Wednesday? Where did you go?

Rabbit rabbit rabbit! Evil spirits begone from Nutwood!

I swear, it seemed like the day vanished in a poof of smoke. We went down to my folks' place this afternoon to pick up tables for our upcoming garage sale and then stayed to visit a while. Do you guys remember the story I posted here a while back? About the girl in the window? I had given a copy to my Dad and although he said he thought it was good, he said he didn't quite get it. I explained that the girl in the car grew up to be the woman at the gas station, and then he was like ohhh, okay. Well, I didn't even ask Mom to read it, because that's not her thing. She's not fond of fiction, and prefers biographies and nonfiction. She definitely has a morbid turn of mind at times (We still laugh about driving through the Georgia mountains, and as we looked over the sides at the deep ravines, Mom said, "That would be a good place to dump a body." Mom? Huh?), but I didn't think she'd care for it. She shocked me today by saying, "Honey, that was really good. It really caught my interest and made me want to keep reading. You should be writing for a newspaper or something."

I can't begin to tell you how much that meant to me. Like I said, I never thought it would interest Mom, so I didn't even ask her to read it. To hear her say that she thought it was really good was a very pleasant and completely unexpected surprise. I guess we never get too old to enjoy praise from our parents, do we? I'm smiling as I write this. I thanked her a couple of times for what she said, but I don't think she realizes how happy I was to hear that. Pretty cool.

On our way back, we were tooling along nicely when a couple of police cars came speeding up and passed us, lights flashing. We found out why before too long, as we ran into a bona fide traffic jam in Lapaz, Indiana, of all places. (Population 489 in the 2000 census) It was apparently a fairly bad accident, because it took about an hour to clear the logjam and get us moving. I didn't even have a book with me! Ack! I almost took one, too, but I always like looking around at the countryside, or the wildflowers (which are blooming like crazy now), or at people's landscaping. I looked at the same patch of wildflowers for about 15 minutes and Ken said, "How are those looking to you?" I said, "Stupid green." Haha! We finally got moving again, and I just hope no one was seriously hurt. We only saw one SUV that was smashed in the front, and it didn't look too awful, so I hope there were no major injuries.

Now Ken is trying to mow between the raindrops. It's an unseasonably cool day for July. I'm ready for warmth again!

As promised, here are a few pictures from last night. It was great to see my pals, and I'll look forward to next time. Maybe I'll be caught up on the book list by then...oh, and I did find that Lord Jim is available at Project Gutenberg. I think I'll give it a try online, but I can tell you right now that it is not better than holding a book in my hands. I'm tactile, baby. Anyhoo, here are the pictures.

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From left to right: Jillian and Erica (I love how Jillian is cracking up); Jim and me; Mary and Jillian; Sarah and Teresa (the birthday girl). A good time was had by all!