A+; how was yours ?

My sister and I used to swim at that lake right by the freeway. I think it was that one. I think it was my sister. It was in the summer when it looked a lot less like a steaming cauldron of icy vampire infested water. And it is a quarry, or sort of a pit scraped out in the mud. Never mind the details.

The teenager drove all the way to grandma's on the freeway, and all the way back, which was nice although it does not actually entitle a person to play rap music on the car radio (why do teenagers hate to be lectured unless it is via their music? I even hate for people to talk to me on and on without giving me space to say anything back or maybe run away from them. Rap music isn't the only kind of music that is like somebody hectoring you: there is a kind of frantic jazz that feels the same way. Oh, and show tunes. Or anything by Barbra Streisand or Whitney Houston.) I got to eat leftovers from my brother's family's holiday feast the night before. I really like doing that. Why can't I just go to my friends' houses and open up their refrigerators and browse whatever they have available? I could throw out moldy things as those presented themselves. The joy of not cooking and the joy of thriftiness and the joy of exploring all mixed up together and packed into a rubbery container with a lid that almost fits, who wouldn't like it? Besides some gifts selected just for me, I also got to take home quite a few things that didn't fit the nieces or they didn't like them. So did SWMBT. Good things, like fleece sweatpants and the sort of slippers you can walk around outside in, while you are being lectured via music over headphones, if you are a person who enjoys wearing slippers outdoors and lecturing music, for example.

Some of us took the hyper dog for a walk down a steep hill (the slobbery tennis ball kept getting away) and through a graveyard (oldest birth date logged, if you count having to do math to get it : 1812) and up a different street and around a twisty street and back up the hill, then (minus dog) to the backyard of a neighbor who was away in Hawaii who said we could let the hyper dog run in the enormous back yard, but first we had to check to see if their chickens were cooped up. They had a GREAT chicken run: a couple of pens connected by chicken tunnels (not underground tunnels but made of wire) with interesting doors that could segment off the different areas and a intricate folding double door system to allow or disallow access to the giant yard. Think of those plastic cages for gerbils connected by plastic hoses, and then make it much larger and turn it into chicken wire and you have the idea. I am impressed and inspired. That yard had its own hyper dog needing interaction with us and the spit covered tennis ball. One side of the dog was white and the other side had a certain amount of spots. It reminded me of a car I had a long time ago in Texas with different things painted on both sides, that somebody told me would be really useful because I could rob an icehouse, then just turn the car around and park it in the other side of the street, and nobody would catch me. I guess the dog could run at you from one direction, bite you, then run away and when out of sight turn in the other direction and sit down. "Uh, not me. I have spots. Wag wag wag."

After that we gathered up all our loot, took Mom/Grandma back home, watered her flowers for her and cut up her gift fudge and accepted some, and went back home. The End.