the rest of the story

so it snowed when we got there, and it snowed when we went to hickory falls, and it snowed on the way home. dv navigated us safely home, over the river and through the woods, and on sunday....

it was a country ham extravaganza, complete with angel biscuits to die for, fried eggs, and something else i now forget. then we waited for the other family to congregate. oh wait, i think it was SUNDAY that we played rook. in any case, around five, we were joined by steve and terri, andrew (his jessica was at mardi gras, being a tulane grad), melanie and her betrothed, scott, and...ta dum....the second coming of X, aka Christ, the first baby in the vantrease family since andrew was a tender sprout. that would be cooper bussell, steve's daughter allison and her husband jeremy bussell's first, and likely only, child.

oh! the entire congregation was enraptured. all eyes were on the infant seat positioned judiciously in the center of the living room. every smile, every sound was noticed with alacrity. forsooth! a baby of three months, 2 weeks early borne, who is a child with a new moniker to mine ears: what is the term? it's not colic....it's not upchuck...or spit up....oh! it's reflux! who knew babies are now on reflux med? cooper is, and that's all good.

so when all were assembled, we feasted on all sorts of yummy fixins, like baked beans, assemble-your-own sammich, turkey cheese rollups on a tray from costco, dips and chips and vegetables and numerous home baked desserts, to include a beautiful red velvet cake, iced and under glass, a pee can pie and ... uh....oh yeah, fruit cake and orange slice cake.

can you blame me for gaining a few L.B.s that i now must force off using lenten tactics?

allison reminds me of me, when elizabeth was in the infant seat. e had "colic," and cooper has "reflux." they both apparently were prodigious screamers early on, enough to make a logical, young, and methodical mother try to fit this problem with a solution. our solutions were similar, at least from my observations. love the hell out of the child, and get 'em on a damned schedule, and don't let THEM IN CONTROL!

en e way. wish you were there. i grilled andrew, not unlike david grilling diana not 48 hours earlier, about his dreams and aspirations. we watched the 5 pm news on channel 4 every day, because he produces that. he doesn't want to be producing the rest of his near future, not in nashburg anywho. mebbe in ... iran? iraq? africa?

so we'll definitely stayed tuned to that channel.

melanie showed us her wedding dress. said she wanted one child, scott said none. (scott's surreptitious thumb and forefinger response in an O when I asked the question of them both)

kath brought pics from germany and wow, was the house enchanting, the visit enthralling, the time too short.

terri said to me "next time you come, we'll have to take you to the cajun place near hickory falls" and steve said to her "you paying????" which I had to appreciate. being married to his brother and all...........................

we had more wonderful country ham, the requisite water all day long to accompany said salt lick, some ab fab banana bread, and were on our way to augusta at 10 am on monday.

oh i forgot: on saturday, methinks, instead of the rook i mentioned, we found starbucks within the nearest 10 miles and i got online, hoping for a glimmer of news from addis ababa. to no avail. ah well, another hour wasted on technology, or lack thereof.

so as we left, i entertained the idea of going home through athens to see the pea.

which we did. we took her to sushi at 3:30 pm on monday, and were home by 6 ish. went DIRECTLY to bistro, all that country ham made us naturally thirsty, but bistro was closed. so we hied direckly to the nearly creole establishment for rb's and r's. that would be french market grill. came home. watched "l'enfant" in french with no subtitles and did fairly well. went to bed round 10:30.

are you bored yet? (of course you are)

yesterday i was working and got two cell phone calls from an unidentified number and ignored them. then while on the phone got an email from erin: clark collins is holding.

naturally, i hung up faster than a rocket, afraid for the chilren in africa, but clark and marth were an hour away from augusta and wanted to have dinner together.

so we went to bistro. oh no, after that is when we watched l'enfant, after bidding adieu to the collinses. a good time indeed.

whew. i'm done. david just came home with chinese and we must view jeopardy and another movie.

xxoo