A New Attitude

What a great week it's been and tomorrow when the alarm goes off it might mean back to work for Steve, but it'll never be the same here again. Not after the what we've accomplished around here. Living in Harpers Ferry has always been sort of a sweet defeat for me. The majestic mountains, the meandering river, the change in seasons, I could go on and on, but only to sadly realize how enjoying these things that nature has given us is so often hindered or just made bitter by the local resident attitude. It's a shame really.... HF has so much potential. One day, even if it's in my own head, I will live in a town where individual egos aren't the basis of friendships, and encounters with neighbors or strangers on the street won't result in some sort of vitriolic dialogue. Now I'm sure you're wondering where I'm going with this.... well Steve and I had a revelation this past week. First of all we managed to work side by side and not once ... well not for long, did we ever get on each others nerves!!! LOL!!! It dawned on us, well at least it dawned on me.... maybe Steve saw it all along, That we don't have to live like the rest of the world THINKS we should live. Our home is OUR HOME and it's unique placement and design is unlike any other in town. How we choose to enjoy and share our home is also up to us. We're not the normal HF couple. We're unique in our own right and we're going to take full advantage of that. All that being said and of course realized, we've reached a turn in the road so to say and although it's been a fun and exciting adventure so far... it's going to get better!! We've been "cleaning out" and I mean CLEANING OUT this past week. At least 3/4 of a ton of stuff has left our home... not to mention the soul cleansing that's taken place as well. We're going to start living inside our home. Before we were living outside it... meaning, our furniture was too big... there was too much of it. We were living like most Americans have been fooled into thinking is the norm. Bigger... Grander... better than the Jone's. No longer.... we want our space back. We no longer care to be "like" anyone else we know. Room to move and room to "maybe" entertain. Less is more if you get my drift, in all aspects!! Part of the cleansing started weeks ago actually. In our maiden attempt to become more social creatures I believe we allowed a standard we hadn't realized existed, to be compromised. We thought it was a given that most adults socialize with mutual respect and free of egotistical immaturity. We were wrong in that assumption and have since altered our willingness to open our home to just anyone. Lulled into a sense of false satisfaction, we abandoned a necessary standard for maintaining sanity........ Tolerance!!! Not any more.... Of course there's no such thing as zero tolerance, but I'm as close to it as I can be. We've sifted through so many memories this past week. We've let go of things we aren't even sure why we saved in the first place. We've sharpened the skill to be more selective in decorating as well as sharing our home. One of the weeks finds was an appearance Poster for Don Knotts. Steve designed this poster when he was at USA (University of South Alabama). So when Mr Knotts arrived... Steve got his signature!! That's right.... Don Knotts signature... How Cool. We're not sure if we'll have it framed or just auction it somewhere. For now it's fun to look at and it's definitely a conversation piece. Saturday we went to see our friends Jon and Vic and there other friends who had gathered for an early Oktoberfest!! I've known Vic since 1990 and he never seems to get any older.... it must be his youthful attitude. I love their place.... it's so serene and beautiful. I could just walk for hours through the yard... there's always something new and interesting around each corner or behind a bush. Sunday we went back with some goodies to drop off and stayed for a delicious dinner of corn pone, red cabbage and deer bbq. while sitting on the front porch, we were treated to an aerial display by swarms of hummingbirds. Sometimes coming so close to us we could almost touch them. Their little wings moving so rapidly they created this deep resonating humm. Duh... I guess that's where they got the name.!! Anyhow, I seriously doubt many of you have ever seen as many hummingbirds in one place for as long as we watched. I tried to capture one or two on camera, but all I had with me was my phone, so all I got was video. Their gardens are definitely gardens to covet. I'm always admiring them while at the same time wondering how I could airlift them across the river to our own backyard. :) Well we finished our wonderful dinner, said our goodbyes and returned home. This was the evening we were to take our bikes out for their first public appearance. Steve had been working on and off all week on his latest Geek inspired project. We now have light sensors on our bike spokes. Powered by rechargeable batteries and water proof, these continuous motion lights create an image when the wheel spins. Almost any image can be directly uploaded to the bike and currently both our bikes have the Obama 08 logo. We took our test run out Shenandoah Street just in case there were any last minute issues to correct. All worked well, so we headed over to Potomac Street to the bike shop where we had our bikes restored last week. The sidewalks and outside restaurants were full of tourists. We didn't realize our audience would be so big and after riding to the end of the street we now had quite a few adoring fans. Shouts of OBAMA could be heard from every terraced level of the lower town. People were stopping us to find out WHERE we got the cool lights and where could they get theirs!! I was pretty amazed at the great reception we got. Not one McCain fan in the group... if there was they stayed quiet like they should have. My guess is McCain supporters don't hang out in quaint little historic neighborhoods like HF. It's too American for all that foreign money. Our original intention was to show the lights to Ron the bike shop owner. He of course fell in love with not only the lights but the logo as well. Apparently we're his number one neighbors now... LOL. The light/logo display on the bikes morphed into a small frenzy of activity for awhile. It wasn't pride that we felt but Steve and I definitely experienced some sort of community bonding. It's sort of like seeing a hot air balloon as a kid. You're super excited to see it and then it drifts away out of sight, but the feeling it created still swells inside you and remains for sometime. That's what America was once upon a time and that's what Harpers Ferry could have. I believe we tapped into something last night. We touched a vein or a nerve or maybe even a soul or two.

We witnessed an exhilaration... people got excited..... they hollered out their support for Obama. On a dark night on a side street somewhere in small town America, a community had a moment that brought them all together. I'm glad I was part of it. There are many reasons why this past week has been such an eye-opener, but I guess all I really need to say is, "I have a new attitude"

GO OBAMA!!!