Willie Rather Disliked Branson...

...and this may well be our last trip to Pigeon Forge for a long time.

My parents own a time-share condo in Pigeon Forge (P.F.), Tennessee. They bought it in 1991 but even before that, we spent many vacations there. So, I am tired of it. But the kids were not. They begged to return this year to the Land of Dolly with their grandparents in tow.

Who were we to deny them their summer wishes?

We arrived the weekend of the 4th of July so it was even brighter and flashier than usual. Lots of "God Bless America" signs were used and I believe the Tennesseans really mean it. They build lots of very large crosses at churches on the side of the mountain and some houses had strobing neon crosses in the yard. It left me nearly speechless. I will say the fireworks display was stunning. I'll give them that. But I don't have a photo of those.

I do have a photo of this.

This is an ice cream bear in it's natural habitat.


And this is my snookums just before he forbade me to post the one of him pretending to lick it.

In fact, here's a couple more of him to make up for the difference:

I wish we could've bought some "FUN" here but unfortunately, they have gone out of business.

Enough of Joe and his mustache. Let's get started on the play-by-play!

-DAY ONE-

Otherwise known as The Day Of Nausea

Joe took Sam to the Nascar Speedpark. After riding go-carts, Sam insisted they play TWO courses of putt-putt. It was about 2pm, very sunny and 93 degrees. Needless to say, Sam came very close to heat exhaustion and referred to the Powerade his Dad bought as "the thing that saved me." He was a bit crummy for the rest of the day and he swore off go-carts for the rest of the trip. We couldn't convince him it was the heat that did it to him.

I took Zoe to the pool and she had soon made many friends. And faces. And requested a new swim suit her "belly can hang out" of, like the other girls. We all have to aspire to something.

-DAY TWO-
Otherwise known as The Day Of Trauma. 

This was my bright idea. The premise:

 "Tomb takes your group of archaeologists deep into an ancient Egyptian tomb for 45 minutes of excitement. Guests find themselves trapped by the spirit of an ancient Pharaoh, faced with ingenious challenges that must be completed for any chance of making it out alive. Your group must work together to find success in this battle of wits, or face the Pharaoh's wrath! If you fail, you may never escape!"

I LOVE haunted houses that have lots of secret passages and "puzzles" to figure out. I'm not much on chainsaws and gore but I really enjoy some problem solving. I blame Scooby Doo. And Sam's been an Indiana Jones fan since birth! I specifically asked if it was age appropriate for my 5 and 6 year olds. I was told it was and that there "is one little spot where it goes pitch-black for about 20 seconds so that may get to them but nope, they're good to go!" The fella was really young and really cute and he also said age 5 and under received free admission. I may not have been thinking clearly. I had no idea it was not a win-win situation.

Well, let's just say they're free so you can afford the intensive therapy afterward. Jesus....

It was a very cool place but there was deafening sounds, strobing lights, ceilings slowly descending, pyrotechnics, floors dropping by so many inches, a tour guide who hammed it up and kept screaming about impending death. And my two babies. Zoe was more terrified than she has ever been. She was chanting little prayers into my ears and rocking and sobbing SOBBING with me trying so hard to convince her it was a ride, a game, that they wouldn't kill people lest no one else buy a ticket....and all of those people just looked at us like we were HORRIBLE parents and ruining their good time. Sam was frantic to solve the puzzles but this wasn't 6 yr old puzzle solving. And the A/C didn't seem to work during the "trapped" episodes. Joe was sweating bullets and shooting daggers from his eyes. OH, and in the midst of all this fun  chaos, I realize Zoe's heart is pounding, erratically. And then I remember her arrhythmia. There were no warning signs about it and we were told she has no special limitations but SWEET JESUS! This thing was 45 minutes long, you know?

Obviously, we all survived. The ending was cool in more ways than one when the A/C kicked back in. But when we stumbled back out into the light, the children insisted we hold them close for ten minutes before they could go on to the car. Zoe verbalized a valuable lesson learned when she said, "Mama, that was stupid scary. I'll never trust a teenager again." Cute boy who looked like Brian Bloom overheard her. But he didn't care. Later on their Facebook page they posted this:

"Since we already scare little kids (and some adults) to death, we are thinking about putting together a special haunted Tomb tour for Halloween. What does everyone think?"

Sigh.


DAY THREE
Otherwise known as The Charm

Magiquest was fun. You buy a wand and gain entry to a life-sized video game. You're given a book with tasks to be completed. You cast your wand and the sensors in what you cast on open the treasure chest. Seriously cool. I would like to point out that even though we did not accomplish all of the tasks, the girls accomplished more than the boys. And now the wand is good to play any Magiquest, anywhere. Whoopee.

Then we went gem mining! Old Dude showed us around his establishment then set us up with a lovely bucket of treasure-filled sand. Old Dude was something else. He was like Shaggy, if Shaggy came from Appalachia. (Scooby's buddy not the Jamaican dude.)

When we were finished with the mining part, he showed off his 1965 Mack Fire Truck to us.

After finding many valuable gemstones and fossils and trying out the siren on the truck, we were forced to seek refuge from the heat. We made a bee-line for the nearest ice creamery!

*** I've been forced to make this one a two-parter. I just cannot let it sit in draft any longer. I must make room to write about a bunch of crappy stuff!***

Behind The Wood Shed

"The beautiful thing about treasure is that it exists.

It exists to be found.

How beautiful it is to find treasure.

Where is the treasure, that when found, leaves one eternally happy?

I think we all know it exists.

Some say it is inside us.

Inside us one and all.

That would be strange. It would be so near.

Then why is it so hard to find, and so difficult to attain?"

-Log Lady


_________________


I am short on words these days

but I am big on

dreams

and

memories.

The Ghost Of Christmas Past

Zoe's After Party Was Grrrrreat!

Too bad she missed it due to bedtime at my Mom's. Winkwink. Nudgenudge.

I decided to pull a party double-header and have an "adults only" party after Zoe's pool party.

We had a nice turn-out and my friend, April, who I haven't seen since 1992 came to what she called one of the infamous Calmpound parties. She's been my FB friend for some time and here I will plug Facebool for not being entirely evil if you handle it correctly.

My husband and the twinkle in his eye.

Keith tells us he has blisters on his fingers.

Leah laughs. She's a happy sort.

Along with April came a lawn game by the name of Kubb. It's a mix between bowling and chess.

Joe scored first and did a little victory dance.
It steamed up my lens!

Leah laughed...

This new Kubb was so much fun we went a little redneck and pulled the cars out on the lawn for music and light. I couldn't imagine anything more fun than Cornhole but I think this is!

April made individual key lime pies with Tequila and Triple Sec.
This is photographic evidence of one of many little pie accidents.

Little alcohol pies were just what we needed. Leah dropped this one first on the sweater then right on the krahm. She's still laughing...

Skinnydipping? Yeah. There was some. But not while the cameras were rolling. We had a hard enough time getting any flattering pool pics with our suits ON!

See?

Then we went all sexi. But just for a moment.

We partied till 2:30 am.On a Tuesday. It was good for the soul. Well, for everyone except maybe Ed. That's him, below, abandoned by the rest of us, shivering in the dark depths alone. Hatching evil revenge plans no doubt.

I hope you have good times and good friends. I do.

How Was It?

How was it, you say?

I'll just let this picture tell the story of the doctor's visit until I can get back to you.

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe

Guess what? Today is mine and the beloved's Officially Unofficial Seventh Anniversary! You don't even have to ask. I'll explain. It's not our wedding anniversary. It's not our when-we-first-met anniversary. It's not even our shackin' up anniversary. It's our first-time anniversary. 

Now, I can go one of two ways here. I can paint the evening with soft poetic hues or I can tell you the truth. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe...  

The truth is, when we met the first time in a local bar, I was distracted by a conversation with someone else. I may have been a little drunk. I know he had the most striking head of hair. He was grey but he wasn't old. He was dressed well and he was handsome. I thought he was out of my league. I didn't dwell on him. The next time we saw each other we were both attending a reading at a local theater. There was a lot of free wine. We kept bumping into each other over the free wine table. He was very chatty. Later, I learned this was a side effect of the drink and not his natural way. After the reading, we hooked up with a mutual friend and that's when we got bent and wicked. We whooped and hollered all the way through town. Hours passed. Someone shared party favors. We partied on. We lay at the end of a dead end road in a triangular formation. We were looking for UFOs and there were three of us, after all. We walked down the path and into our friend's place. We sat on the sofa like birds on a wire. We turned up the stereo. We listened to the music he and his friend made together. It sounded like outer space. Time slowed down. 

Then our friend excused himself and went to his bedroom with a steak knife and handcuffs under his arm. He might have had some beef jerky too, but I can't be sure of that. So we snuggled there on the sofa. He lay his head on my shoulder. He told me it felt so good. time stood still. Then he stood up and said he was going to bed. He turned around and held his hand out to me.

C'mon...

That's all he said. That's all it took. I put my hand in his and he pulled me upright. And that's just what he did. He pulled me up right into my new life with him. And I never saw it coming. We were just going to get it on in a dark, cluttered room on a cot covered with a Star Wars blanket. No one looks for true love in a place like that on a night like that. But we found it there. The beginning of a whole new way of life was hiding under some Star Wars memorabilia in a trailer in the woods. 

Oh, it hasn't been all glitter and unicorns since then. We've had our trials. Neither of us is perfect. But we continue to discover things about the other. We continue to evolve together. We still love each other and we are still going strong after seven years. Who wouldn't want to celebrate that?

*Follow our lead. Don't hesitate. Click on that spider picture up there and be amazed at the writing on the web*

I No Longer Do

Sixteen years ago today, I married the wrong man for the wrong reasons. I think he did the same. I mean, marry for the wrong reasons, not marry a man. We didn't set out to hurt the other but now we both carry scars eight long years in the making.  I never thought it would, but the bitterness has faded significantly. The keen stinging edge has given way to a long lost ache that comes from the remembrance of traveling the wrong path for too long. I've now been without as long as I was with.

The wedding took place on the hottest day of the year. The air in the old church faltered. It was physically miserable and there was more than one reference to burning in hell. All these years later, I'm taken aback by the symbolic irony of the oppressive heat of that day and the deep crack running up the steps between our feet in the photographs. 

Oh goodness. My friends and family did their best to deter me but I was so sure I was teaching them all such a valuable lesson about life and love.  As it happened, I was the one about to be taken to school. Oh goodness me...

But we muddled through it. We emerged different than we were before. I took my lessons to heart and I've made every decision since then based on what I now know for sure about what love is and what it is not. 

I no longer do and I no longer have to.

One Thousand Mile Journey

I am home. We pulled in early this evening from another one thousand mile journey and I know home is the best place in all the world to be.

While we were away, my uncle died. He was named Wesley and he became my aunt's second husband after the first fell dead off a bar stool, long before I was born. He's always been family. He was quiet and stubborn and smoked cigars. Short, slight and seemingly always bald, he had a penchant for mumbling and wearing navy blue coveralls. I always thought him an odd bird. What do I know? 

I know I always wanted to really get to know him and I didn't. I know he tried really hard to win me over and he couldn't. I know our time is fleeting but why do I have such a hard time believing it? And now he's dead and I don't know anything about that. I can only guess death is the great escape. Like a trap door opening below you and the dropping that steals your breath...

Isn't that what we're all after? The ultimate escape? Why else do we drink and drug, gamble and fight, make love, or make war? What are we doing when we look deep into our child's eyes? When we lose ourselves in a deep, dreamless sleep? 

The ultimate escape- I know it's in all of us.

Workin' On A Buildin'

This is our courthouse. It is located on the square in downtown. It was originally built in 1904. When it opened on December 30, 1904 it's final cost was $58,000. The dome houses a clock on all four sides and although it was originally hand wound, they converted to electricity in the 1960's. It's been refurbished twice. Once in 1974, the fabulous year I was born and again in 1990 when I was in high school. 

I've only had business in the courthouse three times in my life. The first was when I made my debut in front of a judge at age 3 months, to complete the legalities of my adoption.  Don't worry, my parent's made all of the arrangements since I couldn't walk or talk, much less set up legal appointments. The second, when I testified against a man who I'd become involved with at age sixteen. He was a bad man who did bad things and I got my restraining order and he went to jail. The third time I darkened the doors was for a ruling on my divorce. Now that I think about it, my parents were with me every single time I had official business there. 

This photo was taken a few years ago, before the most recent renovations. 

See those huge trees?

Well, they took them down.

Chunk by chunk, piece by piece, they were removed.

I drove by one day and couldn't believe my eyes.

Those trees have been there my whole life! 

Fortunately, for my tree hugging self, the newspaper printed an explanation that described it as a necessity. The city brought in tree guys to check the trees for diseases and problems and such.

Obviously, as evidenced by the rotten and diseased centers of the branches, they made the right choice. Come to think of it, every time we had a big storm, huge chunks of tree debris would fall onto the sidewalk. I guess it was time for a big change.

Now, they've replaced the huge trees with smaller trees. In time, they will grow as large as the others. They've also begun to replace the copper on the dome. And I read the clocks were removed for repair also. I can't wait to show you the finished project! 

I hope they finish it up soon.

Patience, is not one of my virtues.