Day 253 ~ Where Was I Going With This?

September 10, 2014

My Instead: Annette and I visited my previous house on John Henry Street to investigate it at night.

To my surprise, Annette showed up at my door on a Wednesday night! She did not want to wait until the weekend to see me. And I was glad to see her, but I knew that my evening still had several things on its agenda. I was at my sink cleaning out paint brushes and still had my “instead” to do and a blog to write. I would forego writing the blog, but it’s a must to do my “thing” every day. We sat at the kitchen table a bit while I wrote up a few things to keep me on track with my yearlong challenge of “insteads” and blogging.

Then, not knowing quite what I had in mind myself, I said “Let’s go!” I felt like Annette thought I was leading her to a firing squad because she had no idea what or where I was making her drive. We navigated to the back of my subdivision and onto John Henry, the street where I lived when I was married over 23 years ago. She was following my directions very well, but was getting more apprehensive with each trip around the block. It was after 10 o’clock and anyone lurking about at that hour in my subdivision is up to no good. Really? 

I asked her to park on Cross Street along the side yard of my previous “married” house. All of a sudden, we both noticed this bush overhanging the front of her truck. We burst into laughter (you know…LOL). As I started to open the door (still not knowing what I was going to do), Annette’s nervousness took a turn for the worse. I quickly shut the door and we discussed my "intentions". She talked me out of doing anything else that might lead to suspicion and we settled on moving to the front of my old house and taking a photo of it at night. The lights inside had gone out (sometime during our procrastination), just as my previous life had extinguished long ago.

Annette and I drove slowly back to my current house. I felt very strange. I know the events of my year have been a bit strange at times, but I never wanted to feel a fool. And tonight I did…in Annette’s eyes I thought. When we settled in, I said I had to talk about tonight’s outcome. I explained about the course my life had taken this year and she had understood it for the most part. But tonight was unnerving for her. She is pretty conservative and “trouble” is NOT her middle name. She listened and listened…explained and explained. I reciprocated.

I am not sure what happened out there on John Henry, but Annette and I found another opportunity to learn about each other and to grow even closer. So, you know what? This “instead” was one of the best and I had no idea where I was going with this!