Dear Liza,
This weekend was the last of our street fairs, and it’s the one closest to us! Just a block down the street we found all sorts of fun things and yummy food.
First off, this character was doing an old-fashioned silly magic act, making balls disappear under cups and pulling coins from behind kids’ ears. It was fun and felt just right.
Street fairs need craft booths, of course, and this one fit the bill! An entire army of six-legged Monster Barbies was walking across the table of this booth. Well-done, certainly. But a bit too creepy for us.
We listened to some good jazz, saw little kids dancing with their dads and watched this lady cook about a million chicken kabobs on her small grill. They smelled heavenly, but we needed a place to sit down and get some shade.
Paradox, the vegetarian restaurant up the street, was just what we needed. Air conditioning, soft seats and smiling folks let us recuperate from the bright street. Lemonade for Grandpa Nelson and fresh, cold carrot juice for Bridgett and me held us until lunch got delivered.
I found a kindred spirit in Sienna, one of the servers! She has a tattoo of one of my favorite illustrations from Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends”. This one is called “My Beard”.
My beard grows to my toes
I never wears no clothes
I wraps my hair
Around my bare
And down the road I goes.
The fact that this lady, younger than either of my kids, has memorized one of MY favorite poems, just makes me smile. Poetry is like that, I guess.
We enjoyed our lunch and then spent a little while returning a set of lost keys thanks to the NextDoor website, which let me post pictures of the keys and get notes from people who recognized them. It was amazingly simple and ended up happily for everyone. Hooray for community!
Then, happy, tired and well fed, we headed home.
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 