It's Friday!

Actually, it's the wee hours of the morning on Saturday. Everyone in the house is asleep but me. It's quiet and peaceful. I'm straining to think of anything interesting to write about besides school.

Ahhh. I know.

Today I ran out of gas for the first time in my life. I knew the "you need gas" light was on, but it didn't seem like it had been on for that long. Very, very fortunately, it was a picture-perfect, gorgeous day and we stalled right next to a very nice playground within walking distance of home. Brandon was with me at the time and he had a lot of fun while we waited for AAA.

The place had formerly been one of those all-wooden fort-type playgrounds that were popular in the late 80's and early/mid '90's, but for whatever reason, the HOA replaced it with something more modern. One thing I really liked were some very classic playground toys that had been added, like a crane/scooper that picks up pebbles and moves them from place to place using handle mechanisms. . . I hadn't seen one of those in years. It's funny how things go out of fashion and then are all of a sudden considered novel again after a while.

(okay, one thing about school, but only briefly: reading through the Little House books with the kids, we stumbled across an archaic word -boughten - meaning an object that had been purchased from a store instead of having been made by hand -- "a boughten broom." *Everything* is purchased from somewhere these days -- and now the novelty is if something is hand-made).

Anyway, Brandon had a lot of fun with the scooper toy. Another thing I love about that playground (that I'm so glad they didn't change) is the swing set. It's got wonderful, deep bucket seats that are high enough for an adult to swing on comfortably. It's nice and tall, and when you swing, you go really high and touch the tips of the tree branches with your toes.

It was a fun, carefree thirty minutes that I most certainly would have said I didn't have time for if I'd been given the choice. Running out of gas in this case seemed more like a gift.