Car Talk

I like the radio show on MPR called “car talk” even though I don’t care about cars at all and cannot drive them. Kudos to the Taproot brothers for entertaining someone who cares nothing for the topic of their show! It really is no fair I cannot drive. It hits me sometimes how this activity that others take for granted is so foreign to me. My parents were here this week and it was nice to feel a little freedom to go places. Today I find myself imagining what it would be like to hop in the car and drive to the craft store in Huntsville to look for more beads; that sounds so exhilarating!

Instead, I am relatively housebound again. I can walk to the bank and hardware, grocery, and pet stores as well as various antique stores on the square, which are fun to frequent only on a yearly basis due to their slow inventory turnover. It would be much harder or near impossible to walk to many other places here because the town was not built with pedestrians in mind – one thing that angers me about our country. In America, pedestrians have been lost. Apparently in Europe they have different standards for cars that take pedestrians into account, like bumpers have to be made in such a way as to minimize pedestrian injury. But, not here, no, cars rule. (click on "cars rule" to see an interesting, yet disturbing, article)

I miss my parents now that they’ve left. It was a nice visit but I did feel like I should have slowed down to enjoy it more. Instead, I was checking email, grading final projects, writing things in the blog, wrapping presents, ordering more presents online, making yet other presents. We went out shopping several times, but that must be boring for my dad, who is such a patient man. I think he wanted to go to the museum here yesterday, and I really should have pushed us to go, but did not and feel a bit bad for it. Yes, baby L was sleeping during some of the time we could have gone, and then my dad had to take care of a UPS problem that had cropped up back at their house, but still I felt bad that we dragged him around shopping and he did not get to see the museum.