipes at it, but nobody gets a house as clean as I do.  No, I'm not a professional, nor do I want to be, but I just like my space clean.  I mess it up all of the time!  But messy and dirty are two different things, and I can't stand dirt and can't stand the thought of my daughter living in it.  Of course, she should learn to do a better job at it, and plenty of people think it's just a shame, but I'm still Mom and as such, still believe in taking care of my children, even if they are 21 years old.  She doesn't have a car so she takes the bus everywhere.  For the next couple of days, I'll get up early, take her to work, pick her up for lunch, take her back and return at 5 to pick her up.  In between I'll hit my favorite Springfield thrift stores and I'm sure I'll find something great because I always do.  And she'll get a good dose of being a kid again for a day or two, with Mom doing all the hard stuff.

I'm having a garage sale this weekend.  This is the most packed garage I've seen--not trashed, but full of real stuff...furniture, tools, toys--no junk.  Since I can't work around the fridge, the washer, the dryer, the 500 or so records, the wheelchair and the desks and dressers, I will have to wait until Friday morning to get set up so I can actually pull things out into the driveway.  Should be an interesting day!  Did I mention that this is my Mom's garage?  I can't complain because I'm the one who is insisting that this take place.  It's kind of scary in there right now, plus I need the work space.  As much as I love my new spot, I miss the yard, the driveway, the basement and the garage.  I'm free to use hers, but it's up to me to clean it out and make it usable.

I was trying to think of a good story to share today.  I remember that when I was a kid, my grandfather had the best smelling back yard because the entire patio and back porch was covered by a grape arbor.  Nothing fancy mind you, just leafy and sweet and purple and green.  According to my sister, who seems to remember everything, there was a secret tunnel under the house as well.  The assumption is that bootleg liquor was produced and sold on his property before he bought it.  That's never been verified, but this is Chicago Heights and plenty of major players in the business passed through here, including Al Capone.  My dad graduated from high school in 1939, so he went to school with a lot of interesting characters who grew up to be even more "interesting".  Anyway, it's a good story, and the grapes were good.  Occasionally I see similar grapes in the grocery store.  They call them "table grapes" and they have a kind of weird, dry skin--you know what I mean?  But boy did I eat a lot of them when I was little.  Those were the only grapes I knew.  Now I'm thinking about all his other fruit trees, and the cherry tree we had in our own yard.  I have a good story about that, but I'll save it for another time.  It's a great story about a cherry tree, an open window, and two kids who really wanted to get outside to play.  Where there's a will...

I carted my camera around all day today, but didn't take any pictures so I'm going to post one that I took early one morning last winter.  I was still getting used to my new (old) surroundings.  The sounds (the bird that wakes me up every day), the smells (my neighbors are always cooking!) and the sights.  My view is pretty nice looking out at "the Street" but my bedroom faces the parking lot, dumpster and the alley.  Still, I woke up earlier than usual, the camera was handy and I took a few shots just as the sun was coming up.  After uploading them, I decided to play with the special effects and the results were pretty neat.  You just need a good picture with a little color to start with.  

It's all about perspective.  I saw the alley, but then I saw what was above it. I decided that this isn't such a bad place to be even if I don't have a yard or a basement or all the space that I used to have.  It has a great view!