What made you smile today?

I did a pan of West Washington - what year? - well, before the change.

The change? The change to prosperous.

In my time, there would be a starter place and another or two that gave up. That went on for decades (while Rose's kept going on and on and on and on, overcharging for the slightest thing).

My husband and I fell in love while dancing to the loud music from the dyke bar across the street...

Lots of empty spaces, spaces with windows marked in some way to shield artists' studios.

There were one or (stretching) two good restaurants there early on.. Chez Helene being tippy top, not sure the years, but that wasn't the only. Tiny places. warm in the beating down rain.

But..
Sarai Ribicoff (sp?) was killed right there, and then I think it was Eileen Brennan exiting (Chez Helene's) and crossing the street (with Goldie Hawn?) who got hit by a car... (I don't remember all this exactly, it's what is in my memory - Eileen and Goldie, however it worked out).

Chez Helene's gave up and moved - and that was way too bad. One of my favorite restaurants ever.

And since then, many more in its place.

The thicket for this is that in my time with a studio on w. washington, and.. now...
a troubled neighborhood is/was close at hand.
I'm not all so interested in distinctions, but property values folks are.

The finessing of the street now - may be like an ice line, not the way we thought of it then. At least we didn't.

So today I am profoundly sad, for reasons I won’t be discussing, but it’s an important detail to my tale. I’m driving down the road with a severely autistic (IQ in the 40’s) 8 year old darling, whose vocabulary consists mostly of movie lines from Dora the Explorer and a handful of phrases she’s learned will get her what she wants. My sadness must have been quite apparent (though I wasn’t crying or anything like that) because she picked up on it and began gently stroking my arm and saying “It’s okay GoBilly” (<-that’s short for Uncle Billy) It’s okay” Then when we pulled to a stop she looked at me with a her little face pinched up in compassion and says “hugs.” I smiled and leaned over to giver her one and she patted my back and said “All better. It’s okay GoBilly.” This kind of emotion and empathy was a genuine breakthrough for her, as well as being the sweetest of comforts for me.

Oh!

i was at the bar, and the bartender was hella cute, and i told my dad, jeez, these jack n cokes ae ******* STRONG, no really its like pure jack, and then the bartender starts talking to my dad at the bar while i was at the jukebox, and shes says wow ur cute son can hold his liquor, there barely any coke in those!

Onion, lemme guess, Dad was payin? (and tippin')

Barmaids are usually damn good at what they do... (and don't)

How ya been, Jack?

Oh, Onion made me smile...

haha yessirr. but im the one she stares at... Hrmmmm

Went to a school thingie yesterday. Miscellaneous kid (haven't ever met her) looks at me and then says, "You're [sozlet]'s mom, aren't you???" I allowed that I was and she said, "You guys look SO much alike!!!!" (She'd figured out I must be the mom just from how I looked.) Then she talked about how she knows sozlet (she was in the second-grade class that sozlet read with last year).

She was so cute and enthusiastic that it made me smile in and of itself, but also it's a compliment (sozlet's gorgeous, I don't always see a resemblance) and it seemed to be a Very Positive Thing to be associated with sozlet.

Well, Soz ..... I remember seeing a picture of you on the forum some-time-or-rather and you really ARE gorgeous. Sometimes I think we just don't see ourselves as others do?

Out of the mouths of babes, though.....ya gotta love em'!

Aw, thanks Brooke... nice of you to say.

I just realized I left out an important point... sozlet wasn't with me at the time (she was at a friend's house). (Correctly identifying me as her mom would be less impressive if sozlet was right there.)

Whale watch. It was a mazing this trip! We saw one whale breach multiple times. She was a humpback cow with her calf. The calf breached too. They breaches SIMULTANEOUSLY once. Quite a rare event, that. We saw fluke slapping (lobtailing) and flipper slapping. Also, a unusually large pod of white sided dolphins played in our wake for a while - they were REALLY fast.

Not my photos, but here's a humpback breaching and white sided dolphins:

This happened a few years ago but I smiled today when we did " This is the House that Jack Built"

When my Son was 4 as I was reading the rhyme he looked all puzzled when I got to " This is the Priest that married the man ...... that kissed the maiden...."

Upon inquiring he solemnly declared the question " How come the priest married the man but the man kissed the maiden?"

Wow!

My neighbour is fixing the front steps of my house (smile-worthy in its own right).

I went to Home Depot with him on Thursday to pick up supplies. When I finally needed my wallet/purse thingie on Friday ... gone ... we ran around the house, shuffled everything around, stripped the car ... nothing ... panic ... asked the neighbour if I'd been carrying any shopping at the end of our trip ... ahhh already checked that bag ... he suggested going back to HD (which was the next step in any case) ... he'd lost his wallet there once and it was safely recovered ... off to HD ... finally found the services department ... tried to describe the thing I use as a wallet/purse ... what colour is it? ... gold and sage ... ohhhhh hey everyone this is the purse lady! ... she called upstairs to the vault ... they sent it down ... it was found in the parking lot! everything in there ... i.d. debit and credit card cash ... everything ... oh and in cleaning out the glove box in the car I found a long-missing gift card to the liquor store ...

imagining the faces of the witnesses to the havoc E created.

There's this new little coffeeplace a couple of blocks down our street. They opened three months ago, it's basically this girl, my age, exceedingly happy, cheerful and optimistic, who set it up. Her father helps out. She is positively blushing with excitement about having her own place, it's infectious - and impressive too, considering she's open from eight or nine in the morning till ten in the evening, every day except Sunday. Place is tiny - two small tables downstairs, one halfway the stairs by the window, and three in a small room upstairs.

So tonight I'm sitting there, seven o'clock or so. She's playing old jazz - like, from the twenties. The mood is good. There's a shy couple chatting upstairs. She's talking with her father by the counter, and a quiet American guy walks in, thirty or so. Speaks up when a song is on, to say he was in New Orleans just a month or two ago, and saw a singer singing the same song there, how beautiful it was. Then they talk about coffee - he worked in a small independent coffeeplace where he's from, in Colorado, a 24-hour place, long hours - "it was our life", his friends would always be there and hang out. It was just like this place, he enthuses, cosy and cheerful -

He's brand new in town, it turns out - fresh off the boat. Came here four days ago. To take one of these intensive one-month courses at the International House to get a certificate for teaching English, and then he hopes to stay here and earn his way teaching... The girl springs into action. There's this woman who's a regular customer, and she knows someone who's looking for an English teacher, could he do that? If he comes back on Saturday at 10, she'll introduce him, and then he can make the deal right then! I jump in too, why not, telling him how he should give private classes, cause to get a job in a school you need an independent tax status, and thus a work permit etc - lots of paperwork.

He's about to leave when I remark on the baby guitar in his backpack. It's a ukelele - he used to do busking in America. Oh my fiancee too!, exclaims homegirl - he travelled around Western Europe playing on the streets (she's translating the conversation simultaneously to her dad). He also plays this little guitar! Maybe if he comes round often, they'll meet, and they can play together, or he can teach him Hungarian songs! Do you want to hear a song, the Colorado boy asks? Sure - and so he sings a soft-voiced, sad love song, playing the ukelele. It goes right with the CD of French chansons that had been playing by then.

The evening's full of surprises. How fitting for an autumn evening like this - the weather's suddenly turned all harsh, far prematurely, late October weather in September. So outside the rain drips its dreary rhythm, and inside we have a shy boy playing ukelele. On his fourth day - it's like you see the welcoming memory being made. He must feel that, hey, things are going to work out just fine, here, in this new country. And I'm sure they will.

My son recently received one of those "Know more about me" surveys from my mom in his email recently. Ever the good boy, he followed the directions and filled his out.

One of the questions was "What was you favorite childhood toy?"

He gave a good answer: "I'm still a child, I don't know yet."

Good stories, nimh and mcG.

I'm still smiling from yesterday. I went out to lunch with the in-better-health Dys, and Diane, to our favorite albuquerque restaurant, and then grocery shopping as a crew. The restaurant has an outdoor patio with a big cottonwood tree hovering over it, good food, good wine, and wasn't crowded. Just enough people not to feel deserted. The waiter was new at his job, and visibly relaxed as we all talked for a while. When we left, we speculated that he was the owner of the '58 red cadillac in the parking lot.

I smiled today at some of the things people smile about.

I also smiled watching the landlord in the pub going about his work after I had told him that if the global meltdown in the financial markets gets much more advanced his pub would be a serious liability which he might have to pay to have taken off his hands.

Waking up and looking in the backyard to see 4 raccoons playing in the grass