I have a headache. It is not a health induced headache. Nor is it in any way physiological, or neurological. It is an HGTV headache. For those lay people who are not decorating enthusiasts, I am referring to Home & Garden Television. I watch their station with a nearly religious zeal. I do this because of a condition I have which has been diagnosed by my husband as O.C.D. (Obsessive Compulsive Decorating). He swears that if we are in a hotel room for longer than 24 hours, I will decorate it. Is it so wrong to want to add some fresh flowers to a room?? I would refute his allegations, but the evidence is in the paint. We have owned our current house for 8 years and I have painted and redecorated the dining room six times. The downstairs bathroom has been redone 4 times and three out of four of the upstairs bedrooms have been repainted at least 3-4 times. Oh, and the family room has been redone five times. I have redone the kitchen cabinets twice. Once, when Derek was away in Japan, I decided to paint our bedroom…in the middle of the night. Thank heaven for 24 hour Wal-marts. You get the gist.
Now, I can’t blame any of the HGTV television shows directly, but I do feel that they deliberately led me to my current plight. The thing is, I keep watching these shows where some trendy designer checks out some poor schmucks real estate nightmare and then comes back two days later, whips out a laptop and procedes to show the home owner a fabulous new, Technicolor, 3D…practically holographic depiction of the perfect solution to all of their décor woes. With the slightest click of the mouse, the walls change color, other walls dissolve to unveil a brand new dining room and floor coloring changes with digital flourish.
My O.C.D. little brain went into overdrive the first time I saw this wondrous marvel of decorating technology. I wanted that! I could feel the décor lust kick in. Since that first tease, I have poured hungrily over programs that promised the same miracles for at least two years.
As spring hit this year, my brain only had room for the yard. For months I have decorated the yard, weeded the yard, entertained in the yard and relaxed in the yard. Like a kitten who has had way too much attention paid to it by a 3 year old tormentor, you could almost feel the house breathe a sigh of relief at my obvious distraction, but we have recently been hit by an early fall and as the temperature dropped, my thoughts have turned back to the interior and all of the things I have neglected. After a three day HGTV/DIY binge, I lost my battle with reason.
I was at Office Max having some senior portrait proof magazines bound when I saw it, a beautiful box boasting a glossy photo of a stunning home promised me that if I had their software, I could transform my living space. Deep in my soul I knew that if I just had that software, I could make my home look like the one on the cover. My daughter had mentioned that her husband bought her a home decorating program for her birthday. If she could do it, I knew I could too! I should have remembered that her husband is a software engineer.
I knew the box felt too heavy when I picked it up and cradled it close to my heart, giddy with anticipation, but I was in deep denial and didn’t question it’s heft. I took it home and eagerly slit through the clear seal spanning the opening to the box.
It is my belief that not mentioning that this software comes with a SEVEN HUNDRED page manual is a gross oversight on the part of HGTV and their software developers. This is a highly relevant piece of information that could have significantly impacted my decision regarding this particular purchase.
Taking a deep, bracing breath, I decided that as a computer literate, tech savvy women, I would not be daunted by this minor setback, and setting the monstrous manual aside I confidently installed the software and opened up the design program, eager to begin creating my new and undoubtedly fabulous 1920's inspired, art deco library. After wading through their “House Design Wizard” and lying through my teeth about dimensions and roof type and basement wall depth and so on, my first design screen popped up. It looked nothing like my house. In fact it was just a big, square, white, wasteland. I felt my optimism start to plummet. Steeling my resolve, I opened the manual.
I would like to suggest to HGTV that in addition to mentioning the 700 page manual on the front of the box, they should also put, in a large, highlighted box…in bold type…that in order to use this software, they would advise first securing an advanced degree…preferably a doctorate...in architectural engineering. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!? There are 58 chapters, all pointing out in graphic detail, that I am completely inadequate in every conceivable way to the task of designing a room with their software! Who knew Tolstoy wrote tech manuals! I am not averse to the idea of going back to college, but I didn’t really want to have to do it simply to be able to use a bit of decorating software. And in case you are thinking "oh, well it's probably only a hundred pages long and in 7 different languages", you are mistaken. Every word on every page is in English. Completely unintelligible English, but English none-the-less.
After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that it will be significantly cheaper to hire a professional designer to bring their laptop to my house and show me THEIR beautiful 3D designs than it will be to pay 8-9 years of tuition to get my doctorate. Because I am a stubborn woman, I will take a crack at using this software, but don’t be surprised if my house ends up looking like a Salvador Dali painting.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
I'll trade you two puree's and a cat's eye for a boulder
Today was the perfect autumn day! The air was crisp, the clouds scudded across the sky in steely gray swirls, miniature wind devils caused fiery red and orange and yellow leaves to dance frenetically across the garden and the smell of wood smoke wafted in the air. For some reason autumn always invigorates me. Maybe it’s the crispness of the air or the fiery colors. Whatever it is, I just feel more…vivid in the fall.
I got my photo editing work done early in the day so that I could play hooky with Derek this afternoon. We had an exciting adventure planned with our granddaughter, Julia.
Derek picked Julia up on his way home from work and the three of us headed out to Valla’s Pumpkin Patch for an afternoon of adventure. Valla’s is a huge farm on the outskirts of town that, most appropriately, grows pumpkins of every imaginable shape, size and even color. For a few short weeks every fall the place is transformed into a magical autumn wonderland. Every nook and cranny is a picture perfect scene of autumnal bliss. A large red painted barn with white trim sits bursting at the seams with pumpkins and cornstalks, bales of hay and mum’s of every conceivable color. The paths are lined with wooden carts laden with more pumpkins and oddly grotesque looking gourds. Much to Julia’s delight, another barn was filled with every bit of Halloween paraphernalia imaginable. There were gruesome rubber masks and freakishly large spiders as well as princess tiara’s and The Sorting Hat from Harry Potter. She tried everything on.
The farm is located several miles from the outskirts of the city amidst perfect rolling hills. It couldn’t have looked better if it were a Hollywood designed set.
Interestingly enough, I would swear in court that I have never been there before today. Derek, on the other hand, swears that I have been there no less than three times. The sad truth is I have no idea which one of us is right. Senility in one so young is a terrible thing.
From the moment we pulled into the parking lot, Julia went into overdrive. Her tiny two year old body could barely contain her excitement. Watching her leaping from one foot to the other reminded me of the Mexican jumping beans we would pick up in Tijuana when I was a kid. If you haven’t seen them, they’re really pretty amazing. It’s a bean that has had a tiny worm burrow its way into the center. As the worm squirms around inside the bean, it makes it jump around, hence the name jumping beans. That was what Julia was like today. 200 psi of excitement crammed into a 25 lb body. There was a real possibility of a spontaneous implosion occurring.
Julia wanted to do everything…twice. First we looked through an area with dioramas of children’s stories and fairy tales. Ancient looking paper Mache’ figures looked as though they had seen better years, but still had a certain charm that was not missed by Julia’s keen eye.
We raced from one activity to another as though they would announce a winner at the end of the day for the person who saw the most in the shortest time. We made it through the maize maze in record time (that would be the record for the longest it has ever taken to find ones way out of the maze. It is NOT prudent to put a two year old in charge of direction selection in these delicate circumstances).
We stopped for a soft pretzel and Derek got a roasted turkey leg that looked like it came off a world class body builder. Next we meandered through a quaint looking sort of general store. Julia found at least five different items that caused her to exclaim “I want this”! Papa finally told her she had to pick just one. The undisputed winner was a bright orange, jack-o-lantern lollipop the size of her head. While they haggled over the purchase I discovered, to my intense delight, two huge bins filled with every size and color of marble imaginable. I was instantly transported back to the fifth grade.
One of my darkest secrets, one even my closest friends aren’t aware of…until now…is that in my youth, I was a colossal marble junkie. I couldn’t get enough. I had a world class (at least to my 10 year old mind) marble collection. Every recess, every lunch hour, every bus stop wait, before AND after school was spent playing marbles. An addiction like this was a huge burden for a 10 year old girl to bear, especially in the dark days before 12 step programs. I knew all the lingo; Purees, cat’s eyes, boulders, devil’s eye, corkscrews, snakes, ribbons, Aggies. I even had a lucky shooter. It was a mesmerizing clear blue puree. I was a marble connoisseur.
Each day at lunch, my cronies and I would hunker down on our haunches around our favorite marble circle and the negotiations would begin. Sometimes marble trades were spoils of war. The winner picked a particular marble that he had long coveted as his prize for winning. Other times we would simply trade. I say simply, when in fact there was nothing simple about it. We would launch into negotiations so intense you would have thought we were holding international peace talks. I would eyeball each trade offering carefully, looking for signs of imperfections in the glass, or worse, cracks. I looked for color quality and uniqueness of swirl patterns. If I’d known what a jewelers loop was I’d have had one. We played our games with a fierce intensity.
Now here I was, standing there, hypnotized by the swirls and colors in the huge bins. A large sign above the bins announced that the marbles were $3.00 a bag. A little wooden peg beneath the sign held a dozen or so off white cloth bags waiting to be filled. It may have been because autumn always makes me feel nostalgic, but before I knew what I was doing, I found myself rifling carefully through the bins of marbles accessing each marble with the immaculate attention to detail of a diamond merchant. I worked feverishly to fill my bag as Derek stood there, shaking his head, knowing better than to question why a grown woman was loading up on marbles.
After sufficiently quenching my marble lust, we moved on to more Julia-centric activities. We tried to hit everything that would be dear to a two year old. We took the train ride around the perimeter of the farm, passing mock towns peopled by dusty and aging paper Mache’ townsfolk. We even saw an entire wall of mounted singing fish flopping in time to a wormy looking mannequin whistling the theme song to the Andy Griffith Show. Julia was in heaven and was now covered from head to waist in bright orange goo from licking her lollipop.
At one point on the train, she seemed to suddenly become aware of her sticky plight and poking her hands at me started wailing, “Nana, I’m sticky”! I marveled that this could be a sort of surprise to her considering the zeal with which she had been devouring her lolly. Between Derek’s water bottle and the packet of tissues in my purse, we were able to de-stickify her with some modicum of success and then we were off to the next adventure, which was a huge ‘sand’ box filled with kernels of corn!
This was taking playing with your food to a colossal new level and Julia plunged in with glee. Derek followed suit and soon had her buried to her waist in corn kernels. You’ve just gotta love Nebraska. We explored too many activities to catalog here, but the highlights were a tricycle course that Lance Armstrong himself would have killed to ride, a pony ride and a lost gold mine.
Julia did us proud on the pony ride as she virtually leapt onto the ponies back and rode like a pro without even a flicker of nervousness. After the pony, Julia insisted that we go through the ‘Lost Gold Mine’. It was a fun walk through a ‘cave’ that was actually much larger on the inside than it looked from the outside. It too was populated by badly made, but amusing miners, some of which exhibited arthritic looking animatronics, while others didn’t move, but had voice tracks that professed “this map is no good” and other sage words of wisdom.
As we exited the cave Julia jumped up and down shouting “Again! Again!” I suggested that Papa might be an excellent choice for a second round, while I looked in the shops. Now, if Julia had come out the second time yelling “Again! Again!” I think Papa would have had the fortitude to resist her, but when she popped out, turned to Papa and said “Wanna go again Papa? Huh?” I knew she had him, so off they toddled for one last plunge into the mine shafts beneath Valla’s.
By the time they came out for the third time it was obvious that Julia was done. She kept insisting that she didn’t want to leave, but her tired eyes and fussy face betrayed her. I finally told her we had to leave because they were closing…a tiny lie for which I feel confident God will someday forgive me.
Against a darkening autumn sunset, we headed back to the car, Julia clutching a little painted pumpkin that she had chosen on our way out, and me clutching my treasured marbles.
It was a perfect autumn day.
I got my photo editing work done early in the day so that I could play hooky with Derek this afternoon. We had an exciting adventure planned with our granddaughter, Julia.
Derek picked Julia up on his way home from work and the three of us headed out to Valla’s Pumpkin Patch for an afternoon of adventure. Valla’s is a huge farm on the outskirts of town that, most appropriately, grows pumpkins of every imaginable shape, size and even color. For a few short weeks every fall the place is transformed into a magical autumn wonderland. Every nook and cranny is a picture perfect scene of autumnal bliss. A large red painted barn with white trim sits bursting at the seams with pumpkins and cornstalks, bales of hay and mum’s of every conceivable color. The paths are lined with wooden carts laden with more pumpkins and oddly grotesque looking gourds. Much to Julia’s delight, another barn was filled with every bit of Halloween paraphernalia imaginable. There were gruesome rubber masks and freakishly large spiders as well as princess tiara’s and The Sorting Hat from Harry Potter. She tried everything on.
The farm is located several miles from the outskirts of the city amidst perfect rolling hills. It couldn’t have looked better if it were a Hollywood designed set.
Interestingly enough, I would swear in court that I have never been there before today. Derek, on the other hand, swears that I have been there no less than three times. The sad truth is I have no idea which one of us is right. Senility in one so young is a terrible thing.
From the moment we pulled into the parking lot, Julia went into overdrive. Her tiny two year old body could barely contain her excitement. Watching her leaping from one foot to the other reminded me of the Mexican jumping beans we would pick up in Tijuana when I was a kid. If you haven’t seen them, they’re really pretty amazing. It’s a bean that has had a tiny worm burrow its way into the center. As the worm squirms around inside the bean, it makes it jump around, hence the name jumping beans. That was what Julia was like today. 200 psi of excitement crammed into a 25 lb body. There was a real possibility of a spontaneous implosion occurring.
Julia wanted to do everything…twice. First we looked through an area with dioramas of children’s stories and fairy tales. Ancient looking paper Mache’ figures looked as though they had seen better years, but still had a certain charm that was not missed by Julia’s keen eye.
We raced from one activity to another as though they would announce a winner at the end of the day for the person who saw the most in the shortest time. We made it through the maize maze in record time (that would be the record for the longest it has ever taken to find ones way out of the maze. It is NOT prudent to put a two year old in charge of direction selection in these delicate circumstances).
We stopped for a soft pretzel and Derek got a roasted turkey leg that looked like it came off a world class body builder. Next we meandered through a quaint looking sort of general store. Julia found at least five different items that caused her to exclaim “I want this”! Papa finally told her she had to pick just one. The undisputed winner was a bright orange, jack-o-lantern lollipop the size of her head. While they haggled over the purchase I discovered, to my intense delight, two huge bins filled with every size and color of marble imaginable. I was instantly transported back to the fifth grade.
One of my darkest secrets, one even my closest friends aren’t aware of…until now…is that in my youth, I was a colossal marble junkie. I couldn’t get enough. I had a world class (at least to my 10 year old mind) marble collection. Every recess, every lunch hour, every bus stop wait, before AND after school was spent playing marbles. An addiction like this was a huge burden for a 10 year old girl to bear, especially in the dark days before 12 step programs. I knew all the lingo; Purees, cat’s eyes, boulders, devil’s eye, corkscrews, snakes, ribbons, Aggies. I even had a lucky shooter. It was a mesmerizing clear blue puree. I was a marble connoisseur.
Each day at lunch, my cronies and I would hunker down on our haunches around our favorite marble circle and the negotiations would begin. Sometimes marble trades were spoils of war. The winner picked a particular marble that he had long coveted as his prize for winning. Other times we would simply trade. I say simply, when in fact there was nothing simple about it. We would launch into negotiations so intense you would have thought we were holding international peace talks. I would eyeball each trade offering carefully, looking for signs of imperfections in the glass, or worse, cracks. I looked for color quality and uniqueness of swirl patterns. If I’d known what a jewelers loop was I’d have had one. We played our games with a fierce intensity.
Now here I was, standing there, hypnotized by the swirls and colors in the huge bins. A large sign above the bins announced that the marbles were $3.00 a bag. A little wooden peg beneath the sign held a dozen or so off white cloth bags waiting to be filled. It may have been because autumn always makes me feel nostalgic, but before I knew what I was doing, I found myself rifling carefully through the bins of marbles accessing each marble with the immaculate attention to detail of a diamond merchant. I worked feverishly to fill my bag as Derek stood there, shaking his head, knowing better than to question why a grown woman was loading up on marbles.
After sufficiently quenching my marble lust, we moved on to more Julia-centric activities. We tried to hit everything that would be dear to a two year old. We took the train ride around the perimeter of the farm, passing mock towns peopled by dusty and aging paper Mache’ townsfolk. We even saw an entire wall of mounted singing fish flopping in time to a wormy looking mannequin whistling the theme song to the Andy Griffith Show. Julia was in heaven and was now covered from head to waist in bright orange goo from licking her lollipop.
At one point on the train, she seemed to suddenly become aware of her sticky plight and poking her hands at me started wailing, “Nana, I’m sticky”! I marveled that this could be a sort of surprise to her considering the zeal with which she had been devouring her lolly. Between Derek’s water bottle and the packet of tissues in my purse, we were able to de-stickify her with some modicum of success and then we were off to the next adventure, which was a huge ‘sand’ box filled with kernels of corn!
This was taking playing with your food to a colossal new level and Julia plunged in with glee. Derek followed suit and soon had her buried to her waist in corn kernels. You’ve just gotta love Nebraska. We explored too many activities to catalog here, but the highlights were a tricycle course that Lance Armstrong himself would have killed to ride, a pony ride and a lost gold mine.
Julia did us proud on the pony ride as she virtually leapt onto the ponies back and rode like a pro without even a flicker of nervousness. After the pony, Julia insisted that we go through the ‘Lost Gold Mine’. It was a fun walk through a ‘cave’ that was actually much larger on the inside than it looked from the outside. It too was populated by badly made, but amusing miners, some of which exhibited arthritic looking animatronics, while others didn’t move, but had voice tracks that professed “this map is no good” and other sage words of wisdom.
As we exited the cave Julia jumped up and down shouting “Again! Again!” I suggested that Papa might be an excellent choice for a second round, while I looked in the shops. Now, if Julia had come out the second time yelling “Again! Again!” I think Papa would have had the fortitude to resist her, but when she popped out, turned to Papa and said “Wanna go again Papa? Huh?” I knew she had him, so off they toddled for one last plunge into the mine shafts beneath Valla’s.
By the time they came out for the third time it was obvious that Julia was done. She kept insisting that she didn’t want to leave, but her tired eyes and fussy face betrayed her. I finally told her we had to leave because they were closing…a tiny lie for which I feel confident God will someday forgive me.
Against a darkening autumn sunset, we headed back to the car, Julia clutching a little painted pumpkin that she had chosen on our way out, and me clutching my treasured marbles.
It was a perfect autumn day.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Oh the wicked irony!
Okay, I swear I will never joke again. The irony is too unkind. I never finished blogging about my trip. Well, I wrote the last entry while I was in Colorado, but I never posted it. This is because it took every bit of my energy just to keep up with my sweet little granddaughters. It was a brilliant visit. I enjoyed my time with Samantha and with the girls. Eden and I had a princess evening together on Thursday night while Samantha and Mark went out for the evening for their anniversary. I enjoyed everything, but through a huffing and puffing haze of fatigue. Friday evening Mark drove me back to Denver to catch the train. The train ride was a blissfully uneventful trip devoid of drunken shoulder leaners. I slept most of the way and arrived in Omaha at 6:00 am. Derek was there to meet me at the station and whisked me back to the house where I grabbed my Heritage Makers materials and headed to Bryan High school to participate in a craft fair that I had booked weeks before. Derek gallantly donned his bright shiny suit of armor and rode me to the fair on his white horse. I can think of several million things he would like to do more than spend the day at a high school craft fair, but instead he sat by my side for five hours. It was supposed to be seven, but I wimped out after five. I was bleary eyed. We got home and I quickly fell into a coma like nap and woke just in time to prepare for a family reunion photo shoot at 5:30. After two hours of shooting pictures of people who didn’t want their pictures taken, I went home and collapsed into a heap…until Monday. I missed Sunday entirely. Monday through Wednesday went by in a mucous encrusted haze. Still no blogging. Not enough energy to be witty. This morning at 6:34 I snapped. I grabbed the phone and called the base clinic for a same day appointment.
Here’s where the wicked irony kicks in. Turns out I really DO have swine flu. I believe the politically correct, 21st century term is The H1N1 virus. For any of you living in California, here’s a little warning. The typhoid Mary that kept slumping on to my shoulder was headed your direction.
You can only imagine my wry amusement this evening when I re-read my previous blog prior to posting it and discovered my prophetic little statement about my train mate giving my swine flu. So, I will try to get back onto the blogging track. There is some pretty good blog fodder coming up as my youngest son, Colt, has announced that not only is he engaged to be married, he is going into the military. I will be happy to keep you all posted as things develop. I have to go now. I have an overwhelming urge to go root around for truffles.
Here’s where the wicked irony kicks in. Turns out I really DO have swine flu. I believe the politically correct, 21st century term is The H1N1 virus. For any of you living in California, here’s a little warning. The typhoid Mary that kept slumping on to my shoulder was headed your direction.
You can only imagine my wry amusement this evening when I re-read my previous blog prior to posting it and discovered my prophetic little statement about my train mate giving my swine flu. So, I will try to get back onto the blogging track. There is some pretty good blog fodder coming up as my youngest son, Colt, has announced that not only is he engaged to be married, he is going into the military. I will be happy to keep you all posted as things develop. I have to go now. I have an overwhelming urge to go root around for truffles.
I am intoxicated…then validated.
The last 48 years of my life were completely validated by two events today. That seems a sufficiently compelling opening line to keep you reading to the end, don’t you think? Good, because having said that I have to back up to yesterday’s blog. In literary circles this is done as a suspense builder. In my case, I’m just doing it to be annoying.
So, the culmination of my Zen railroad experience last night was very short lived. At about 4:00 a.m. the conductor led an odiferous and obviously intoxicated woman to the seat next to mine and apologetically advised me that she needed to seat the woman next to me. She had apparently become so intoxicated that she made a huge scene in one of the club cars, shouting that someone had stolen her baggage, when, in fact, she has merely left it beneath a different table in her inebriated stupor. Each time she breathed on me, I felt my blood alcohol level rise another two points. She would let out a large sniffly snort and then slowly drift over until her head rested on my shoulder. At this point I would sit and reel from the smell of alcohol and pray that she would eventually lean over the other direction…until she fell into the isle. Yes, that would work. She snuffled and snarfled throughout the remainder of the night. I felt myself getting unhealthier just being in close proximity. I’m fairly certain she gave me swine flu.
I arrived in Denver at exactly 7:30 am as predicted and was met by the entire Knieser contingent. A three second, full on exposure to Eden’s beaming smile upon seeing me made the entire night worthwhile. The day was spent visiting, playing and shopping all punctuated by frequent cries of “Hey Nana”. While riding in the car, Eden asked me where Nebraska was. I told her it was North East of here and was far away. She replied “I know, I had to sleep a very long time for you to get here”. I appreciated and acknowledged her efforts on my behalf.
We spent a lovely day playing and shopping and visiting. We went to the mall so Eden could play in the large play area there and against my better judgment, I crawled all over the place with her, sliding down miniature snowy mountains and traversing trees and cabins, knowing I would regret it later when my muscles cooled down and started tightening.
We stopped for dinner in the food court of the mall and there, my sweet little Eden looked up at me with a beaming smile and said “I need you Nana, a whole, whole bunch”. Life validated. Everything else is just icing from here.
Later in the evening my good friend Laura came and picked us up to go for a late night snack at Village Inn. The food was more an excuse to get out and visit than a meal. Our waitress was either sick, very sleepy, drunk, or just the worst waitress to ever serve a meal in the history of waitresses. She was distracted, flakey and got pretty much every aspect of our order wrong. Laura and I suffered in semi tolerant silence. Samantha wrote the waitress a note thanking her and wishing her a good night. She finished it off with “you have a beautiful smile”. I smiled indulgently as I saw her writing the note. It was one of those “pat, pat, pat…oh how sweet” smiles.
We finished our meal (no more than 15 minutes after closing…oops). As we were waiting to pay our check, I noticed our waitress clearing our table. She picked up Samantha’s note and read it, then very gently, she folded the napkin and with her beautiful smile plastered firmly on her face, carefully placed the note in her pocket.
I smiled at my daughter. A life validated twice in one day!
So, the culmination of my Zen railroad experience last night was very short lived. At about 4:00 a.m. the conductor led an odiferous and obviously intoxicated woman to the seat next to mine and apologetically advised me that she needed to seat the woman next to me. She had apparently become so intoxicated that she made a huge scene in one of the club cars, shouting that someone had stolen her baggage, when, in fact, she has merely left it beneath a different table in her inebriated stupor. Each time she breathed on me, I felt my blood alcohol level rise another two points. She would let out a large sniffly snort and then slowly drift over until her head rested on my shoulder. At this point I would sit and reel from the smell of alcohol and pray that she would eventually lean over the other direction…until she fell into the isle. Yes, that would work. She snuffled and snarfled throughout the remainder of the night. I felt myself getting unhealthier just being in close proximity. I’m fairly certain she gave me swine flu.
I arrived in Denver at exactly 7:30 am as predicted and was met by the entire Knieser contingent. A three second, full on exposure to Eden’s beaming smile upon seeing me made the entire night worthwhile. The day was spent visiting, playing and shopping all punctuated by frequent cries of “Hey Nana”. While riding in the car, Eden asked me where Nebraska was. I told her it was North East of here and was far away. She replied “I know, I had to sleep a very long time for you to get here”. I appreciated and acknowledged her efforts on my behalf.
We spent a lovely day playing and shopping and visiting. We went to the mall so Eden could play in the large play area there and against my better judgment, I crawled all over the place with her, sliding down miniature snowy mountains and traversing trees and cabins, knowing I would regret it later when my muscles cooled down and started tightening.
We stopped for dinner in the food court of the mall and there, my sweet little Eden looked up at me with a beaming smile and said “I need you Nana, a whole, whole bunch”. Life validated. Everything else is just icing from here.
Later in the evening my good friend Laura came and picked us up to go for a late night snack at Village Inn. The food was more an excuse to get out and visit than a meal. Our waitress was either sick, very sleepy, drunk, or just the worst waitress to ever serve a meal in the history of waitresses. She was distracted, flakey and got pretty much every aspect of our order wrong. Laura and I suffered in semi tolerant silence. Samantha wrote the waitress a note thanking her and wishing her a good night. She finished it off with “you have a beautiful smile”. I smiled indulgently as I saw her writing the note. It was one of those “pat, pat, pat…oh how sweet” smiles.
We finished our meal (no more than 15 minutes after closing…oops). As we were waiting to pay our check, I noticed our waitress clearing our table. She picked up Samantha’s note and read it, then very gently, she folded the napkin and with her beautiful smile plastered firmly on her face, carefully placed the note in her pocket.
I smiled at my daughter. A life validated twice in one day!
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