Our Redneck Grill And Other Weekend Adventures

Whew!  What a weekend.

Disclaimer: This is a l-o-o-o-n-g post.  Full of the mundane, nonsense and fun.  Enter as you wish. ::grin::

Friday night began our weekend with a small bump.  Let's just say Steven and I had a very heated discussion when he arrived home about me going back into the hospital. Immediately.  He saw that I was in a type of pain so severe [and a new pain, imagine that!] that I was doubled over and couldn't stop crying.  One of the things most people [here in my blog pond] don't realize is I hardly ever, ever cry when I am in pain.  It's not because I am so strong or stoic [puhlease I am a wimp] but I don't cry mostly because it's a waste of time and I would be waterworks most days if I did it for every twinge and spasm, ache or pain. More importantly it really, really upsets the family.  So. . . when Steven walked in on me at 5:30, hunched over, sobbing, his first reaction was to toss me bodily into the van and have me admitted. No questions asked.  What I do know y'all know is I HATE the hospital.  It is pretty much understood if I show up in an emergency room they will just admit me.  I have to be honest.  I have spent enough time visiting other wards in the hospital on an out patient basis that getting me to agree to be admitted takes an intervention, an act of Congress and the will of God.

I am stubborn as heck about refusing to go. Which, admittedly, can be stupid on my part, but I am what I am.

Spottie enjoying the weekend too.

We compromised.
If I talked to the doctor I would make a deal with my husband that I would take some of my [most despised] pain medication and if that worked I would get to stay home. And if it didn't work?  I promised I would get into the van and go.  I knew if it didn't work I had to go.

[I said I was stupid, not death wishy.]

As  much as I hate, hate, hate the side effects to this particular drug I knew it was my only choice on a Friday night to avoid the emergency room. I simply hate the hospital more.  This particular prescription is an anti inflammatory, not a narcotic. The side effects being what they are I have to be desperate to take it. Are we getting this? hee I am nothing if not repetitive.

This is also a drug that the doctors would be willing to keep me on for the long term until my treatment is done, but I am leery of staying on it because all the literature and research shows it is not good to do that.  I have been on and off of it since February.  The other problem with it is that once you start taking it you have to continue to take it until you can taper off of it.  Depending on the particular problem [this week ::sarcasm drip::] it can go anywhere from a week to a month.

Ah, the joys of  living in this body. ::grin::

All's well that ends well because it actually worked and in good time too. I was feeling my chipper self by 7 pm and even managed to fall asleep at a decent hour.  That was strange because I thought the initial high dose of the drug would keep me up for days like it usually does.  Yes, it is THAT 8 day bender drug I took back in February, remember?  I guess the pain and worry just finally exhausted me.

Now. . .comes the good part.

Saturday and Sunday. WOO-HOO!

Saturday we had to travel great distances just to get a few simple things done. Y'know. Ordinary stuff like cashing a check and taking Wallene school shopping.  No kidding. EVERYTHING out here takes hours, if not days, to get done.  Turns out it was easy peasy. I popped a few of my magic beans pills, we hopped in Ozcarz at 10 am and we made a day of it.  We live very close to Charlottesville. Close being a relative term if you consider 45 miles close.  OF COURSE the bank was in the opposite direction of the stores and the mall we wanted to visit in Charlottesville, but?  I will admit there is nothing nicer than tooling around with my family, in Ozcarz, and admiring all the lush green woods and farmland.  It doesn't seem like the trip is too long when you have all of that to go along with the drive, y'know?  Wallene picked out some of the nicest clothing - bonus! no fighting between Mom and teenage daughter over the appropriateness of her clothes, for once - and as we were getting ready to pay at the register the power went down. HA! We put the clothes on hold and popped over to a pizza joint for lunch. I left Steven and Wallene there to nosh and I went for a spin around town.  Pretty town full of really nice people.  By the time I got back they were done.  We picked up her clothes and headed home.  Funniest part?  We got lost on the way home.  Heehee.  Which, I have to admit, is a pretty hard thing to do considering it is a straight shot out of the town we live in to get to Charlottesville.  One road, no turns, go straight.  Somehow we ended up in a county named Goochland? I think? Great name, but no where near our temporary digs! Ooops. You know you are lost when you didn't even know where you ended up existed in a state where you have lived your whole life.  When we noticed the farms started to look unfamiliar we turned around and landed one town over from home.  At least we knew how to get home from there, albeit it added an hour to our drive.

Duchess' new babies.  This was our first glimpse. She has kept them hidden for quite a while. So pretty.

Again, not to worry. When we got home I threw together my amazing Italian subs.  Think the best sub you have ever had and then double it.  My family loves these things.  I have had my kids' friends text me to ask how to make them. It cracks me up because they are so silly simple. Just follow what you see the Subway sandwich artists do and ta-da! You too can have amazing subs. [I was being completely tongue in cheek for my family's sake when I bragged that they are my amazing subs, just so you know.] We took our subs to the pool.  This was probably the best part of the day.  I think you can understand that Steven really prefers not to be around swimming pools when he is off work.  It isn't that he even sees all that many in a work week as he is in the office, but after dealing with them for over 30 years, well. . .yeah, you get the idea.  And me?  I don't do the pool, ever.  I love to swim. I grew up swimming - high school, college - but I am so over the pool.  Or so I thought.  Wow. It was a blast.  We packed up a cooler with drinks and the food, sat poolside and there was a band playing in the amphitheater adjacent to the pool.  Now Tadpoles, I ask you, what could be better than that?  An added bonus was they had a spa that worked it's magic on my creaky, old body.  Damn Skippy. That was awesome! I also extracted a firm commitment from my lovely husband that we shall have a spa of our very own when we move. We're just trying to figure out how to get insurance to pay for it.  Medical purposes you understand. ::grin::

I know all of that sounds insanely boring and not at all exciting to anyone other than us, but I hope you understand that Saturday was a pretty big day for me, and for my family who I love so much, as I haven't felt up to that kind of activity in a few years.  But. . .as y'all know, every once and a while and with some good drugs, I get a good day.

Wait. . .Sunday was even better.
I know, I know! "How could Sunday be better Skippy?" you ask? 
Because it was Redneck Grilling Day! I'll get back to that in a minute tho' because the morning was pretty dang great too.

The weather here has been so beautiful. I don't know what happened to the heat and humidity that Virginia usually experiences in July and August, but Sunday was spectacular.  It barely got above 70 degrees. Luscious.

We started the day by going to church.  Our new church is completely different than our old church as we are in the country here and we used to live in the suburbs.  It's agricultural vs. government geek I guess you could say.  No complaints, just different. Everything, including Mass, it just so.much.slower.here.  Still, you can't beat the view out the massive windows in our new church as it overlooks the rolling hills and farmlands of Orange, VA.  I told Steven we have to start sitting in the middle, nearer the aisle because that view distracts me.  And I am not easily distracted in church.  I also know it is only going to get worse [better?] as autumn approaches.  Ah well, blinders are on order. ::wink::  I only had one small hitch the whole day when the pain started to come back during Mass and had to excuse myself.  I wasn't scheduled to take the meds until after church - precise timing with this drug and all that.  This does happen occasionally and our friends at our old church were used to it, but our new friends were so kind too. ::smile:: I made it out without disturbing the service and simply went to the car and looked at the view.  Weird. I know. But it was just. . .so . . .nice.

Afterwards, having taken the pills, we went and did what is becoming second nature to us on the weekends. We went house hunting. Again.  I have decided that I no longer want to deal with REO/bank owned properties anymore because the banks are bitches [sorry, but they are].  Excuse my language, but they are impossible to deal with sometimes. Even if you want to pay cash.  Suddenly the price they want is no longer the price they'll take and blah. blah. blah.  Instead we are narrowing it down to a few homes that have been on the market forever and are normal sales. We had met the nicest lady in Food Lion who, it turns out, is the official Orange, VA Welcome Wagon lady [for lack of a better term.] She works in the county office of living and tourism for the county. We saw her again at the OC Fair and she was so helpful in guiding us around here. We feel better about where to pick a home now.  I have fallen hard for one home, but Steven is being cautious because there are stairs involved.  I am working my mojo hard I guess we'll wait and see.  The house can be reconfigured to one level for him and me, with the girls upstairs. I don't know.  He usually [okay, always] grants me my wishes, but he is being a bit more realistic than me this time I have come to realize.  I tend to go all Pollyanna on him and forget my limitations because I want the normal back. Since when did 46 become too old for one set of stairs? I guess it is just my nature to not to want to feel old. Thank goodness one of the two of us is sane. [But, the house? Completely redone - new wiring, roof, siding, windows, floors, kitchen. And? It's so cute. It's blue! A blue house! How cool is that?]  See what I mean?

Okay, okay. Redneck grilling.  When we moved to our temporary home in the resort we only brought the bare minimum because the home we are staying in has most everything we need. It is a fully stocked and supplied three bedroom home that you might remember belongs to Steven's parents and we have vacationed here in the past.  So, yeah - we didn't need a lot and most of our stuff is in storage.  Even our grill.  Except, oddly. . .the grill pan to that grill moved here with us.  Just the grill pan. [Fitz you can stop laughing now.  I just kept picturing your temporary moves as I stared that grill pan down.]

Ah, leave it to my husband to pack. I don't even want to see the inside of the storage units.

Redneck grilling came about for two reasons.

First was a comment Wallene made to me the other morning [2 am to be exact] when we were sitting outside and she said "Momma I really miss the smell of a campfire. Can we go in the backyard and light something on fire?"  Um. No.  But, of course the wheels in my head started turning at that precise second.

Then the next morning I was suddenly in the mood for grilled hamburgers.  I mean, really in the mood.  Y'know, those juicy, off the grill burgers, with all the fixins' served on an English muffin? Yeah baby.  And nothing was going to deter me from getting that burger.  Oh, and letting my baby light something on fire? Bonus!  I had noticed while walking Spot on the [now defunct] golf course there was a pile of torn up asphalt from the old cart path.  I looked back at our big back yard with the soft dirt and thought of the grill pan. Hmmmm.  Throw in a bag of charcoal that I saw in the garage and what do you think this girl did?  That's right.  While Steven supervised I grabbed my cookie cooling rack, had Wallene dig a hole in the yard, threw the pan and charcoal in, topped it with the rack and . . .

Redneck grilling:

Asphalt, grill pan and cookie rack
YUM!

 

The last picture was taken while Steven was grilling dinner.  A flock of turkeys. Amazing. They were right off the back of the property, about 100 feet away.  We counted 12.  We have seen all manner of wildlife out here but this is the first sighting of a whole herd of them.  Finally Wallene got too close and they scattered into the woods, but it was pretty dang neat.

The night was topped with s'mores over the grill.  And Tadpoles?  A weekend just doesn't get better than that, now does it?

If you made it this far thanks for reading my ramblings.  Not only is driving to do anything around here a major commitment I suspect my posts are turning into that too. Sorry.  It is just because I don't post for days and then - BOOM! I have a lot to remember and want to get it all written out so I don't forget.

Not that I am going to forget this weekend for a long, long time.

I will leave you with one last pic' of our weekend. Not the greatest pic' - but it has a lot of cool things special to me in it.

First - see that lacy top I am wearing over my bathing suit? A bathing suit I only took off to go to church and sleep? YAY! I bought that shirt at Goodwill on Saturday for $4.50. It still had the tags on it.  Oh, and the pic' also illustrates that I have finally, FINALLY put back on all the weight I lost. Not the greatest pic', I admit, to show that, but I think you can tell. I ain't stick thin anymore Tadpoles. Go me! And prescription meds! They helped a lot.  Also in the pic' is my new haircut.  I don't have a good pic' to show you how long it had become but since it has started to fall out [again] I decided it would be easier to clean up shorter strands clumps than the additional four inches I hacked off last week.   Besides cleaning the drains was getting to be a drag. Do you know it took my husband 5 days to notice my full pony tail was 4 inches shorter? Men. bah! ::laughing::

Finally - I love the pic' simply because I can look at it and know that Steven and I were laughing at eachother. If you notice I am holding a spray bottle in my hand.  And being the little kids that we are I was spraying him instead of handing it over so he could wet down the flames.  Wallene was laughing the whole time she was taking the pics.  He finally grabbed me under the guise of giving me a kiss and then stole it.

What can I say? It is always the simple things that make me happy.

Again, thanks for reading.
We'll see ya' on the flipside Tadpoles.
Smile Loudly. Life is a Gift!
xo Janine

PS - [always a PS] Before anyone gives me a good "what for" in comments I  did talk to my doctor. He explained what happened is just the progression of the disease and he assured me that it was fine to take the meds.  He knows my aversion to the hospital too. :)

Another PS - plus the Disclaimer? How lucky are you guys?  I have re read and tried to fix all of the misspellings, grammar and oh, forget the comma usage. I can never fix that.  Sorry it isnt' written better. Sketch internet and all that. Hugs and love!