The Grandma

I skyped with Cara again. It's always so nice to hear from her. They're in Georgia now after a stay in Turkey. I asked about their lodging, and she showed me their small and neat BnB. They've got it for a couple weeks and don't know where they're headed next. 

She noted that the living quarters came with a Georgian grandma next door who brings her cookies and fruit and special coffee, kisses her on both cheeks and was currently in the garden with Mack the cat settled comfortably on her lap. 

That's a quite a nice feature for a BnB. I hope they feature it in their advertising.

Cast Iron Memory

The property that came we bought 3 years ago to build our retirement home came with a ramshackle little house chockablock full of contents. The woman walked out and sold it to her grandson. He walked out and we bought it.

I knew the owner, and I contacted her to let her know that she was certainly welcome to come and go through the house and take anything that she wanted. I also contacted her son, a kid that I'd graduated with and offered the same thing to him and his siblings. Both Mary and Dave thanked me, but never came to clear out. 

Out of the blue, I received a message on facebook. The person asked if we were the ones who had bought the property. I advised her that we were. She said "I know it's a long shot, but there's a cast iron frying pan...." I read the message to Tim and he immediately said, "Yeah. That's in the stove." 

Now her aunt and uncle live across the road, so when we went to camp yesterday, I ducked across the road with that frying pan. Pat didn't recognize me at first, and her eyes went wide as they went from my face to the frying pan in my hand. I said, "It's me, Debby, Anna's sister. I heard Junior was giving you lip and so I brought you something to straighten him out with." She recognized me then, and laughed out loud. 

I told her the story of the frying pan and told her that she had a niece who would be stopping by for it. She studied it a bit incredulously. "Why would she want this old thing?" 

Funny, isn't it? The things that evoke the most powerful memories can be the most ordinary things. 

Something that makes me smile!

Iris in the rocking chair her great-great grandparents bought for her grandma nearly 60 years back.

Not Tired

Tim made an early appointment to have the new tires put on the car. (TireS because the tires on it were very expensive ~ they came on the car when we bought it ~ and Tim didn't want to replace the one expensive tire with another expensive tire, so he bought two new front tires).

Anyhoo.

Tim made the appointment at 7, which meant that he and William had to be up and moving much earlier than usual. When he told William about the appointment, and what time they would be getting up,

William looked at him and said, "That's WAY early."

Tim said, "Yes. That's why you're going to bed early."

William was not happy about this and protested. Tim stood firm.

William headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth with one last parting shot. "You're a barbarian."

Flat Tire, revisited

When we went back and found the wire, something else we noticed is that where they had 'skimmed' the road, they had laid that wire grid work open, torn some of it free. In one place, there was even a foot long section standing loose and facing into oncoming traffic. 

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that the situation needed to be addressed. So I went to the court house with my piece of wire. They sent me to the municipal building. The folks at the municipal building in turn called PennDot who said that it was a contractor doing the road work there.

They took the information for me and filed a 430 claim.

In the meantime, I told each stop about the wires poking up in the road at the intersection of North Parker and Pennsylvania Ave. At each telling, people seemed shocked to hear this, and acted as if they personally were going to rectify the situation.

Long story short: they haven't. But I am grateful that it appears that we will recoup at least part of the cost.