For various and sundry reasons we can receive mail at our new tiny place, but are unable to have the mailman take ours away with him. 

So I walk a lot now, as in, down to the nearest blue public mailbox on a street which was once in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most bars. Hmm. All these years later there are still some bars, most with people living above them.

And there are apartments. Many, many apartments in huge, old houses from the early 1900's. Some well-kept, others leaning, tearful-looking, as though they miss the days when just one family lived inside.

And on my way to that mailbox, I pass lots of other tall houses with multiple mailboxes lining porch walls and multiple families tucked inside the walls (I like to picture them happy, cozy, and filled with potential friends, but I'm aware they're not all that way). 

These streets are only 5 1/2 blocks from my old house and old life, but there's a feeling of being a whole planet away.

I now live in the Land of Apartments. And well, I love it. I love walking past these old places and seeing cute, tiny houses tucked away in the backyard. Or gardens back there with benches and old light posts and brick walkways. All those attempts at making shangri-la's charms me. I love catching up on all I missed only sometimes driving past these places for fourteen years.

And I do walk a lot more now because, for some weeks, Tom will work a different schedule and I'll not have the car as often. So I walk the blocks down to the convenience store and yesterday I walked farther, down to the old train dining car which has been sitting there since 1910 and is now a coffee shop. We've driven by many times, but no one is ever inside (it seems) so I went to give them business. To sow some goodwill and encouragement by buying coffee and a chocolate chip cookie.

I love sowing goodwill that way.

There are other places to walk to, there on that street with bars, apartments and convenience stores. There are more adventures awaiting me.


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