I could get used to this

This whole not-working thing. I could get used to still being up at 1:30 in the morning with a glass of wine and  no plans for going to bed anytime soon REAL fast. Well, I am used to it now and I’m going to have a very very hard time getting back to a work schedule. But that doesn’t happen for days and days and days. So, not thinking about it. Lalalalala!!!

This is weird, having all this time off. Weird and wonderful. I’ve been quite busy, oddly. I’ve been all over the place. Saturday we went to Morganton to see Baker B’s niece and her husband and their 9 month old baby we’d never met. Who is the cutest baby ever. The minute she saw us, it was like we were her long-lost favorite friends, and she’d been waiting forever for us to turn up. She was the happiest baby I think I’ve ever seen, and apparently she’s always like that. She even let me hold her immediately – and generally the quickest way to get a baby to start screaming is hand it to me. We were quite taken with her. Her parents had been on a waterfall hiking trip all week, and they just took her along in a backpack. A baby backpack, of course.

We had planned to spend Saturday night there, and then I was going to go on to Asheville Sunday to see my parents. Because it’s about half the distance from Morganton to Asheville as it is from here to Asheville. So we took two cars. But Baker B’s car is having gear problems now. YES, the same car that JUST had a new computer put in, a tune up, and a muffler welded back onto it. That we debated over whether it was worth spending all the money it cost for a new computer. YES, now it’s having gear problems. Sometimes. Not all the time. Of course, it starts going out of gear on the way to Morganton. So Baker B is all mad and upset at it and decides he will just drive back up here Saturday night instead of waiting till Sunday. Because you wouldn’t want to NOT be on a deserted remote road in the middle of the night when your gears go completely out and strand you.

So I decide if he’s doing that, I’m going on to Asheville Saturday too. Naturally after I call my parents to let them know I’m coming that very day (I’d already told them it would be Sunday or perhaps Monday), he changes his mind again and decides to stay. WHATEVER. At least he didn’t drive back up in the middle of the night with a iffy-gear car. (Which has been fine since he got back. I think he’s projecting his own aversion to leaving his comfort zone into the car and making it do that.)

So I go on to Asheville Saturday night, and spend some quality time with the parents. Vacuuming, mopping, cleaning, catching the checkbook up, making grilled cheese sandwiches. On hamburger buns since they had no bread. Other than raisin bread. My father actually said, "Grilled cheese would be good on raisin bread, wouldn’t it?"

Came back up here Sunday night, taking the long route through Burnsville and Spruce Pine again. Very pretty and scenic. Then Monday Baker B said he wanted to go back down to Morganton. Again. Not to see his mother, but to see if he can find a way to get onto his sister’s land. That has no access. That belongs to his other niece now – the one that we saw last weekend. We’ve seen a lot of nieces lately. His father bought this land years and years ago, and gave it to his sister. It was long enough ago that Baker B remembers riding on his sister’s husband’s shoulders as they walked around on it. So that’s been a few years. Gail never did anything with it because she couldn’t get access to it – it’s surrounded by land that’s owned by other people and there’s no road and she couldn’t get a right of way. So when the other niece was here last weekend she and her husband talked to the guy that owns the land surrounding it, and he won’t give them access. And was kind of mean about it. So Baker B is all obsessed with finding a way in, and wanted to go down there again and look at it. So we did. It’s about 35 acres, and borders the interstate, with one acre being on the other side of the highway from the rest. And a little creek runs through it, so Baker B figured there was a tunnel. So, we parked on the acre on the other side of the interstate, walked along what was probably the access road to get to the billboards, and sure enough, there’s a drainage ditch big enough to crawl through.

I’m happy to report that Baker B did NOT crawl through it – he certainly would have been crawling alone- but he did take pictures to send to the niece’s husband. Because he’s sure Bob will want to come back up and crawl through that ditch and at last set foot on their land! That’s right by the interstate, so I don’t know what they’d ever do with it even if they DO find an easier way in than crawling through the drainage ditch.

After that, we drove over to Lake James and visited this bizarre creepy old dam that he’s also a little obsessed with. It is very strange, and I’ve got pictures coming up.

Then, if that wasn’t enough driving around, today I took a road trip of my own to North Wilkesboro. Because, to my astonishment, they have a brand new Kohls. Which I have my own obsession with, thanks to Cousin E who introduced me to the wonders of Kohls last summer. There’s a new one in Asheville – I’d never been to one before that, but I’m hooked now. And they sent me a $10 gift card to celebrate the grand opening of the North Wilkesboro one. Which I’m a little shocked by, since there is NOTHING in North Wilkesboro. Other than a community college and Merlefest. And a huge empty mall that went out of business years ago. And a racetrack that also shut down when Nascar went somewhere else. Which was kind of sad for them, since it actually is one of the birthplaces of car racing, with the moonshiners and all. But other than THAT, North Wilksboro just doesn’t offer a lot of shopping opportunities. Until NOW, at least. And it’s only half an hour from us, tops. Very exciting. So I went shopping, used my coupon, opened a charge account and got 15 percent more off, and ended up with three nice shirts, three pairs of socks and a very pretty picture frame for my student worker’s birthday, all for $25.

So, yeah, I’ve been busy. And now it’s AFTER TWO IN THE MORNING. I’ll slap some pictures in, and then I really really need to consider going to bed. I shudder to think of how I’ll ever adapt to going back to work.

The adorable Baby Claire.

Claire climbing over Mark. She climbed back and forth over him for ages. It was very entertaining.

And the big scary weird old dam. Note the holes. Very very creepy.

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