Got home late on Tuesday, because I went through Woodward. It's on the way, really. It is too on the way, if you think like I do. Besides, I wanted to get my nails done. It's been awhile since I've had that, I'm sure. I try not to do it too often. I'm always afraid that I'm becoming high maintenance and we wouldn't want that, would we. It's not really my fault that I like having things like that done anyway. Really it's not. I grew up in a beauty salon. Honestly I did, so therefore, it is not my fault.

Mother started beauty college when I started first grade and she had her shop open before I was out of school that year. The Lincoln Avenue Beauty Salon was located in a back room of our home where Mother had done laundry and ironing for people before we started school. When I wasn't in school I hung out in the beauty shop. Well, not all the time. She had a few customers, my favorites, that didn't seem to mind my being there. Some did seem to mind though, so it wasn't comfortable being there when they were. Mother says she put the shop there in our home because (a) she had this space that was plumbed & paid for, and (b) she could keep an eye on me. Hah! She says now, that I raised myself and she was close by in the case of an emergency. Like the time I skinned my knee so badly in a bicycle wreck that I needed stitches. On a Friday evening. Mother had a standing appointment with Irene every Friday evening and I should have known better than to have a bike wreck on that day of the week. So I sat quietly and bled until Irene was rolled and under the hair dryer before I was bandaged. But looking back, it was nice that she was close if I needed something important. Like permission to go fire pop bottle rockets off piss bridge the old river bridge. You would think with her standing there in that beauty shop all day long, making little old lady's hair blue, that I would have been able to get away with all sorts of mischief. But no, that just wasn't the case. Somehow, she aways knew when I had done something inappropriate even before I got home. There seemed to be no end to the number of spies in our small town. These people were all "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child" long before Hilary Clinton was. Thank goodness they were.