a lotta angels & a lot more words

Yesterday around 3 pm, Henry and I headed into the fan for a lively afternoon of blue grass music and children's literature at Narnia Bookstore. The word "Narnia" alone made Henry laugh. I'm ashamed to say I had never taken him there before. We've already been gifted with about 1.34 billion children's books, not to mention I still have most of mine, so selfishly when we look for new books they are usually for me. Also, bookstores are trouble because of their high risk potential for spending way too much money. But this was a perfect excuse to risk taking out my wallet and adding to the boy's massive book collection.

Patricia Keeler, the step-mother of my genuine scraped-knee blood sister from kindergarten's was in town from Hoboken, NJ to sign her newly illustrated book, "Thank You Angels." A nice 4-some of staid looking 50 somethings played a guitar, a cello, a mandolin?? I don't know my stringed instruments!!! But I recognized a lot of the good music and soon a lot of kids and some moms and stragglers were doing a sort of stomp dance jump clap fest in the middle of the floor. Henry's favorite activity was eating the angel-shaped sugar cookies on the refreshment table and then demanding me to read him board books pulled at random from the shelves. We bought a copy of Patricia's book and I immediately recognized the name of the author: Doreen Virtue, PhD, because she authored a particularly good set of Goddess Tarot cards I used to have.

So this was all nice and fun, but the crazy part (I guess it's not really crazy considering we're talking Richmond) was the people I knew who showed up! It was wonderful of course to see Ida and her new-ish husband Ben (more about them later) and Sabot families I used to know and local author/actress/director Irene Ziegler, and Ingrid Mercer and Gail Shookoff (sp?) who took Ida and I to Water Country USA every summer for like 8 years even tho I didn't get a chance to even say "hi" because I was over reading a Cheerios Action Book in the corner , and then.....(drumroll).....Carter Graham walked in! Just last week I'd had this astral travel/vacuuming/muppet movie dream about him and had tracked down his address to send him a blow by blow along with an invitation to maybe come for dinner sometime and meet my son. I don't think I'd seen him for about 3 years. But since we were both there, I just went ahead and told him my dream and introduced him to Henry- they did the high 5-guy thing- and then that night, when he got home, my card was waiting.

So this morning, Stan, Henry & I had brunch with Ida and Ben: french toast, ruby red grapefruit juice, turkey-bacon, strooooong coffee and red grapes. What a great time! Ida, a former poetry professor now writes a newsletter for a museum/garden place in Wilmington, Delaware where they moved for Ben to work at House Industries as a "type designer." That's right, Ben has Master's Degree in Fonts. He received it somewhere in England, but I already forgot where. I asked him what he does all day working at a font company and he said he stares at letters (and answers tech support calls)!! Isn't that WILD?? I thought so too.