Mother's Day Bouquet

My parents are still very much in love. My father regularly tells my mother, "The day I met you was the luckiest day of my life." My mother replies, "You made me laugh." She laughed and kissed him when she received these roses from him on Mother's Day.

Eat Here Get Gas

I had a good laugh when I saw this sign along an Indiana highway yesterday. For one mad moment I considered stopping there for lunch. It was no surprise that they were out of business.

Wandering Indiana

I'm back on the road again, this time wandering Indiana. Van was in need of a check-up so I took him to see the friendly Sportsmobile dealer in Huntington. He had a defective propane gas detector which I swear was possessed. The detector would go off intermittently, but only during the middle of the night when I was sound asleep. I put up with it for several months until one night I couldn't take it any longer. In a crazed stupor, I took a pair of wire cutters and crawled on my belly under my bed in an attempt to stop the incessant beeping. The detector was mounted high enough, in the tiny space under my bed, that my bifocals were useless. I managed to stop the flashing light, but the evil alarm kept on beeping. It wasn't until morning and after I'd had my first cup of coffee, that I realized I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I'd just pulled its fuse out.

Van now has a new detector and the propane system was checked out and given the ok, so I hope to sleep soundly tonight. The day has been cold, windy and gray, but I'm staying in a state park with electricity, so the night should be warm and cozy...and quiet.

As I drove over the Salamonie Dam this afternoon I stopped to take a few pictures of the view--- a study in shades of brown.

420 Characters # 4---The temperatures were in the twenties

The temperatures were in the twenties, but the sun was warm. If it hadn't been February, I would have said that spring had arrived. I was out for a ramble at one of my favorite parks: Proud Lake Recreation Area, in Commerce Township, Michigan. My family and I camped here when I was a kid and as a 6th grader, I spent a snowy week here at science camp. Today, when I searched for signs of spring, I found pussy willows.

420 Characters #3---The Sweetest Valentine

The Sweetest Valentine, I Want To Be Your Cutie---She stuck the tiny stickers on endless mandarins, the same stickers she'd once cursed while sifting garden compost in the summer. Summer seemed far away from the refrigerated warehouse where she packaged produce twelve hours a day. Fresh fruit wasn't in her budget, but the kids didn't mind the canned seconds from Krogers. $7.20 an hour wasn't much but it beat welfare.

420 Characters #2---Rebecca Kneeled

Rebecca kneeled on the dusty floor of the storefront window, tightly rolling the cotton batting into a giant, snowy jellyroll that reminded her of the breakfast she'd skipped that morning. As she jammed it into the black storage bag, she hoped she'd be in Saskatchewan by next winter---she was sick of fake snow. She vacuumed the remaining cotton fuzz off of the floor and wondered if Tim Hortons still sold maple bars.

420 Characters---# 1

If you've been following my blog for any length of time, you know I love to travel. You may not know, though you've probably suspected, I love books as much as I love traveling. To me they're much the same, reading is just a different mode of travel, a more powerful mode. Books allow me to travel without leaving home, to places that may or may not really exist. I get to meet characters and hear tales, some which are real and others which can only be found in books.

I've been reading a special book for the last couple of months. I've renewed it so many times, if I don't return it soon, the librarians will suspend my card, placing me in library limbo. The book is, 420 Characters, by Lou Beach. It was published in 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I've never written about a book before, but this one is so unique and has given me such pleasure, I just have to talk about it before I return it to the public library. I expect a copy will soon be joining my home library.

420 Characters consists of illustrations by the author and miniature stories, each no longer than 420 characters, including letters, spaces and punctuation. I love these stories! Each one is detailed, engaging and complete on one page. Beach tells a better story in those few lines than many multi-chaptered books I've read. I've mulled on some of his stories for days.

His book has inspired me to improve my writing and stretch my imagination. Until I start physically traveling again, I'm going to travel in my mind, writing 420 character stories. Here goes # 1:

THE TALON-HONED MISSILE launched from the sky---death on feathered wings. She gained on the tiny bird until both predator and prey exploded kamikaze-like into the invisible panes, smudging the windows and leaving two feathered bodies littered on the damp sidewalk. A clerk scooped the bodies into a dust pan while women steered their carts around the obstruction, rechecking their lists and planning their evening meals.