To The Pacific

Dad left at 3:00 this morning for his mission trip to Burma. Last night he packed a suitcase full of dried meat and granola bars and then cooked a big family dinner for his own send off. As he's already finished taking pills to ward off Typhoid Fever, he silently moved on to chasing his oatmeal cookies with a Malaria caplet. He packed a tiny little pocket knife "for protection" and spent the rest of his evening acting as though he was simply going to Lynchburg on business.
"Aren't you nervous?" we kept asking him.
"Why would I be nervous?" he asked.
"Because you're going on a secret mission!"
"No." he responded calmly.
A few moments of silence passed by.
"I'm worried." Ellen said
"Why would you be worried?" Dad uttered with outrage. He doesn't have enough sense to realize the potential danger of his own adventure.
"What if there's an air raid?" I suggested. Mom sat quietly, waiting for a satisfying response.
"What's wrong with you women?!" Dad howled and then scampered off to unload tools from his truck.
"Don't be a hero!" I shouted as the front door closed behind him.

I will have no way of updating you on his whereabouts or whether he even makes it to Burma at all, for Mom and I are leaving tomorrow morning for Auckland and could also be easily lost to the depths of the South Pacific.
Let's a say a few prayers for the Union's, shall we?

We leave in less than 24 hours and I have yet to pack or do laundry. I've been busy saying goodbye to folks and enjoying Ari and my last venture to the Surf Bar. I also had my last day at Duvall and I was ignored all day by the girls who's work I do for them and then not told goodbye when I left at 4:59. It made me so angry that I almost told them so.

Ari is leaving for her new life in Athens on Monday so today we have to say goodbye. I've made a list of things for Taylor to watch over while I'm gone and have made an agreement with Buddy that neither of us will be sad about missing each other except at night while we try to fall asleep. I just hate leaving that dog. He will be staying with Ellen while we are gone and Brett agreed to surprising him with Grace visits on occasion.

Mom and I have a horrendous 8 hour layover in Los Angeles while we wait for our 13 hour flight to New Zealand. She has planned for us to go to Venice Beach in this time which we are excited about though we both realized we now need three different changes of clothes for our day in transit: comfortable in-flight pants, something appropriate for a California beach, and then long pants and a coat for our arrival in chilly Auckland. "I can't put all that in my carry-on!" Mom said. I believe this is the only aspect of this trip that Mom hasn't yet figured out.

And that is that. Off we go. There shall be no blog posts for a little over two weeks which is something I'm sure you've become quite accustomed to. Enjoy these last few lovely scenes from my favorite place in the world and send us lots of good traveling juju. Especially Dad. Send him lots of juju.

Ari And Laura Go To The Beach

Going to the beach is a real hassle these days. Not only do we have awful traffic and weather that could rival an African desert, there's also me. A fainter. Now, I'm pleased to report that I haven't fainted since I knocked out at that convenience store concert in Portland last year. That makes me faint-free since '14.
To maintain this stellar record I have avoided the beach, downtown Charleston, and hot work of any fashion.

Ari also has had minimal beach time since she moved to New Orleans all those years ago. She's been dying for a beach day. "But I'm a fainter Ari! I can't!" I told her.
"But you can bring a hat and sunglasses." she said. "Oh oh! I'll bring a beach umbrella!"

A beach umbrella. A contraption I have no adult recollection of ever sitting under. "How would that help?" I wondered. It's heat that gets me, not sunlight. So we made a plan for our Tuesday afternoon.
We ate lunch at our favorite Mexican food restaurant, I picked up gummy watermelons, Ari loaded her car with beach gear, and off we went. Boy was it hot. We trekked onto the sunny beach and found a good spot to plop down. We unfolded beach chairs and Ari stabbed a contraption she calls 'ExCaliber' into the sand. She pushed and grunted. She leaned her entire body weight onto ExCaliber's handle and then she stabbed an umbrella pole into the hole that ExCaliber created. I watched, observing the process of preparing a beach umbrella. She worked diligently. "Almost." she told me as I stood in the blazing sun, counting the moments to lightheadedness. And then that beauty opened a rainbow umbrella and we shuffled our chairs underneath it, turning them away from the sun, pointing down the beach rather than facing the water.

It was lovely under the beach umbrella, shady with a breeze. We happily prepared two celebratory margarita's as a toast to our first successful beach day. We sat cheerfully, people watching and determining whether our rainbow umbrella was flagging us as a gay couple.

About fifteen minutes into our perfect beach day, Ari noticed a suspicious patch in the sky. "That looks like a little rain shower" she said pleasantly. No matter, we'd ride it out but then we noticed people on the beach gawking and pointing at the sky behind us. Our eyes met, and we slowly turned our heads to look behind us.
"Oh no!" we shouted.

And so we quickly shimmied back into our clothes, tossed our crap into my big navy bag, and set to work folding up the chairs and unearthing ExCaliber. People everywhere were packing and scattering and the wind was picking up. A lone red beach chair blew past us like a tumbleweed. I noticed one girl taking a selfie in front of the storm.

Within six minutes we were back in Ari's green Subaru, our windswept hair loaded with sand. It still wasn't raining so we sat for a while mulling over other options before determining that we should probably just go home. It started to sprinkle as we went around the traffic trying to leave the beach and then suddenly the rain was torrential. The radio alerted us to wind gusts up to 60mph and potential roof damage. We plowed through the rain, barely able to make out the cars in front of us. It was kind of exciting though we were disappointed as a whole and also sad that we never got a chance to eat the gummy watermelons.

"Maybe next summer." I said, as we silently watched the storm outside.

Someday Ari and Laura will get to have a beach day.

So Much News

First of all, you should know that I'm putting random photos into this post and that Ari is here for the whole month of July. So there.

She arrived on the first Wednesday of the month and I’ve neglected most other things since. Have I mentioned she's my platonic soulmate? As soon as that next Tuesday rolled around we booked it to the Surf Bar and spent a night catching up with a few old friends who were right where we left them and definitely noticed that it had been over a year since either of us had come to visit.

We’ve had a number of pool parties and spent the Forth of July eating homemade peach ice-cream on her dock, watching fireworks and waving our own sparklers. If we both weren’t straight females it would be such a romantic story.

Brett's dog, Grace, looks just like Buddy.

Ellen has had her last day in the Real Estate world and this week started her classes that teach her to teach. She has been given a list of the classes she will be teaching first semester and they are Web Design and some kind of Integrated Business Thing. She’s nervous but excited and dare I say, happy.

Ellen tried to leave our family dinner early so I hung her car keys in a tree, just out of reach.

Dad made me get them down.

During the Keys trip I had a poorly timed and even more devastatingly executed phone interview. I was caught off guard see and I screeched out “umm”s and staggered over everyday words. I’d applied weeks ago for a long-shot job as a floral designer in a swanky hotel and I never heard from them. I had already given up hope and still felt no sense of relief to be talking to them while my father waddled by in scuba flippers just outside my window. “Everyone go outside” I hissed. “I can’t do this with y’all listening.”

Mom, Dad, Ellen, and Chris reluctantly sat on the porch during my interview. Ellen tormented me, standing right outside the window with a creepy smile plastered across her face while I talked intelligently about my current position “I’m an assistant, you know. I assist. “haHAha!”

I didn’t expect hear from them again.

Low and behold, twenty minutes before the of end of the seven day window in which the “supervisor might call” I was asked to come in for a second interview. I prepared a booklet of my best flower arrangements, put on a professionals costume and I endured an hour and a half long interview that included making a "romantic arrangement of a dozen pink roses". The supervisor was a really nice lady and sent me off from my interview feeling like she liked me a lot but also knew something sad that I wasn't aware of. "You'll hear from me by the end of the day." she said and I anxiously carried around my cell phone all day, still rationalizing that 10:30 pm wasn't too late to call. But my phone never rang so I pictured my romantic arrangement and thought about my distaste for sappy things and decided she could tell that I'm put off by feelings and romance.

Just when I’d given up hope, at 1:00 the next day Elizabeth called and offered me the job saying, “I love your individual style” about my alternative flower arrangement which I saw as being the outcast of the flower cooler. “What a freak!” the other roses would sneer at my funky arrangement.

Dad teaches Mom to use her new iPhone.

And so I am Charleston Place’s newest floral designer. I have a golden name tag and a pair of sensible, rubber shoes that the hotel bought for me so I don’t slip while wandering around in the bowels of the hotel. It’s very big and confusing back there. And slippery.

I will work 9-5 four days a week and one Saturday a month. This is because my focus will be designing and making any arrangements that go into the hotel while the other designer is in charge of wedding and event arrangements. I believe they have given me more credit than I deserve and I’m now spending my evenings reading floral books and taking mental notes. I must change all hotel arrangements once a week. This includes the conference pieces and every little bud vase on the tables in the hotel’s two restaurants. That’s an awful lot of new designs. Even on the website the first photo features the giant lobby arrangement. I can't do dat!

We found Wilhelmina lounging in our yard after our most recent HonBon visit.

So I’ve been busy you see, training for the new gig, finishing up the old gig, preparing for my South Pacific adventure, and trying so hard to see Ari when possible.

Trip Medley

Lastly I give you my favorite shots from the trip.

Here I love the sequence of our facial expressions. Particularly Ellen's. We were happily having our picture made until Ellen spotted a dog in a car with tightly closed windows. 

Don't worry. We later saw that the trunk window was rolled down.

And lastly, my Ode to Alston, who made of point of ruining any photos I took of him.

Most Days

During our Keys visit there were many instances of things gone awry.

There were shark encounters, near death by lobsters, and a losing duel between Dave’s shin and a glass coffee table. There were various small wounds, a few bouts of seasickness, and Ellen’s everyday disposition.

Our days were lazy. We did lots of reading and napping in-between short ventures on the kayak or a snorkeling break. Dad became so caught up in a book called Unbroken that he sat quietly for two days pouring over those pages. “Come on Dad! We’re leaving” we would say.
“Let me just finish this chapter.” he’d reply.  He finally finished the book and I was pleased that we now had his full attention. Then he prattled on about how good it was and I foolishly picked it up to look at it’s pictures. Two days later I finished the book and Mom started Chapter One.

By evening, our families would join together for our one hot meal a day and sit on the back porch listening to tunes and bobbing our heads. When meal time was over, wild dancing and blasting laughter followed. Low Country Boil night was our biggest dance party and whether it was the margaritas or just the taste of freedom, our party got wild. During breaks from dancing, folks would split off in groups. Us kids would gather in the kitchen, Mom and Gigs would discuss the musical playlist and Dad and Dave would talk “man things.” Then music would resume and all would gather to shimmy and shake, though mostly Mom and Gigs put on the show.

I suppose the unanimous favorite moment of Low Country Boil Night was when sweet Uncle Dave missed the last step of the dock and tumbled headfirst into the dark water, curling himself into a fetal position on the way down. 
“I jumped!” he shouted as soon as his head reached the surface again but seeing as his phone and wallet had to be scooped out of the water and he had blood running down his shin, he later admitted that he fell. There was an abrupt end to Low Country Boil Night as we all became concerned for Dave's bloody leg and just how we were going to replace his cell phone.