HI!

Please picture me wondering around an empty house turning off the radios my Grandpa has left on, spreading grass with a large, lethal pitchfork, trying on an extremely classy sixties dress and coat set from my Grandma’s closet, going to battle with a mulberry bush that lives in the middle of the prickliest roses, and discovering the most wonderful photographic evidence of some very early cousin bonding. Kindly remember that I have not yet visited Walmart, and there is still a cow carcass to be removed from the barn. Wish you were here.

Love, Alice

(That was a postcard for you)

Other highlights so far have included having a very business-like game of waving with Cheryl’s twin boys, finding that unless I have the number memorized I am far too slow for the dial telephone, making friends with a sixteen-year-old girl at the library who’s obsessed with anime, finding a really cool cigarette lighter in the yard, walking up to the cemetery on Memorial Day, then slinking away when real mourners came, and making the life-altering decision to give the dog a bath, so that when he gets friendly while I’m weeding I’ll still be able to breathe.

I’m rather lonely—my cousin Charity won’t be here for another week and a half—and am still adjusting to life mostly sans internet and phone reception. There is currently a rather startling red X over the wireless icon at the bottom of my screen, but tonight I’ll drive Grandpa to Moberly for his prison Bible study, sit in the YMCA, and use their Wi-Fi to post this. And I’ll probably watch the season finale of Modern Family, and it will be very therapeutic.

One more thing. I’m making dinner tomorrow night, and in a counterproductive act of utility I convinced my Grandma to give away a good deal of her cookbooks last week. She doesn’t use them—but I would. Ideas? Something simple that would remind me of home.