Just when you think all is lost...

Despite the rain and cold today, I had to get out of the apartment, but where do you go when you have no money and you're stuck in the middle of nowhere?  I went shopping, well, sort of.  I did the round of thrift stores and picked up a few things to eat at the market  And a burrito, I forgot about the burrito from Taco Bell (Grand Forks' version of authenic Mexican food).  When I arrived home, I checked the mail and there it was, a gift from my best friend, Judy, aka, my sister-in-law.  She knows what makes me happy and it was in my mailbox this afternoon - fudge, chocolate fudge.  Marrying Judy is the smartest thing my brother ever did.

Speaking of my brother, I never forget anything, like the time he was still living in SoCal and I was visiting for a few days.  It was one of  the hottest days of the year and Mr. Jock said, "Hey, let's go for a bike ride".  Not, let's go surfing, let's go to the beach, no, he wanted to bike ride.  It's a fact, I would rather die than let him think I can't keep up, go the distance, so I said, "Ok'.  We started out slow, we did some small hills over some rocky terrain and then, I got a flat tire and I had no pump.  We had probably done 20 miles by now.  I could see a small market ahead, the only building in sight.  We walked the bikes over to this little oasis in the desert, highly decorated with strings of dried red peppers, deer hides and a large number of suspeded snake skins.  We were greeted by several ethnically diverse guys who were as surprised to see us as we were them.  At that moment John said, "You wait here, I'll ride back to the house, get the van and come pick you up".

I'm not bilingual but my new friends didn't seem to mind, they just kept looking, talking, smiling, nodding.  After an hour had gone by I decided I needed something to drink so I left my bike outside and entered the world's smallest grocery only to find everything labeled in Spanish.  I found something I recognized, paid and returned to wait for the brother who I now think had this all planned all along.  The doctors call it, "Sibling Torture". 

He eventually showed up, I said goodbye to Manuel, Jesus, Juan and Pedro and got in the van.  John said, "Well, did it work, did you get a date"?  I finally broke down and told him, "You were adopted".