Life in the Midwest

If you're not from the Midwest or have never had the pleasure of visiting our beautiful section of the country, you should know we are pretty friendly here. 

Neighbors help neighbors (I've borrowed sugar, our neighbor has borrowed Baking Powder, they've cleaned the snow off our driveway both when we've been home and out of town, we share plants, food and lots of laughter).

We say hi on our walks. Dogs and kids use everyone's yard as their own.

Today was no exception when a woman driving her car stopped to ask us directions. Glenn, Bill and I actually had no idea where she was going, so I ran inside and grabbed the iPad. I looked up the address she was searching for and went back to tell her how to get there. She was pretty close, but needed a dead-end street that she probably would not have found (and for whatever reason she didn't have a cell phone with her). 

Then, as I was walking over to D.d.'s, a man was out with his adorable little hound. He didn't have the dog on a leash (very common around here), but the dog wasn't listening. As I passed the man I said, "it looks like a game..." because the dog would stop and wait for the man to get about ten feet away, and then he (the dog) would take off running down the sidewalk. The problem I had with this is the dog kept crossing the streets that were perpendicular to the street we were walking along. It's a pretty busy street. I was so afraid the dog was going to turn and run out into that street. I was walking faster than the owner, so I caught up to the dog. He came running right over to me, so I let him sniff me and gave him a little scratch on the ears as I reached for his collar. The owner caught up and put the leash on him. That made me feel much better.

As for Cinco de Mayo, yes, we will be celebrating. No matter that we have no Mexican or even Spanish in our blood. It's basically an excuse to eat food that likely has nothing to do with that culture anyway. I'm making skillet tostados. I'm sure they're going to be delicious.

See? We even like to share holidays.