Haunted Steps, Didgeridoos, and Normalcy

So today we made the trip to Madison to find out what the heck is going on with my daughter... turns out; nothing. She is a normally developing little girl and our local hospital system doesn't know how to read an x-ray or diagnose a mysterious lump. (She had had a "cyst" in her armpit that the local system thought needed removal. Turned out to be a swollen lymph node because of a pre-existing sinus infection that swelled the node, like they do...) The x-ray showed that she has the bones of a nine year old, which confirmed the normal blood test that we never got results for from our system in the first place. Ah well. I would rather go and find out all is well rather than something terrible.

The trip wasn't a total waste anyway, because I got to go and hang out in one of my favorite cities; the city I grew up in. The fiance and I went to State Street, which is a very bohemian and laid-back kind of street where you can shop, hang out, and hear the random person playing any kind of random instrument. Today it was the Didgeridoo. We could hear the drone from down the street and went in search of the source. We found a good looking blonde and bearded guy playing a very fancy looking mahogany art piece making sounds like coyotes and kangaroos. His name was Scott. My four year old daughter Cyrah really enjoyed it and we sat at a bench listening to the sounds of Australia in Wisconsin.

Side story. Dustin and I read this article a while back about how a famous violinist decided to go sit in a subway terminal or some other kind of well-packed location and just see how many people stopped to listen to the music. It wasn't about the money; the guy was pretty wealthy. It was about the music. Here this man plays for hundreds a ticket at Carnegie Hall, and he can't get people to stop and listen for free. When children tried to stop and listen, their parents tugged them along as if it were no more significant than bubble gum on the sidewalk. Barely anyone cared.

So we sit and listen to Scott translating the sounds of the Outback into a musical drone and decide to give Cyrah money to leave in his hat. We stop to sit again not far away and she picks a flower and puts that in his hat as well. He tells her "thank you" through the Didgeridoo, explains to us that it is hard for him to keep playing while he is smiling so hard, and bids us a good day.

We decided to walk the full length of State Street, and end up at a small fruit stand where Cyrah decides it is time to get grapes and a Honey Crisp apple. As we are standing there, a couple of people working the cart notice that I am wearing a sweatshirt from the House on the Rock's Gathering of American Gods event.The woman asks if I got to ride the carousel, I tell her no, and she says that she met someone the day before who had. I ask her if she looked like Rachel Leigh Cook, she has no idea who that is. I ask her if she would have gotten to ride the carousel twice and she says YES! Turns out the girl was the same girl who commented on my Gathering of the Gods post just a couple of days ago. One I photobombed, and now apparently stalked. Well done me.

It's funny how small the world is. We spend all this time trying to make ourselves feel insignificant in it; looking to the stars and to the billions of people on our planet, the millions in our country, the thousands in our city. The world isn't all that big... and for a small person like me, that is a comforting notion.