one more thing

I love this picture. I took it on our way up to Round Lake last weekend.

If I showed it to my dad or any of my siblings, there's a good chance they would think that it was taken many years ago, my mom as the photographer. but it's me.

When I'm in the passenger's seat I NEVER sit with two feet on the floor. Unless I'm pregnant. I'm not sure when it started, or even IF it 'started' ever. It's just always been. It's in my genes I guess. :) And I get it from my mom.

Her toes were always painted. Chipped, but painted. And they were always up on the dashboard, leaving toe prints on the inside of the windshield of any car she probably ever had.

We now drive the gold car that she drove (and rode in the passenger's seat) for many years before she died. And tonight, for the first time, the toe prints are gone. I told Steve long ago that he could clean the windshield, but he never had the heart to do it. He knew that most of those toe prints were probably mine, but some of them were definitely hers. But it was to the point where the windshield was hard to see out of, just because of all the grime that gets on the inside of it, ya know? Not really because of the toe prints, but because of just not having been cleaned for so long.

Steve called to ask one more time if it was okay. and I said yes. He did it while I was gone, and I'm kinda glad. I would have struggled with wanting to be out there while he did it, but knowing that I would cry, and that would make him feel bad, and so on. So I just cry now, as I write this instead.

It's just one more thing gone...