Post Office Lines and Reading Aloud

Raven, mom, and I went to the post office today to mail our Christmas presents. It was (as expected) a very long line. The woman in line behind us had three children, ranging from an infant still in its carrier to probably three and five, respectively. As happens with such young yet active boys and long waits, they got restless. Raven and I had gone to stand by the wall with most of the packages while mom stayed in line. The plan was that Raven and I would bring up the packages when mom got to the front of the line so that we and our packages were less in the way for other customers.

Well, mom noticed that the boys were beginning to act up and called me over to entertain them. I tried striking up a conversation, and that worked perfectly fine with the older boy, but the younger of the two was a bit shy. I don't know what made me think of it, but I remembered that I had a copy of The Hobbit in my bag, so the two boys and I went to a carpeted corner of the post office and sat down. I read aloud to them, and quite surprising to me, both boys stayed right near me and were well behaved while I read to them. They did get distracted (or so I thought at the time) but I was surprised when I had stopped reading because the boys were looking at cards and commenting on them, but when I stopped they both turned back around and asked me to keep reading them the story. They hadn't been distracted at all in fact, they just needed something physical to do while they were listening. I got them things to draw on and with to keep them in one place, and that settled their need for something physical to do quite nicely. The younger boy, who had been so shy when we were standing up talking, became open and friendly when I started reading aloud. I actually spent a good portion of the time reading with him in my lap off and on as he rolled and played about. We read through Bilbo meeting Gandalf before the boys' mom made it through the line and it was time for them to go.

It was a small thing, a passing interaction and I doubt either boy would recognize me if he were to see me tomorrow, but it was a wonderful moment for me. With all the electronic gadgets and gizmos that are out there for young kids these days, and the TV and internet saturation, as an English major I have found myself lamenting the loss of simply reading aloud to children. There was some idea in me that just reading to kids, without any bells and whistles to keep their attention, was not something they would want anymore. These two boys, complete strangers in a post office line, proved me wrong. They enjoyed being read to, and were listening and paying attention to the story. And they were interacting with me, watching my expressions and engaging with me as a storyteller.

The boys didn't know it, and their mom thought I was the one helping her out this morning, but today two little boys gave me a wonderful Christmas gift.

[Re]Discoveries

It has been a long time since I blogged last. Sorry. I wish I could say that I was too busy doing something important, but I can't. I should be as busy as humanly possible studying for my comprehensive exams, but I have found myself resentful of having to do schoolwork during the summer vacation (I know, PhD students have no vacations, only more time during the day to get work done since there are no classes to take up time. @#^@%! [fill in whatever expletive you deem appropriate]).

While I have been slacking somewhat on my reading (not entirely, I am still getting schoolwork done, just not as much as a full-time schedule of study would call for) I have been slowly rediscovering the world and its pleasures outside of schoolwork. Raven and I have started having "date nights" once a week, a time to go out together just for the fun of it and enjoy being married again. We've gone to the movies, played pool, gone out to dinner, you know, date night things. Being comfortably married and sharing each other's daily worries and frustrations, it is easy to forget that you can still have fun together and take pleasure in each other's company, and that you are still allowed to take time to love and enjoy your spouse [in more than 30-second increments] without any outside motive or purpose.

I have also rediscovered the kitchen and am actually starting to enjoy cooking and baking again. I have worked as a cook at several restaurants from Oregon to Montana to Virginia, but my experience with cooking and baking then was for the job, not for myself, my loved ones, and the simple joy of the act itself. I remember enjoying being in the kitchen before, but generally only for brief flings with large breaks between forays into the joy (rather than just the necessity) of cooking and baking. I have, however, had a longstanding desire to have a romance with using ingredients and crafting homemade food.

I found a pair of cast iron skillets in the things that were packed away from The Move while I was going though boxes in the garage. There is an 8-inch skillet and a 9-inch skillet (or thereabout, their bottom stamps are rather unreadable, so I am guessing that is what they say). No one who would have had such implements prior to The Move recognizes them, so I have claimed them for my own.
     Raven has lots of cast iron cookware that he emphatically tells me I can use, but somehow having these as my own has given me the permission to use them and play with them however I want. Not that I have any plans to abuse them, just the comfort of knowing that they are mine to ruin if I happen to do so on accident. So far my newfound pans have served wonderfully to make scrambled eggs, a stone-fruit cobbler, and a frittata.
     Not knowing the history of the two pans, the first thing I did was scrub both pans vigorously with lots of soap and hot water, then re-season them according to the instructions in one of my cast iron cookbooks. They have behaved beautifully and nothing has really stuck, and nothing at all has burned or failed. Fingers crossed that my success with these pans will continue.

Baking is teaching me greater patience than I have had to practice in the kitchen before without getting paid for it. I am learning  to bake breads that take days from start to finish: breads that rest overnight, pizza dough that should rest for two or three days to build flavor, sourdough breads that take multiple days from beginning the starter (which I have actually not yet begun) to feeding that starter to actually making the bread. In a work kitchen, there is always something else to do, something to make you forget about whatever you've made and are waiting on until it needs to be addressed again. In my home kitchen, I do not forget about the waiting, and I am trying to convince myself to look on it with anticipation rather than irritation at the delay. Part of this is telling myself (repeatedly) that it is not a delay, the wait is part of the process, and the result will be much the better for the time it takes.

Today I made two different pizza doughs with recipes from the blog Farm Fresh Feasts; one is for Buttermilk Crust Pizza and the other is for Roasted Garlic Herb Pizza Dough. Raven sent me a link to the buttermilk pizza dough to make for him while he was at work, and I enjoyed reading author Kirsten Madaus' post so much I poked around on her site and found the other recipe and ended up making both doughs (and of course following the blog). I already have a pizza stone, so in a day or two it will finally get a real homemade pizza baked on it (Raven might have made one or two, but the poor thing is only lightly used as yet).

I am terrible at remembering to take pictures for my blog. I am trying to work on that (Raven and my mom even got me a great camera so I could take awesome pictures!), but I forgot to take pictures of the pizza dough I made. I will post pictures of it before we build and bake the pizza though, I promise!

Hello Again, and A Bit of Poetry

Hello all,

I know it has been quite some time since I last posted. For that I apologize, I have had PhD dissertation rather than blog on the mind lately (ok, for the last year or three). I am trying to find a balance between the two, so that perhaps this blog will be a creative outlet, a sort of vacation spot away from Dissertation-land where I will still be living for the next year or few.

For today's offering, I give you a poem I wrote in a college poetry class. It was right after we lost the amazing and irreplaceable Robin Williams, and I wrote several poems to help myself deal with his loss. For me one of Robin Williams' most memorable roles was John Keating in the film Dead Poet's Society. This is my attempt to work through losing such an influential, wonderful professor.

John Keating is Dead

Once a room filled with poetry,

with sparkling language and flashing ideas, now

cold, dry, uninspired.

The classroom was once filled with verse,

Pulsing with life and vigor, and music,

where a man taught boys to

constantly look at things

in a different way,

taught them to go beneath the pages, to dive

into their own souls and bring up poetry,

words still dripping with their soul’s blood,

To listen to their hearts beating and sound their barbaric

YAWP over the rooftops of the world.

Now only the sound of fingers drumming on the edge of a desk,

The creak and rustle of shifting bodies,

Bored enough to notice the hard wooden seats.

The clearing of a throat,

A quiet cough.

The Captain they loved has gone.

Where for a few brief months there was

excitement, there was life, there was

poetry, now boys are immersed in the drone of

a lecture, choking out the vivacity that was once there.

Words wash over all,

Lecturing to ears attuned to hearing

subtlety, nuance, and rhythm,

no longer the monotone drilling of

a rote lesson, dry and barren.

Ceaseless waves of meaningless words

trying to wash away memory of their Captain

and his ideas, the thrill of his classroom.

The pressure of the class’s silence

kills the metronome voice,

this new teacher drowning

in his own mediocrity.

Grasping for more to say,

More quotes, rustling of pages,

Words begin to splutter, gasp, flail,

sinking in the once uplifting classroom.

Silence. No help from the class.

Questions? Remarks?

Anyone?

Anyone, please?

WORKS CITED

Dead Poets Society. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke. Touchstone, 1989. DVD.

Letter #9

Dear Rowan,                                          October 6     Plattsburgh, NY

Sorry I haven't written for a while, I was trying to get into a better frame of mind, less melancholy and whiney. I have yet to end up in a ditch, although with winter ice storms coming I suppose it is a possibility. I am on this trip, this Grand Tour of mine, to find good things after all, not depressing things. And so, I struck out on a quest to find a small happy town somewhere between Detroit and Boston. After the big cities with their decay and melancholy, I was feeling the distinct need for small town comfort. With that in mind, I took a few weeks rambling up the highways along the top of the country. After I left Detroit, I wandered through Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Syracuse, but they were all too big and none of them had the feeling I was craving. So wandering up farther to the north, I found Plattsburgh. I also found out that it is cool enough during the days now that I can have chocolatey snacks in the car and not worry about them melting into a giant glob of chocolate ooze in a wrapper, or worse, in an opened wrapper so it looks like a miniature scene from The Blob, oozing out of the packaging to attack nearby upholstery, maps, bags, or anything else within its creeping reach. For the summer months my chocolate cravings were only safely transportable in the form of M&M's, which I like, but variety is nice, and somehow small candy-coated chocolate bits do not satisfy an intense milk chocolate Dove bar craving.

Plattsburgh is a small town, with nothing in particular to recommend it to a distant traveller, but it was what I had been looking for. It sits right on the edge of Lake Champlain and has a river running right through downtown, so it has a strong water-life about it. It is very relaxing and comforting to just sit at the edge of the lake and think, or write, or just be. I also had the good fortune to arrive just in time for the annual "Adirondack Coast Wine, Cider and Food Festival" which was a whole day taken up with good food, nice wine, wonderful hot ciders, and music. It was a wonderful Fall festival, full of all the warm, homemade fall comforts I could want: cider, pies, artisan breads and cheeses, small batch wines, family butcher sausages, and of course all the hand made, home made non-edibles that you could think of, from rocking chairs to to wooden kid's toys. And yes, I now have a beautiful hand crafted carved wooden sailing boat that really floats and was sold as a child's tub toy. It has a little anchor, and a mast with real sails that can be pulled up and lowered, and a wheel that really turns and works the rudder, and tiny little ropes and pins and tackle and everything a sailing ship should have. I love it as much for the fact that the gentleman selling it was adamant that it was a toy, not a decorative piece, as I do for the wonderfully loving details that he put into it. I justified getting it because it could be a Christmas present for one of my nephews, but really I got it to play with myself. And it wasn't that expensive either, the man told me he hated seeing things marked up to be so expensive folks were afraid to use them because they might break, so he keeps his own prices low enough that kids will actually get to play with the toys he makes, instead of have them sitting on a shelf collecting dust. I really liked that guy, he had a great way of looking at things.

I bought a hand made traveling candle too. It is a candle that is in a tin with a lid so you can close it up and travel with it. The top of the lid has a sort of grippy, non,slip rubbery texture, and I didn't understand why until the lady who sold it to me told me to take the lid off the top and put it on the bottom of the tin in the car if I want it in there, like an air freshener (not lit, of course). The grippy top means the candle won't slide around while I'm driving. It smells like baked apples, all warm and spiced and scrumptious. The lady said that during the winter if it gets too cold and does not put out enough scent in the car, I can put it onto the front air vent as long as I have the heater running, to warm it up. She warned me just to be careful and not to leave it up there long enough to melt if I had the heat on really high.

The ciders were exquisite, and I tried cider from every vendor that was at the festival. Did you know that a place that just does ciders is called a Ciderie? I love that word, I know it is really no different than a Winery, but somehow it just sounds fanciful rather than formal. One vendor had a giant barrel full of apples, and a press, and was pressing the apples right there to make cider and apple juice. I tried both. Just the smell of the festival was entrancing. It was indoors so that they didn't have to worry about the weather, and the smells of cider and pies and wine and all sorts of wonderful foods all mingled together in an intoxicating blend. It smelled like the most enchanting Thanksgiving dinner ever. I sampled cheeses, and butters, and breads, and sausages, and jerkies, and pastries, and wines. I had as many different apple and pumpkin pies, crisps, crumbles, and other assorted fall desserts as I could manage. When I got full I just wandered around the festival until I had room again then tried something else. I glutted myself on the food, and the wine, and the cider, and the amazing friendliness and good will of the festival and the people of this small lakeside town. Between feeling like I was at a dead-end in Arbuckle, dry and brittle Bend, the horridness that was Wichita, and the disillusionment and decay of St. Louis and Detroit, I had forgotten how wonderful people could be, especially small town people.

The festival and music started at 2pm, and there was a bike ride beforehand, but I left my bike in storage since I didn't think I would need it over the winter. Oh well, I took a nice jog along the lakeshore in the morning instead. Then back to my hotel room for a shower and a few hours of writing time before the festival. There are no hostels in Plattsburgh, but there is the ever-present HoJo, which is fine. All I really need my room to have is a bed, a bathroom (with a sink, toilet, and shower or tub that has hot water. I know it is asking a lot, but really these are ALL necessary. It is very strange to find the places that are lacking one of these and think you as a guest should be fine with that, and should still pay them for the privilege of staying in their necessity-lacking establishment), and a table and chair for writing.

I have discovered one drawback to traveling constantly and writing. I get so many ideas for stories and articles that there is no way I can write them all, but they all seem like such great ideas and leads that I hate to not use them. I know, the trials and tribulations of a happy writer overburdened with exactly what she needs to be successful. Pity poor me. I have finally finished the first draft of a story I started in undergrad and got to book length, but never actually got past the climax. I put that down so it can rest for a while and started revising the first draft of a book I did for the 2010 NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Then of course there is the "work" side of writing, my travel writing. I am in the middle of a piece on St. Louis, but it is a bit depressing, as was the city. I think I will set it aside for a bit and write about this little town. It has such a wonderful feel to it, especially with the festival, that I think there is an abundance of feel-good things I could write about and really make people want to come and experience it for themselves.

I plan on staying in Plattsburgh for a week or so, then meandering over to the coast. I found a town called Belfast in Maine, and I think I will head there. That way I can say that I have been to Belfast (I just won't tell people which Belfast). And of course I will have to try Maine lobster, even if it is not in season. I really think I will stay in small towns until I come to New York for New Year's, except for Boston and Salem of course. I really do enjoy the feel of the holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas in a small town more than the impersonal hustle and bustle of a big city. If you want to join me on my East Coast wanderings before New Year's, just let me know. You might know a great tiny town that I have never heard of. Didn't you live in a little Virginia town for a while? I remember you told me it had a great theater that did Christmas shows. Maybe we could go there for Christmas, then back up to New York for New Year's Eve. That would be worth finding a B&B if one was running through Christmas, just for a more personal feel than a big hotel.

I will write you again from down the road. I promise it won't be near as long this time as it was between this letter and the last one.

Your friend,

Emily

Letter #8, Detroit

Dear Rowan,                                        September 16     Detroit

Hello from Detroit! It is great out here on the road! I spent a week exploring St. Louis, then most of a week in Indianapolis, and now here I am in Detroit. I get to do what I want, when I want, and how I want. I go to coffee shops or Elmer's, or anywhere else that has free wifi and write. I had forgotten how much better I feel when I am writing. I feel like my life is finally going in the right direction. I am happier, and saner, and don't have the random sobbing breakdowns for no real reason whatsoever, like someone taking my favorite chair, or losing a pen or pencil I like, or for no reason at all just standing in the middle of a room and breaking down. And the feeling that there is no reason to do anything at all other than sit and stare at a wall or just go to bed because there is no point in being awake. I know they say that these are the symptoms of depression, and I am well aware of the fact that depression is something that is a constant companion and has been since I was very little. I even have the doctor's note to prove it (I don't really have a note, just a diagnosis. Although a note would be kinda neat, I think I would frame it. "Emily should not attend real life today, as she is depressed and should stay in bed with a mug of tea or hot chocolate and a good book, signed Her Doctor"). But writing helps me balance my brain, even when there is still a landslide of things to do. If I give myself time for writing, it really does seem to help me get everything else done, rather than take time away from my to-do list. Not that there is much on my to-do list these past few weeks other than "write." It is really great. I have to write, and read, and run, and live. And the occasional load of laundry of course, but I can read or write while laundry is running, so that hardly counts.

I have been writing mostly fiction, I have five books in various stages of incompleteness that I have started over the years, and they all need work to get them finished and polished. I also have a few short stories that have come up just in the past few weeks that I hope to get finished shortly and submitted to magazines or contests or something. There is also the travel writing to do, which is the "work" side of my writing, but even that is fun. I have been trying out the travel writing I do on people in whatever cafe or coffee shop I have stopped into to see if my descriptions work. It has been great, I get a wonderful range of opinions and it lets me really hone my language to tug just the right strings to make people really want to go and see the places I am describing. It would be really wonderful if I can build my writing up into an actual career, so I never have to go back into the real world of a nine to five punch-the-time-card job again.

When I get stuck in the middle of writing something, I have a few different knitting and crocheting projects going, and I just work on one of those while I think about where I want my writing to go next. If I get really, really stuck I have been going for runs, which means I have been getting in at least one run a day. It is really fun to be able to just get out onto the road and find new places all the time. Going from city to city, and spending a week or so in each place, I have the time to look up any major trails in town, but I am not there long enough to get bored running the same places all the time. Heck, I haven't had time to explore every trail system I have found, but that is ok. If I ever make it back around to these cities again I will still have places to explore.

Detroit is a rather melancholy place to explore though. I have heard that one third of the city is vacant, and wandering around neighborhoods here, I believe it. There are entire blocks of houses that are empty, some boarded up, some left open with their windows gone and doors falling off their hinges. Some of these houses are grand old stone or brick places, and I am sure they were really beautiful when they had people in them to care for them. Now they are still beautiful, but it is the sad beauty of something that was truly grand now so far gone that it is past reclaiming but not yet simply ugly. There are also still signs of the riots in 1967, a truly ugly moment in history that left ugly and lasting scars on the city. There are buildings that were abandoned or burned out and just left there, not reclaimed and not torn down. Just left neglected, like no one cared or could be bothered to do anything about those buildings. But wouldn't a park, or even just an empty filed be better than an abandoned burned out warehouse?

The whole town seems to be cheering on their sports teams. I have yet to meet one single person that wasn't a fan of at least one of Detroit's sports teams. It seems like these teams are all that is holding this town together, they buoy up everyone's spirits and convince them that there is still something good here, something to be proud of and stay here for. There are all the factories of course, but while people do seem to have pride in the cars they make, it is different than a uniting, happy rallying point that is for pleasure, rather than to earn a paycheck. And there are rival car companies here, so people don't seem quite as unified there are they are by sports. If someone here is a baseball fan, they have their team and that team is the same for every baseball fan in Detroit. And if someone is a basketball fan, they might think the baseball people are a little weird but they still support each other's fanaticism since they are both fans of Detroit teams. Overall though, this is not a place I would want to live in. It is too sad, too empty and abandoned. It feels like every gaping old house has ghosts in it, looking out of the window hollows and seeing other ghosts looking back from empty windows across the street. And walking though, I feel like all those ghosts are feeling sad for the living, as though just being in Detroit gives a person a little more mortality than they had before.

I am much more in the business of keeping myself happy now, even though there is something sadly sweet about these abandoned old places. I bought an 8 gig thumb drive and I have been busy loading it with every musical soundtrack I can get my hands on. My car has a USB port in the glove box, and the stereo will play whatever I put onto a thumb drive. I have also been putting on tons of Disney songs, and other happy makers. With 8 gigs, I am not too worried about filling it up, but if I do I will just get another one and have thumb drives for different sets of music, like mix CDs but huge. I have another thumb drive that I have been filling with audio books. It is rather amazing how many audio books there are out on the internet for free. There are always the audio books for sale at truck stops, but I find I much prefer classics to the pop and pulp fiction that is generally available there, and the books that do look interesting at truck stops are usually available online too. I guess I am just an old fashioned girl when it comes to my reading habits.

I suppose it is not really fair to go on about how wonderful my life has become these past few weeks while you are still waiting to find your perfect life. And my life is not perfect, and I know that the "romance of the road" will wear off before too long and I will want to have a place to go home to every day that is mine, instead of a room I am renting for a few days. But that point has not hit yet, and I am in no hurry to get there. It is such a grand change right now to have gone from a dead end in Arbuckle, then a dead end in Bend, then another dead end in Wichita, to a brand new bright and shiny world full of possibilities out here on the road. And I know that this bubble might pop too, just like the one I was in all the way to Wichita and through the first week or two at least. But right now I feel like I have a plan, I am living the life I want to live, and somehow I will make it work. Between the rent from Arbuckle and the travel writing, I think my finances will be ok through this Grand Tour of mine, and hopefully will actually get better after I get a good reputation and a nice set of clippings and examples from the travel writing so I get more assignments. Right now, I really think that this crazy writing-for-a-living thing is actually going to work!

I plan on staying in Detroit for a few days, then meandering up across the top of the country until I can cut over to Boston. There is really no rush though, since I want to be in Salem, Mass. for Halloween and would rather not have to backtrack to get there. I might wander up to Maine before I go to Boston, depending on the weather. I know that I will be driving in snow a good portion of the winter since I will be on the East Coast, but that does not mean I am eager to get into icy driving conditions just yet. But from what I can tell, everything is still clear sailing (or driving) for now, so I have the whole country open to be explored! I will write again from my next fabulous and fun destination!

Your friend,

Emily

Letter #7

Dear Rowan,                                                September 1     St. Louis

After my first day on the road, life is looking up again! What a wonderful feeling to be free of that job and that apartment and to know that I never ever have to go back to either one. The job offered me a leave of absence, apparently they know that their employees feel more like cattle in a slaughter yard than people, and need to walk away from the job for weeks or months at a time or they will snap or crumble. Apparently, while they do nothing to actively make their employees lives better, either a verbal explosion or a weeping pile of depression that used to be a person occurring in the middle of the call floor is not something they want other employees to witness more than once a week (maybe they think we will spook and stampede for the doors). Thus they offer time away from hell to see what the real world is like and regain a sense of self respect before plunging back into the cave of cubicles that reek of human despair. As I told you before, I just quit. I do not want the gloom of impending re-damnation hanging over me, even if they were to give me leave of absence for a whole year.

Today I packed up all my stuff into the back of my car, turned in the keys for my little dungeon, and took to the open road. My destination, at least for a week or two, is St. Louis, MO. The drive took all day, but I was in no hurry, other than to gain some distance between myself and Wichita. I headed north first, up through Kansas City, then east over to St. Louis. I stopped in Kansas City for lunch and a little sightseeing. The country around Kansas City is just as flat as Wichita, but the city itself seems more alive and modern. I didn't stay very long, as I was looking for a place that didn't remind me of Wichita, even if it was more appealing. I had lunch at a place I found online called Fiorella's Jack Stack BBQ that has a really good Zagat rating and decent prices. I was a little dubious since it sounds like it should be an italian/BBQ fusion, but it was actually really good. And yes, I did have ribs. At a BBQ joint in the heart of America, would you expect anything less of me? After lunch it was straight back onto the interstate headed for St. Louis. I may go back to Kansas City someday when I don't hold resentment to it simply for being within driving distance of Wichita.

St. Louis is a terrifying place to drive into. The outskirts of the city are dotted with empty, abandoned, decrepit buildings. It feels like a plague has come through and left buildings with no one alive to care for them. Or maybe the zombie apocalypse has already started and no one knows, because it started in St. Louis and it is eating all the people from the outskirts into the central city and no one escaped to warn the rest of the world yet. Even in the heart of downtown St. Louis, within walking distance of the iconic (and amazingly, disturbingly, mind bogglingly gigantic) arch, there are abandoned, crumbling buildings wedged between fully functional, apparently thriving businesses. I expected to see contamination signs across the doors to warn people away and explain these rotten teeth in the skyline of the city. But there seems to be no explanation except neglect and ennui. The problem with these now uninhabitable buildings is that their owners gave up on them and moved away, but no one bought them so now no one wants the bother of either tearing them down or fixing them up, so they sit hollow, with boarded up windows or gaping holes in the upper stories where windows used to be. It feels like the city is dying just because no one cares, and they will just sit and watch it rot until they think it is hurting their own profits, then they will just move away and leave another rotten tooth to crumble into decay and drag the city further down. Its sad, really. I found an amazing little Indian restaurant with the greatest dessert naan I have ever had. It was naan stuffed with raisins and coconuts, and pistachios, and dusted with cinnamon and sugar, and they served honey with it to drizzle onto it for a little added sweetness. There was also an apparently thriving arts district, because the streets were crowded with people either coming from or going to  shows, and some people that had apparently just come out of one show and were going to another, from what I gathered from shamelessly eavesdropping while loitering around the crowds on the sidewalk. How else was I supposed to find out what there was to do in town? I did not go to a show tonight though. After my escape from Wichita and a full day on the road, I was just ready to find a bed and not wake up for a day or two.

I discovered that the US has hostels today. Somehow I had always thought of hostels as a European thing. But there are quite a few hostels in St. Louis, and you can even get a private room. Normally dorming would be fine with me, but after the day I have had, I wanted a little alone-but-not-driving time. Besides, it was late when I finally found the hostel, and I did not think that dorm mates would appreciate me staying up to write a letter, or creeping in in the middle of the night after having stayed up in the main room writing. So private room it is, for tonight at least. The "hostel" I found with private rooms is actually a Motel 6, but its rooms go for $21 a night, so I might look into a real hostel tomorrow. I know there is a youth hostel somewhere in St. Louis, but it was late and I did not want to hunt around and try to find it tonight, I just wanted a bed.

Speaking of beds, the old bat of a landlord in Wichita bought the mattress from me that I got when I moved in, and she bought it for the same price that I bought it for, seeing as it was nearly brand new. I also did not tell her what I bought it for, and gave her an inflated price which she then haggled down, but the price we settled on was just about the price I got it for, rounding up to a flat dollar amount of course. And she paid me in cash, so I don't have to worry about a check bouncing or anything.

I think I will stay in St. Louis for a few days, maybe a week, then head north again to Chicago. I want to make it over to Salem, Mass. for Halloween. From what I have been able to find online, it looks like they do a rather amazing city wide blowout, and if that doesn't get me a candy fix for a few weeks (or maybe months) I don't know what will.

If you know about, or have opinions about, any of the cities between Chicago and Salem, let me know. I am going to be driving along I-90 (as far as I can tell from the maps), so I will be up for exploring any place between Chicago and Boston. There are no hostels in Salem, I already looked, so I think I will find a place to stay in Boston and then drive up to Salem for Halloween.

Once I finally get up tomorrow, I plan on beginning to explore St. Louis. I have to go up in the arch of course, and the travel book says there is an underground museum beneath it that I will go down and see. I also read that they have a dome with a year round rainforest inside, so I really want to go see that. I wonder if they have animals in their rain forest or just plants. The guide does not really specify, but I think it is just plants. It is inside the botanical garden, which I guess used to belong to a hardware baron, and he willed it to the city when he died. I will also need to go spend at least a day at the St. Louis zoo, as I do love big well-funded zoos. Little zoos always make me sad, but big ones with nice enclosures for the animals are calming to me. Plus I need to take several walking trips around the city to see any fun buildings or stores. And I will need to drive out to any places that come to my attention as interesting but are out of walking range.

Do you have any suggestions for must-do or must-see places or things in St. Louis? It would be so fun if you could come out and go on this Grand Tour of mine with me, but at least I will get to see you for New Year's when I come to New York. Are you still at the same job, or did someone finally notice your rather amazing talent and hire you away from the coffee shop? Or there is always the possibility of a wonderfully handsome and wealthy young man coming into your Park Avenue coffee shop, falling madly in love with you at fist sight, and sweeping you off to his penthouse. But the finding-a-better-job idea seems more likely, even in New York. And that way I would not have to be wildly jealous of you, either. If you did end up in your own happily-ever-after New York fairytale it would certainly inspire at least a short period of jealousy. But in all seriousness, I hop life is treating you well in whatever you are doing, and I look forward to hearing from you soon. You don't have to tell me that I have gone insane though, that is already a well established point by now.

Your Friend,

Emily