Things Will Be Great When You're DOWNTOWN!

So. As of today, the Todd and I have been together for seven years. Granted, there was a breakup in there if you are being technical, but who likes technicality in matters of the heart? So, seven years. Wow. That’s longer than quite a few marriages I could name. We’re like Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, except with much less collagen and no Academy Awards.

Did you know Goldie Hawn won a Best Supporting Actress award in 1969 for her role in Cactus Flower? From Laugh-In straight to the Oscars in one fell swoop. Now that is what I call a good career trajectory. And she gets Kurt Russell out of the bargain, and any man who voiced the lead character in a major Disney film (The Fox & the Hound’s Copper) would win my heart, too. Anyway, Kurt and Goldie have been together since 1983, so they have a good twenty-six years on the Todd and I. Let’s not look too far ahead, though, because it makes me nervous.

Last weekend, the Todd was home for the first time in three weeks and we decided to celebrate our anniversary a bit early. This was a serious, serious decision. We are, perhaps not “foodies” because that carries sort of a food snob connotation, but most definitely food lovers. You would not think our tiny little town would have much of a choice between restaurants, but you would be mistaken. Our Main Street area has five great, great little places to eat. Ou’ La La, where I recently hosted the baby shower for Nicole and Amelia, is a sweet little coffee shop with a killer dinner menu as well – often featuring the fabulous Tessa playing with Main Street Trio. C’Sons is a brand new place across from Ou’ La La. It’s all new and sparkly and the menu changes every day. And they have this fun covered porch balcony thing that makes me feel very L.A. Then, of course, our friend Tulla has not one…not two…but three restaurants, all with different specialties, all within walking distance from each other. Tulla’s Bayou Bar & Grill is (obviously) all about spicy Louisiana food. Venucci, Pete’s favorite, is all Italian, from the Chianti to the Cannoli. Finally, The Basil Leaf, the flagship restaurant, is billed as Upscale Contemporary. I mean, really, how does one choose?

I will tell you how one chooses. One goes to the Basil Leaf on Tuesday with the fabulous Brennan Sisters to make sure your allotment of Fried Green Tomatoes with goat cheese and white wine sauce (Mmm!) is met for the week and then you try out the new place, C’Sons. (Get it? SEASONS. Ha ha!)

Y’all. You just don’t know. We both wanted to get really dressed up, but his idea of dressed up and my idea of dressed up varies a bit. Example: at Chuck the Girl’s wedding, I had to be onsite early, as I was giving a reading. So after the wedding, all the guys took off their jackets because the reception was outside. The Todd kept wearing his…buttoned…way longer than he normally would have worn it. I knew something was wrong.

“Why don’t you take your jacket off?”
-- “I don’t want to take my jacket off.”
“Why don’t you want to take your jacket off?”
-- “I just don’t want to take my jacket off.”
“Dude, it’s hot. The guys are all playing football (Note: That’s right, we played football. It was the greatest wedding ever.) and you’re sitting here all sweating.
-- “I can’t take my jacket off.”
“What are you talking about?”
-- “I sort of left my dress belt in Atlanta.”
“What do you mean you…..Oh. My. Word.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, nothing says dressed up like a belt emblazoned with the Grateful Dead bears.

So we both dressed up – somewhat equally – and went out on the town. It was great. I had Wild Mushroom Ravioli with a red pepper coulis and all sorts of yummy goodness cooked within. The Todd had the Fried Alaskan Halibut with, I think, claw crabmeat, hollandaise sauce, grits and asparagus. I hate stuff that swims, but he said it was pretty much awesome. We were seated at a low table, which was really good, as the Todd was rocking his skateboard shoes with dress pants and a tie. This is how we roll, peeps.

It was fabulous. After dinner we walked around downtown on a useless hunt for Tiramisu. Venucci makes a killer Tiramisu, but it was sadly not on the menu that night. So we settled for a stroll around the square and an ice cream cone. There was supposed to be a post-dinner showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, but we were just too full to watch it! We postponed Harry until Sunday and, now that I have seen it twice, I have some serious bones to pick with that screenwriter. But I will wait on that, for the moment.

All in all, it was a lovely evening, and has been a lovely seven years. And will, I hope, continue to be just as lovely, because I can think of several more restaurants that need to host our anniversary dinners.

Too Sexy for My Sunburn

Embarrassing moment #1 Not in my entire life, just since this blog started, and that’s only if you don’t count the fact that I admitted my new affection for He-Man.org. Over the past weekend, my friends Paisley and Nicole accompanied me to the amazing and wonderful Callaway Gardens. It was Nicole’s inaugural visit, so I originally planned to ride the paddleboats and see the circus and visit the chapel, the Sibley Center, the Butterfly Center…you see where this is headed. But we decided to stay on Robin’s Lake Beach. Which, by the way, was missing both the ferry and the little train, a matter I fully intend to investigate. What’s a trip to the Gardens without riding around the woods on a train? I can’t count box turtles without it!


This whole tangent made no sense to anyone who didn’t grow up in this area, and I am sorry for the confusion. And for your loss, by the way. Because if a child can’t grow up counting box turtles from a kid-sized train hurtling through the Georgia pine forest, what good is being a kid?


Y’all just don’t know - the beach was wonderful. I am the whitest woman in at least the state of Georgia if you don’t count actual albinos, so I loaded up on the sunscreen. We had a fabulous day. Lay out for a while, go swim out past where the kids were to lower the odds that we were swimming in baby pee (Thank you, Paisley for bringing that subject up.), then go let the sun dry you off. It was perfect, and the snack bar was serving up some pretty delicious chicken fingers! Chicken fingers are always an important part of the equation. And the sweet tea was stellar.


Somehow in all of this lazy day, I neglected to reapply the ol’ SPF to my upper back. Later that night, I was putting out close to enough heat to toast a Pop-Tart. I tried the aloe thing, the lotion thing, and I was all set to try the vinegar thing but that’s just no fun for anyone that has to be around you.


This morning the peeling started in earnest. I’m not trying to be offensive or anything, but it’s pretty gross. You know those snake skins your science teacher would keep on a shelf in her classroom? I feel like that snake. So this morning I was itching terribly, but my office looks like a goldfish bowl. It’s just not the best place to contort the body so that you’re able to scratch that little spot just under your shoulderblade yet above your bra strap. That little spot that you can almost get your hand on, but just not quite. And it was driving me nuts. Nothing would work. Not a pen, not my fingertips, not the corner of a file folder. And then it struck me – my boss likes to use this fun little machine (This might not be a big deal to you but I had never seen one until I started working here.) that makes little books with those round binders. Sweet, bendy, binders. Let me tell you, if you have an itch, those things will scratch it. So my poor, peeling, sunburned self is pushed into a corner where nobody can see me with a bendy book binder down the back of my shirt, scratching like fire…..when I hear a “Hello?”


I love the Todd and all, but there was the cutest little real estate agent standing there, looking at me like I was the world’s biggest freak. I mean, he totally busted me, and he was so polite, which meant that of course he had seen the whole thing and was just too nice to mention it. So I was totally humiliated, and too freaked out to use my wonder-binder for the rest of the day.


Case in point: if Callaway Gardens still had a train, I would have been in the SHADE, not gotten a sunburn, and then not been caught with a book binder hooked under the back of my bra.