ANNIE

20 ☼ I Don't Need Anyone But You

A N N E T T E

After having taken a several hour long nap in the afternoon, I wasn't exactly eager to go to bed at any sort of reasonable hour.  Especially since I'd found a Looney Tunes marathon on one of the cable channels that would have the show playing back to back until the wee hours of the morning. So, while mom eventually went to bed, I stayed up and accidentally ended up sleeping on the large plush couch.

Then at somewhere around eight in the morning, I felt myself being called awake by my mom.  "Hey, hun. Did you actually sleep out here all night?" the woman asked as she sat down onto the cushion beside me once I'd sat up. "Remind me again why I bother paying for us to have two bedrooms?"

"I slept in my own room last night," I tiredly defended myself. I'd considered asking to sleep in her bed but had thought better of it. 

"You did," mom conceded with a laugh. "Now, are we going to the railway museum or the garden today? I think that's what you had said before. Either way, we have until eleven and then we need to grab some food and head towards the airport so we can take off."

With a deep sigh, I leaned my tired body up against the back of the couch for a moment before giving in to the urge and falling over onto my mom's shoulder. "Is it okay that I don't really want to do anything?" I asked cautiously. The entire trip had been my idea and I felt sort of bad about wanting to spend the last day doing nothing. I sort of assumed it was because I stayed up too late watching tv. I'd probably only gotten about five hours of sleep.

Mom smiled at the way my head was resting against her and sighed contentedly. "That's fine, love. This is your trip and we did a lot of stuff over the last two days. If you want to hang out here then that's fine with me."

"Thanks," I said with a yawn.

Over the next several hours we ate breakfast and lounged around in front of the television.  Then at just before ten-thirty, mom started to pack up our bags and instructed me to get my shoes on because there was somewhere she wanted to stop before we got lunch. 

I easily complied and followed my mom out to the car. "Where are we going?" I asked after we had buckled up.

"To a place that I heard about yesterday that I think you'll like," mom replied with a smile and was pleased when I didn't press for any further information. The ride to the desired destination was only a few blocks away. So, mom had me follow her down the sidewalk and around a corner into what looked like a wide alley.

I was somewhat amazed to see where my mom had led me. The alley was covered top to bottom in graffiti. Not the trashy kind that was often seen around New York, but colorful artful paintings that seemed to overlap as people came in to take their turn adding to the mix. On other walls, there were purposeful murals that stretched across.  There were cats, sharks, robots and flowers all vividly portrayed. "This is amazing," I said as I ran my hand over a painting of a particularly detailed silhouette. 

"I thought this would interest you," mom said with a hum as she followed me around various corners and watched as I took picture after picture.

We spent a good hour hiking around the area, looking at all of the street art before mom insisted that we had to go. Our opening of flight clearance was only so long and Mr. Barret would be waiting for us. 

The flight home was without drama. I was too sleepy from the long night. However, as we approached our home airport, I was starting to wake up a little more and ended up taking over to do the landing with Mr. Barret's instruction. All in all, it was a really fun trip.