Love and Marriage. And camouflage. Lots and lots of camouflage.

Remember when I told y’all a few weeks ago that I was taking a trip soon?  Remember when I said I was going somewhere y’all have probably never heard of and would probably never go on vacation in a bazillion years?

I went.

This weekend was my sweet little cousin’s wedding.  In Morton, Mississippi.  See?  Has anyone heard of it?  Y’all don’t want to go there do you?  No, I can assure you that you don’t.

Want to know what other little towns I spent time in while I was there?  Forest, MS.  Cooperville, MS.  Puckett, MS.  Canton, MS (yes, that’s where A Time to Kill was filmed and my aunt worked at the post office back then and got to meet all of the movie stars so maybe Canton, MS is actually more exciting than Atlanta).  And we did make it to Jackson, MS yesterday morning for breakfast before we left.  But we went to Cracker Barrel so we may as well have been in Forest or Cooperville or Puckett again with the countryness of it all.

My aunt by marriage (the bride’s mom) has a sister and two brothers.  One of the brothers has a barbecue restaurant so we went there for dinner Friday night.  Y’all.  That was some awesome barbecue.  Then we decided to go out for coffee.  There is no Starbucks in Morton, MS.  Or any other coffee place for that matter.  But there is a McDonalds (and they only got a McDonalds about 2 or 3 years ago) so that’s where we hung out. 

Between the barbecue restaurant and the only McDonalds around for many, many miles, I am fairly certain I saw more camouflage on Friday night than I’ve ever seen in my life.  There were entire families covered in it.  Girls on dates.  Babies.  Everyone wore camouflage.  Except us.  I kind of wanted to go buy myself some camouflage coveralls so I would fit in better than I did in my jeans and grape colored sweater.  Also, every female between the ages of 13 and 40 in Morton, MS has the exact same hairstyle.  It is so weird.  And my aunt was telling hilarious stories about my cousin’s new puppy and how it is eating everything in their house and she said it ate the electrical cord off of “one of the six hair styling tools” in my cousin’s bedroom so apparently the women of Morton, MS spend the majority of their time all making their hair look identical if it takes that many tools to do it.  And they probably do that because there is very little else to do in Morton.

Guess what happened when I was there though?  There was something going on with some major police activity.  They had police at every stop sign.  The police were stopping people on the expressway, diverting them off the highway and then back on.  I guess they were searching for someone.  I brought the criminal element from Atlanta with me it seems.

And guess what happened when I got back to Atlanta last night?  I got off at my exit and I was right behind an Atlanta Police Department Crime Investigation unit.  It turned down my street.  But then it turned off at the street 4 houses away from me and thank goodness for that.  I only like my ‘hood crime when it’s a few houses away.

This morning the fire department and ambulances were at the house across the street from me while I was eating breakfast and the police had a car pulled over in front of my house when I was leaving for work.  There is always something going on in my ‘hood.  There is a fairly young girl (late teens/early 20’s maybe) who lives across the street from me and she is very sickly and the fire department and ambulances are there a lot to take her to the hospital.  I haven’t seen them pick her up in several months so I honestly was afraid she had passed away because they are normally there about once every month or two.  Maybe it’s just been happening while I’ve been at work or out somewhere though.  Anyway, I was glad to see she’s still alive even though she headed back to the hospital this morning.

But anyway, the wedding was super sweet.  Her bridesmaids wore my favorite color (peacock blue) and their dresses were a little above the knee and they all wore cowboy boots.  The bride wore cowboy boots with her wedding dress too.  The reception was at the lodge in the state park where we have our family reunion every summer but they fixed up the lodge quite a bit and it was just one of the sweetest and simplest weddings I’ve been to in a while.  It was beautiful.  And now they are on a cruise for a week. 

On the way home, I passed by an exit for Eutaw, AL.  I was thinking maybe they thought that’s how “Utah” is spelled and named it after Utah.  Thank goodness I didn’t go offend someone asking them that because I Googled it and it’s named after some Revolutionary War battle somewhere in the Carolinas.

When I got home last night I saw that Hot Brazilian had tried to call me a bunch over the weekend and sent me sad, frowning faces because I wasn’t around to talk to him on Skype.  I told him last week that I would be out of town this weekend.  Can he not remember that while he’s busy trying to stay alive, chasing animals into snake infested rivers for dinner, helping the poverty stricken children of the Amazon, and in general being a giant badass fighting corruption so he can change people’s lives?  Geez.  Can’t he do it all?  (Y’all do know I’m kidding, right?  Because he is totally doing all of those things.  That’s part of what makes him so freaking hot.)

Now I will spend this week working by day and getting my house ready by night because my mom is coming this Thursday to stay for about a week and a half.  Also I will be grocery shopping because I have nothing to feed my mom.  I hate grocery shopping. It ranks right up there with cleaning toilets in my world, and if there is one thing I despise doing it’s cleaning a toilet.

The college student that is renting my guest room sometimes one night a week and sometimes several nights a week is here through Wednesday.  So I can’t change sheets and clean the guest bathroom until the night before my mom is coming.  And then the college student might be here one night next week.  If so, I will have to kick my mom out of the guest room since the college student has already paid me for the month, change the sheets (again) and clean the bathroom (again) before the college student comes, my mom will have to share my bed with me and the gross stain Bailey left on my comforter while she was exploding everywhere last week because quite frankly I am too broke right now to be buying a new comforter, and then after the college student is gone I get to change the sheets (again), clean the guest bathroom (again), and put my mom back in the guest room so she can have that room when her husband flies in the night before Thanksgiving.  Because I’m absolutely not sharing my bed with both of them.  (Ewwww!)  I have a 5 bedroom house but only two beds so I have to go through this ridiculousness a lot.  Because I’ve had nothing but house guests for the past year.  Have I told y’all that already?  I feel like I have.  The longest I’ve gone in the past year without a house guest is a little less than 3 weeks.  So please do not ask me to come stay at my house anytime soon. 

I think the college student will be gone at the end of November and then Hot Brazilian is supposed to be here the last week of December.  I was hoping I might get a whole month without a house guest before HB got back.  But when I talked to Hot Brazilian last week he told me one of his daughters has been saving her money to come visit the U.S. for 10-15 days and you know what I did, don’t you?  I offered my house for her to stay.  She’s trying to come in early December instead of waiting until her dad comes back.  No, I’m not sure why.  However, I’m not sure that’s going to happen because he is uncomfortable with her jumping on the train and sightseeing around Atlanta by herself since she’s only in her late teens and has never been to the U.S. before and I have to, you know, work.  I told him I might be able to take a day or two off but not two weeks.  When I asked him what she would do all day stuck in my house if he wouldn’t allow her to go downtown alone, he said she likes to read.  I told him a teenaged girl who has worked and saved her money to travel to another country does not want to sit in an old lady’s house and read while the old lady is at work.

My life can be exhausting sometimes.  As I’m sure all of yours are too.

Let’s move on to Music Monday.

In honor of my cousin and my trip to one of the most countrified places I’ve ever been, this week’s theme is:  Gettin’ hitched!  The song(s) you submit must contain a word in the title relating to weddings/getting married (wedding, marriage, dress, veil, flowers, honeymoon, ball and chain, etc.).  I’m going to say “love” is not good because there are way too many songs with “love” in the title and I want this to be a bit more challenging than that.

As usual, I have a few songs in mind but can’t wait to see what y’all submit!