Mark Twain Found In Lafayette

We had to buy a book as a present. I could have bought it online, but I kept putting it off.

Unfortunately, I waited all the way until the very day of the party, a Saturday, to buy it, when we finally had some time to shop.  I wanted Mark Twain's autobiography, so I thought for sure the big book store, Barnes & Noble in the next town over would carry it.  Well, we never even got inside to see.  Every single parking space in the town was full.  Even the garages which can hold thousands of cars were all full. Apparently everyone needed something in Walnut Creek that day.

Or, they were there to just stroll around,  or just see and be seen.... which is fine, but when you are really just trying to buy one book, it's really annoying.  Or, maybe I'm just getting old... and don't need the scene.

In any case, we decided to go right back to where we were literally just parked, and try our luck at the local bookstore, The Storyteller. Yay! We got our book!  Well, not the autobiography, but a biography, which was good enough for our purposes. But we realized something that day.  It was so nice to shop in our own town.  First of all, it was bustling with people, but in a much more quieter way.  There were no traffic jams, no full parking lots, lots of shade and time to pass inside a cool, quaint bookstore, where we got what we needed and so much more.

Here's one of my daughters sipping lemonade in the car after going to the bookstore. Here's my other daughter reading one of the books that we bought. They were in the car in the shade and since we were next to CHOW, we had to get their lemonade.

The ART Room was having an art fair, so my youngest and I checked that out while these two relaxed and read in the shade. I'm not sure how our day would have turned out if we had continued to circle and go up and around garages until we found a spot... but I'm pretty sure I would not have found some yummy lemonade and sat in the car in a parking garage and drank it.. maybe this is all more appealing to me because I am getting older, but like they say... with age comes wisdom.

Sometimes it's nice to be wise enough to enjoy and appreciate the smaller, quieter and quainter things in life.