Weekly Photo Challenge: Street Life II

bushstreet

Waiting for Obama
Bush Street
San Francisco, California

I was out running errands one afternoon and stopped on Divisadero to pick up the dry cleaning. As I got out of my car, I saw the street in front of me was blocked by a motorcycle cop and bunch of people were lined up on the whole stretch of the street. They were waiting for President Obama’s motorcade to come through (which it did, about 10 minutes later).

On a side note, I leave for Michigan with the girls in three days. I really, really should be packing. Procrastinate much?

Family + Telling the Girls + Bugs

Family portrait

Spring 2012

I haven’t talked about my family a whole lot yet, but family is pretty much the whole reason for the move. This is probably my favorite photo of my three loves. My husband (who is the most private person I know – bless his heart for not collapsing when I told him about the blog) was being silly with the girls one morning and I captured this sweet moment. Lucy was about six months old and Penny had just turned three.

Speaking of the girls, we finally told them about the move last night. The first words out of Penny’s mouth were, “I’m not really that excited because I don’t like walking in Michigan….they have worms!” Not the response we were expecting, exactly, although it wasn’t entirely out of left field. Last summer when we were there, Penny was freaked out by all the bugs.

In the backyard

In the backyard. (No bugs.)

To her credit, they were kind of creepy, especially when they crawled up from the dirt and onto the hot stones of Nana’s deck or concrete sidewalks of the neighborhood. They would writhe around, flipping and flopping, and if they couldn’t find their way back to the earth, they would eventually shrivel up and die. There were also lots of beetles and bees and other flying insects. We rarely see bugs here, even in our backyard.

I feel her pain. Bugs make ms jumpy, too. My gross-out Michigan bug moment was during my early evening runs. Every couple of blocks, I would run through a swarm cloud of tiny bugs in a funnel formation (what were they doing? And what kind of bugs were they? I would Google it, but then I’d have to look at buggy photos). Every once in a while I would inhale one. I got to where I could spot them up ahead, and whenever I reached a swarm, I would flail my arms in an attempt to keep any bugs from entering my nose or mouth. Sometimes I’d let out a battle cry while doing it. Preeetty sure the locals could tell I wasn’t from around there.

Penny and I have some manning up to do, for sure (she’s been talking about worms all morning), especially since I plan on composting and planting an edible garden. I’ll let you know how it goes down.

Quote: 2

These are the same sort of women as those I encountered 20 years ago…who told me that they NEVER leave Grosse Pointe unless they are forced to. When they travel to Paris or Hawaii or Turks & Caicos for their holidays, they call a limo service and ‘close their eyes when the car travels through Detroit’ to the airport.”

– From the Comments section of Grosse Pointe Today