Last Saturday, after we finally left my workplace, we got ready and headed south to Kansas. First to Lawrence, where we Haskell Avenue'd it up meeting another Mommy from Mira's birth club. Such encounters are always fun--it's like meeting a celebrity, because it may be your first time actually meeting the person, but you've seen them in pictures and already know so much about them. We stayed several hours, the kids played, and all was dandy. Then we headed over to Old Chicago to visit an old friend of PGG's who's attending Haskell Indian Nations University.We capped the night by jaunting over to Topeka, where I have a long-lost auntie. She's my mom's eldest sister, but we just met her for the first time last summer (my mom is adopted--actually my dad is too but we don't know who his biological family is). We stayed the night with her and her rumpled Schnauzer. I was sufficiently creeped out by a picture on her dresser whose subject looked like a male version of my mother, complete with semi-glaring half-scowl. His name is Larry, and he's a brother of theirs, now deceased. I am envious of her knowledge of the Omaha language but not her cigarette habit...I'm slightly concerned that she will inadvertently burn her house down one of these nights as she chain-smokes half asleep.
