I Miss Spring

Just as we were beginning to get used to the warm breezes and sunshine, this cold wave comes. In January, we would love to have a day like this, but now it just seems cruel. Actually, I think it's probably warmer outside than I think. I just haven't gone out to check. It's been an uneventful 3 days, and if I don't write things down as they happen, it's like they never did happen, and it's all forgotten. How can this be when Mike and I can remember going into a store in Auburn over 40 years ago and buying me not one but 2 pair of shoes for graduation (his - I was just a spectator) and for whatever might happen with our exciting move to an uncharted territory - Georgia. On one hand, it was exciting to me to actually buy something after a full year of "starving student and wife," although I don't think we were ever hungry. And probably the reason he remembers it is that he had to buy 2 pair of shoes. When I was doing a search last week to see if I could find the type of Villager shoes I liked so much then, I noticed that regular women's shoes could be bought for $7.99. I think these would have been more than that and probably seemed like a whole bunch to us at that time. One pair would have surely been enough, but I probably had a hard time deciding. That was more than likely the first of the "Go ahead and get what you want," phrases that he has uttered hundreds if not thousands of times over the years and as late as Monday to the daughter trying to stay in her wedding budget.

Speaking of which, I got an overnight visit from Emily, finally finishing up her clinicals in Warm Springs with much relief and excitement at being so close to her goal. Her car was crammed full of whatever it took to live there for that time (Grandaddy knows exactly how many days it was) - birthday party hats in the back, many, many books piled everywhere, snack bags and water bottles and CDs, and I don't even want to imagine how many loads of dirty clothes that are being washed this afternoon. We talked ourselves into exhaustion about deadlines and park rentals and flowers and knives and more flowers and why lily-of-the-valley is one of the most expensive flowers to have for a wedding bouquet and why that's what she has had her heart set on. I believe we saw on line that a bouquet of lily-of-the-valley that some celebrity carried in her wedding was $600. We were wanting a teeny bit less than that! The whole bouquet thing started out that she would just carry an informal handful of flowers, then she saw lily-of-the valley, and that looked simple, and that got ruled out, and then we ended up looking at hundreds of bouquets until my head was spinning. The consensus again this morning was that it doesn't really matter. It's not a formal wedding, and they'll be dead the next day, and we're back to the simple handful. Oh, and cakes! People spend a LOT on a wedding cake. I know if had to do the decorating, you would need to pay me a lot too, but again it's something that will be gone the next day - if it's good - and that's what the "tastings" are for next weekend - to pick out an affordable, pretty, but mainly good-tasting cake. I do remember that our wedding cake, although beautiful, was not really good.

To get my mind off weddings, I'm going to go back and post various unrelated pictures that I took last week. The one I'm not going to include here is a picture of my neck that I took so I could enlarge and look at a puzzling red spot. Kathy, if you read this, stop right here. It started off like a mosquito bite but kept getting bigger and redder, and I was afraid it was a spider bite. Enlarging it didn't give me any more insight except that I'm more in need of plastic surgery than I thought. I think it's better now, just a dry patch, but I still don't know what caused it.

These are pictures I took on a library visit last week in the rain. I just think this spiral staircase is interesting. I had to be careful not to get the bag lady loitering at the foot of the stairs - or was that a mirror? The big wide steps make it not so painful to get to the second floor.
This is a kind of generic media room, but I love the fact that it's just filled to overflowing with audio tapes, and I still have a tape player! In several towns, I had a hard time finding anything to listen to, so this is a good thing.
They're beginning to get more CDs, enough to give me a little choice, but I think I mentioned before how low they are, and I'm standing on my head or kneeling down to look at them. The last CDs I took back, I had failed to put the last one of the series in the case, and the nice humming lady called and told me. It wasn't in the CD player, and I looked for it for days. Then I happened to open the CD slot or whatever that thing in the computer is called to back up some files, and there it was. Happy day! I think I mentioned something about my memory. The next two are some I took on the way home. The first is just a beautiful building across the street from the library. I'd like to know more about it. There's no sign out front to indicate it's a public building, so I don't know what it is. The last one is an area that I love when I come over the crest of a hill and start down. The Regions Bank building is the tall one and the capital and all those building are toward my left (somewhere). Again, I'd like to take a tour one day.
It seems like there's more and naturally more that I have to say, but the afternoon is gone, and I have to start back to work.