Bon Voyage and Bon Bons

Meme departed today, leaving us with lots of clean laundry and love. We went for a truly spring-like hike in the woods at Audubon before she left, where we could walk in light coats and watch the vernal pools forming. Jasper and Josie mercifully slept all the way to the airport and then further south to Nashua where I went in search of used tires. Peter had arranged to buy four tires from Octav. I was to meet Octav's wife in the parking lot of Walmart in Hudson, near the Monroe Muffler shop. I was ten minutes late, no Mariana to be seen. I waited for half an hour, called her cell phone three times, went in to Walmart to use the bathroom. One hour later, still no Mariana. All this time Jasper and Josie astounded me by just "hanging out" (and watching Family Feud at the muffler shop). More phone messages. We finally gave up and went shopping at Trader Joe's, which took us a good half hour (and several stops for directions) to find. More phone messages to Mariana at Trader Joe's. I spent 45 minutes and 150 dollars. Josie was laughing hysterically at Jasper who was tossing groceries wantonly into the cart and running around. She was so loud I felt I needed to apologize to the other shoppers. But they continued to be gems. When I finally gave up on the tires and headed home, Josie fell asleep (as is her forte), and Jasper listened politely to a string of "Jasper and Josie" stories, 45 minutes north back into the snow and chill. He got a lollipop for being such a good boy. When he finally sat down to his piece of pizza at 6:30 pm, he started to cry, screamed, and threw it across the room because he wanted MORE. Total melt down. Quite frankly, I was impressed he made it past the toll booth. I'll call it a 10 of a day.