Another road trip

Traveling with Sue to another show. We are headed to Duluth Mn via the upper peninsula of Michigan. We have both heard it is supposed to be beautiful there - neither one of us has ever been.
Route 80 across Pennsylvania is interminable - it just seems to take forever and ever! Pleasant part of the drive is the view of the verdant forests with their fern underbellies. Lush and green, nice to see. Rushing past you think about all the wildlife - the flora and fauna contained there. I love to wander around in forests, takes me back to being a kid, playing in the woods, discovering wildflowers, building forts and dreams. I think the last time I wandered around in the woods was with my friend Bill. We would go to the Quabbin Reservoir looking for eagles (never found them) but we did find old cellar holes, neglected orchards, ruins. Actually, more recently my friend John and I went into the woods to check out a pollywog pond he had discovered. I always feel very peaceful and happy just enjoying what the scene has to offer. Reveling in what ever nature has to share in that time and place. I digress!
I suppose for me the reward for traveling Rt 80 is the Delaware Water Gap. Once you reach that you have put the familiar behing you. The place has a light quality that I have only seen one other place: Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. There is an energy and presence in both places that I feel, a bonded similarity expressed in topography and geology, reflected in light. Sue describes my expression as seeing vortexes. In the median strips are isolated meadows of wildflowers. We spy some side-of-the-roadiums and pull over to select some flowers for the ride. For the love of daiseys and birds foot trefoil along with blue ones neither one of us can identify, we power on with the blessings of the meadow deposited in a Poland Springs water bottle in the cupholder. Praying that we don't pay for this beauty with our blood - deer ticks, wood ticks, any kind of ticks...you get my point!
The afternoon is gliding into evening, the sun sends polka dots onto shadowed forested red rock mountains with stripes of grey. I examine the clouds and wish I remembered cloud identification.
Stopping at the next rest stop at the banks of the Susquehanna Riverwe encounter a busload of Polish tourists. I wonder - what are they doing here?
There is no A/C in the van, and you can't put the window down because you hair flies in your eyes. So the windows are open just enought to create a dull roar in the back of your head causing you to yell to be heard. A challenge at 80 mph!
Reynoldsvill, Pa. The evening sun streams through the clouds like stairways to heaven. My mother was a Reynolds, sadly I say hi.
We are up to 9 dead deer by the side of the road so far.
Cracker Barrel Resturant. Is there any hokier place on Earth. I think Sue secretly likes this place because at least once on every trip I find myself there. I hate Cracker Barrel. Extreme hokability with a serving of saccherine sweetness and a side of whitebread values. We ended up at this cathedral of culinary nasty owing to the fact that the adjacent "Quaker Steak & Lube" (I kid you not) was overcrowded due to a car rally happening in the parking lot. Dang it! Naturally, with my love of the Nascar culture, I was really hoping to go there!
So let's talk about sing-song voice. You know what I am talking about. That high-pitched voice one employs with dogs and idiots. Now as I see it, there are two professions who regularly use sing-song voice. Nurses and waitresses. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know not everyone in these professions is guilty of this, but IMHO enough for the generalization to stick. So anyway, as for the nurses, I don't go to the Dr. so this is not a problem for me. Waitresses however, well, I encounter them all the time. Yeah, Cracker Barrel. Sing -song. Somebody get me a gun! I know there have to be several people in this resturant right now who are packing! Ahh America! Tremendous natural beauty, and plenty fo ugly people.

Having recently closed my business, ( a small retail store showcasing antiques, women's accessories, decor, gifts), I find myself in middle age with too much time on my hands, full of ideas and no money! This is actually a scary time for me, as it is for many people.

I however do not want a job. I do not want to go back to working for someone else. This much I am certain of. I am certain of very little else.

I have all these ideas about things running around in my head. I want to create. I want to produce. I want to be creative. There is a problem however. I have very little talent! I am an idea factory, but I have no talent for working with these hands to actually produce something. I do have the ideas and the design sensibilities, I just don't have the manual talent. I also don't have the money now to be able to hire someone else to produce my ideas. So I am in a bit of a bind in that regard.

So these days, I spend time playing with my infant granddaughter, and that is an absolute delight.