This Week

After my last oh-so-dramatic blog entry about death and family and all those other wisdoms gained via fever, chills and general unwell-ness, I'm back to my usual excellent mediocrity.

We came to the mountain house on Tuesday and although I can't say that the drive was one hundred percent uneventful as I was still battling dizziness and nausea and a killer headache, it was much easier than I would have thought, even one day before. It may not be true for everyone but for me, these mountains are always good for whatever ails me. There is peace and quiet and beauty in the things that God made. The neighbors are more than shouting distance. Well, mostly. Sound does travel across the lake fairly well. There is no traffic, although there will be over the weekend, for certain, as this is a tourist area and holiday weekends draw tourists like picnics draw ants. It's just a big space with a lot of grace.

I was still somewhat shaky yesterday but I convinced mama to ride into town with me. I'm a homebody, no way to deny it, but my mama is way more homebody than me. And I just think that to really appreciate living here, you need to know where you're living. So we packed up Oscar the Less-than-Sociable-Dachshund and went into Helen.

For those who aren't from the Southeastern United States - Helen, Georgia is a little town in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains that sometime around the time I was born was transformed from a wide spot in the road to a cute little Bavarian tourist town. It's pretty mountains views and a Fest Hall and putt putt and your usual tourist activities. To live here is to have a sort of love/hate relationship with tourists. It's so beautiful here, we want to share but it stinks that you can't go into Helen on a weekend day between May and December and it take less than an hour of bumper to bumper traffic. The economy of this area depends heavily on those tourists, though, so you learn to enjoy things during the week.

Neither me nor mama nor Oscar was up to the usual tourist task of wandering through stores... so I just drove through and pointed out the important things to help give her a frame of reference. She now knows where Betty's Grocery Store is and how to get to the Dollar General and that Fritchey's (spelling) Market is ok but not as good as Loganberry Farm but you have to be sure to ask the folks at Fritchey's where they got their tomatoes because otherwise you're just paying more for the same stuff they have in the grocery store. She now knows important things like how to get from the church to La Cabana and/or North Georgia Barbeque. She knows that Hofer House has great corned beef hash but you don't go at 7am because they don't open that early and because that's where we spotted a huge bear early one Saturday.  She's learning that the highway numbers are not how people give directions here - for instance - coming home from Helen we took Alt. 75 to Hwy 384 but anybody living here would tell you we took Helen Highway to Duncan Bridge Road.

After a short tourist trip, we came back to the house so that Oscar could bark at the wind and Mama could rest and I could nurse another migraine. We opened the windows and enjoyed the fresh air and the sounds of frogs and crickets instead of sirens and rap music. We watched Les Miserables - Cody and Marquee gave me a copy of it for my birthday and I had held off on watching it until we could see it here, on the big tv.  Mama didn't really know the story so I had to fill in the blanks for her as it went along but I love sharing from my knowledge and passion of musical theatre so it was fun. We went to sleep to the sound of pouring rain.

Except. Well. Neither of us is sleeping much and what sleep we get has been poor quality. She's detoxing from a sleep medication and my sleep medication has stopped working altogether. So we sit up until 2 or 3 or later and sleep until we decide not to - or the dogs have to pee - whichever comes first. We've tried napping but it's hard to do. Sleep is the time where your cells are repaired and muscles regenerate or something like that. So, as my doctors have explained to me, whatever damage you've done to your body during the day should be repaired as you sleep... and if you don't sleep... things don't get repaired. So we're both a quart low on rest which meant that we didn't make it to the girls' ball games this evening and it also means we're not likely to make it to the school for honors day tomorrow. I would apologize but it's so shallow... "I'm sorry that my body doesn't work right" ... "I'm sorry that I have the kind of pain that you can't even possibly comprehend and I pray you never will be able to".

Today we made a big grocery trip in town. I helped mama get her Ingles Advantage Card and helped her find things in the store and read prices and stuff that was too small for her to see. Her vision never really improved after her last surgery and it has deteriorated significantly lately. Even something as simple as reading the instructions on the back of the frozen pizza box... nearly impossible... so I read things for her and drive her around and she totes things for me and pays for stuff and we're having a great time.

The next thing on our agenda is to go to Loganberry Heritage Farm and get some asparagus and whatever else is in season or draws our eye. I've got some okra already but I don't think it's local. And since I've been sick I've been craving juice like crazy so I may see what is available at the farm.

The weeks just pass, you know? And somewhere in the back of my mind is the thought that "I should be doing something..." because I've either been in school or working for nearly all of my life. This whole... wide open calendar thing is still very foreign to me. I'm just glad that this week, at least so far, it has been happy and relatively productive.

There are still good times to be had.
Hope you are all well and loved and having lots of good times!
Happy Long Weekend!