This morning Kerry and I motored over to Inglewood to do some shopping at their fresh market.  I purchased some vegetables, and she bought some jelly.  Then we headed downtown.  Our destination was a coffee house on Fourth Street called Tamp and Grind.  When we turned onto Main, I asked Kerry if she had ever been to River Oaks. I told her that I had had a studio in the Bolton house (one of two buildings where artists can lease studio space) when the boys were in grammar school.  She didn’t know that the place even existed, so we pulled into the parking lot and entered the Bolton house.

We walked through the studios,

and enjoyed checking stuff out in the gallery spaces.  Then we left for Tamp and Grind.  Or, at least we thought we had.  Unbeknownst to me, but knownst Kerry (who had forgotten), this was the morning for the children’s Mardi Gras parade in downtown Alexandria.  Had I known, we would have left our car at River Oaks and walked to Fourth Street.  But noooooooooooooooo. When we got to Jackson Street, where we were going to turn, they were just putting up the last barricade. Kerry said, “Oh, the parade is today”.  We had to detour and find us a parking place, which was next to impossible, so that we could walk to Tamp and Grind.

People were everywhere, barricades were everywhere, and the Tamp and Grind was just right there.

We walked a little farther hoping to find a hole to slip through, but found policemen on motorcycles doing figure eights. The children seemed to like it, but I didn’t find it amusing. We could have thrown a rock and hit the Tamp and Grind, but I looked at Kerry and said, “We can’t get there from here”.  Lord knows, we tried, but I guess that’s what happens when you don’t stay on task.