All the Weather, All at Once.

Somewhere between 78 and 84ºF on Saturday; rain, hail, and wind today. Saturday, I did as all dutiful middle-aged sons should do and drove to T-Town to do the mom thing...the forecast was accurate for once, so she had decided we would go for a ride. I'm fairly sure the mom will be 78 this May, so 'we' means I drive and she happily asks random, unrelated questions at a pace guaranteed to make my brains bubble up and run out my left ear.

The problem is, I actually have to listen because, on occasion, she'll toss in a cogent, well-conceived little hand-grenade of an inquiry that may actually bear on our current situation and near-term plans. So. She makes me a bit nuts, but she hasn't gone little-old-lady nuts herself...she's always been mildly nuts, the way a lot of highly intelligent women of her time are, given the limits women operated under in the middle of the century (don't want to be a housewife? Secretary or teacher...no matter what kind of talent you have) ...their creativity often turned a bit sideways.

Now, however, she's a little bit less focused and a lot more don't-give-a-tinker's-damn. The original plan was to head out to Orting and take a look at daffodils or tulips, which are a bit behind schedule this year. She had a moment of clarity and remembered that this past weekend was the Daffodil Festival in Pierce County, and that there would be 300K of our closest friends out viewing the parades in the valley...especially with the weather prediction.

Instead, we opted for a dash over to Gig Harbor, which was originally a quaint Scandinavian fishing village that was actually populated by Yugoslavians...Scandinavian sells better in the PNW, though. The day was definitely a teaser: soft air, warm but not hot, clear, with just a touch of vapor haze...people wandering about, looking not quite settled in their summer cloths, lots of pale blue Northwest legs in evidence. And the Mountain was out, and Gig Harbor's a very scenic spot almost any time, but especially when Rainier overcomes its shyness.

It's an unspoken agreement we have: she gets to chatter as I drive, I try hard not to point out that most of the questions serve no purpose and, in exchange, I get to take a few pictures here and there along the way.