Flânerie will get you nowhere

I came to Baltimore to help my mother in her unpacking in the new condo. The boxes are not really diminishing that quickly. One can now can actually pass in the hallways but there is plenty left to do. I have stripped wall paper, insulated the windows, hung the carbon monoxide detector. The only time I have been out was to go to Sam’s Club and to drop off stuff at Good Will

<> <>I am getting cabin fever. <>

There is only just over an hour of daylight left. there is supposedly nothing more I can do so… an outing. Butcher’s Hill as that was where I left off, on through Patterson Park and into Highlandtown.

But you know me, instead of heading for the metro that would drop me off at Johns Hopkins in no time time I wander down Park Heights and seeing the M-10 decide to race it to where I can catch it as it doubles back on itself.

<>Finally Ubaldo gets some use as I am in landscape mode and photograph Western Run and then – mindful of missing the bus – some abandoned stuff left in front of some older blocks of flats.

When I could have got off at Mt Washington and still maybe made it by dark, I decide to stay on to Falls Road and Lake Avenue where I look in at the Ivy Bookshop. A walk over to the Falls Road light rail where a train just leaves I would have probably made it if I hadn’t dallied thinking on the merit of a basketball hoop, or whether I should wander Robert E. Lee Park.

<>In between trains thought that I would try once again to photograph the tangles that make up woods around here and find a path that lead to what must be a compost pit but had a nice patio set set up as if I were on someone’s back deck.

Another train passes.

<>
It is almost dark when I get down at the Yard’s and think of simply walking to the end of the Metro and heading back. Thought also about a burrito at California Burritos but there was only one person in the shop and he was sleeping. <>

Then I think, it is time for Melissa to leave work. I’ll simply go up and say hello and leave in one of my patented methods of angering people. I couldn’t leave anything on her machine as this time I was to have no free time and left the Midwest in a hurry. <>

I see her leave, walk up shake her hand and say good bye. <>

She tries the living fossil approach at conversation – want a beer.

We are off to the Wharf Rat for pints and something to eat. This beats the Ram’s Head, real beer engines my pint was hand drawn and great, was sorry I wasted bladder space with the porter even though that was great also the food though was only good enough to be a sponge. Luckily I go to drink.

<> There was a time when I saw Melissa once every 20 years, in the days of the post office we’d send post cards, now it is a couple of times a year as I like hanging out with the Ram’s Head crowd in Annapolis. <>

I was informed of all the events I missed the weekend both here and in Annapolis and the status of everyone there. I hold back on bragging about being at the G.(reatest) A.(rt) S.(chool) E.(ver). A delicate balance was had as I am a drinker who is a social talker and she is a talker who is a social drinker. It means that I don’t stumble on the metro. Even so after seeing her off on the light rail, when I get back to the condo I am scolded for being out after dark. It seems that no matter how old you are when your mother is around you are twelve.