Don't Get Out Much

Well, you know, I don't get out and about very much. For instance, haven't flown in about 14 years. So today was quite a day. First I stopped at the secondhand store (well, I'm used to doing that anyway) and got an immense pile of wool for hooking, but haven't held them up to the Bird rug to see if they would work as a background (great prices, most half the marked price), went on to an estate sale that was in an intown neighborhood of Atlanta that has been neglected, etc., but which is on its way up, at the very beginning, in fact. The woman had her sale items set up all over her house and, in fact, it was one of those sales that the people have more than once. She was delightfully friendly and we were talking about the neighborhood, her fixerupper Craftsman house (that she got for only 110K a mere 24 months ago in a bankruptcy sale), her merchandise, etc., when my friend showed up that I was meeting there. She was looking and noticed the woman's business card and the woman's last name was the same as mine. Not a common name. Couldn't believe it. Her dad is from Detroit originally, and my family is from Ohio, Berks County PA before that, Alsace-Lorraine region before that. Then my friend started looking through the stack of photographs that the woman said were from a local photographer and they were photos of the family who had owned the elegant 1924 Avondale Estates craftsman house at least since the 1940s that my friend and her husband had recently purchased. She knew that because a few photos had been left behind in the house. Can you believe that?? Then my friend and I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant, then I drove down early to the airport to wait for my son to arrive from Albuquerque. He had been to an ROTC Honors Camp. I got there a few hours early, so sat down and talked to everybody who sat down next to me, people-watched all the arrivals walking through the South Terminal, and just had the best time. All the stories, all the rich lives. One pretty young woman had just gotten married six months earlier, was five months pregnant, and was waiting for her husband to get in from Paris, which he visits regularly on business. She had been there a week earlier visiting him. Then the middle-aged woman sitting by me just before Timothy showed up dropped a bombshell that she was waiting for not only her boyfriend to arrive, but her boyfriend's ex-wife, the boyfriend's mother, and somebody else, I think the ex-wife's boyfriend, who were flying back together from Missouri, where they were attending their son's graduation from something in the service. She said that her boyfriend's tone of voice had distinctly changed over the week as they spoke on the phone, that is to say, had gotten colder, and she was understandably concerned, and now I won't ever know what happened!!