Well, it's another beautiful day in the hood. Sorry, Saf, I didn't get your sunrise today(nor the sunset last night), but I will attend to that tomorrow. Honestly, I'm kind of looking forward to the quiet morning exercise, tho being right off a main street, it won't be too quiet.

Yesterday was so beautiful. Just the right temperature. I sat outside only for a little bit, not long at all. I do so love spring. The mini-forest behind my house is starting to thicken up once again and the squirrels are darting around...there's about four or five back there...and the birds are chirping cheerfully. When we first moved here, all I could see were the trees behind us. It wasn't until the fall, when the leaves began to drop from the trees, that I realized there were houses back there, and pretty close. In the winter, I can stand in my bedroom and see into one of their bathroom windows. But when the trees fill out, I forget they're back there at all.

I love when the sun starts to go down behind my house. There's just something about the way the light filters through those trees. I've always thought that one of the prettiest sights and anyone who's read my writing will see this attribute in it. Chalk it up to those long country rides my parents used to take. We'd load in the car and head to the hills of Arkansas, cruising along the back dirt roads where the trees always hung over the road in a magnificant natural archway.

My dad had been a city boy most of his life. When he was younger, he lived in the rural areas of Oklahoma, but once they moved to the city, he never went back. Never was into hunting and fishing and he spent all of his adult life encumbered by a shirt and tie. So as we'd ride along, passing an occassional farmer or country resident, he'd hold up a hand in a wave. I remember asking him when I was little, "Did you know him?" He'd say "no, but it's nice to be friendly. That's the way these folks are."

I don't know if it was because of those rides we always took on Sunday afternoons or what, but as I got older, I took to roaming the landscape. My friend and I would often just get in the car and drive. I have to think it's because I always felt to tied down to where I was...unable to break out of my backward prison. There's a feeling of freedom to driving, whether you actually make it someplace or not.

Well, my, I'm rambling and off my point, if I indeed ever really had one. It's just days like today(and yesterday)make me want to hop in my car and drive, with no purpose, no real destination, but just to see the landscape slip by me in a steady stream.

But there will be no driving today. Last week our neighbors(the ones who had us over for Easter)asked us to dinner. Tami ended up on the afternoon of the dinner backing out. They've bought a house and all sorts of things were going wrong...well, I don't think it was all that tragic, but she seems to be one of those drama type people, making a bigger deal out of things than they need to be.

So then she wanted to reschedule for Fri, but I kept missing her and again, we didn't have dinner over there. Z didn't get to do his easter hunt because it rained that day, and she wants to do it because she has a prize for him. So last night he and a friend sat outside with her, talking(my son often prefers the company of adults). When Mark goes out to get him, she asks us to dinner today and says she wants to do Z's hunt. She told them both what his "prize" is. She bought him a guitar that she found online. This to me is unbelievable...I mean, she hardly knows him. I mean, she's talked to him a lot, but really...a guitar is too much. Me thinks Tami is a bored, bored woman with money to burn. She works for Luis Vitton(sorry, spelled that wrong)as the head collection person, traveling around from wealthy client to wealthy client demanding million dollar payments in full. I tried to glean the whole story from her, but she's a little too scattered to understand. There's something she's not telling. She does go out of town occassionally. She says she spends a lot of time on the phone. But I guess since they've been in the process of buying this house, she's taken some time off.

At any rate, now I've got to spend my nascar day at her house. Hubby again doesn't get a day to sit in his own home and rest. Work has been wearing him down terribly, and he just wants to sit and chill. So now I'll be spending this afternoon trying to get us the hell out of there. This will not be an easy feat.

*sigh* on the plus side, it's another beautiful spring day.