Things change, and things stay the same: a nice visit to the old neighbourhood

There's never enough time to visit.  I'm bad at keeping in touch.  I'm not good at planning things.

There, now that's out of the way, and I can write about the good stuff!

The occasion was the official release of the Aurora Writers Group's third anthology, cleverly titled, "Aurora Storyalis III"  The first anthology made me join the group; the second had four entries of mine.  This time around, I took part long distance, which did complicate things, but was worth it.  I love being part of that big, diverse group.  Seeing everybody again was wonderful!  I even got up and read a poem despite my scratchy throat.

I tried not to spread my germs around, I really did, but that's difficult for a hugger like me.

Jethro likes when I have a cold.  It always hits me in the throat, and he likes my husky voice.  I figure he likes it when I'm raspy and quiet and lethargic, for a change.  He says it's nice, cuz my defences are down.  Ha.  Ha.

I ran around the room with a pen trying to get signatures from all my fellow writers.  It really was like the last day of high school with yearbooks.  Great, now I'll start having high school nightmares again.

I made all kinds of promises to stay in touch and be more regular about it and if any of you are reading, including my Tiny Writers: I  MEAN IT!!!

Hey, if you are a solitary writer?  Get yourself into a group.  Even if the group is only one other person, do it.  You'll not only have somebody to help you with an objective eye for your work, but you won't feel so alone in your craziness. It's nice to have somebody else understand your imaginary friends.

Later on we ended up back on the old block.  I was put on a couch and given a nice hot bowl of soup to soothe my sore throat.  Awwww!  We moved up one house and it turns out I was totally right about the people who bought our house. They are the right family. She had us in for over an hour, gave us the tour, fed us, gave us hugs and sent us away with tomatoes!!!  She thanked us for selling them that sweet house.  I thanked her for enjoying that house.  Then we all laughed and told her about the giant pit the gang of kids dug in the back yard, and the plastic skeletons we buried when we filled in the pit.  Yeah, welcome to the neighbourhood!!!

The place sure looks great.  It's a lot cleaner, now that it's theirs...

One thing that stayed the same is the presence of two boys who used to spend a lot of time in that house and that backyard, known here as Not So Little M and Cute Stuff.  Turns out, they still end up there quite often!  They've adopted the new teenage boys.  All the boys, including Bucky on a borrowed bike, went on a long ride up the ravine hill and back.

Apparently it's not normal for a seller to choose the house's next inhabitants.

Well, I'm also the girl who names pickup trucks and computers, and is part of three writers groups.

A few old neighbours weren't home when I knocked on the door, but that just means we have to go back again. We rounded out the evening up the street with pizza, laughs, music and sloppy Bernese Mountain Dog kisses.  Just like old times, only instead of a quick stagger down the street, it was an hour and a half drive home.

Home...