the purple house

since the last post from west virginia, i have traveled two thousand miles. west virginia to ohio to chicago to ohio to michigan to ohio to pennsylvania to western massachusetts. chicago was beautiful and busy. every night of the weekend i emerged from union park feeling dirty but satisfied, it was well worth the trek. on the last night we were there, a much needed thunderstorm hit and lit up the windows all night with lightning.

while staying in mt gilead, i spent a lot of time with seth's mother. in one day, we made five different kinds of cookies from scratch. another day we painted her bedroom. this summer i have started to understand the appeal of country living. seth's cousins laughed at my habitual locking of my car after closing the door. they leave the keys in their unlocked cars. there are acres and acres surrounding where they live, forming a barrier from any sort of real threat. had a bbq with seth's out of town relatives and volunteered to make a special trip to the store to get s'more ingredients, which turned out a success. other things of note include getting knocked to the ground by a very excited and very large dog and pettting lots of horses.

in ann arbor we spent almost fifteen hours reading the latest harry potter, with a short break to sleep in a small room with no curtains where the sun rose directly on us and it was one hundred degrees! i reached out to touch seth's arm at one point in the night and we soon realized the only way to sleep was on opposite sides of the bed as far away from the other's body heat as possible. soon after sunrise, we brilliantly hung a sheet up to block the sun and slept in until noon.

now i am in northampton and am spending my days with lizzy. liz isenberg is out of town and graciously let me sleep in her room. we went grocery shopping and bought sourdough bread and cheese and have now had it for dinner two nights in a row. yesterday i woke up at seven in the morning to a fluttering sound, and soon realized there was a small brown sparrow that had flown through my bedroom's open window. had a sudden adrenaline rush and did the only thing i could think of - grab my cell phone and hide under the covers until lizzy sleepily came and rescued me. unfortunately we couldn't go back to sleep after this, so we made tea and toast, went on a run & picked some flowers. today i got a chiropractic evaluation and looked at an apartment for seth to potentially live in the fall. it was nice, but was only one room in a larger building with no kitchen and a shared bathroom. it probably won't work out, but the landlord and i had a really nice conversation and really hit it off. have been lucky with landlords lately. also, jasmine made pickles and i think it's amazing. i am going to be a pickle making machine when i learn how. they are more crunchy when homemade.

next stop is boston on monday, and then home on thursday or friday. my mom starts her new job in south carolina on monday, so i may want to leave on thursday to be able to make it home for the weekend, after splitting the drive in two and staying in dc for a night on my way home.