Rainy days and Fridays

It’s November.  The days are shorter.  Yesterday morning I drove to work in the dark.  Mellow songs played on the radio in the background as the earth received an early morning shower.  The first rain of the season gently fell on the windshield; wipers rhythmically swished water from side to side.  The lull between songs was broken by Kenny Loggins.   

Loose, footloose kick off your Sunday shoes
Please, Louise pull me off a my knees
Jack, get back c’mon before we crack
Lose your blues everybody cut footloose

Just what do those lyrics mean?  Do they matter?  I turned the radio up full blast and girated as you do when you hear one of those songs you just can’t sit still to.  I remember the day when I was driving the GAP, then a teenager who stoically tolerated her mom, somewhere like moms do.  The rule of the car was “adults selected the radio channel.”  Since I was the one most often taking that role in a single-parent home, she put up with my music.  We were at a stop sign on one of the busier streets in our town when a familiar Air Supply tune filled the car.

I can make the runner stumble
I can make the final block
And I can make every tackle at the sound of the whistle
I can make all the stadiums rock
I can make tonight forever
Or I can make it disappear like the dawn
I can make you every promise that has ever been made
I can make all your demons be gone

I leaned over to my teenage daughter, put my arm around her shoulders and drew her down onto my lap, while belting out almost in tune the lyrics the two of us had learned by winding, playing, and rewinding the tape over and over during a more affable time of our relationship.

But I’m never gonna make it without you
Do you really want to see me crawl
And I’m never gonna make it like you do
Making love out of nothing at all

(Who would have thought anything you liked in the 80′s could now look so hokey?)

By the middle of the day, the sun had come out and morning was all but a faded memory.  At noon, Andie and I sauntered down a block, sharing stories only mothers of multiple births know and fear.  Perhaps we should have remembered the morning showers.    During our luncheon feast, unbeknownst to us the sun gave way to more gray clouds.  As we stepped out the door in the rain, the short block back to work looked much longer.  “Do you have something we can put on our heads?” I asked, stepping back in to the restaurant. 

Mimi's new take-out bags

The only things that can worsen my photography skill is rain, self-photography using a cell phone, and a plastic bag. 

Good thing it was a casual day at work.  Dressed up on a sunny day, we’re really two beauty queens.

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2. The best gift — friends
3. Game night for seniors
4. Hi, Iris
5. Eight miles and a lifetime away