Come on over!

You never know what you might find, but you are always welcome. It was a weekend of company (Lindsy here Th night before flying to FL, 2 musicians Fri.-Mon.) and events (RVR for me Fri.-Sat., concert for Alan on Sun.), and life was in a bit of a swirl.

Lindsy flew back from FL yesterday and when she got to our house we were all pretty punchy. She'd been traveling all day, our house was a wreck, and we still had a musician house guest, so she & the girls & I walked to the grocery store. "The fresh air, walk, and 'normal' activity will do us some good," I thought.

We weren't in the store long before Amelia disappeared. (By the way, they did NOT go to the grocery store in their underwear. The picture was taken AFTER the trip to the store. Stripping to their undies is normal. Going to the store in them is not.) So Lindsy took the cart & I took Evelyn & we split up to look for her. I found her meandering in an aisle, knelt down and did the low-tone-firm-voice-don't-ever-wander-away-from-Mommy talk, then proceeded to locate Lindsy, which proved to be even harder than finding Amelia. Afterward Lindsy said she'd had this funny visual image in her head of the bird's-eye view of us continually moving and missing one another in the aisles of the store.

At one point, I was walking swiftly down the meat aisle with a kid on each hand and I heard this "'scuse me! 'scuse me!" and had that sudden realization that the speaker was talking to ME. I turned around and this girl (who'd obviously been tailing me longer than she'd have liked) was moving towards me with Amelia's shoes in her hand. "Your daughter's got no shoes on," she said, handing them to me. I looked at Amelia's bare feet, laughed a silly, self-conscious, too-loud laugh, thanked the girl with way too much white-lady enthusiasm, and then wondered how Amelia could have walked right out of her shoes and never said boo about it.

We finally found Lindsy, got through checkout, and were walking home when Evelyn disappeared. She'd popped in to visit with the friendly, accented proprietor of the Near East Bakery, who knows us well. (He'd know us better if he accepted credit cards.) Lindsy, Amelia and I stopped and turned around in time to see Evelyn coming out of the store waving goodbye to the man. He stuck his head out the door, smiling and waving, and suddenly Evelyn stopped in her tracks. She ran back to the Near East Bakery man with her arms outstretched. He stretched his arms out to her, they embraced, and then she kissed him right on the mouth.

Ah, yes, a touch of "normal" in an otherwise pretty busy weekend. At least we got to see Lindsy!!