August 28, 2015
Selah June and I spent the late afternoon on an awesome adventure with Grammy. I saw a couple of houses that looked interesting and talked Mom into jumping in the car and going for a ride. SJ did her best to get into the conversation. Noises and laughs, gurgle sounds and tongue clicking, screeches and singing…. She tried every trick in the book. And I have to admit that they worked like a charm. We yelled and laughed up and down nearby streets.
It was like a trip down memory lane. I saw the house that Marty and Ruth Moore lived in. That little section of Fox Run has turned into a fancy little neighborhood of home renovations. We drove through River Gardens and saw houses that all my faculty friends live in. We drove through the other end of Mom’s street and spied on the neighbors.
Two episodes were priceless. First, we went into a neighborhood over by Azalea Trace. I didn’t realize that it was full of patio homes until I got there. So Mom looked at pictures on my phone of the one house that seemed interesting, and I drove by it slowly on the way outta there. But an old sweaty guy saw us lingering. Ugggghhhhhh….. He walked right up to the car, and I rolled down the window. (Stupid, stupid, stupid.) “Can I help y’all folks?” He told us some stuff about how great the neighborhood was and the house that was for sale. Whatever! He had his grimy dripping-with-sweat hands all on my car door. Sweat beads were rolling down my leather interior. Even now, it makes me vomit a little in my mouth. We quickly made our exit, and Mom cracked up because she new how much that had bothered me.
The next stop we made was in what I thought was supposed to be River Gardens. But no! It was some weird Riverina place. The houses looked like crazy psychedelic houses. We rolled the windows down to get a better look at the craziness, and I started running my mouth. “This looks like some architect started trippin’ on LSD and headed from River Gardens into the woods and ended up here with a hammer! Look at all those cars and boats and crap in that driveway! I can’t handle this place!” And then Mom noticed a man sitting in the boat in the driveway full of cars in front of the crazy house that looked like it belonged in the Middle East somewhere.
Needless to say, that’s two neighborhoods I won’t be visiting anytime soon.
Then we got a call from Dad asking us to dinner at Tijuana Flats. I can’t remember the last time I went there! They didn’t even recognize me… sad times. We sat outside. It was probably too hot to sit outside, but I don’t ever have the chance to eat food like a normal person or be outside, so it seemed like a good idea until it wasn’t. Little Miss did good until about 6:40, and then she just got tired. We made our exit, but I only had 9 miles of gas left in my tank. I rolled down the windows and played peek-a-boo with her while I stood at the pump. And then I realized that my back seat is a really good reflection of my life in 2015.
- regalia… because an administrator never knows when dress is academic formal
- a white paper… because everything is always a working draft waiting to be torn apart
- a baby…. because that’s the biggest thing and comparatively speaking nothing else matters
