Wouldn't It be Good If We Could Live Without a Care?

How about some nice graffiti shots for your Friday? I like this one.

Oh, kids. It's been quite a day. A wonderfully, warm sweet, tease of Spring 70 degree day, but quite a day nonetheless.

I hadn't heard from my landlord about resigning the lease yet, and I was starting to worry a little. Normally, he contacts me in February. I worried about Coadster's little party last year. Remember? When I was dating that long-distance guy and went to St Louis for the weekend and Coadster told her dad she was going to a friend's house, but went to my house and had a party instead? Then she went to bed, because she had a show choir competition the next morning and let everyone stay and make noise, and wreak havoc while she slept? Yeah, that. I have no idea what the hell she was thinking. It was like she suddenly forgot how uptight the German grad students are who live above us. Anyway, my landlord has his own teenage daughter and was totally cool about it. It just gave me something to worry about this week, is all.

Since I don't like to worry, I decided to email him and see if we could sign the lease again for next year. He wrote back and said, that would be great. He said he'd have to raise our rent, however. Property taxes have gone up like crazy around here and he hasn't raised our rent even once the whole seven years we've lived here. So, I wasn't surprised, I was just worried, because he was doing so much apologizing about it, that it would be so much that I couldn't afford it. You want to know how much he was raising it a month? $10. Even I can afford that. He also wrote this in his email to me: "

Mrs. Landlady and I feel very fortunate, and blessed, to have had you and the girls as tenants and hope that you don’t find this to offensive, so…..

let me know if you would still be interested and we can get things finalized.

Isn't that sweet? It was just one of the things that made my day today.

This was on a door. I'm not sure if it's really considered graffiti since it's more like a drawing someone glued on the door.

The other thing happened while I was running today. I was turning onto First Avenue, when I saw some high school track boys walking across the street toward me. Eventually, they started running and passed me. The other boy runners who had already finished the route, were all waiting for the slower runners to clap and urge them along and tell them they did a good job. So, when I ran past, they laughingly did the same for me. Me, being the worst, most horrible mom of teens ever, decided it would be really fun to yell, "Wooooooo!" as I passed them. The whole time I was doing it, I was delightedly imagining the horror on my daughters' faces when I got to relate the story to them at dinner. And let me tell you, I was not disappointed. If you could hear eyes rolling, the sound of it in my house tonight would have been deafening.

See what I mean? It has been quite a day...Quite an awesome day, that is.