What a Week It's Been!

I just love weeks like I've had this week. Remind me of this one if I have a bad one on tap later, okay?

Last weekend Henry and I traveled to South Alabama for a wedding, and the getaway was just what we needed, although I might could have done without the folks in the hotel room next to us playing video games all night. Anyway, the wedding was just lovely, and reception featured actual and really, truly shrimp fresh from the gulf, so what could be better? (Seriously -- you go to South Alabama and get real close to the actual ocean where shrimpies live, and then find out that every shrimp you ate all weekend except those at the wedding were from THAILAND. Pffpth.)

The day after the wedding we went to a really cool restaurant we'd heard about, and lordamercy was it ever good. My favorite thing -- other than the rolls, of course, were the "pass-arounds." Wait staff saunters though the dining area periodically with huge bowls of stuff like fried okra (excellent!), fried potatoes and onions (excellent!), and black eyed peas. I didn't try those, because after eating chicken-n-dumplin's, and about a pound of turnip greens with pepper sauce and steamed baby carrots, where would I have PUT them??

We ate lunch on Saturday here, and it made me kinda sad to think about what a good time the grouper were having before they wound up on a plate, so I had the crab cakes instead. I can't get all warm and fuzzy about crabs, since they can pinch you back. On a scale of one to ten, their frozen margarita was about a 6.

And on Friday night we ate here, conveniently located less than a block from the door of our hotel room. I'd have been happy eating here morning, noon, and night, quite frankly. Even shrimp from Thailand (or wherever) is good here because the hushpuppies make it so.

Enough about food.

Henry and I were getting ready to leave our hotel room Friday night for a pre-wedding dessert social when our sweet daughter (in-law) called him to tell him that she might be getting transferred back to Montgomery (and bringing her husband, who happens to be our oldest son, with her), but nothing was a sure thing. This news alone was enough to have us grinnin' like possums all weekend.

Well, we got back from all those festivities worn slap out. As the week wore on, and we went scouring around town for possible places for Jackie and Luke to live, it was becoming increasingly a sure thing that it was going to happen, but I was still holding my breath.

Let me interject something here -- we have not cajoled them in any way to return here, even as much as we wanted them to eventually wind up here. They are coming back because they want to, and when I read on Jackie's blog her reference to Montgomery as "home" I thought I was gonna cry my eyeballs out. It's no secret how much I love my hometown, but I know it's not everybody's cup of tea.

That said, this move is now OFFICIAL, and in fact, Jackie is here now, staying with my parents (there's no bed for her in this inn) until things can get situated. Luke is staying in B'ham to work out his notice from his current employer (the only downside to this whole enterprise is that he's leaving a place he had already really grown to like a whole lot), and I reckon it'll be a few weeks before they can settle themselves and Mr. Sullivan here.

A little factoid struck me this morning.... Luke is the first of my folks' grandchildren to opt to make Montgomery their home, and that really means a whole lot to them. My Daddy actually got a little teary eyed with joy when he said to Jackie last night, "Welcome home."

So we've been just happy-dancin' about THAT all week, but on other fronts...

Thomas is getting increasingly excited about getting his AmeriCorps paperwork done and gone -- we're waiting on his letters of reference. I cannot state deeply enough how much I hope this works out for him. I have no doubt but that it will be a tremendous opportunity for him. In the meantime, as cramped as the house is for all of us after being used to not all living here together, it's handy to have somebody to which to say, "Would you get me a banana popsicle as long as you're in the kitchen?"

Oh, I say it to Henry all the time, but since he's mostly asleep on his side of the sofa when I say it, it's less than efficacious.

AND -- my mother had a checkup this week with the doctor who has been following her post-operative condition on her carotid artery. They had told her when she had that one done that there was a possibility that the other would need it soon, or that scar tissue might make a second go-round with the one she had fixed necessary.

Well. The unrepaired one has NO SIGNIFICANT BLOCKAGE remaining, and the repaired on shows NO EVIDENCE of any new blockage at all.

And the fun never stops -- we are heading to another wedding tonight, and are really looking forward to it and plan to have a most excellent time.

Next week? Who knows? It could all go topsy-turvy, and if it does? Well. I had this week, and it was a tonic!