Yellow Puppy Dog

Thrift Store Find?
Originally uploaded by minvervah

This was the crowning top of a display in a thrift-store in Crystal Lake. I like the contrast of the dry beige with the wet yellow, but good god, it is hideous.

It was placed next to someone's collection of bells from different states. People's desire to collect things always puzzles me. "I'm in Wyoming, I should collect a bell" someone must think. But mostly they were from lame places in Florida.

Baby Thoughts

The old lady who lived in the house across the street appears to have died. Appears?

Yes, appears.

She did not come over and tell us she was dying. She was 100, so we knew. And we'd see her soft living room light come on, then later go off, a definitive sign that the woman who had been a girl during World War I was still hanging out, night after night.

The caretakers would sit outside and smoke. There was a rock at the end of the old woman's driveway, and the caretakers would sit, always at 8am or 8pm, and smoke. The shift would change.

The smoking stopped a few weeks ago. Before Christmas? Now there is a green sign planted in the snow: "For Sale".

Soon new neighbors will move in, perhaps another couple with children, a couple like we are about to become. Their children will dance on the lawn, they will decorate the house. Perhaps we'll become friends and step inside for dinner?

But I won't forget the lady, living alone at the end of her life, sometimes slowly answering the door, the light usually on in the evening.

ChiBoGa

Arid Greenhouse Bloom
Originally uploaded by minvervah

Since we had to head up to Highland Park to pick up a crib for Gus, we decided to head over the the Chicago Botanical Gardens to see what was happening. For a garden in the winter in Chicago: not much. But the orchid room and the desert room are always a treat, and I made Shylo take this picture because it looked other-planetary.

Truly Pattern Recognition

"She is increasingly of the opinion that worrying about problems doesn't help solve them, but she hasn't really found an alternative yet."

-- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition