"I Don't Like this Place"

Happy Anniversary to us. Six lovely years husband and I have been married. We're not even having that six/seven year itch. I think that's because we're too busy. . .

To celebrate this monumental occasion we decided to venture out to the mountains of North Georgia and rent a cabin for the weekend.

Remote location? Yes. It was near Ellijay which is a tiny town known best for its apples.
Rustic, yet comfortable? Definately, there wasn't a DVD player and the fireplace was not gas.
Romantic? Hardly. At least not with two toddlers in tow.

We couldn't leave until husband got home from work and it is about a two hour drive. The directions were rather confusing. I got three different sets: from Google, Mapquest, and Yahoo. E McPan would have been proud. We finally decided to go with the directions Joy, the lady from the cabin rentals, gave us. We had to "stay on Walnut through Chattsworth until it dead ends. Turn right. (At a dead end?). Go left on 762 and then right. (When?). Go over the bridge and turn left right before the Hardees. (Hmmmmm). But we made it all the way to Ellijay and then turned onto Vanilla Lane (our cabin was on this street). But when they named it "Lane" they meant "dirt road barely wide enough for your car in the middle of nowhere" Lane.

No problem. We can do this. Joy's directions said to take the lane "to the end" and then take the "right turn off down the hill. Your cabin is the one in the middle." Hmmmm. After turning off twice to the right and not finding a cabin we finally got to what we thought may be the "end." To our right was a road that plummeted into the darkness at an alarmingly steep grade. No way. Surely she didn't mean THAT road. I got out of the car and tried to peer into the darkness to asertain if a cabin was down there. Husband asked me what I saw.

"Nothing. It's dark. I really think this is the way though."

He, I have discovered, is no Boy Scout. No roughin' it in the woods of Georgia for this guy. He did not want to take the chance going down that hill. I was getting so frustrated that I wanted to just drive the minivan myself. But I kept my cool and called Joy.

"Umm, Joy? We're lost. I've followed your directions and we're just not sure if this is the right path. "

She proceeded to repeat to me the exact same directions she had written down. I think she was reading them off her paper.

"But, Joy? Is the driveway to the cabin down a steep hill?"

"Well, it's not THAT steep. . . " Hmmmm. No help there, Joy.

Finally,I convince husband to go for it and we creep down the steep hill at a snail's pace. Ah ha! The cabin! It was down there!

The next morning we finally get going at around 11:00am to go to an apple orchard. I loaded up the girls and we drive off. Half way up the hill we get stuck. It's so steep I really think we're going to topple backwards. Our front wheel minivan is no match for this. Of course, it doesn't help that husband is barely moving the car. He tried two more times and then I tried (after we got the girl's out, of course), but no go. I called Joy again.

"Umm, Joy? We're stuck. We didn't know we needed to have a four wheel drive to get up this hill."

"Oh, you can do it! Just get some weight in the back of your van and creep on up. We do it all the time." (What weight did she want me to put back there? I don't generally keep extra weights in my car. Just on my butt and thighs.)

"We've tried for an hour, Joy, and it just won't work."

"Well, there is a way to do it. Now, it might sound crazy, but. . . " I interrupted her at this point and told her I wasn't going to do anything crazy with my minivan or my family. Husband excitedly told me to tell her we were just going to go home and wanted a refund for the second night's stay. Bingo! He found a way out! So I told Joy all of this and asked her to call a Tow Truck to help us out. I also asked if this happened before.

"Oh, no. Never."

"So where do I tell the tow truck company to come?"

"Just tell him you're next to Steve Smith's place."

Hmmm. How would a tow truck company know where Steve's house was in the middle of the woods unless he had been asked to go there 45 times before????

Anyway, a man and woman from the third cabin walked up and I told them our tale of woe. He smiled a very toothy grin and assurred me we could get up the mountain and wouldn't need a tow truck.

"Just take it on up and go on the outside of that last turn. You can do it!" Big toothy grin. Luckily, he offered to do it for me but let me ride along. We sped so fast up that hill I almost peed on myself. What a rush. Once were were at the top he just put it in park and said "Nice van you got here." I was too busy catching my breath to thank him for not killing me.

So we went on to the orchard (a total bust - completely campy. They didn't even have caramel apples!) and then went back to the cabin. I was determined to stick it out. This time we didn't take the van down the hill but left it at the top and walked our stuff down. I'm sure our friendly neighbor enjoyed a good laugh from that one. But husband was happy. He got to watch football and I got to play with the fire. The girls got to skip their naps and pick up sticks in the woods. At least it was a beautiful setting right next to a stream. Needless to say, as we were leaving Priya said, "I don't like this place."

So does this mean we won't be camping anytime soon?

Army of One

Yesterday I did more before 9:00am than most people do before 9:30.

I stained my deck (which was fun because nobody bothered me and I listened to great music). Okay, so I didn't stain the entire deck by 9:30, but I got started around 8:30. That's something.

Then, if that wasn't enough, I got a wireless network adapter for my Tivo, so I can publish pictures on our TV. It only took me 2 weeks and 1/2 tank of gas to figure out which adalpter was compatible with Tivo. The guys at Office Depot didn't have any idea what to tell me, and when we looked it up on the internet we didn't realize we had the wrong one (twice!). Husband was convinced it wouldn't work, but I perservered. I even submitted my rebate online! Welcome to the 21st century!

Not only that, but I also took a cooking class called "Fall into Flavor." It was a demonstration class in which this great chef cooked some Pumpkin/Apple soup, pork tenderloin with dried fruit and a great glaze, and Acorn Squash with some sort of wonderful Licquor melted in the butter. All of this was topped off with a wonderful Apple Blueberry Dessert thing. He used some type of pasty paper that was impossible to work with. I walked away thinking, "Gee, that was neat, but I won't make any of it. Husband hates bland food (soup was very bland), Husband hates pork, and I simply can't mess with phyllo pastry. Maybe I'll make the Acorn Squash dish for Thanksgiving. MMmmmmm. Who wants to come to MY house?

90 days

Today I saw a very interesting patient.

"You won't believe what all has happened to me in the last 90 days. In July, my wife committed suicide. I was in Arizona at the time and she was in Texas. So I moved out of our house in Texas and put my things in my folk's house in Biloxi. You can guess what happened then. I lost about 60% of it all in the hurricane. Then I found out I have renal failure and need a translplant. I'm here for a referral to a nephrologist."

Now THAT'S a bad summer.

I've learned to ask patients a lot of questions about their family, homelife, and career. It really gives me an idea about who they are and what they have to deal with.

Today a lady told me she has three children.

"Well, one is deceased." she added.

"What happened?"

"She was murdered. By her broher-in-law when she was 30. She had three kids and was trying to leave her husband. His entire family is very tight in the town she was living in, like the Little Mafia. Her brother-in-law told her she absolutely would not leave and he shot her. And to my dying day I think her husband was involved."

"Why?"

"Because he took an overdose of just the right amount of sleeping pills to put him in the hospital the day before her murder."

"Where are the children now?"

"They're with their father. He remarried and is very happy, apparently."

But the story that stays on my mind is the one a lady in her early 60s told me a few weeks back. All I asked was how many children she had.

"Three."

Pause.

"But actually one died."

"Oh, how awful."

"She was two years old. I went to take a shower while she was napping and she climbed onto the stove and turned it on. She had never ever done that and I don't know why she did it then."

This was a very soft spoken woman who worked at the local fabric store. I actually met her there and have seen her there often since she came into the office.

"Her little dress caught fire and she died in the hospital four days later."

She was crying at this point, but didn't say anything further about it.

It's a story I will never forget.

Stripes

A few weeks ago I spent all kinds of money on a new hairdo with highlights. This morning I asked Toddler what color hair I had and she replied "Mommy has Stripes!" Nice.

Toddler also has learned that treasures exist in her nose. She'll pull out one such slimy treasure and say "What's this?"

"It's a booger. Gross. Don't put your finger in your nose. That's yucky." A comment that means nothing to her because she promptly sticks her finger right back up in there and asks yet again "What's this?"

What is it about Toddlers and repeating the same question 46 times in one hour?

Double Stroller

I went to Texas with the girls and while I was gone my nurse quit. So I had to learn how the urinalysis machine works this morning. That was fun.

I learned a lot on my trip. Everyone in the airports were so friendly when they saw me trudging along dragging two toddlers in their car seats on wheeled luggage carts. Then, when I turned too sharply and toppled one child over or tried to squeeze them into a small elevator the helpful people would say something brilliant like, "You know, I have two children (a friend with twins, two grandchildren, etc) and I use a DOUBLE STROLLER." They would say DOUBLE SROLLER loud and slow to make sure I understood.

"You don't say? Wow. . . "

I especially liked people's helpful advice when they told me why Little Bit was screeching. Not crying and not screaming. Just screeching. "She's teething (ears are popping, hungry, tired, etc)." Again, I would just nod dumbly and say "Yeah, poor thing. . . " when I knew she was none of those things. She was perfectly happy. She screeches like that all the time and I can't get her to stop. All it does is bother her big sister, who covers her ears and starts to cry herself, saying things like "Stop Screaming! My ears hurt! I'm not listening! I'm having a HARD TIME!!!"

Aren't we all?

We went to the State Fair of Texas and I had wonderful fair food. Corn dog, Tornado Fries, Caramel Apple with nuts, Nutty Bar, Pralines and hot dogs. I can't remember what I fed the girls, but I at least I ate well.

I think I'm going to suggest we make this a yearly tradition (the State Fair, that is).

I also enjoyed our visit to my brother's house. If I knew how to link I would link to his blog. Anyway, he went to the Burning Man week and wanted to tell us all his stories, but we were in mixed company. He's like a man reborn. Maybe I'll go that sometime. First, I must lose about 30 pounds and get a tan. Because people don't wear clothes there.