Anyone local who has some time free this week, would you please drop me a line at technomom@spamcop.net? Thanks 🙂
sambear, shadowkatt and I spent that guy’s birthday in Charleston, and thanks to the most huggable and generous hlynna and popefelix. We are now the proud owners of Uncle Abernathy, our very own land yacht. He’s marvelously protective, he is, and very practical, just like the Ridge Runner for whom he is named (as Stars & Garters vets may remember). I credit him with my survival from a misadventure and trust him to protect Katie when she’s driving on her own if he hasn’t gone on to other missions.
I’m still trying to figure out what happened to the picturesque place I saw on my honeymoon in 1985, but it wasn’t this place. I guess I was blind in more than one way back then! I was in much better company this time and saw some very interesting sites.
I performed a Stupid Cyn Trick with not eating or remembering to stay hydrated or take my meds or keep my glucose meter with me, then got really really lost, and had only a new cell phone with truly WRONG routing on it, so nobody could actually call me and I only got hold of Sam once when I called him. I was really, really lost. Charleston isn’t that big, but it goes in spirals. I swear it.
Sam and Katie were driving around trying to find me, and we were never in the same place at the same time, although with the amount of time spent and space covered that doesn’t really seem possible. Sam had called the police, and they had never seen me, either. A terrified suburban white lady, driving an old land yacht, in the, well, the slums, who made several wrong-way turns on the crazy one-way streets and ended up backing up trying to fix things. A lady who obviously wasn’t accustomed to taking gang bangers and obvious drug deals in stride. Someone who certainly had not accidentally annoyed not one, but two different entrepreneurs, while trying to turn around in alleys. (I’m sure they pay taxes, and their customers just prefer open-air experiences to hotels. Snowbirds probably want to enjoy the mild Georgia December.) Anyway, maybe I looked fairly normal or they frequently get people lost that way or lose lots of visitors to the streets or whatever.
I believe that I actually drove into a Nancy Collins novel, based on some things I saw. I never spotted seraphim, or Sonja herself (precisely), but otherwise, it was definitely her world. Turning a corner to find six police units surrounding one guy on foot in the lot of a boarded-up gas station, the cops seeming badly outpowered and nervous, just because of something about the guy, and the boy just standing there, doing nothing and looking normal, but not nervous at all—well, I wanted to see what happened, but even in a really bad place physically I had enough sense to haul ass out of there, knowing it wasn’t like reading safely and enjoying shivering over Collins’ text. Nope. Trigger-happy cops and spooky dudes who make cops nervous are to read about, not hang around and watch.
We got to watch Serenity in our hotel room on Christmas Eve, so I’ve finally seen it! Yay! It was worth the wait. I expect to watch the DVD many more times. I love River, but I have to say that Katie did River fashion before River did, okay? So there. If, however, anybody knows where to get boots like River’s, the girl wants some, and I haven’t had time or energy to track them down.
Sam and I used our walkie-talkies to game most of the way back from Charleston, while the girl napped, read, and played with the laptop. Yes, we gamed. We ran into channel overlap several times, usually with kids playing with new toys. Once I’m sure we heard toddlers giggling on a nursery monitor, which made me think of Kelthaven. Once it seemed to be kids on different cordless phones all telling each other to go get their parents to pick up the phone, arguing about who would go get their parents, while some exasperated adult was trying to convince them to just hang up so he could call back. We mystified all of them (except the happy toddlers) before we switched channels.
Anyway, I had lots of good time with Sam and Katie, I got to meet two new, sweet people with great hugs, and we have another car.
Sam doesn’t go back to work ’til next week, which is an OW money-wise but happy time-wise.
We’ll have our “real” holiday celebration for Imbolc, I think. A really great Imbolc. With cards and everything. It’s more appropriate, anyway considering our particular dedications. It’ll confuse the heck out of the extended families, but when haven’t we done that? They’ll be so shocked by cards from us, that they may just assume they’re late Christmas cards. What’s Imbolc, anyway?
wordcandlemage, we need lots of candles. Really. And I may have a student for you, but I’m leaving it to her to contact you, to see how serious she is.
I hope you’ve all had a great whatever you celebrate 🙂
