Tuesday's with Mary Beth

I was able to graduate a semester early from high school in December 2001. In February of 2002 I went down to L.A. to live with my grandparents and to see if I could stay there a year, get residency, go to a community college (their's are $22 a unit compared to around $300 a unit here) and then go to Biola University. So there I was in sunny Southern California. I got my first job ever at a Farrell's Teacher Supply store. My days off were Sunday and Tuesday.
One Tuesday, not long after I had started working there, I went to pick my cousin Mary Beth up from California High School. (She was a junior at the time.) She is tall and slender with gorgeous strawberry blond hair and fair skin. She climbed into my great grandpa's Buick Century (which I had purchased from my Gramma for the gracious amount of $400) and she adjusted the vents so she could feel the Air Conditioning. We headed on over to Starbucks. At the time there were only a few in that area. Going to Starbucks always reminded me of being back home in Washington because here there are Starbucks on nearly every corner. She got a Chocolate Brownie Frappacino and I got a Caramel Frappacino. We sat outside for a few minutes chatting away. Then we headed over to the scrapbook store. One thing that Mary Beth and I both like to do is scrapbook. We hung out there for a while and we each bought a couple things. Then we headed to Uptown Whittier. This is the cutest part of Whittier. I guess you could say it is like being in the downtown of a city except for the fact that it is uptown. Maybe that's because you go up towards the hills to get to it. We stopped at the L.O.B., The Little Old Bookstore. They have all kinds of used books. We enjoyed scouring over the piles and bookshelves looking to see if there were any we might like to read. I found 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was only about $3 so I grabbed it. (I loved it so much that each time we went back to the LOB I would get the next one in the series. There are 4 total.) After that we headed back to Mary Beth's house.
From then on, every Tuesday, I would pick her up from school and we would do the exact same thing. (There were probably a couple Tuesday's in there when it didn't work out.) I loved those times with her. We became really close while I was there. I went home in June for graduation and after that I ended up coming back to Washington, but that is a whole other story. But when I think about the time I stayed in L.A. I always think about Tuesdays with my dear Mary Beth.

This is Mary Beth on the right, she is with her sister Eva- Karin, who we lovingly call EK. :)