Day 538: Shorter

This title of this post is inspired by a text exchange I had yesterday, with my friend Ray. Ray has shown up in this blog — along with his wife/my friend, Janet — in several previous posts, one of them being shorter.

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Here is the inspirational exchange:

Ray: Hi Ann!  We’re looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. We’re wondering if we could meet a little earlier for brunch. Maybe 9? We may go to open houses afterwards and want to get an earlier start. Let me know what you think.

Me: 9 is fine. I’ll just have to write a shorter and crappier post. See you then!

Ray: Thanks for lowering your standards for us! See you at 9. It’s called the Town Diner in Watertown, right?

Me: Deluxe town diner.

Ray: Ooh!  Deluxe!

Here’s what I’d like to point out about that dialogue:

•  Ray and Janet are back in Massachusetts, after several years away in Ohio. Although their absence may have been shorter than it seems to me, it was still too long.
• My favorite line, in the exchange between Ray and me,  is the one that is shorter than the others.
• The other adjective I used in my message to Ray, after “shorter,” was on my mind  because of yesterday morning’s post, which marked the first appearance of bird poop in this blog:

• The words “shorter and crappier” could be construed as judgmental, couldn’t they?

This reminds me of one of several discussions — some shorter than others — I had yesterday with my cousin, Lani:

That’s Lani and her precious cat, Jewel.  Lani and I haven’t seen each other for over a year, even though she lives a  shorter distance from me than Ray and Janet.

Lani and I had a terrific time yesterday — talking about people and judgment, our parents and other family members, my blog posts (Lani is a faithful reader), and other topics (short and long). I resolve to see Lani again soon, after a much shorter time.

That would be wonderful.

Although this post is probably going to be shorter than my usual weekend post, I still have time to post more images from yesterday:

That’s from brunch, with Lani, at Brio in Chestnut Hill. I took that photo because the butter there was shorter (height-wise) than I remember ever seeing before at any restaurant.

On my way home from my too-short-time with Lani yesterday, I snapped this picture:

The two tallest buildings in Boston — appearing above —  also showed up in yesterday’s post. Which do you think is shorter: the one on the left or the tower on the right?

Later in the day, bf Michael and I returned to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, also featured in several previous posts (some appearances being shorter than the others).  Our walk yesterday was shorter than usual, because of a restoration project:

I remarked to Michael that I had never heard the term “off-wheel vistors” before. It took me a moment to realize I was a member of that group, despite the helpful illustrations. I guess that was a shorter way to describe “those who aren’t riding bicycles.”  You know … walkers. (Or runners, too, I suppose.)

Despite the shorter route, we still saw several new and interesting things:

 

Maybe this post wasn’t so crappy, after all.

Thanks to Ray, Janet, Lani, Jewel, Michael, off-wheel visitors everywhere, story-tellers (and walkers), people with standards (no matter what their height), those who find their way home,  anybody letting go of unhelpful judgments (for shorter or longer amounts of time), and — especially! — to you, no matter how short your visit today.

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* You  may notice that some of the photos in this post are shorter than others.  WordPresser AmyRose, at Petals Unfolding, has told me that the size of my photos might be slowing down post-loading for my readers and eating up storage space.  (Storage space DOES seem to be running shorter, everywhere.) Thanks for letting me know, Amy.

Another, shorter footnote: Those of you getting my posts via email — and finding me on WordPress Reader — might find those initial readings shorter today, assuming I successfully followed Mark Bialczak‘s helpful instructions about re-routing readers home, here.