In which Kim comes home.

On Friday Rich and I left in the morning and drove the five hours to E-ville, listening to an audiobook of Dead to the World. I had my knitting and once we got the heat adjusted (too hot, too cold, just right), we had a comfortable ride.

When we got there, two of the girls had already moved out of the apartment, and only Cazzy and Kim were left. Cazzy's parents had gotten there the night before to help her move her truckloads of stuff to her new apartment, and they had already gotten most of their daughters furniture, etc, moved out and they were busy cleaning the apartment around the piles of Kim's belongings.

Kim had hardly packed up anything except her clothes, so Rich and I had to throw all of her stuff into boxes and haul it out to our van and her car while Cazzy's parents went on cleaning the entire apartment. They are lovely, friendly people, and they cleaned like machines! That apartment looked good when we left!

We got a phone call on the way home, from our next-door neighbors, and I thought maybe they were calling to say our house was on fire or something, but they just wondered what time we would be home. I told them we were about an hour away, and they said they would wait up then, because they had a surprise for us!

When we got home, Rich and I (well, mostly Rich) started unloading the van and we sent Kim next door to let Judy and Dave know we were home. (She was also very interested in petting their beautiful cat.) A few minutes later, there was practically a parade coming across the lawn - Judy, Dave and Kim, each bearing gifts like the Magi!

Judy had made her wonderful Coconut Pie, and a Hummingbird cake, which is a dense fruity cake made with bananas and pineapple, with white frosting studded with walnuts! The third thing was a box full of fruit, bananas, grapes, apples and oranges, and some of Judy's handmade dishcloths! There was a pinwheel sticking out of the top of the box, and they explained that it was for Maddy!

They had tucked in a note, thanking us for cutting down the big tree in the front yard and telling us what good neighbors we are! I bet they weren't thinking that a few days later when our massive dandelion crop turned to fluff and was blowing around the neighborhood!

They only stayed a couple of minutes and then we went on unloading the van and Kim's car, just piling everything in the living room and dining room, and there was spillover into the kitchen and the front hall, too. We were all sitting down in the living room, on whatever spots weren't covered by Kim's things, when the doorbell rang and it was Sando!

He came in with his Playstation and proceeded to set that up so he and Kim could play uh, something, and Rich and I went up to bed. (We offered Sando some cake or pie, but he is a picky eater and turned them both down.)

I was reading in bed for a little while and I could hear them laughing downstairs, and Kim told me later that he stayed until 4 a.m., and by the time he went home, she was so tired she felt like she was drunk!

Gradually over the weekend we have cleared the living room of Kim's boxes, but there is still a lot of stuff all over the place. When she needs a pair of shoes, she has to dig through the big box in the kitchen.

So we had lots of treats for Mothers Day weekend, and Maddy was very interested in the pinwheel.