Note from a friend:

Hello all, this is Summer from 107 Madison Street and as of late, another place, but we won't talk about that right now. Our dear friend Brad has asked that I guest blog on his blog. Me! Moi! Wow! I am honored! No, really. I am!

Every family has some peculiar characters in them, mine is no exception and omuhgawd, I hope that as the old ones are dying off the young ones don't start referring to me as the peculiar Aunt Summer, or I hope I don't hear one of my kids say one day, "Well, you know how Mother is." Of course we know *how* Mother is, you drove me to it. But, anyway. My family had Aunt Anna. Pronounced Aint Anna. She was of no blood kin, but married one of my father's brothers. She was a fiery redhead and she was just what Uncle Raymond needed to keep him in line. Hard as she tried though, it didn't work until one fateful Monday morning.

My father and his brothers and sisters were, let's just say, a high spirited bunch. They liked their country music, their drinkin' and dancin' and the men well, weren't saintly when it came to their marriage vows. The wives didn't work, they stayed home and had babies and baked cakes and life in the 50's went on.

We'll Aint Anna didn't take too kindly to these arrangements. She decided she was going to teach Uncle Raymond a lesson. A hard one at that. She planned it all out and kept it all to herself and I marveled at that, still do. After everyone went to bed Sunday night and went to sleep, she snuck around and changed all the clocks in the house. She moved them up an hour. She got everyone up, cooked their breakfast, packed their lunches, sent them all off to school and work and she hopped a plane. So, where did she go?

SEATTLE!

By GAWD that woman went to the furthest place she could think of to get away from her life, of cooking and cleaning and ungratefulness. Rumor had it, that she had a fella stashed there, but, we never did find out for sure. So, this brought Uncle Raymond down to his knees. He begged, he pleaded, made promises, only if she would come home and take care of him, the kids and the house. She wouldn't budge. Hehe. Well, she did finally and he walked the line after that, as she used that threat to keep him on the straight and narrow from then on.

So, all the while, growing up, when one of us had a problem, when life wasn't going so well, we'd always say, "I'm going to Seattle!"
Even to this day, it isn't unusual for me to pick the phone and hear my mother or my sister say, "I'm going to Seattle." I never really wanted to go to Seattle, because, I don't like rain or clouds or anything damp. We just used it as a figure of speech when we were frustrated and wanted a place to hide from our problems.

Later in our lives we decided it wasn't such a good place to go because we had friends that decided to move to Seattle, lots of friends, and they loved it. We thought, hmmm... we know far too many people there now and we wouldn't be escaping anything. People we knew would be living there and that just wasn't good! So we started thinking about Iceland. Ha!

It wasn't until just recently that I met our Brad and Mo and started reading their blogs about their beloved Seattle. The people, the stores, the bookstores, coffee shops, restaurants, yarn shops and GOATS.

Now I want to go and visit.

All for good reasons!

Love you Brad!

Thanks for having me!