Art Car Parade

We went downtown today, for the annual "Art Car Parade." We met friends R and C there before the parade, and had lunch at one of the cafes inside the city's loop. Then off to the parade we went, taking just one car to make it easier to find parking near the parade area.

I think there were about 175 vehicles is this year's parade.... everything from cars and trucks to motorcycles and bicycles, with a couple of boats thrown in for good measure. There were cars decorated with mirrors, fruit, computer disks and old record albums. Cars that looked like dragons and dogs and space ships and wild animals. There were lots of surprises, from the super-long dragon car to the little cupcake cars that may have been tricycles--- hard to tell because you couldn't see what was underneath the cupcakes.

That parade is always a lot of fun... thousands of people line the streets to watch the cars, and every vehicle gets a good round of applause-- and the smaller the vehicle, the louder the praise. There were a lot of kids in this year's parade... school groups which put cars together, and young kids with decorated bicycles and wagons--- and even a motorized bathtub on wheels, complete with bubbles.

We got there early, and found a spot in the shade under the trees...... nice breezes blowing for the whole time we were there, and we were sitting pretty in the lawn chairs that we all brought along. After the parade, the four of us went to one of the local ice cream shops, then we drove further into the downtown area to an art gallery. R's hobby is painting, and she now has more than three dozen watercolors on display in the gallery. She had invited us to the opening, but we were up in the Hill Country that weekend, so today was the perfect day for us to see her work, being that the four of us got together for the parade.

I could see that she put a lot of thought into her paintings, and I was attracted to two of them-- one with a southwestern flair-- a painting of an adobe house; and the other was of a tombstone standing in front of an old Mexican church. The one with the tombstone and the church was by far my favorite. Can't say exactly why.... I was just attracted to it.


Speaking of being attracted to something....... our first offer on the house and properties in the Hill Country was sent in this morning, and rejected by the seller this afternoon. The seller has also decided now not to sell the additional acres on the other side of the mountain. Which means that if my husband makes another offer, it will be just for the house and the five and a quarter acres that it's sitting on. Which is fine with me, since I didn't think we'd be buying any other acreage other than the property that the house is sitting on anyway.

My husband doesn't want to make a second offer right away..... he'd rather wait a few days so we don't appear to be desperate, or to appear that we want just that house and no other. I can't stand all of this. I had a gut feeling about that seller........ I thought the best tactic would have been to just make an offer on the house and the land it's sitting on, then once that deal was made, to then discuss the other properties. I didn't even mention that to my husband because I'm too emotionally invested in this house, and I don't think I can even look at the business-end of this deal in a rational way.

So I'm leaving it up to him...... and to the seller. Two men.... both of whom might just let their egos get in the middle of this deal, which can bring it to an end or a standstill. I just have to keep telling myself "what will be, will be." Sure makes it hard to sleep, though.

And I wish to high heaven that we hadn't gone up to that mountain and stayed in that house for two nights....... that was the worst thing for me to do because it got me even more emotionally invested in that house.