Beautiful Town

Anja seems to be catching up on some lost sleep today. She got a good twelve and a half hours last night (not straight-through, of course...) woke up at 8:30 and was fussing and ready for a nap again about an hour later. Martin wanted to work out and since we STILL haven't moved our bedroom back upstairs, it's best to put Anja to sleep in the car and put her carseat in her room with the door closed because Martin's weight room is right next to the big room and his noisy weights will wake her up if she's in there. So anyway I drove her around town a little bit (she pretty much fell right asleep after a few minutes of singing and talking) and took a little tour through the old Perrin neighborhood. I love to drive through there and think of when all those huge houses were new and freshly painted and the trees were not so big and everyone was rich and fancy. I like to imagine the fancy ladies coming down the steps from the Pegan's house or our old house with their big-butt dresses and little hats and the men with their fancy suits and funny shoes. And of course I can't supress the vision of Lady and The Tramp running down the street as well....

I drove home via Main Street instead of South and I thought again what a great town we live in. We're so lucky to have everything kept up so nicely! So often it seems little historic downtown areas are mostly run-down old buildings with crumbling bricks and peeling facades. But lately on Main Street there seems to be a lot of work going on to spruce up the building fronts. We're really lucky to live in a town where everyone cares so much about keeping it historic, yet nice.

Of course it's not ALL historic and nice. Last night we took a depressing drive out to the new Goodwill to return some stuff I bought there with Perkins and decided once I was home that I didn't need any of it. It's pretty gross to see the new sprawl that's going up out there. It's all strip malls and subdivisions, like a little suburb of its own. And all those gross new plywood and plaster structures back right up to beautiful Indiana farmland and it's really disgusting. *Shudder* If I ever live in an area like that, by choice or by force, please, just kill me.

Today is going to work out so perfectly! I'm so glad Anja is getting a good nap now because she'll be rested and happy for lunch with her Oompa. If she falls asleep again after lunch that would be great too, even if it's just for a short nap, and whenever she wakes up we're going to go swimming with my sister and her kidders over at Castaway Bay! Martin has never been there, so I'm excited to show it to him. I really like that pool. It's perfect for the tiny kids. They are always in sight because it's a small pool and there is much more shallow water than deep and it's perfect for babies Anja's age who can sit on the incline and kids Christopher's age who aren't quite big enough to be in a big-kid pool but can splash in the deeper part of the shallow end, run through the fountain, squirt each other at the Squirt Station, etc. And since it's so small it's not completely overrun with crazy people, as I imagine Tropicanoe Cove to be. It'll be nice next year to be able to be back up at the river, but for this summer Castaway Bay is a good choice!