Shoes and Books

Last night when I took Danny outside for the last time before I went to bed, I heard the coyotes yipping. They make the weirdest, spine-chillingest sound.

EJ has been searching on-line for a used 4-wheel drive vehicle. We have to find one before winter because the little HHR that JJ drives to work won’t be able to handle the deep snow. EJ found an Avalanche for not too much money, so we left early to go look at it. It had already sold, but we had a nice chat with the salesman. He told us stories about his younger days when he worked in a factory that made bread, donuts, and cakes. I love to hear stories of different jobs because there is always so much more to them than it first appears. For example, I used to have a friend who became a landscape architect. I always thought landscaped architects merely knew how to artistically plant flowers. Instead, my friend was an architect who had to artistically draw up plans, and figure out parking lot gradients, and all sorts of things. It was interesting.

After we left the car lot, we drove around the countryside. In our travels, we came across a shoe tree. A shoe tree is a tree into which many, many people have thrown their old shoes. There are several shoe trees in Michigan and around the country. No one really knows who starts them or why. They just are. I told EJ that someday I’d like to add an old pair of shoes to the tree. The shoe tree reminded me of the quirky movie, The Big Fish, in which no one wore shoes.

Neither EJ nor I slept well last night.  EJ had to go to work, but after he left, I took a nap. I didn’t sleep long or deeply, but I got enough sleep to revive me a bit.

I spent the rest of the day unpacking a few more boxes and putting stuff away. JJ didn’t have to work today so he helped me move 24 boxes of books (I counted them) from the garage into the pantry/storage room. he asked why I didn’t put them in the library, and I explained that the library already has many boxes of books in it and if we put any more boxes there, his Dad won’t have any room to build me book shelves. Until the shelves are built, I wanted to get the boxes out of the way so they’d be safe and so EJ could have room to organize his own stuff in the garage. I have just a few more boxes of household stuff left in the garage–as well as many, many empty boxes.

All day long it has felt storm-ish but so far we haven’t gotten any rain. I think it’s supposed to rain later. We really need it because our grass is getting yellowed with dryness.  While I worked today, I glanced outside and saw the turkeys with their little ones at the top of the driveway. By the time I grabbed my camera and called for JJ to come look, most of the turkeys had moved further down the driveway out of sight.