Small Town Livin'

First full day in the small farming community of Hillsboro. Grampy wanted to take me fishing, so after him and Karen taking about 4 or 5 hours getting ready, we slowly but surely leave the house to get fishing licenses. All I could think about driving through Hillsboro is how childhood in this atmosphere must be vastly different from childhood in Phoenix. I imagined my alternative-universe child self digging in the moist dirt, following brick pathways among dense trees, running from backyard to backyard (there are no fences here! Weird!), counting pennies at the local store for a cup of ice cream, and biking with skinned knees. Ok, I had a great childhood, and quite an outdoor one compared to some kids these days (thank goodness for pre-video game times!), but this place seems to be what summer is made of. It’s so beautiful here. If I could prove to myself that I could make it happily through the winters, I wouldn’t mind raising kids in the Midwest. Ah, enough of my maternally-based rants. Moving on.

So, the fishing licenses thing didn’t work out because by the time we got out of the house, all the available places were closed! So, the plan tomorrow is to hit up a place tomorrow right when it opens at 8am…we’ll see how well that happens. It’ll be nice to go fishing with Grampy, though. Grampy has been pretty good company. He knows I’m active in the feminist community, so he’ll try to say little jokes to make me angry, then look over to me and smile. Like, we’re watching a reality TV show, and he goes, “Oh, they don’t need to worry about her. She’s a woman” glares over at me and smiles “Ha, Ha, Ha, Grampy. Good one.” But, this morning, we had a pretty good conversation about politics and cars and fishing…I enjoyed myself.

Tonight Karen was lovely and made pasta with marinara sauce, an AWESOME salad with AWESOME onions and tomatoes and crunchy lettuce and spinach, and for dessert we had both blueberry pie with ice cream and carrot cake. I woke up late so I didn’t eat lunch, so this completely hit the spot. I kept thinking of Mom during dessert…I suppose sweet tooths breed sweet tooths.

And, now I’m in bed with a headache, probably due to the fact that I didn’t drink enough water today (camp counselors in unison: “DRINK MORE WATER!”). There is an amazing lightning storm, with the rain pounding. I think tomorrow I will explore outside, and enjoying the post-rain weather. Expect pictures tomorrow!