food, crochet, merriment
But we…have…a…crawler…
Stationary is no longer good enough.
Now when she sees something pretty…
that before…she could only look at…
and long for…
from afar…
it is magically within her reach…
within seconds.
Perhaps a name change is in order here, because…
overnight, Baby “Chomp” has transformed into…
the “Flash.”
And we’re keeping her.
We found another one…
a County Fair, that is…
complete with a cow girl on a horse showing us where to park…
lovely Elsie and Bossy the cows…
and sleek, sleepy sheep.
Say that three times really fast…I dare you.
I found a small smackeral of trimmed wool on the ground and I needed it.
Baby Chompy wanted to play the rubber duck game…and she won…
an amazingly cool stuffed wolf.
We saw a pink tractor…
and an oddly groomed llama.
We ate fair food…
saw blue ribbon vegetables…
gorgeous quilts…
beautiful preserves…
and amazing artwork.
Oooooh—slow down summer…
we aren’t finished with you yet.
When you look at a typical pile of cast off clothing, it’s likely you have the same conversation going on in your head that a lot of us do.
“Can someone else wear that?”
“Should I just donate it to DI or Good Will?”
“Is it unwearable?”
“Should we throw it away?”
But lately–since my beloved sewing machine has made it’s way home, every too-short shirt and badly fitting sweater has begun morphing in my mind–to something…
more.
Suddenly, I’m seeing the dreaded, disturbing collection as a fabulous store of potential—spread out in front of me…
waiting to see what’s next for them in the universal “repurpose” life plan…
My head seems filled with 10,000 little sticky notes…
giving a new direction to something old or torn or droopy or faded or just plain ugly.
It feels good to recycle paper and plastic and unplug the cell phone charger and turn out the lights and use less water and sew pretty handbags out of evil plastic sacks and make things we need right now out of things we thought we were finished with.
This all may seem like tiny drops in the big, huge world bucket—but doing something always beats doing nothing. So, because we honestly really love this place, this pretty, little planet…we choose something…
and it feels very right.
When you wake 3 babies and 7 grown-ups at 4 am to catch a shuttle at 5…
so you can get to the airport at 6:30 to stand in line until 8…
to catch the 9am flight back home…
there really should be an agreement of some sort…
that they will not, under any circumstances, delay the flight–
for two and a half hours.
But there isn’t.
So they did.
And the whole building found out the real meaning of the words, “sweet tempered babies” and “darn good sports.”
Till finally, finally they pointed us westward…
grateful that they got that wing screwed back on…
so that we could fly, and fly, and fly safely back…
to our little home…
in the mountains.
——————
Week 21 Food Storage Prompt: 10 lbs. Powdered Milk
If we’re going to see it–it has to be today. Note the lady in the white T-shirt smiling sweetly at our little herd. Yeah, we got a lot of that.
Aren’t these mounted policemen the guys who chased Santa Claus through Central Park in that Elf movie? I bet that got them on the naughty list.
A shy bald kid at his favorite place on the face of the earth…
Nintendo World! Gee, I thought our front room was Nintendo world. My mistake.
The youngsters were thoroughly enthralled.
Most of them, anyway.
I really wanted to see where the Macy’s Parade takes place on Thanksgiving. Maybe I’m some kind of country chick or something, but I just couldn’t fathom an 8 story department store.
By the time we went up all the escalators–I was a believer.
This place had a McDonalds right in the middle of the store. Yogurt–yum!
Then on to the Empire State Building. We didn’t actually take the tour to the top—
but the ground level was really pretty.
Speaking of ground–apparently New York people spit a ton of gum on the ground. Ewww–ah.
Prepare now for the ultimate Subway experience. First you go in and down…
then sometimes you have to go back up. Hooray for big burly men.
See that gal in the green shirt waaaay up ahead? Well, she is our illustrious leader, guiding us to all things touristy–provided you can keep up.
I’ll admit, I expected the subways to be dark and dirty and full of scary gangs and half dead people. I know, too many movies–but the truth is–they were clean and well lit and full of regular folks…just like us. See? I can be taught!
Our destination was at the very last stop. That why the sign says, “Last Stop.” har har
We found this lush, shady park to sit in and rest our tired bones…
and stare out at the lovely Lady Liberty. This was my very first time seeing her.
We just sat and thought for a very long time. It seemed like the proper thing to do. That’s the bald kid and his mom in between the trees there.
It was really quite peaceful…sobering even. My mother’s family came here from Sweden and my father’s came from Scotland about a hundred years ago. They both saw this very same lovely sight.
We loved the boats…
and the chicken nuggets…
the sea birds…
and the mysteriously matching trees.
We discovered that they are building a memorial visitor’s center for the World Trade Center.
So, for now all we could do was stand back and take pictures of the Ground Zero horizon…
but it was enough.