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(An extra memory from our time in Belgium.)
When we got off the train in Brussels, this just down from the station.
It seemed an aggressive, passive-aggressive sign. We ate elsewhere that day, but cake seemed the better of the ideas. Very hip, hipster-ish place.
This is the tenth Fourth of July we’ve spent together. We took part in part of our regular tradition: getting ribs.
We missed the fireworks because we mis-timed things. But it was raining anyway. Clearly we got the important part right.
Last year we skipped the ribs for reasons that we’ve both forgotten. Had to do with staying in with friends, I think. That’s why we missed the picture then, why there’s a placeholder there now. Next year, maybe, we’ll get it right again.
Nevertheless, the traditional Fourth photograph collage:
Yesterday I completed the family circuit and hit my other grandparents’ home.
I walked around outside in the woods, as I did as a child. I got eaten up by mosquitos, as I did as a child. I was not told to be careful of snakes, as I was as a child. But probably only because my grandmother wasn’t home just then to warn and worry. She was at a funeral and I was killing time playing in the woods.
And then she came home and fussed at me, as she did when I was a child. And pretty much every day of my life she’s seen me.
It is a wonderful thing to be fussed at.
She’d had a big day so she had an early night last night. I played the Facebook where-are-they-now game. This is difficult to do in a place with limited cell phone service. It is even more challenging in a bedroom with only one electrical outlet, which is as far away from the bed as possible. These things didn’t matter much in the 60s, I guess, when the house was built.
Also, the mattress might be that old, too. And while I’m not that old, I always feel like it after a night in the back room.
But a lovely morning today. Huge breakfast. I washed dishes. More visiting and then this afternoon was timed to get on the road before the rain.
So with more traveling and visiting, I’ll just point out the obvious: when eight of 11 words on a label are that important, you pour yourself a big serving.
When you see pets — or people, for that matter — only occasionally you see them in a different light than if you had daily interactions.
People’s personality traits are more endearing or obnoxious. Things you thought you liked, you might rethink. Things that you thought you disliked might not seem so bad after all.
With animals it is a little bit different — personalities and interactions being what they are. But I look at this pup and I think there’s something worth learning.
Ya know, she’s got the right idea.
I didn’t even run that far today. It was one of those days where I ran precisely enough to get in a 5K. And then I stopped, right away. But tired? That’s me.
