Audio File: errand road trip Sept 29

Today we went car-car. Car-car for those of you who don’t speak dog is going for a ride in the car and getting to watch the world go by. Sometimes if you are lucky, you get to stick our head out the window and let your ears flap in the breeze.

Sophie, our dog, hates riding in the car if it is going over 35 miles per hour. We never have figured out why. She loves to fly on airplanes, trains are OK. Small boats and ferries are fine, cruise ships are cool. Cars, not so much.

So, with courage and a seat belt we headed north 50 miles for my spouse to go to two meetings. Sophie did really well. On some trips she pants the whole way. She once panted all the way from Denver to Southeast Idaho where we live, 11 hours driving time. She was almost put out of her misery since we were so miserable listening to her pant. We felt bad for her at the same time were ready to toss her out of the car. Of course, we would never have done that but the trip was a trial for all of us.

Today was not a trial. It was a cool-ish fall day. While my spouse went to the meeting we sat outside in a park just watching the world go by. It was a nice time.

After that we went to an antiques mall where my spouse has a booth. While he attended to business, I wandered around the mall with Sophie in tow. She was overwhelmed by all of the smells. I had never thought about how used stuff would smell. Seen from her perspective, it is a confusing array that must be inspected carefully. We go the pattern of going down the aisle then turning into each booth and were having a good time looking for cheap things that might bring a little more hominess to our collection of post-fire stuff. We turned into one booth and I jumped back almost toppling things over. Sophie was startled and ready for action. It was a manikin that scared me. With shared pounding hearts we gathered ourselves and checked out what else was in the booth. A few booths later I turned in to a booth with farm equipment and old plates. What I did not realize was that when I turned, poor Sophie’s snout smacked right into an antique hand plow. She took it quite well but we ticked off one more scary thing for the day.

We found some lovely small homey things including a little 1940s dish to put my watch in at the end of the day. It was $2.

We came home with some new bits of home. Building home is tiring work, especially if you have to pant for 100 miles and do battle with manikins and plows.