All posts in H A P P E N I N G S

About a week ago Matt and I saw an adorable portable kennel for Ollie at the best store ever, Target. We were drawn to this reasonably priced purchase because, in case you haven’t heard…we will soon have a small human in tow. We have heard from a few people that babies come with a ton of baggage, and we tend to take our perfect pup with us when we go places too, so somebody needed a collapsable home…Ollie won.

The new home is precious. It is very spacious, about .1 ounces and it folds into the size of a small frisbee. Just what we need! And better yet, Ollie loves it!

So all is well. Well, not quite. I came home this Tuesday afternoon, and when I opened the door……Ollie was waiting for me tail a’waggin’. My first thought is Ollie chewed through his new home, because he does like to destroy soft toys…..so I was sad. But when I got to the kitchen I found the kennel in tact, our adorable, amazing dog can work zippers! As evidenced below:

Not one thing was out of place in the house, no pee, no poop, no torn up rugs or chewed on furniture. Just the pillows on our bed slightly mussed. I can imagine Ollie’s day went like this:

8:15 am Matt puts me in my home and I rest

9:30 I stretch and notice one zipper pull moves slightly to the left

9:32 I push again

9:33 I get a paw in the hole and pull down

9:34 I crawl out of my home

9:35 I quickly go back in, in case some one sees me

9:38 No one is here, I go back out

9:39 I wander the house looking for my people

9:41 I crawl on to the people’s bed and go to sleep

4:15 I hear Mary’s car pull up and greet her at the door

Needless to say, Ollie thinks this is a perfect new arrangment.

Yesterday, I mentioned that Mary was participating in a guitar workshop in Nashville this week. Boy, is she ever.

You see, when she left Memphis, Mary was a little baby bird on the guitar, who was just learning to fly. As you’ll see in the video below, she is now flying across the frets like a majestic eagle, leaving nothing but sweet, sweet music in her wake.

Witness the transformation:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS4rAJH_GRw]

Impressive, no?

Usually, when we take such a long break from posting, it is because we feel that there’s nothing really going on in our lives that would justify the time you would spend reading about it. A lack of activity, however, is not the reason for the most recent radio silence.

For starters, Mary and I have separated. Temporarily, that is. She’s been in Nashville since Sunday attending a guitar workshop at Belmont University, while Ollie and I have spent the week down in Olive Branch at my parents house. We’re all away from home because we’re (finally) getting all of the floors replaced in our house due to the Great Pipe Bust of 2008.

(Did we tell you about that? Long story short, a pipe in our dining room burst while we were in Florida, and leaked onto our hardwood floors for who-knows-how-long. We walked in to standing water. Thank God for insurance.)

Anywho, we’ve had to move out of our house, and we’ve got to stay out until the work is done, which has been estimated to take two weeks. It’s terribly inconvenient, but thankfully we are blessed with a plethora of friends and family who have offered us shelter during this time.

Adding to the equation of madness, I’ve had a HUGE work project this week, and school starts for Mary on Monday. Fun, fun, fun!

All this rambling to say that we haven’t forgotten about this place. Stay tuned, because as soon as we can catch our breath, we’ll be back with more fun and frivolity. Audi 5.

I am having the Best Day Ever.

I know I’m a day late, but as promised, I’d like to share with you the story of the Walton County Beach Patrol Communists (WCBPC).

First, some background. We’ve been going to Seagrove Beach, Florida, for three years now. The first year, we were beach rookies, so we only took things like towels and floats to the beach with us. When the sun got the best of us, we’d retreat to the house to cool off, then repeat the cycle.

The second year, we figured out that the beach was much more enjoyable when you had some shade to provide a respite from the heat, so we brought one of those canopy tents to set up on the beach. We also had the bright idea to set up my small dome tent on the beach to store the collapsed canopy tent overnight, along with all of our floats, beach chairs, coolers, etc. At the end of the day, we’d cram all our stuff in the dome tent, zip it up, and leave it overnight. It was a genius idea, because we didn’t have to rent a moving truck twice a day to transport our beach supplies – we’d just grab our towels and go.

This year, we followed this plan, and it was working beautifully. Until Wednesday.

We got to the beach Wednesday morning to discover that our little dome storage tent was gone. G-O-N-E, gone. Being Memphians, the first thing we assumed is that our stuff was stolen. However, a neighboring fisherman came over to tell us that the Walton County Beach Patrol had picked up our tent (along with other folks’ stuff), thrown it in the back of a truck, and drove off.

Turns out that there is a state law that says you can’t leave anything on the beach overnight, because of the sea turtles or something. Granted, this is on the little rules sign at the beach entrance, but honestly, WHO looks at the rules sign when you arrive at the beach?

Anyway, according to the law, the WCBPC tags your stuff at sundown, and if it’s not gone by sunrise, they take it. Then, you are supposed to have 24 hours to claim it before it’s gone forever.

Bummed by this seemingly minor setback, Cliff and I started the process of finding out where they took our stuff so that we could go claim it. After three hours, and calling about 100 government offices, we located our belongings.

They were in the dump.

That’s right, those sick bastards took our tent-full-o-goodies straight to the county dump. No warnings, no claim center, no nothing. Right to the ol’ garbage pile. Enraged, Cliff and I talked to every county employee we could find a phone number for – aldermen, county clerks, coroners – we even tried to go to the dump and find our things. All to no avail – our stuff was cleared out and immediately thrown away, all because of a turtle (which I’ve never seen in Florida, BTW).

Now, truth be told, the economic damages were minimal. We lost six camp chairs, a couple of beach towels, and my beloved dome tent – could’ve been worse. But it’s the principle of the matter. We’ve done this for two years (with the law in place the whole time) and no one mentioned a peep about it. Even so, we were SUPPOSED to have an opportunity to reclaim our things, which we did not receive. And thirdly, please explain to me how the immediate dumping of all that plastic and metal and nylon is better for the environment than risking the remote chance that a turtle will be impeded by a 4 x 6′ dome tent? Where do turtles have to go that is so important, anyway?

In conclusion and in summary, if you go to the beach in Florida, please be aware that you are prohibited from leaving things on the beach overnight, for if you do, the beach patrol will be obliged to remind you that communism is alive and well, and that turtles have the right-of-way.

This concludes your public service announcement.

As you may have noticed, the posts have been few and far between lately. Usually, these types of delays are caused by a lack of inspiration, which seems to hit every few weeks or so. However, in this case you can blame the sparsity on the unholy amount of travel on which we’ve been embarking.

In the last 30 days, our itineraries have included:

• Las Vegas, Nevada – where I attended the Dave Dietrich Bachelor Party Weekend Extravaganza™
• Jackson, Tennessee – where we experienced a Lambuth Alumni Board meeting, the Senior Tea, and the Gate Ceremony
• Tunica, Mississippi – where a big group of us spent 24 glorious hours in T-Town – shopping at the outlets, eating at Paula Deen’s new buffet, winning at the roulette tables, and laying out by the pool
• Columbia, Missouri – where we spent the Memorial Day weekend celebrating the marriage of Dave and Jen with some of our closest friends in the world

But wait, there’s more…

Mary Elizabeth and her mom are currently on their annual "End-of-the-School-Year" road trip. This year, the girls have gone up to Bailey’s Harbor, Wisconsin to visit with family. Along the way, they stopped in Chicago to spend a day playing in our favorite city (I’m not jealous, I promise!), and have a few other minor stops planned, to and fro. This also means that I’m in the middle of my annual weel-long "I don’t know what to do when Mary is out of town" funk. Good times for her, un-good times for me.

And to top it all off, in just 9 short days, we’ll be leaving AGAIN to spend another week on the white sandy beaches of Seagrove Beach, Florida.

Whew.

All that to say that it’s not that I don’t love you anymore, it’s just that it’s been hard to find the time to write coherently about life when it’s a highway that you are riding all-night-long. So please be patient and trust that the posts will return as soon as our breath does!

Spending another Saturday night watching The Tornado Show.

Back on campus, watching the kids I recruited actually graduate. It’s weird.

Homeward bound.