coming home dirty

when i was about six or seven, we lived in a condo.. the sidewalk leading to our home had a couple of strawberry plants in the dirt and i pinched off the tiny berries as soon as they colored and ate them. too soon. i always ate them too soon. i hatched a plan for how to get out of the house properly should there be a fire (my room was on the second floor), i wrote a letter to santa on my mom's bed and i remember sitting for about ten minutes trying to figure out what to put as number one. because it mattered. the complex was huge. tons of condos, or so it seemed. there was a big hill right outside with two concrete winding sidewalks in the grass. in my mind, these sidewalks are steeper than a mountain. and we rode our bikes down them, legs straight out to our sides. we called it 'going to disneyland.' i wore underoos. i'm pretty sure the sidewalk was more of a learning curve, not a steep slope after all.
i used to spend so much time outdoors as a small child. entertained by flowers and grass and unripe strawberries. making mud pies and coming home dirty.

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we share a car. on days when bryan is gone and i am home with kids, we do a lot of indoor activities. our current neighborhood is...not walkable. i feel sometimes like we are a group of cacti. we don't need a whole lot of pruning and watering and maintenance but if you sit us inside for too long without light and fresh air, we will slowly dull.
last week we decided to spend the one day when our family has nowhere we have to be (which, as of late, seems to be thursday) away from home. somewhere that didn't include a food court or a waitress or target.

we last visited when finn was two. and we remembered why it's nice to act like a tourist in los angeles sometimes. why sometimes walking around for the sole purpose of walking around is more than enough to feel full. and that coming home dirty is generally the best answer for any question you might have. even if it's just a metaphor.