My sister-in-law and I were talking today about how long it's been since we've travelled, I mean really travelled, to Europe or someplace farther. At this point, even Canada (especially since the results of the election) would be exciting. I pulled out my (non-digital) photos of London and played around with an image of my daughter and a friend having a picnic on Parliament Hill. My camera-shy friend allowed only her feet to photographed.
My daughter gets carsick, so lately she's been sitting in the front seat when we go on long car rides. I, the mother, have been demoted to the back seat. But it's worth it not to have her throw up. Plus, the back seat offers some privacy. I can snap pictures out the window, put on headphones and listen to my own music and generally drift off into my own world. It's a nice break since most of the time, I'm the one in the driver's seat.
Stuck here in the house one day, I clicked on a photo at random in my iPhoto file and came up with this picture I took while waiting at a red light in Laramie, Wyoming. Laramie has a lot of old, nondescript buildings like the ones in the photo that still stand. In other American cities, these building would have been torn down, or the neighborhood would be a slum. These buildings, not distinguished enough to be landmarked in any way, recall a pre-mall America filled with small town Main Streets. But are we really nostalgic for this older America? The signs for the interstate show there's always a longing to leave these provincial towns. We sentimentalize these towns while at the same time, we're looking for a way out.
I finally downloaded all my photos from Wyoming into my computer. Huge files. I definitely need storage. Now that I'm back in my usual suburban-urban environs, the photos of the mountains seem surreal. Could I have really been there? I took this photo from inside the car. It was pouring rain the day we went up to the Snowy Range. For years, there's been a drought in this part of the West but now the heavens have opened. Wildflowers popped out that had been sitting in the ground for years, waiting for a little moisture. I took pictures of them also, somewhere in my welter of files . . . .
We went to Upstate New York for the Memorial Day Weekend. The weekend was beautiful and we took the kids to see a re-creation of a Colonial American town in Cooperstown. Naturally, the adults liked it more than the kids, who complained about being bored. And of course, we got stuck in a huge traffic jam on the way home, even though we had cut through Pennsylvania in order to avoid the NY Thruway. We sat in the traffic, stuck paying our holiday dues.
We drove down to visit the Philadelphia Flower Show, my favorite antidepressant at this time of year. This year's theme is "Destination Paradise" and it was absolutely wonderful. I bought all kinds of stuff I couldn't really afford—t-shirts, willow branches, a big bunch of eucalyptus. Oh well, it's only once a year. Afterwords, we went out to Chinatown for an Asian "fusion" dinner. I really don't know Philadelphia that well and I'm always surprised that even though its not that far from New York, it really is a very different place. We had a great time. It feels like a letdown to get back home.
