how I spent 10-10-10

I read about a photography contest, to take a picture at 6:10 am my time (10:10 Greenwich Mean Time) on yesterday, but I decided not to set my alarm. I woke up at 7:00.

The sun was rising behind the Blue Ridge mountains. We were at David's parents' house. No one else was up yet. Emma was snoring gently in her sleeping bag on the floor. She has a slight cold. I went downstairs and turned on the tv (an exciting novelty for me!) and decided to watch CNN. They were showing live footage of a massive celebration in North Korea to introduce Kim Jong Il's successor, his youngest son Kim Jong Un. I know that live tv from North Korea is rare, and 100 international journalists were invited to watch the impressive dancing and fireworks. There were thousands of dancers in a stadium, choreographed to the millisecond. I've never seen anything like it. Beautiful!

Other news was annoying - spokespersons for partisan politics speculating on the influence Barack Obama might still be able to have on mid-term elections. Why don't they get more neutral observers? Bringing these on, you know exactly what they're going to say -- that's not news.

My father in law was up next, told me he found on Google Earth the place he had been stationed in South Korea in 1956. There's nothing there now.

I think it was around 8 am when I heard my mother in law moving around and then, E's little voice. We watched the Scooby Doo movie her Aunt Cindy sent to her until it was time to set the table for breakfast. E helped me with that task a couple times over the weekend, learning to fold the napkins and which sides the knives and forks go on. She was excited to have cheese toast, eggs, and orange juice. She ate bacon after her grandma teased her for saying it was too hard. She said, "Oh, she doesn't have any teeth, she can't chew it." Then E asked for some.

After breakfast E helped wash the dishes. And we went outside and collected fallen apples. E kept changing her mind about what to do with them. At first we were witches making applesauce with rotten apples. Then she wanted to pretend to make an apple pie. After several distractions we ended up leaving them in a pile as an Apple Feast for the deer who visit. E didn't like the "squishy" wet grass we walked in and went back to put her shoes on, but I loved it and kept my feet bare. The ground there doesn't have as many hard and spiky things as our yard here.

More playing, then finally packing up to leave. We took the scenic route home, guided by the GPS. It was truly gorgeous. Hard to find a bathroom though. We got to a country store that said they didn't have public restrooms but I promised to buy something so they let me go. I came back in with my purse and E and the store clerks exclaimed over her. Gave her free candy. David said, "Now she's learned she can get things just by being cute!"

We got home in time for E and me to go to the park. We played and I helped try to find the owner of a loose dog who was apparently not a stray but starving. Another neighbor brought cat food for him. Another neighbor petted and talked baby talk to him. He wandered off and we lost track of him. Poor dog. None of us felt comfortable taking him home to keep him temporarily, putting up posters and all that, which is what my animal loving friends would see as the right thing to do. Didn't want to call the dogcatcher either, because we knew how that would end. He was incredibly gentle and pleasant, but too old and decrepit to be adopted, probably.

The day ended with reading of the Richard Scarry Storybook Dictionary, as usual.