Friday, March 30, 2012

Babysitting

Today my youngest son turned 30!  And he and his wife took me up on my offer to babysit while they went to dinner.  I got a quick lesson in putting her down for her nap and then got her up and we played while they ran errands.  That probably sounds easy to most everyone, but I hardly ever see her and was not at all sure what she would think when this strange woman appeared in her bedroom to get her up.  She was a trooper.  Her first reaction was - hmm but no tears just no smiles.  So we played peak-a-boo and slowly turned up the lighting until she was ready to put up her hands to be lifted out of the crib.  On to a clean nappie and clothes before going downstairs. 

 
We looked out the window at the men unloading a new water heater across the road, she wafted under the sheer curtains to look for something exciting but after a while and we moved on to playing with a few toys before I discovered her favorite game of snuggle wrestle. 

She would hide behind my back while I asked where was Madi - when she peaked around she would giggle when I swept her up and snuggled her.  We moved on to the stamp, stamp, wiggle, wiggle dance.  (I learned this watching Ashby's before bed show).  Tonight I got to watch her have a bath and hair dry before reading her two stories.  She is snuggled in her bed with Frog over her head and her blanket under her head sound asleep.  Now to see if I can stay awake until her parents come home! 

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Dissed in the hood - revisited

Seems that somehow I deleted my blog post for Tuesday.  I wrote it on my IPad and must not have saved it correctly.  So now the whole purpose of the blog seems silly.  But in summary, I came up last week to help find new homes for many of my Aunt Jane's treasures and to clear out her apartment so the keys could be turned over to the complex. 

My aunt was a single lady who lived frugally, she loved nice things, but her apartment was not overly ornate.  She was also a fiercly independent and private person.  Very few family members had ever been inside her apartment, and her neighbors all described her as a truly sweet person who would never accept any help.  Over the course of several days family came to adopt different pieces of furniture, art and what nots by the end of five days everything had found a new home and it was time to sweep the floor and turn off the lights. 

The original blog talked more about seeing what looks like a familiar face but not knowing if it is really someone you knew or just someone who looks like someone you knew long ago.  When I am in Baltimore there are so many familiar sites, sounds and accents.  On Tuesday while I was waiting for a potential buyer for the remainder of the furniture I went over to Starbucks on Charles Street in an area where several girls from my high school had lived.  I had been thinking about one woman in particular who I knew from Facebook had moved  back to the area and wondered what she was doing now.  So it was probably just those thoughts that made me think that a woman standing at the bar reading a magazine might be just that person.  I haven't seen her in more than 40 years and we weren't best friends to start with but I thought that if she looked my way I might offer a smile and ask if she was Bonnie.  Despite my super power staring she never looked up, in fact she seemed determined to not look up.  Maybe she caught sight of me coming in and had no escape plan or maybe I am just too paranoid.  On the full disclosure side I have to admit I looked pretty scruffy.  My hair was back with a hairband, I had on jeans, an oversize shirt and sneakers.  Give me a break I had been cleaning and sorting - dusty work.

Vanity the ultimate gotcha.

Vanity 1. Heels, shoes. They were my addiction. I loved being able to wear heels, sandals, cute shoes. Even if they were slightly uncomf...