Friday Outing

I skipped going to water aerobics this morning, so I could be ready at 10 a.m. to take the ladies of our scrapbook club to a nearby town to shop at a new store.

The ladies were disappointed that the fall foliage wasn't brighter in the hills along the twisting and turning highway of the 30-mile trip.

"There's not much color," one lady commented. "The trees are all just brown."

"Brown is a color," Mother declared.

We laughed and agreed. The trees might not have been a riot of yellow, red, and orange, but the hills were still pretty in autumn browns and rusts, intermingled with the green of pine and cedar trees. In the fields, wheat-colored grasses swayed in the breeze, and along the shoulders of the road glowed bright red poison sumac.

We arrived in the small town about 11 a.m. and began looking for the new scrapbook store. We traveled through the few miles of the business district without spotting it, but since we were in the right vicinity, we decided to look for a specific restaurant we intended to visit later. We were unable to find that, either.

So I turned around in an unpaved and potholed parking lot of a pizza restaurant, bouncing my passengers as I went, and retraced the route back through town, carefully checking addresses as I drove. Finally, we spotted the scrapbook shop...which turned out to be one of the first businesses we passed on the way into town. I don't know how we missed it, since it had a colorful sign prominently displayed near the highway.

We spent about 30 minutes in the store, with each of us buying several items. The prices were a bit higher than we liked, but the shop did have some things we hadn't seen in other stores.

The business is run by a lady whose husband helps her from time-to-time with various tasks. He was there today, laughing at the chatter of the women. "Do you have any idea how often women use the word "cute," he asked?

One of the ladies didn't appreciate his comment, saying later that while it was nice that he was willing to help his wife, she thought that women would enjoy the shop more if he wasn't hanging around in it all the time.

After we were finished shopping, we had lunch at the buffet pizza place...the one with the pothole parking lot...since it was the only sit-down restaurant other than a Mexican one down the road. Mother doesn't care for Mexican. The other choices were fast food joints. None of the restaurants were good for my diet, but at least I could be a bit more choosy at the pizza buffet.

As we were paying for our meals, Mother asked if we'd been given the senior discount. The manager said, yes, he automatically gives the discount rather than asking if folks are eligible. "One time I asked a lady, who must have been in her 80s, if she wanted the senior discount, and she got mad at me," he said. "So I don't ask anymore. I just guess at it." We laughed and assured him he didn't have to guess very hard to know that the five of us qualified. We are all happy to take advantage of any discounts offered.

Back in our hometown, we stopped by the fairgrounds to shop at the Extension Homemakers Holiday Craft Fair, where I bought a jar of homemade blackberry jelly and a snowman Christmas tree ornament made from a stainless steel teaspoon.

We arrived back at my house around 3 p.m., where we bid goodbye to the ladies as they got in their cars and headed to their respective homes.

Mother and I were not very hungry by suppertime, but we went ahead and joined Hubbie in eating bowls of chicken noodle soup, with canned biscuits and honey.