On the Gulf

The Gulf of Mexico as we see it today. Bright white sands, blue and green water. Tomorrow? Who knows when the oil is going to hit here.

For now anyway, the disaster has not hit the Mississippi, Alabama or Florida shores. We're thankful.

I drove over to Bon Secour on Thursday and bought some fresh brown shrimp for dinner.

So peaceful and simple here. The thought of our waters being poisoned by who-knows-what kills me.

Local brown Gulf shrimp which may be our last for a while.

I made a low country shrimp boil.

Earlier in the week, the kid and I went over to Darlene's for art class. She's the best art teacher ever. She teaches a student on Tuesdays and she always invites us over when we're in town.

This was our inspiration for the day. Dar makes beautiful, whimsical pieces.

I absolutely love her work.

Gotta love that face.

And those colors. Of course, we love her too. She's just the bestest in so many ways.

We had showers off and on today with thunderstorms mixed in. I found it to be absolutely perfect as it kept the neighbors' noise down a few decibels. ha. We have a big group renting the next-door house. Joy. They're nice, just loud.

And is that Fessy I spy? Naw, it's just a log floating down river.

Heading home tomorrow. Then we're off to Dublin on Saturday!

Heading South

Packing up all my jank and heading down to Riverside tomorrow with the kid. The hub will come down on Friday for the long weekend; and then we all head back. He's freshly home from all points East, flyin in from Vietnam yesterday afternoon. The kid's last day of school was also yesterday. Let the summer begin!

Can't wait to get back down to Riverside and get some odds and ends finished up. I haven't been following the oil gush, it makes me sick to even think about it. I need to get down there and see and hear for myself on what's what. Sickening. My brother Jim has already called and announced it's going to be a BBQ summer (rather than all the local seafood we normally enjoy).

The teenager pulled in a great semester at university, cum laude. He had his job at the grocer's transferred from here to Knoxville so he's working full time this summer. Them's the rules--no school, no money coming in from us! He's very happy to be working and living on his own for the first time with no help from mom and pop. We're very proud of him and I'm happy to have the extra bucks in my pocket before heading to the UK. Have my eyes on some things, wink wink.

So, all is well in our little household.

Alive and Well

Just busy. One more week of school and then we're over and out! Planning a trip to Europe, as you can see. My printer spit paper out every which direction which amused Bella, so I left it. K, here's the itinerary: Dublin, Brussels, London, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Edinburgh, Lake District and then back to London. Two weeks. Phew. A lot to see. We bringing my niece Jacq! So, of course, we have to fit EVERYTHING in! Oooooof.

I finally got around to working on the kid's childhood room. The bunk beds, gone. I put them up for sale, along with a whole slew of items included, on Craig's List. My first time using it. They were sold within a couple of hours! I was very pleased with myself. And I was happy that a young family will get another 15 years of usage out of them.

Ew, look how yucky after we lifted the mattress. EW. Bad boy.

And the walls! Oy! Lots of spackling and priming. Yuck.

But it all turned out quite nicely. It turned out to be a putty color. The kid was animate about having a more masculine color. He says the taupe I used in the teenager's old room was too pink. Wha??? Oh well, I didn't redo it for him anyway. Regardless, he was happy to be back in his old room, updated a tad.

And I got "my" room back for the girls (all of my nieces)! I'm going to girly it up. I don't have a girly room in the house, so this is going to be it, by golly! The curtains are going somewhere else and I just pulled the little rug from my room to get an idea of what some color on the floor will look like. My plan is to do the twin beds in white-on-white and then add splashes of color on the walls and floor. Yay!

Look at the last of the cookies from Carlo's. Heart shaped. Aw. I ate it.

Mom's peace lily is blooming happily. Sweet.

The Cumberland River has finally gone down. This is one of the waterways that did so much damage in downtown Nashville. You can barely see our Titan's football field at the top left which was completely flooded. The waters rose two block up the streets. Crazy. It so reminded me of back home in Virginia when the Potomac would flood Old Town Alexandria. We are having storms again today and my alarm keeps going off warning of more flash flooding. Oh no.

A shot at the Hermitage Hotel at brunch last weekend. This was at the front desk. Perty.

Think we're heading down to Riverside next weekend for a week. The oil has not hit Mobile Bay yet. I keep praying that the gush will soon be capped off. C'mon people, we can do this.

I can't even imagine the impact we will see down the road. It makes me utterly sick to my stomach. Literally.

Shame on US.

Mother's Day 2010

Happy Mother's Day. Wishing all you mothers a wonderful day full of love and happiness.

Today is a bittersweet day for me. It's my first Mother's Day without mom.

But I have two wonderful boys who love their momma. Brunch at The Hermitage Hotel.

Family and Fun Up North

It was a beautiful weekend in Jersey City and it was hard to leave everyone. But I had to come back home to my Bella, now didn't I? I found this awning in Hoboken.

This is City Hall. There are so many wonderful buildings in Hoboken. Times sure have changed. When the hub first brought me here in the mid 80s, it wasn't as happy as it is now. Sure wish we still had the condo! Whew!

And what do I do whenever I'm in the NYC area? Go to my favorite bakery, Carlo's. Now you know, all of a sudden, since Cake Boss, the place has become a tourist trap. And so, we had to WAIT IN LINE to get into the shop. Oy! They even have a door man that gives you a number at the door. Well, I suppose that's the smart thing to do.

And since I've been there a million times before, I went right to the cookie counter and grabbed three tins of Italian cookies, some lobster claws (sfogliatella) and, of course, rainbow cookies for the kid.

After drooling over everything, including all the canolis, we were boom, done, outta there!

Afterward, we walked up Washington several blocks to our favorite pizza spot. Now, this is real NY pizza baby. YUM.

And yes, we opened the rainbow cookie box.

After leaving Hoboken and heading to the hub's brother's house, we got stuck in traffic from the Holland Tunnel and then the George Washington Bridge--I'm sure all due to the Time's Square bomb. How thankful we are that it didn't go off and no one was hurt. Oy.

Here's my little nephew Daniel. What a cutie. I fell in love immediately, of course!

More food! The hub's sister had a family gathering at another brother's house celebrating my nephew's second birthday. Big D was born in Korea and we celebrated with Korean food. YUM, again!

This is about the time that I heard that Nashville was flooding. And I mean REALLY flooding. I called home and found out that our house and neighborhood was good, but so many others have not been so lucky. Beth has some photos of the flooding around town. It is so sad.

Sunday was a beautiful day and my nephew was Christened in the church. Look at his little sear sucker suit! Awwwwww. My niece and son are the Godparents. How cool is that?

Here is my son lighting the Baptismal candle. If you click on the photo, you can see the priest glaring at someone. This is about the time, almost finished with the ceremony, when another family enters the church and parades to the front. OMG. Were these people raised on the streets? Do they not have any manners? They had a son who was being baptised at the same time. The priest waited for over 45 minutes for them until finally Bob's sister said Ok, enough! Let's do this thing! Then they barge in like they own the place in the middle of the sacrament? Wow. Doesn't get much better than that!

But a lobster claw makes it all better, guaranteed. We finally finished them last night at home.

We were lucky enough to get out of NY just before storms hit there and the storms here in Nashville had cleared. There was a small delay, but considering there was a bomb scare and weather was wreaking havoc, we did pretty darn well. Dodged another bullet there.

And on Monday? You never would have known there had been any storms here or that downtown Nashville was flooding.

Now, all we have to worry about is the oil gush in the Gulf killing so much wildlife, not to mention hitting our little Riverside. Please keep the Gulf in your thoughts and prayers and let's not let BP off the hook on this one. How horrible.