Traveller

Getting my mother a digital camera for her first trip to Europe was my good deed.  She got it early so she could practice shooting pictures and deleting the goofy or overexposed shots.  Being a very cautious lady she was concerned about running out of room on her memory stick.  Even though we went through an exercise of calculating the average size image and how many would fit on her memory stick, her verbal panic on the phone and general worry of space after being in Europe for three weeks convinced me to buy her a second memory stick.  Clearly she didn't need it but if it made her happy and cost me less than $20, it was a small price to help her focus more on her sight seeing. Recently I got a postcard from my sister describing her joy at being in Paris and how AWESOME it all was.  She made no mention of my mom or anyone else on the trip for that matter.  Now I have two postcards from my mother.  One is digital that my brother produced off of an iPho...

My older sister is already half way through her first trip to Europe. After her eye rolling when I saw her last, it was weighing on my mind that she might be not having as good a time as she expected and hoped. Fortunately for me, and you , I have hard evidence now that she is having an AWESOME time. If you can't read this scan, my sister is clearly EXCITED about Paris.  She climbed the the bell tower in the Notre Dame Cathedral and in Versailles.  She loved seeing the Louve, the Musee d'Orsay and Eiffel Tower. Her joy at being in Paris and in France period is palpable from this postcard.  I love that she sent this postcard so early in her trip too. She arrived only three days earlier so jet lag must not have been a problem for her. Want to know what made me really happy too?  She took my advice and printed labels for her postcards.  I knew her handwriting wasn't the most legible so it was a little selfish on my end - hey I wanted to be sure the handlers on tha...

How cute do they look? Here are my mom and my sister (cropped because I never asked them if they cared about my showing their faces) in my brother's living room. Want to know how excited they are? My sister asked me to take their photo and my mother smiled in the photo! I know! I wish I could have shared that rare smiling image but you'll have to believe me. At first I was surprised at these happy faces since my sister was rolling her eyes pretty hard when I arrived an hour earlier.  I wonder. So here is the first funny part - see the blue tote bag? The initials ZF.  Dig this, my mother - as a form of caution and identity theft I think - used one of our dogs initials!  Yes our dog! Who passed away 30 years ago.   His name was Zorro. Part of me thinks that she's brilliant, the other part of me thinks she is a little bit crazy - a 1950s, unspoken/suppressed, Cold War style of crazy.  That perspective should make for some interesting comments overheard in Nor...