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| Our inviting new storm door |
So last spring I was DYING to replace our storm doors. We had the
UGLIEST storm doors in Suburbia. They were metal with lots and lots of
glass slats, circa 1965
(see YIKES picture below). They were heavy and sharp and a pain to
clean. They slammed shut clipping ankles in their wake. They offered very little in the way of extra insulation and worst
of all, they didn't help people know that we were open and ready to play.
Growing up we had a rule; it wasn't written or said, but when the front
door was open, neighborhood kids would stop by because they knew we could
play. Sometimes kids would stop by when it was shut too, but
were mostly told that we were still doing chores or busy, but when the front
door was open, we knew freedom was imminent.
This was in a different time, a time
when we only had window A/C units and they were only turned on in certain rooms
and only on the hottest of days. An era when video games were so new that
barely anyone had them and nobody I knew had cable. As kids we played "Scatter" or "Kick-ball" outside
from the moment the door opened until well after the sun had gone down with
"Ghost in the Graveyard" through every yard on the block because no one had
fences and almost everyone had children or remembered what having children was
like (and there was no such thing as a professionally landscaped yard). And honestly,
I remember those kids names but they were only friends by proximity; I kept in
touch with very few after high school and almost none after college. It wasn't
necessarily the people themselves but the atmosphere of Summer in Suburbia. We played through swarms of mosquitoes without my mom spraying
us with bug repellent or sun screen or handing us bottles of water—we just moved to the shade and
drank out of the hose when we needed it and ran around until we heard my dad's
whistle; at which point we sprinted home, knowing that if we didn't, our
"curfew" would be moved up an hour the next night. When we got
in, we would wash our feet in the tub, be covered in calamine lotion, and sent to bed.
We bought a pop-up camper on Thursday, my last day of work was Friday, my DH left Saturday for his annual golf trip (not even close to as elitist as it sounds - I believe the goal is to find the cheapest round of 18 in the tri-state area), and I am about to drive My Dear Son to summer camp. It is pretty much the start of moving our home to the road. For the next 4 days, all we will be doing is:
