30.8.12

Going my way

Hi All,
I owe you about a twenty posts from our trips this summer. And I promise to get to them as soon as I can. The kids start school next week so we're currently preparing for that. New families and faces to welcome. New supplies to acquire.But I had to post today because, truthfully, I've been a bit down lately. I suppose it's normal after such a fabulous summer of travel. And returning to a different landscape of friends as many left again this summer. Nick is away picking up the dogs so it's just me and a house full of teens. But I pulled myself together for some errands and I'm so glad I did.
My biggest pet peeve about driving to my house is not that I have to drive four blocks past it to drive four blocks back due to the one ways in the neighborhood. My biggest pet peeve is the one street closest to the house that I can turn up to go to my street is a two way street with cars parked on the side that is NOT wide enough for both lanes AND cars parked, not to mention trees that line said road. So often I'd want to turn into the street and would not be able to enter because a car was parked near the entrance and another was going down...so there I was blocking traffic until I could actually turn in. And it's not like these cars didn't have three other options to turn down that I didn't have to use as an up. It was a legitimate gripe.  To make matters worse they recently repaved the intersection and repainted the road line where I make my left up the street. Imagine my confusion when we returned from our trips to see a solid white line at the intersection seemingly indicating that I could NOT make the left there. As there was no other sign there...and I absolutely refused to drive another three blocks to the next left, I hoped that it was an oversight of the recent re-paving and kept my fingers crossed that a cop didn't see. Imagine my delight when I noticed this morning that the white line had black lines painted over it, creating the dotted line which indicated that indeed I could make my turn at that intersection. But there was also confusion as the also recently repainted stop marks on the ground for traffic coming down had also been repainted black. That simply didn't make sense. You can't read black paint even if the road is sort of tan. I started to hope against hope...and there it was at the top of the hill, a beautiful new "do not enter" sign. My pet peeve resolved. I gave a shout of triumph as I turned the corner.
Ah, it's the little things. I change a little and Spain changes a little and we meet in the comfortable middle. But, boy oh boy do I like days when things go my way. And it looks like that will be happening more and more often.