I had a hand in this

TG and I made our way on Saturday up to Salisbury, North Carolina.

Among other day-trippy type things, we did a bit of graving.

In Chestnut Hill Cemetery we found these fine dearly departed folk.

No; wondrous as it would have been, the Fingers and the Nails were not interred side by side.

Nor could I find any evidence that their families had mingled in marriage, resulting in a Mrs. Susie (or some such) Finger Nail.

There was a Barrow too, but I searched in vain for Wheel. More's the pity.

I mean no disrespect. May they all rest in peace.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Monday

I'll stand. You sit.

Photo courtesy Andrew Weber

Andrew has sent me a picture of himself standing at the Arctic Circle in Sweden.

It's hard for me to picture my boy there, but I believe the evidence is convincing.

Tomorrow Brittany will fly out of Charlotte on the first leg of her journey to join him.

Although I don't envy those who travel in this way, I do think it's exciting and I can't wait to hear all about it when they return.

Meanwhile, Andrew also sent me a picture (at my request; he showed this to all of us at Sun Ming last Friday night) of Maverick the Boxer sitting on the neck of a sleeping Rambo the Lab mix.

Photo courtesy Andrew Weber

Which is truly one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Apparently Ramby's head is one of Maverick's favorite places to park and contemplate life, and he does it frequently.

I told you before: Rambo may be the sweetest, most mild-mannered dog that ever lived.

According to Brittany, when they travel with both dogs, Rambo will rack out in the back seat of the truck and Maverick will lie right on top of him, stretched on his back, roaching.

As down the road they go.

You can't make this stuff up.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Wednesday

A son is a son

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A son is a son 'til he takes him a wife;

A daughter's a daughter for all of her life.

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On Friday night, we celebrated Brittany's birthday.

Which was actually yesterday, but she was in Knoxville with her family on the day.

On the afternoon of his wife's birthday, Andrew flew out of Knoxville for Sweden, where he'll fly refueling missions for three weeks.

On Thursday, Brittany will join him there for two of those weeks, because they're newlyweds and don't have children yet, and she has a current passport, and isn't it thrilling?

I can't wait to see pictures (I'm hoping to share a few with you) of the sweethearts schussing the Scandinavian ski slopes, or swanning around snowy Stockholm.

Meanwhile, last Friday evening we all assembled at Sun Ming, our favorite Chinese restaurant. 

We sat at a huge round table -- there were eight of us -- with a lazy Susan in the middle. That thing was three feet across.

Soon the revolving lacquered circle was laden with platters of General Tso's Chicken, Orange Chicken, Chow Steak Kew, Szechuan Beef, and Sesame Chicken.

There were bowls heaped with perfectly-prepared egg fried rice, and plain rice, and steamed broccoli.

I have a serious weakness for these dishes.

Apparently I'm not the Lone Ranger; everyone was chowing down with gusto, and chattering at the same time.

Much of the talk was of TG's and Dagny's adventures at the South Carolina State Fair the night before. Chad and Erica had met them at the fair, so there were many stories.

Like when Dagny fed a kangaroo a carrot, called him a "good boy!" then squatted down to have a look and make sure that "he doesn't have a baby."

There's a video.

She's apparently all clued in to the reproductive habits of marsupials. Don't ask me how.

Dagny had mentioned at least fifteen times that she saw dinosaurs at the fair, augmenting her claim with a pretty decent imitation of a T-Rex. 

(You know: hands up like claws, fierce expression, sound effect like RAAAAAWWWWWgggghhhhhhrrrrr!)

I finally asked why she believed she saw actual dinosaurs at the fair because -- you know -- if they had those, I was thinking I should have gone.

Turns out the prehistoric creatures were impressive animatronics. But still. I question my decision.

(Not really.)

Somewhere in there, I realized that someone (honestly I cannot remember who) was struggling to pronounce a word.

There were fits and starts: Velcr -- Vita -- Vacu -- Vola --

Veni Vidi Vici? No?

Then it happened:

Velociraptor, Andrew (sitting beside me, to my right) said.

Velociraptor, I said.

But we didn't only both say the word; we said it simultaneously.

And not only did we speak in unison; we pronounced the scary extinct creature's name in exactly the same way (correctly) at exactly the same time.

I'm talking each of the five syllables coming out of both of our mouths as if only one were speaking. 

With identical velocity, as it were.

I don't think anyone else even noticed. But Andrew and I did.

A half-beat later, we chuckled -- again, in exactly the same way, at exactly the same time.

His left elbow brushed my right elbow as our shoulders shook with shared mirth.

And that was all there was to it, and it took all of five seconds from start to finish, and it may not seem like anything worth mentioning, because perhaps you had to be there. 

But I was there, and -- 

Well. That's my boy.

He's busy; although his front door is a scant ten miles from mine and we attend the same church, I don't see much of him.

He has a demanding job and also serves in the United States Air Force.

He's got a lovely bride to whom he is devoted, just as she devotes herself to him. As it should be.

But as the meal concluded and we waited for the fortune cookies, I thought of how fortunate I am.

How fortunate we all are.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Monday

Fair game

At long last we are being treated to some beauti-fall weather.

Today, the high barely reached seventy.

In honor of this annual climatic milestone -- or perhaps because it's the only night available to do it -- TG is taking Dagny to the South Carolina State Fair.

I don't do fairs. Just, no. I will be here at home.

Audrey, who apparently doesn't do fairs either, is joining me. We plan to watch TV and eat snacks.

Dag is also spending the night with us, and some of the day on Friday. Tomorrow evening the whole family will be going out to dinner, to celebrate Brittany's birthday.

TG plans to feed Dagny fair food for her supper (who knows what that will entail -- probably something fried) tonight, take her on a few rides, then hang out in the animal exhibits.

There's a petting zoo, a Border Collie demonstrating how he herds goats, and all kinds of barnyard-type critters to admire.

This afternoon, I asked Dagny what she's wearing to the fair, as it will be right cool when the sun goes down.

My new leggin's, she replied. The pink ones. No, the gray ones.

Mmmmmkay. Sounds like a plan. I'm pretty sure her denim jacket will be involved too.

The days are getting shorter. The nights are turning colder. The leaves are brightening and crisping in preparation for their collective swan song.

I wish you could hear the squirrels when they jump from the white oak which looms over our house, onto the sun room roof, then scamper to the edge and take flying leaps onto the privacy fence, along which they run like they're on fire.

Above my head, they sound as though they weigh thirty-eight pounds and are wearing shoulder pads and cleats.

They maraud around our deck as well, tails twitching, scooping up acorns.

Rizzo, who is ardent about acorns, notices and growls from the recesses of my recliner but does not bother to elevate his hackles.

The pickings aren't exactly slim; there are enough acorns on our deck for a gang of peckish squirrels and a Chiweenie whose tastes run to organic snacks found in nature.

I tell Rizzo: Play fair. You aren't allowed to have acorns anyway.

Whereupon he sighs, yawns, and goes back to sleep.

It's nuts.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Thursday

Wake me when it's over

A week ago Sunday, while at church, I learned through the grapevine that another hurricane was headed our way.

Michael.

He was due to arrive on the following Wednesday. Or so went the scuttlebutt.

What in the world? I marveled to TG on the way home. 

Unlike when Hurricane Florence was still thousands of nautical miles away, we hadn't been told two weeks out that we needed to plan for the end of the world.

And you know how that turned out. We had a rainy day. And not even particularly rainy, by South Carolina standards.

(Again: I understand that many suffered catastrophic effects of Hurricane Florence. Again: they have my prayers.)

But here we were with a tropical storm a mere three days away, and no extra bread in the house.

Fast forward to Thursday -- almost a week ago now -- when Hurricane Michael did arrive, in the form of a much-downgraded tropical storm.

The folks in the panhandle of Florida had already experienced devastating losses when Michael loomed on our horizon.

For reasons I'll never understand, this storm was not hyped to us in the same way at all. Even though it turned out to be worse.

As in, our sun room took on water in two corners. The rain came down pretty hard for many hours during the wee hours of last Thursday morning.

Our pool was nearly full to the brim when TG and I woke in still-gray, grainy light to check that all hatches were still battened down.

That's when I discovered the water on my new sun room floor and ran for the stack of pool towels. TG stood by to grab the little Shop-Vac and suck up the puddles.

But not long after, as I drank my coffee and sat watch, the rain subsided. The towels in the corners, having deftly absorbed the opportunistic rainwater, were all that was needed.

By one o'clock that day, the sun was out and puffy white clouds scudded across an azure blue sky.

By three o'clock that day, the pool towels had been washed, dried, folded, and re-stacked in the cabinet where they will ride out the winter.

Crisis averted.

And then it got hot again -- we've been in the high 80s for days now, with killing humidity.

I think Indian summer is about to be in the rear-view too, however. And the sooner, the better.

Rizzo does not like storms; they appear to traumatize his wee canine soul.

When I got up on the day Michael swanned through Columbia, as the rain lashed the windows and seeped in from the corners of the sun room, Riz cowered in the recliner on his blankets, clutching his Bullibone.

The picture above isn't from that day; I took it this past Monday, because as he sat beside me snoozing, I noticed that he'd dragged his blue-rings chew toy up with him and had his paw shoved through one of the rings.

His Bullibone was nearby too. Just in case.

The blue-ring chew toy is the one I bought for him at Pet Supplies Plus on the day we rescued him, in January of 2017. He also has a small black tire with a rope through it, but that came later, and the blue rings are his favorite.

Besides the Bullibone, which is his absolute favorite.

What would I do without the Riz-man?

I'd spend a significant amount of time being sad and lonely, which is its own kind of storm.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Wednesday