Visiting Parents

SUMMARY: A brief Cupertino interlude.

Last night, I sorted through about 600 slides to pick ones that I wanted to send out to be scanned in. And my slide viewer didn't light up. It's a pretty simple mechanical thing, enough so that even I knew how it was supposed to work, but it didn't. I replaced the batteries, no luck. I went shopping to get a new light bulb, replaced that, and it still didn't work. I fiddled around with the little metal pieces that conduct the current for a little while, and nothing, no light. Grrr.

Today, I had some things to drop off at my parents' house while I was in their neighborhood. So, as long as I was going, I took my slide viewer. After a little normal sort of conversation, I asked plaintively, "Daddy, can you fix my toy?"

While Dad was in the other room uttering various sounds and making interesting noises with my toy, I noticed that my mom was wearing her Girl Scout volunteer shirt and the color looked really nice on her. My mom was a girl scout or involved in scouting from when she was a little girl--many, many decades of scouting, and she was at a scouting event today, part of the organization's 100th anniversary year.

She says none of her photos look like her any more. I said I've noticed that lately about my own photos--the camera does weird things to my face so it doesn't look the way I *really* look any more. She said that's exactly how she feels.

Then dad came back into the room, and Lo! the slide viewer lit up! Thank goodness for Repair Hero Man!

On the way out, I stopped to take a photo I've been meaning to get for a while, cuz you don't see one of *these* locked to a pole in a shopping center every day.

All that, plus a morning spent with a friend whose father just died and an afternoon at the movies (Iron Lady) with another friend, then playing with the dogs and potting some flowers and random other household chores, and huh, it's past my bedtime and somehow I forgot to have dinner. Guess it's string cheese and crackers again and then goodnight.