Ran away from home

to wild and crazy Ohio.

Ohio might not be the most entertaining state in the union, but it does have the best place out there to ride roller coasters, so Mom and I hit the road.

We shall be zooming til we puke!

(Probably not, actually, as neither of us are prone to pukiness, but we will try)

Love this country

It's a beautiful day and I woke up to blue skies and sunshine.  Of course, when you've come to Michigan via Iraq and Texas, sunny beautiful days aren't to be trusted - one grows used to them being hotter than a Birmingham steel mill.  But I walked outside and...78, 80 degrees?  Fabulous.

Since I'm hanging out at Mom's place (more of a treehouse with internet connectivity and available takeout than Dad's hollow tree), we toddled off to the local farmer's market.

Mmm...blueberries.  Once, when I was a small child, I partook so enthusiastically in fresh blueberries that I ended up vomiting in the middle of the night.  According to Mom, at first blush, yakked blueberries are dark enough to cause a young mother to mistake them for blood. 

The farmer's market, in addition to being full of awesomely scrumptious things, is colorful.

And not just pretty food.

But, best of all about the farmer's market is hoovering up the goodies afterward.  Tomato + toast + mayo + salt = pure, unadulterated awesome.

You could ask me how many tomato sandwiches I've eaten today, but I would totally lie to you.

Irrational Fears

Dad’s got hummingbirds around the house.  I like hummingbirds as much as the next person, but they worry me a little.  They way they zoom around reminds me of bumblebees, which tend to not have the best navigational skills and occasionally smack into you.  I can’t quite escape the vision of one of these tiny bird smacking into my head and embedding its beak in my skull.

 

As the daughter of an ER nurse, I’ve imagined several times how that visit would play out.  “Yes, I’m fairly certain my insurance will cover the removal of this bird from my left temple…”

Scenery

This is really probably the nicest time of year up here.  Everything is green - it's shocking how green when you've been so long someplace that is almost entirely dirt-colored.  It's been a wet summer, and not a very hot one, either.

So the water is good in the river, and the trees are...well, somewhere between healthy and out of control.

I'm fairly certain one of these trips up here I'll find that Dad's place has been entirely overrun by giant oak trees and aggressive squirrels.  I sit out here on the back porch (where I can kinda get some internet signal, sometimes) and listen to things falling through the oak canopy.  There's never any way of knowing whether it's just a limb, or perhaps a poorly balanced possum, since it's just a sea of green.

What's funny is that in just a couple of months, the view from back here will enable one to sit and watch deer cross the field 500 yards away.  Today they could be camped 25 feet from where I'm sitting and I'd have no clue.

Ahh....

I made it successfully to Hollow Tree, Michigan, where I received the World’s Most Enthusiastic Dog Greeting. 

 

That was, of course, after swinging by the hospital to see Mom (interrupting her workday, so my apologies to anyone who may have had a near-death experience in Barry County today – your care may have been quicker if I hadn’t stopped to hug my Mom, but that wasn’t going to happen). 

 

Jack did get to me before my Dad, but I got some good hugs from him, to (unlike the lab, Dad did not pee on my foot.  Appreciate that, Dad).