Little Blue Ball

If you've lived in one place for any length of time, it is inevitable that you make connections. Sometimes they're obvious, and sometimes you have to play the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game before it becomes clear.

Both my husband and I have experienced life on the Little Blue Ball today.

For my husband, it was a Six Degrees game. He was walking our son home from school when a woman waved at them and invited them to see her political bumper sticker (they'd run into her a couple of days ago when doing an election-related scavanger hunt for school). So they walked back to her house, chatting, and she asked my son who he was, he answered, and my husband also introduced himself. She stopped, looked at him and said, "Oh, I know YOU!" Dear man drew a complete blank. Turns out that in addition to being the sister-in-law of a neighbor (a connection we would have NEVER made), she's friends with a friend of ours, who met her through another friend's friend. Confused yet?

Mine was more straightforward. If you're familiar with my blog, you know that the house I live in is a couple of doors down from where my maternal grandmother lived. She lived there until she died 6 years ago and my uncle lives there now. What you don't know is that my paternal grandmother also lived in this neighborhood. Her old house is on the next street up on the corner. The grandmothers did not live here during the same time period. Paternal was here first, then moved with her husband to Canada. Maternal moved here during the 70's (late 70's, I think, maybe early 80s) and lived here for the rest of her life.

In the mornings, after I've walked my son to school and am on my way back home, I pass all manner of joggers and dog-walkers. I approach the dog-walkers with soothing words to the dog in a doggie-pleasing voice which keeps them from barking their heads off as I pass. One such pair consists of a beagle named Snickers and Snickers' mom. I've been passing them for a while and we did the friendly wave thing. Then one day, I thought I saw Snickers outside of Paternal Grandma's house. So today, when I saw Snickers and her Mom, I stopped and introduced myself, then asked if they lived in that house. She said yes (a little suspiciously) and I explained about my Grandmother. BAM! The friendly floodgates opened and we chatted a while longer. I told her than Grandma had lived there when I was little but lived in Europe now. Jane (Snickers' mom) asked if maybe I could clear up a little mystery for her. Turns out that when she and her husband bought the house, the bathroom had been wallpapered. They took the paper down and discovered a lovely painting on the wall behind it - a scene that looked like an "outdoors in Paris" street scene. They'd asked the previous owners, who said that the owners before them had put it there before moving to Canada (my Grandma moved to Canada from there). They liked it enough that they left it exposed.

Later, I called my dad and asked him about it. He didn't remember, but my mom (who was painting herself back then) did. Apparently my grandmother painted that picture herself! She painted the whole house, but did a picture on the wall in the bathroom.

Wait until I tell Jane! I hope I can convince her to either take a picture or let me take one to send to Grandma. Wouldn't that blow her away????

Yes... it's a Little Blue Ball called Earth.