Ballston is Not

You are hardly the DC/Metro area. You are on the utmost outskirts of your biggest counterparts. You are small, sad, and piddly. You have nothing. Your knockoff Central Park-like spot in the middle of this parish is your highlight, but it is hardly what they call part of "the city."

You have one hot dog stand. One stand-alone Starbucks. One, or two, stand-alone vendors selling jewelry. One, or two, decent bars and one, or two, nice restaurants (that actually rather suck). Do you really qualify as being part of the DC area?

Your mall is deceiving. You have maybe 3 good stores: Wet Seal, Victoria's Secret, and FYE. And those are good stores? Why do you have four levels if you only carry 3 halfway exciting places to go? You attract people with your big Macy's building that can barely be seen from the highway exit, but in reality, it is part of your deceiving strategy to lure people into your walls that have nothing of great value that can't be found at a better and bigger Macy's.

The cafe, or candy shop, or coffee shop, or whatever it is, that is front and center upon the metro exit atop the escalator is a joke. It is not a true cafe. It has nothing.

Rock Bottom, you are disgusting. Your food is gross and makes me sick.

Your building heights are premature and your night life display is embarrassing.

You have one block of 1/4 busy-ness, if that qualifies. Your lunch choices are scarce and you are only the first underground stop on the metro's way to the real heart of the metropolis. Why can't you have more life? A concert here, or two, on occasion...a festivity, more novelties, SOMETHING?

Are you really worth the one hour and forty-five minutes each way I spend in my cracked out car and out of date, unsafe, public transportation method I take to get to you?

Remembering

I hung out at mom and pop's tonight. Pop was at a meeting and mom and I decided to get together so we put up yardsale signs and got a bite to eat at Tony's. The weather this summer is unbelievable. Can it really almost be chilly in July?

It was really a relaxing "minute". A break away from reality, from thinking about work, and priorities, and life in general. Hadn't relaxed over there in a while and it really reminded me of what a haven it really is.

I got into looking at some old pictures of Carrie, Anna, and I's childhood and pics of our aunts and uncles and their kids and old friends, and softball, and cheerleading pics, and pics of me wearing too much makeup in high school and Carrie and Anna before they got braces, etc. I look back sometimes and wonder why mom let me leave the house looking like what I did. How embarassing!

But upon looking at the pictures I was reminded of all the outfits I used to love and the neighbors I used to hang out with and things that we would do when we played together. Coming across pictures of the Stone twins, I remember this special kind of ham at the their house when my parents would babysit for Matt and Nancy. I always looked forward to that week or two because I felt like that special ham in their refrigerator was waiting just for me.

I remembered these special red shoes I used to have. My pop loved those shoes. They had alphabet shoe strings in them and I think he still has them to this day. I remembered all the bathrobes I used to wear and my special pink dress with the white belt I loved and saved to put on my baby doll one summer.

I had forgotten how scraggily I was, as a kid, and how I loved to dress up with the neighbor kids. Almost all of us are married now.

Boy does life happen quick. In the blink of eye people are having babies and moving to other states, taking on new challenges and experiencing life's hardships as adults.

Learning to remember is recounting lost innocence.