A new tribe is born

Oh my dog, y'all.  I have been trying to get on here all week to update y'all on my fabulous weekend and that was a whole week ago.  And I have another fabulous weekend coming up right now.

I have been busy, busy, busy at work - overtime almost every single day even though we aren't supposed to have any.  And I'm hosting an event at my house on Sunday night so every evening has been filled with running errands, cleaning, etc.

Anyway, last weekend I went to the One Fabulous Mama retreat down in Nashville, Georgia.  And I honestly don't know how to put into words how wonderful it was.  Karen in VB.....you MUST figure out a way to go to the next one.

Now, I'm not gonna lie.  It started off a little frustrating.  Karen in VB, I know you'll find this shocking, but I got good and lost trying to get to the place.  We stayed at a hunting lodge and apparently Google maps was unable to determine that this place existed.  Their website did not have a street number, just the street name, so my regular GPS would not help me.  I pulled directions off on my laptop before I left Atlanta and it told me to get off I-75 in Tifton, and go 34 miles on Hwy. 82 E and then turn right on Hwy. 82 S and then some other stuff.  I got off on Hwy. 82 in Tifton and I drove 34 miles and there was nowhere to turn.  So I drove another 5 or 6 miles thinking that perhaps the mileage was just a little off on Google maps, and there still was nowhere to turn so I pulled off on the side of the road and decided to pull up the map on my iPhone.

It told me to turn around and go back 12.9 miles from where I'd come and turn on Hwy. 135.

So that's what I did.

Once I turned on 135 I saw a sign saying I was headed towards Nashville so I assumed that although my laptop didn't, perhaps my iPhone had good directions.

It did not.

My phone then lied like a dirty bastard and told me to turn on Roberson Gaskins and then turn on June Hendley and so that's what I did.  Because the website said this hunting lodge is on June Hendley Road.  I passed two houses and one of those houses had 5 Confederate flags in the front yard.  And both of those roads were dirt roads.  Only it was more like super thick sand and it was not easy to drive on.  It was mounded up in the middle of the road and scrubbing the bottom of my SUV and it would kinda jerk you around so you couldn't drive more than about 15 mph.  I had about 1/3 of a tank of gas when I first got on the dirt roads.

TWO HOURS LATER my gas light was on.  I had to pee.  I had to poop.  And I was super frustrated. If anyone had told me it was possible to drive back and forth on the same dirt road for 2 hours I would have said they were crazy.  But now I've done it my own self.  I tried to call OFM and didn't get an answer and her voice mail isn't set up for messages.  At some point I decided I probably needed to try and make it back to the main road, get some gas, and just go find a hotel.  I was already late for dinner and I was ready to call it a day.  My phone would tell me drive 4.6 miles NE.  Then it would say drive 0.2 miles SW.  Then 3.1 miles NE.  And all I saw were trees no matter what direction I drove.

This is what I saw for 2 long hours:



At some point I passed two different cars.  One was a lady in an SUV so we each squeezed over to the very edge of the road and passed.  After I had turned around for the 38702435712489234th time, I passed an older gentleman and I flagged him down to stop him and ask for directions.  I could tell he had no idea where the place was either.  I kept driving and I eventually passed another dirt road which I had passed 94759475957 times already, and I saw the lady in the SUV had turned on that road and stopped.  So I pulled up next to her, rolled down my window and she called out to me the most wonderful words I've ever heard:  "Are you looking for the plantation?"  "YES!" I screamed. 

She told me she was on the phone with OFM's assistant, (we'll call her Cutie Pie because she is) and to follow her.  "My gas light is on and I have to pee SO bad," I over shared with her.  She told me she had already pulled off the road, walked into a field and used a porta potty which she first kicked several times so she wouldn't get bit on the ass by a snake, and she was afraid a farmer was going to come out of a trailer and shoot her.  I loved her immediately.  "If you run out of gas, honk and I'll stop for you," she said.

I followed her to a paved road (THANK YOU, JESUS!) and she pulled over again and told me that Cutie Pie was on her way to rescue us.  Cutie Pie arrived like a knight in shining armor and said she had to go to a gas station to meet someone else who was really lost.  "I have to get gas so this is perfect!" I said.  I'm pretty sure Cutie Pie was way over all of us before the weekend started, but she didn't act like it if she was.  She was wonderful and sweet.

I think she had to drive and rescue 5 of the 9 of us because iPhone directions and Google maps sucked.

We made it to the hunting lodge where every square inch of the walls was covered in dead animals.  They even had candle holders made out of hooves, y'all.  I threw my purse in my room, met my roommate (we'll call her The Chiro because she's a chiropractor), and since we were late for dinner, we ate.  OFM's community made a potluck dinner for us and it was incredible!  I then ran outside and took photos of the beautiful peacocks, the incredible zebras, and there were also emus, bulls, guinea hens, two cats, etc.  The property is gorgeous.  It's so peaceful there.

Until the peacocks start screaming.

Y'all.  I have never heard a peacock before and it sounded like a lady screaming at the top of her lungs, "HEEEEEELLLLLLLPPPPPPPPP!"

Peacocks don't care if you stay up until 2:00 a.m.  They think they should scream their bloody heads off at 6:00.

 
 We played a game to kind of break the ice and get to know each other after dinner.  It involved sometimes having to sit in each other's laps.  And the drinking started too.  I actually stuck with Sprite and Ginger Ale, but 2 hours after we arrived, someone had to go buy more wine.

There was a screened in porch and we spent a lot of time out there over the weekend.  By 10 or 11, most of us were bra free, in our pj's and already felt like we had known each other for a lifetime.  We all talked, there were some tears shed, we shared dreams, struggles, fears, and also funny stories until we cried from laughing so hard.

On Saturday we toured Nashville and met some of OFM's sponsors. (One of the owners of one sponsor stayed with us for the weekend, Cutie Pie stayed with us, and two other locals were there all weekend.  They are all awesome!)  Two other locals came and spent the day Saturday with us.  We had lunch at Pa's Country Meats and I stocked up on stuff there, we went to a thrift shop, we stopped in Dixie Sales and Graphics and bought personalized goodies, and one thing I bought was this mug which says "What we Say on the Porch, Better Stay on the Porch":





We also stopped in the Nashville Farmer's Market which was ADORABLE and I bought some barbecue sauce as a souvenir of the beginning of my weekend:












Here is the farmer's market:



We eventually made it out to Horse Creek Winery where we had a wine tasting and drank wine slushies (which are the bomb diggity if I'm being honest).  They were prepared for us:





I bought mix so I can make my own slushies at home:








When we got back to the lodge, we were going to drink blueberry margaritas and pain killers (OMG, they are so yummy) and do this......an inflatable water slide:


Sadly, the inflatable water slide had a bit of a gash in it.  OFM's Mister came out with some duct tape but it was beyond repair so a bunch of grown women sat around in their bathing suits in a hunting lodge decorated with dead animals and drank a lot and we turned Catch Phrase into a drinking game which involved a few people doing shots out of a cap from the tequila bottle.  I had a margarita because shots make me barf.

OFM had an art table set up for us so after a wine tasting, a gigantic wine slushie, a blueberry margarita and half of a pain killer, I painted pretty much the worst painting of my life but enjoyed every second of it with some new friends:






We were supposed to all cook dinner together, but around 8 or 8:30 we all kind of said "F*&uck that, let's order some pizzas."  We did have a nice salad because we are a healthy group of ladies.

There is a bunk house right next door to the lodge and the owner likes to have himself a Saturday night poker game in the bunk house.  We saw the guys leave at some point.  We were all out on the screened in porch when they left and eventually we were all liquored up, and somehow the subject of sex toys came up because OFM does sex toy parties (you may remember when I hosted one for her a couple of months ago and Amanda came to visit me and that whole weekend went not as planned because my niece ran over herself with her car and all that).  Well, let's just say that the sex toy conversation got a bit loud and rowdy and it was full of laughter and we were all having ourselves a great time and suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I saw something.  And I said to OFM, "Um, there is someone with a flashlight headed over here from the bunk house."  And we all got quiet as a nice young man opened the door to the screened in porch to tell us the poker game was over and he was locking up and heading home.  "So, have you been sitting outside all this time?" someone asked.  He shyly nodded his head as he looked down at the ground.  "Did you happen to hear what we were talking about?" I asked.

"Good night, ladies," he said as he kept looking at the ground and left.

So yeah, we gave that guy probably the best night he's had in a while even though he was sitting guard at a men's poker game.

By the time I left that lodge on Sunday morning, I felt like I had met 13 of the most wonderful friends that I will have for a lifetime.  In fact, I think I'm getting together with one of them after work tonight!  I can't believe how much I missed them after I drove off even though I had just met them less than 48 hours before.  We are soul sisters and have built a tribe of fierce, strong, caring women.

It was a weekend filled with love.

I think it was the deodorant I was choosing that made him want me

For those of you who are friendly with me on Facebook, you may have seen that I had an interesting interaction while grocery shopping last week.  Karen in VB mentioned in the comments of my last post that she wanted to hear more about it. 

I vary the grocery stores I do my shopping in.  I frequent Kroger, Publix and Trader Joe's.  Last week I decided on Kroger.  This is the same Kroger where a half-blind, drooling, homeless lady followed me all over the store asking me to buy her dinner one night (I did) and that was the same night a man was frantic to find Nutella because he had just recently tried it for the first time and he yelled to me as he waved his hands all around in the air like he just didn't care, "I NEED NUTELLA!  WHERE IS THE NUTELLA?  I JUST HAD IT FOR THE FIRST TIME AND.....I NEED MORE!"  I couldn't blame him one bit.  Nutella is good, y'all. 

It is also the same Kroger where I asked an employee if she could help me find an item one night and she walked me all over the freaking store and never could find it.  She said she had only worked there for about 8 months so she didn't know where everything was yet.  (?)  And then I saw her again later and told her I had finally found the item I was looking for and she pointed to her name tag, asked me to call their headquarters or go to their website or something and tell them how helpful she was because then she'd be in the running to win a new big screen television.  Yes.  Let me get right on the horn to tell them how helpful you were in dragging me all over the store for absolutely no reason since you never helped me find what I needed.

It is the same Kroger where I once overheard a man trying to impress a woman by telling her he had a super fancy bottle of champagne at his house and invited her over to share it with him.  "I paid 28 BUCKS for that bottle!" said ol' Mr. Moneybags.

It is not, however, the Publix where I was walking through the produce section when a guy came running up from behind me, jumped in front of my face and exclaimed, "I think you are a lot like Wonder Woman!" before walking away.  And it was not the Trader Joe's where a lady recently danced and sang and shook her moneymaker at me when I motioned for her to go ahead of me when we almost collided our buggies in an aisle.

No, it was Kroger.

I was almost done with my shopping when it all went down like this:  I had just grabbed some beef from the meat department to make some stir fry and I was partially up an aisle right off the meat department where I was checking my list to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything before I grabbed some shampoo and deodorant and went to check out when I heard a man saying rather loudly from the direction of the meat department, "Do you own a restaurant around town?"  My back was to the meat department by that time and I didn't turn around.

"Excuse me, young lady.  Do you own a restaurant here in town?" he asked again loudly.  I still didn't turn around because I don't own any restaurant.

"Young lady, where do I know you from?  Do you own a restaurant around Atlanta?"  I turned around to see exactly who it was that was annoying some poor "young lady" to discover the man was looking directly at me.  And so I said, "Are you asking me?"

"Yes.  Do you own a restaurant somewhere around town?"

"Um, no.  I don't."

"Hmm.  I know you from somewhere.  You're in the music business, aren't you? "

"No, I'm not."

"Well, I think I've seen you performing around town, haven't I?"

"Uh, no.  You definitely have not."

"Well where in the world do I know you from? "

"I have no idea.  You don't look at all familiar to me."

"Stand right there, please. I want to come shake your hand and meet you," he said as several shoppers were standing in silence watching all of this go down.  I stood there by the shampoo as he came up the aisle to where I was and shook my hand.  He introduced himself and asked me for my name.  He insisted again that he thought he's seen me performing my musical talents somewhere around town and I assured him I have no musical talent whatsoever.  He asked me if I shop in that Kroger a lot and I told him I'm in there on a fairly regular basis and he said he's in there all the time so maybe he's just seen me in there.  I told him I was sorry, but I felt like I had never seen him before in my life.  He then said, "Well, it was nice to meet you." And he walked away.  I turned my back again and started moving up the aisle a little further when I heard him coming up from behind me again saying, "You know what?  I'm going to surprise you here."  And I wish I had thought to say, "You're going to pay for my groceries?" but I wasn't that quick so I just stood there.

"I am in the music business," he said.  "I'm an instructor and a performer."  I told him that I'm pretty sure I'm un-instructable when it comes to music and he said he could probably teach me.  I told him I paint from time to time so I have a creative outlet already.  He went on to ask me if I've heard of a certain business and I told him I have heard of it.  He told me they have a warehouse not far from the Kroger and on Saturdays he sometimes performs there and sometimes his students perform there and people come to watch and then they hire them to play at parties and events and stuff.  He told me celebrities come by and hang out and local politicians visit regularly and no one bothers them and everything is super laid back and casual.  And then he invited me to come sometime.  He asked me if I had a business card.  (I don't.)  He then asked if I had a pen because he wanted to give me his card but wanted to write his personal email address on it.  (I didn't.)  He then asked a random lady walking past if she had a pen.  (She didn't.) 

"Are you going to be here in this aisle for a while?" he asked.

"Well, no, not for a while.  I need to grab one more thing and then I'm checking out and I'm outta here," I replied.

"I'll find you," he said.  "Like I told you, I'm in here all the time.  The guys in the meat department know me very well and they'll have a pen I can borrow.  I'll come find you in a minute."

And he walked off and I moved up the aisle a little further and I was picking up a thing of deodorant when he approached me for the third time.

"My god you're beautiful.  Here's my card and I've written in my personal email address.  Please email me.  I want to get to know you.  I'm begging you.....just email me," he said.

"We'll see," I said.

"Please.  Please email me.  I've got a few good years left and I want you and I to get to know each other really well over the years," he said.

"We'll see," I said again.

"Email me, please.  I'm so glad I met you.  Come out and listen to some music."

"We'll see.  Have a great night," I said as I turned and walked away.

I told my brother (the cop) about it this weekend when he stopped by my house.  He said he'd be glad to go with me to kind of check this guy out.

I waited about four days and then I emailed him last night.  I told him I might come out and listen to him perform sometime and asked if I could bring a friend or two with me.  He responded less than an hour later and said he'd love for me to come out and he was really glad to hear from me.

Now y'all, I have no desire to date this guy because I am guessing he is significantly older than me.  But I think he could be a really fun friend to hang out with and get to know.  I also don't really know what is going on with Hot Brazilian right now (it's a super long story that I don't really want to get into on here but I'm still committed to HB and until I know what is going to happen with that situation I don't plan to date Mr. Music Man or anyone else for that matter).

But that's a little story about getting picked up over a stick of deodorant.

I really need to throw away a certain pair of pants

Y'all.  It's kind of ridiculous how many times I say I'm going to write and then I just up and disappear.  It's not on purpose.  I just get busy.  And too lazy and/or tired to write at night after I get home and do the bazillion things I have to do when I get home.

For instance, the last time I wrote on here which was Thursday a couple of weeks ago, I went to the mall after work (and I wish I could tell y'all how much I hate going to the mall but there are not words sufficient to describe my hatred) because the lady who sits next to me at work also has plantar fasciitis and she told me about some flip flops that people say are good when you have yourself some hurty feet.  So I stampeded over there in my ugly ass shoes with the hard inserts in them because I wanted a pair of flip flops.  Yes, even though that's how I broke my arm a couple of years ago and ended up in a body brace.  I went and paid sixty-five damn dollars for some flip flops and, while they don't hurt my feet while I'm wearing them and walking around all day, my feet hurt like a mother-you-know-what the next morning.  But I've worn them a few times anyway because I spent sixty five of my hard earned dollars on them. 

Anyway, I got home late that night is what I'm saying because I battled the Buckhead traffic, spent some miserable time at the mall, bought some ridiculously priced flip flops, and then sat in more traffic to get home.  I had decided on the way home that what I was craving for dinner that night was breakfast food instead of the chicken and vegetables I already had cooked that just needed to be heated up. 

We are already having summer temps here in Atlanta and when I got home I was sweating like a snowman in a sauna, so I decided that I would run upstairs and put on my pj's and release the girls from my bra before I started cooking eggs and whatnot.  Right before I ran upstairs (and I use the word "run" loosely) I set my home alarm system because I had no plans to go back out in the awful heat.  Y'all, I took off my bra and put on the rattiest, most worn out white tank top you've ever laid eyes on and a pair of super thin, super comfortable pj bottoms that happened to have a giant hole in the crotch.  I did not care because I felt a good ten degrees cooler.

I went back downstairs, pulled out a skillet, turned on the stove, and opened up a package of bacon.  That's right.  Bacon for dinner because I have given up all the white foods - bread, pasta, rice, processed sugar (except for Cake Day at our office once a month), white potatoes, etc. because I need to lose 8 million pounds - but I did not give up bacon.  I had just put two slices of bacon in the pan when my cell phone rang.  As my cell phone rang, I heard sirens coming up the street but that happens multiple times a day so I thought nothing of it.

I didn't recognize the 800 number but I answered anyway and it was my alarm company calling to tell me that they were showing a fire alarm going off at my house.

"Um, no.  There's no alarm going off.  I'm standing in the middle of my house and there is nothing on fire, and there is no alarm going off in here," I told her.

She then said they had tried to call me a minute or two earlier and didn't get an answer (I had my cell phone upstairs with me when I was putting on my beautiful and fancy pj's and it did not ring and there was no missed call from them) so they had gone ahead and dispatched the fire department and then she asked if I wanted them to try and cancel the call.  I had a sinking feeling in my gut but I told her to try since, you know, MY HOUSE WAS NOT ON FIRE.

And that's when two fire trucks pulled up in front of my house with sirens wailing.

"OH MY GOD!  IT'S TOO LATE!  AND I HAVE TO GO RIGHT NOW!" I screamed at her.  "Two fire trucks full of probably hot firefighters just pulled up in front of my house and I am in a white tank top with NO BRA on.  I have to go put a shirt on!  Thanks for your help!" I yelled right into her ear.  She laughed as she responded, "Okay....good luck to you."

And a firefighter was looking right into my front window as I ran up the stairs to go find a shirt.  And this time I am not using the word "ran" loosely.  I was hauling ass as fast as I could.  But I'm fat so it really wasn't that fast at all.  I didn't have time to worry about the giant hole in the crotch of my pants because by the time I found a t-shirt that vaguely matched those awful pants, the firemen were ringing my bell.  So to speak.

I ran back down the stairs and I was huffing and puffing like I had just run a damned 10K, got my alarm system turned off, and then casually opened the front door as though I was expecting two trucks full of loud sirens and hot firemen to show up that evening while I was trying to make some dinner.

"Ma'am, your alarm company called us because you have a fire alarm going off," Hot Guy #1 starting saying.

"Yes, well, I'm sorry that y'all wasted your time coming out here because my house is not on fire and there is no alarm going off so I don't know why they are showing that it is.  I just turned the stove on and I haven't even had time to burn my dinner yet.  Y'all are early!"

He cracked up.  And then I yelled, "OH MY GOD!  My stove is on!  Can I please run in and turn it off before we finish up here?"

Hot Guy #2 said, "Yes, ma'am.  Please don't burn your house down while you're standing on the front porch talking to the fire department.  That would be really bad."  I told Hot Guy #2 that I agreed with him 100% on that.

So I ran back in and turned my stove off and when I walked back out to talk to all of the hot firefighters hanging out with me, I saw one of my neighbors walking up to check on me.  "I'm fine!" I yelled to him.  Then Hot Guy #1 said, "Wow, this is a really nice house you have.  And it's huge!"

"Do y'all know ___________ and __________?" I asked them.  The contractors I used when I first bought my house are full time firefighters with the City of Atlanta and they own a contracting business on the side.

"Oh yeah, I know them" about 3 or 4 of the hot firefighters said.  "_________ is over at Station 13 now," Hot Guy #1 said.  I told them they had done a bunch of work on my house and we discussed what all they had done.  That's right, y'all.  I stood on my porch with a hole in the crotch of my pants and with no bra on and talked about home remodeling with hot firefighters while my bacon was in a pan getting all soggy.  Because that's just a typical Thursday night for me.

I asked them if they needed to check my house and they said as long as I didn't smell smoke and there was no audible alarm going off they did not need to check anything.

They left after a few minutes and I went in and finished making bacon and eggs. 

Y'all know this now means that in the past two and a half months I have almost gotten arrested by the police in a county just outside of Atlanta, had the Atlanta police show up at my house because someone emailed them and said I had a huge cat fight going on at my house when I was actually in bed watching Everybody Loves Raymond re-runs, and the fire department showed up because apparently a silent fire alarm was going off in my house.  And I had a hole in the crotch of my pj bottoms for two of those incidents.  That's right.  Same pants both times.

The one where I tell you how my house was about to fall down.

Oh.  Hey, y'all!

Has it really been 3 weeks since I wrote something on here?  I've been kind of busy, yo.

So 3 weeks ago I told y'all I was having a bunch of work done to my house.  (Again.)  I had my deck refinished last June and huge chunks of the paint (it's not really a normal paint - it's stuff meant to restore old decks) had started coming off.  My contractor looked at it and said he's used the same product on other decks and has never had that happen so he would re-do it for free.  He has been more than fair on a ton of stuff he's done on my house so I told him since it's not his fault, I would pay for the product if he would provide the labor at no charge because I didn't want to take advantage of him.  (I think this was a good move because he then gave me a really good deal on something else that happened which I will tell you about in a minute).  So on the Wednesday before Easter, he and his crew came out to spend the day working at my house and one of them repainted my deck.  And on Easter morning, my mom's husband went out to blow my deck off because I had 25ish people coming over, and chunks of the finish blew off again.  Sigh.  So my contractor came back out again yesterday and worked on it some more at no charge to me.  And how much do I hate my deck right now?  A lot.

I also had to have my front door replaced.  Did I already tell you I had gone through 3 deadbolts in 2 years and my contractor discovered my front door was the wrong size, was probably an interior door, the door frame was not done correctly, the door was sagging and out of alignment, etc.?  Well, when he took the old door down and then took the frame out to re-do it, he discovered that all underneath my door, the wood was rotted out from water damage.  And the frame halfway up the wall was rotted out from water damage.  So he spent two and a half days putting in my new door because he had to replace all of that.

I trust him with my life so I leave him there when I'm not home because I would hardly work a day in my life if I had to stay home every single time something was wrong with my house.  He has the code to open my security gate and to get in my garage.  And one evening he called me and said his whole day had gotten off schedule and even though it was 7:00 he was still going to come to my house and get a couple of hours of work done.  I was standing in the middle of the grocery store when he called and a marching band had just come in, played a little song and left (for real) and I told him I would be home within an hour and would see him when I got there.  Not 15 minutes later, the guy who just installed my security cameras and gates called me and said, "Beverly!  There are some guys at your house!  Do you know there are guys at your house?  I just saw them on my phone!"  I had been having some issues with the DVR and he and the camera company had been working on my equipment remotely that day and he just happened to log on to make sure everything seemed to be working when Tim had shown up.  So I told him, "Oh yeah, that's Tim that you met," because these past few weeks I've had so much crap being done to my house that my contractors have been meeting and exchanging business cards with each other on my front porch.  Anyway, once I got off the phone with my contractors and finished my grocery shopping, I went home and I was standing on the front porch talking with Tim while he was working on the front door and I noticed when he stepped right inside the front door, I could see the floor of my entryway kind of sag down and I decided that was probably not a good thing and was probably an expensive thing and I was right on both accounts.

So the day before Easter and the day before I had 25 people coming to my house, he and his crew were at my house cleaning out gutters, installing gutter guards, finishing up insulation work, and he was still working on my door.  He and his guys went up under my house and came back out with a beautiful picture.  It was a picture of one of the main support beams under my house which sits on top of the foundation and holds up a bunch of other support beams and it was also completely rotted out from water damage.  I said, "Oh crap, Tim.  How much are we talking to fix this?" and he said, "Miss Beverly, I don't even want to go there because it's going to make you want to cry.  But I'm trying to think of a less expensive way to fix it."

About 20 minutes later, he came in and said, "Okay.  Here's the deal."  Whenever someone says "here's the deal" I always know bad news is probably coming.  "To do this the technically correct way, we need to jack your house up, remove that beam and replace it.  And that would be about $6,000."  And I almost fainted on the floor.  "BUT!  We're going to do it not technically the correct way, but it will still fix the problem.  It's simply a much more cost effective way."  My mom's husband was standing there and I'm glad because what he told me they were doing made no sense whatsoever to me, but my mom's husband said it did to him and it should fix the problem just fine and last for another 100 years.  But most importantly he told me that if I had called him out just for that one issue, he would charge me $1,500 but since he knew all of the crap I've been through with my house since he's fixed the majority of it, and he knows how much money I've spent, and he knows I'm one of his excellent customers and he knows that I'm going to have 500 more things break in my house that I'll call him for and because he was already at my house doing a few thousand dollars worth of work on other stuff, he would only charge me $1,000 to do whatever it is he did to shift the weight of my entire house.

And that's a little story about how the day before I had 25 people coming to my house I ended up having guys on my roof, guys in my crawl space, guys finishing up a new front door, and guys shifting the weight of my house so it won't cave in.

I'm going to try to write again tomorrow.  Pinky swear!  Tonight I'm going to go try to buy YET MORE SHOES to try and help my stupid feet.

(I haven't even had time to proof this so probably lots of typos and mistakes.)

And I've now had my second run in with the cops in the span of a month or so.

So I mentioned my latest crazy story on BBP and on Facebook, but here's all the detail about it.

Last Thursday night, I was having my normal exciting night of running an errand or two after work, walking in my house completely exhausted, eating some little thing, doing a couple of things around the house that needed doing, and collapsing into bed.

I had been in bed for a little while and I was watching re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond and starting to doze off and on because that's just how interesting my life is, when I suddenly thought I heard someone knocking on my front door.  It's very hard to hear stuff on the back of my house where my bedroom is (the night two cars got totaled on the street in front of my house I heard nothing, nor did my mom or her husband who were in the guest bedroom which is on the back side of my house).  But this wasn't normal, friendly neighborly knocking.  It was urgent knocking and it sounded like they were hitting my stained glass front door with something.  As I was trying to determine if I really was hearing knocking or if I was dreaming or hearing something on TV, I suddenly heard the doorbell ringing.  And whoever was at my door rang it about six times.  And then the knocking on my glass door started up again.

"Aha!" I thought to myself.  "I can flip my TV over to my security cameras and see who is knocking!"  Little did I know that 4 days after I had cameras installed around my house they would come in so handy.  My security guy was still working on them to do all of the networking stuff so I can see them from my phone, laptop, and tablet they were so newly installed, but luckily I could already view them on my TV.  

Imagine my surprise when I saw three men wandering around my front porch, shining flashlights into my windows, and picking up different items on my porch checking everything out carefully.  I guess birdhouses and flower pots are the official hiding places for bad stuff.  Then one of them turned and was facing a camera and I saw his police badge.  And his guns.  "What in the hell?" I thought because I'm just a middle-aged, severely overweight woman watching sit-coms in bed on a Thursday night at 10:40 p.m. and certainly hadn't called the police out to my house for anything.

The knocking was continuing.

I then looked at the camera pointing up my driveway towards the street where I saw an ambulance.  "What in the hell?" I thought for the second time because I may be middle-aged and severely overweight, but I wasn't dying and had not called for medical assistance.

As I went to the closet to put on my robe since I was wearing the most awful pajamas in the history of ever (a worn out, stained tank top and my pj bottoms had a giant hole in the crotch but oh my dog they are so comfortable so I keep wearing them) I thought to myself that maybe there was a gas leak in the 'hood and they were evacuating everyone or something.  Or maybe something had happened out on the street in front of my house and they saw my cameras and wanted to see if it had recorded an incident (my neighbors had the police come to their house for that one time).

I turned on the light on the staircase and as I walked downstairs there was an officer shining his flashlight into my dining room window.  I got my alarm system turned off and opened the front door.

One officer was standing right at the door.  Another one was in the center of my front porch.  A third one was standing at the bottom of the steps watching up and down my driveway.  A fourth one was standing at my front gate with it closed (so no one could easily escape I suppose).

"Ma'am, are you okay?" asked the officer.

"I'm fine.  What on earth is going on?"

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, I'm sure.  I was in bed almost asleep.  May I ask why you're here?"

"Are you alone, ma'am?"

"I am."

"Are you sure?"

"Unless someone broke in and my alarm system didn't go off then I'm sure I'm alone."

"And you are positive that you aren't injured?"

"I'm 100% sure that I'm not injured.  What is going on?"

"Someone from Forsyth sent us an email and said we needed to send an ambulance and officers to this address because there is a large group of women fighting each other."

"Um, WHAT?!  I can assure you there is nothing of the sort going on here.  I'm fine, I'm alone, and y'all are more than welcome to come search my entire house if you need to verify that there are no women in here fighting."

"So, there's nothing happening?"

"No sir.  Again, I welcome you to search my house if you need to.  Who would do this?  Was it an email from someone in Forsyth COUNTY or Forsyth the city?"

"I'm not really sure ma'am.  Our dispatch would have to confirm that."

"And you're positive they said my address?"

He then asked me to confirm my street address and his partner looked on some sort of device at the call they received and he confirmed my address was the one reported.

"Well, I just had security cameras installed and the guy is still working on them so I'm not even sure how it all works yet, but if you want to see if we can figure out how to review the recorded footage, maybe a huge cat fight was going on out in the street in front of my house?"

"No, ma'am.  The email said a big group of women were fighting inside your home."

"I'm so sorry someone wasted your time having you come to my house.  Thank you for checking on me, but I promise there is nothing interesting going on here and I am fine.  I was in bed watching Everybody Loves Raymond not doing anything remotely exciting."

He laughed.

I then flipped on my overhead light in the living room which is right next my entryway and again told them they could come in to look around if they needed to.  The officer stuck his head in the door and looked around, said everything looked like it's in place and asked me once again if I was absolutely sure I was okay and didn't need any assistance.

I opened my robe, looked down at my hoots and said, "Nope, everything seems to be okay."

He laughed, wished me a good night and they walked away.

How weird is all of that?

The next morning I called the Atlanta Police Department and asked if I needed to get a copy of a report for any reason and they told me since the police came and checked on me and I told them I was okay, there would be no report.  "But what about the fact that someone made a false report?" I asked them.  "We don't investigate those."  When I see my brother, the cop, and about 5 of his cop friends this weekend I'm going to ask them if they investigate them in the suburban city they all work for.  My guess is either someone transposed some numbers and maybe there was a bunch of women fighting somewhere but the wrong address was reported or maybe some kids out on Spring Break got really bored and decided to play an awful prank and randomly chose my address. 

My security camera/gate guy called me when I was driving to work the next morning and I told him all about it.  He was as shocked as I was.  He was at my house most of the day on Saturday and part of Sunday working on my system and he found the recorded footage of everything.  I think he watched it 3 or 4 times because he couldn't believe it.

I may be spending a small fortune on gates and cameras, but I can't tell you how happy I was that I had it last Thursday night so I could see it wasn't someone meaning to do me any harm who was banging on my door.

Next up on my home adventures list:  This week I'm getting my deck repainted even though I just did that last June (there is a story about that), I'm having tons of insulation put in my crawlspace and attic space (there is a story about that), and I have to have a new front door put in (there is a story about that too and no, the police didn't break it banging on it the other night).  And my mom and her husband are coming from Texas on Friday while all of that is going on.  And I'm having 20 people at my house on Sunday for Easter/my brother's birthday so I have to prepare for a party while contractors are working.  And I have to put together a ton of Easter eggs for a bunch of kids to hunt.  And I have to go buy my brother a present this week one night.  And buy a ham.  And a birthday cake.  And a lot of other food.  And I volunteered to put together a whole bunch of gag gifts from my mom and I since my brother is turning 50 because apparently I thought I would have time for that kind of nonsense.  And let us all pray the weather is nice on Sunday so I can put some people outside on my deck to eat.  And let us all pray the paint is dry by then.

Please send wine.  Gallons of it.  I think I'm gonna start drinking soon.

She really is fabulous.

First, an update on my niece.  The hospital released her around 6:00 last night so she is at home now.  I just sent her a text a little while ago to check on her and see how she was feeling.  She responded  and said she is feeling amazing!  She got out of the house for a little while today, got her hair washed, and has been sitting up a lot.  She is one blessed young lady.

My posts about this weekend are coming to y'all in an order that is anything but the order stuff happened in.  Yesterday I told you about part of Friday and Saturday.  Now I'm gonna tell you about different parts of Friday and Saturday.  Just try to keep up, okay?

Do most of y'all know who One Fabulous Mama is?  If not, check out her blog.  Here she is on my porch and my friends hanging out listening to her share her story:

One Fabulous Mama and her friend, Mandy, arrived at 6:00.  She brought me a beautiful floral arrangement, some lotions and goodies, and a coffee mug:

I wish every single one of you could meet her.  This was the second time I've met her and she just keeps getting more wonderful.  She is one of the most colorful yet down to earth, warm, welcoming, inspirational people I have ever met in my life.  After about 30 seconds, you don't see her hair color (currently purple but sometimes it's pink or blue or blonde) or her tattoos.  You see her soul.  You see her spirit.  You see her self-confidence.  You see her heart.

In fact, a bit into the party, some of us were sitting out on my front porch with her chatting and one of my friends looked at me and said, "You know how I am.  Can I ask OFM a question or will I embarrass you?"  I told OFM I had no idea what my friend might possibly ask but to feel free to say she didn't want to answer if she didn't want to.  My friend asked her to tell her story of how she went from a mom wearing plaid dresses and short "mom" hair to the lady with purple hair and covered in tattoos.  So she did.  We all sat there and listened in silence and a bit of awe.  (In a nutshell, the purple hair and tattoos are who she really is on the inside and she finally decided to stop living her life to make everyone else happy and she stopped hating herself.  And she now looks at herself in the mirror and says, "You are absolutely adorable!"  And she is freaking adorable, y'all.  And her husband and kids think so too.)  My friend then said to her, "One of the main reasons I came tonight is because I see the stuff you write online.  I see your Facebook posts.  I see the photos you post.  And I wanted to meet you in person so I could see if you're just full of bullshit.  You are not.  You are completely who you are online.  I am so happy I met you.  You are refreshing and absolutely amazing."  My friend also wrote a very nice post about OFM on her own Facebook about how much she enjoyed meeting her.

I had an opportunity to chat with her for a little while one-on-one.  She asked me one simple question that caused me to share with her some kind of bad stuff I went through a long time ago.  She cried while I was talking with her. She told me she felt honored that people share their stories with her.  She had suggested that we go to the Clermont Lounge after the party was over but as she and I were talking she said, "I know I suggested the Clermont, but to be honest I would much rather stay here at your house and just talk with you some more."  But then 4 people walked in the room and our magical connection was interrupted.  It did feel a little bit magical, y'all.  I know that might sound dorky, but she just makes you feel good about yourself by being around her.  Her soul shines.

When she first arrived at my house, she walked in the door and said, "You are my people.  I want to be friends with you on Facebook on my personal page."  She turned the corner into my kitchen and she gasped and clutched her hands to her chest.  She had spotted a tiny piece of artwork I have from an artist I collect and follow online.  It wasn't a piece that jumps out at people.  It was on a shelf with some other stuff around it and it's only 8x8 inches in size.  I showed her a couple of other pieces I have from the same artist.  She stood there with her hands on her heart and said, "I met that artist one time.  I can't believe you know of her and collect her work.  I was at the monastery out in Conyers doing some meditation and she was there.  I had never heard of her before but for some reason she felt drawn to come over and speak to me.  She shared some stuff that she was going through and we talked for a very long time.  It was one of the most amazing moments I've ever had.  She told me she was an artist and we really connected.  And now here I am and you collect her work.  I don't know what she was doing at the monastery.  In fact, I don't even know where she lives."

I responded to her, "I can't believe she was at the monastery all the way out here in Conyers. She lives in Portland, Oregon."

Those two were meant to meet.

When I used to teach painting classes at the studio, our stuff was a certain "style" of art and I very much enjoyed painting those pieces and working there and teaching.  But when it's just me, piddling around in my home studio, my "style" is much more similar to this particular artist OFM had met at the monastery.  After everyone had left Friday night, OFM asked if she could see my home studio.  She, Amanda, Mandy and I went upstairs and OFM and Mandy started going through every single painting in my studio.....which is probably in the neighborhood of a couple of hundred paintings or more.  I told them not to feel like they had to look at everything and she said she wanted to.  She got to one of my personal pieces (as opposed to the teaching ones) and she said how much she loved it so I told her I wanted her to have it.  I ended up giving her 5 paintings and Mandy a couple.  OFM asked me which style was more me.  I told her it was the ones I do when I'm just painting for me and not the ones I painted when I used to teach.  She looked at me and said, "I knew that."

OFM and Mandy spent the night at my house that night.  I KNOW!  How lucky am I??

We were planning to go to breakfast the next morning, however, we didn't all go to bed until after 2:00 a.m. and by the time they woke up and packed they didn't have time because she wanted to take Mandy to IKEA and they were heading to a thrift store and then she had another sex toy party scheduled for that evening.  So I helped the two of them load up suitcases, sex toys, lube, stockings, wine, books, etc. (OFM has written a book and has her own wine label) into her mini-van, hugged them both and wished them well.  She had pulled her car back behind my house where the garage is and Amanda's car was also back there and before we knew it, OFM was good and stuck trying to get turned around because my driveway is next to impossible to back out of.

So there I was cornered between her van, my deck, the post for my new gate, and a thing hanging on the side of my deck that my garden hose hangs on.  I mean I was sucking in my gut and had both feet turned out to the sides so she wouldn't run over my toes I was so plastered against my deck.  And there she was wedged between the gutter on the corner of my house and the old crappy gate door on the opposite side.  She couldn't back up.  She couldn't pull forward.  Until she decided to just pull forward and scrape the hell out of the side of her van and dent my gutter a bit.  I was way more worried about her van than a dent in my gutter.  Oh, y'all.  I felt just awful about it.  I told her to tell her husband that someone did it while she was inside IKEA because I'm all about encouraging people to tell their husband giant lies. 

And then OFM and Mandy were gone just like that.  It was a whirlwind evening/morning but I adore that woman. 

I hope you all get a chance to meet her at some point.  Karen in VB was so sad she couldn't come down this weekend.  If I ever have her at my house again I'll be sure to let you know, Karen. 

Well. That didn't go as I had planned. At all.

Poor Amanda.

Amanda came to Atlanta this weekend to stay with me and thought we would have a party, do some touristy things, and eat at some good restaurants.  We did have a party.  And that's about all we did on her list.

(I'm not sure if y'all have ever picked up on this, but my plans seldom go off without a hitch or like I think they're going to.)

She had some delays trying to leave to come down on Thursday, so she didn't arrive at my house until sometime between 10:00 and 11:00.  Around 1:00 a.m., I started saying we probably should go to bed because I had to get up early because I had two contractors coming to my house on Friday morning.  We finally stopped talking and went to bed at 4:00 in the morning.

Guess what?

I'm way too old to stay up that late.

I also am a terrible sleeper, so I was wide awake by 6:30 and got up at 7:00 a.m. and tried to be very, very quiet so I wouldn't wake Amanda up since she was right across the hall from me.  She said she never heard me so one thing in my life went according to plan.  Go, me.

The guy who is installing my new gates and security cameras arrived Friday morning and he said he thought he would get the cameras done that day.  He worked from 9:30 - 6:30 on Friday.  He worked from 9:30 - 3:00 on Saturday.  He worked from 10:00 - 5:00 on Sunday.  He'll be back next Saturday.

(I'm not sure if y'all picked up on this, but the security guy's plans didn't go off without a hitch or like he thought they were going to.)

My regular contractor also came by because, and I know this will come as a surprise...I have some stuff going wrong with my house.  I've replaced 2 deadbolts on my front door in 2 years.  Now a third one has broken.  Now I have to buy a new front door and have it installed.  It turns out the front door that was put in by the previous owner was not done correctly.  It should have been 36" wide.  Instead it's 30" wide.  The door jamb was not put in properly.  Nothing is aligned correctly.  My contractor said the lady apparently tried to custom fit a door but failed miserably.  Amanda and I were talking and the stain glass on the front door matches the stain glass in a transom window inside the house so the door was probably originally an interior door that she moved.  And now I'm gonna have to pay a bunch of money to fix it.

I have paint cracking throughout my house on bead board and paneled doors.  My contractor believes it's because I have no insulation in my crawl space and very little insulation in the attic space.  So I'm gonna have to pay a bunch of money to fix that.

I have two outlets that don't work on my deck because the wire has been cut in the crawl space.  (It's been like that since I bought the house.  It's not another security issue.)

I need my gutters cleaned.

My deck that he refinished last June is messed up (the paint is coming off).  At least that won't cost me anything because he stands behind his work.

One of my neighbors wanted to meet with him so I walked down the street to introduce them.

Amanda and I ran around all afternoon getting food prepared for my sex toy party on Friday evening. I warned my security camera guy that he might want to be gone before 6:00 because a lady with purple hair and a bunch of tattoos was arriving at that time with cases full of vibrators and lube.  And then around 7:00 my house was going to be full of women.  I'm kind of surprised he showed back up on Saturday.

In the middle of all of this activity, my brother called me.  He said he'd tried my work number but I didn't answer so he decided to call my cell phone.  I said, "I'm off work today because I have two contractors here at my house, company from out of town who arrived last night, I'm having my sex toy party tonight, I have more company spending the night tonight, and I will have a houseful of people here in a few hours so I'm in the middle of preparing a bunch of food."

"Oh.  That's right," he said as though all of this was even a tiny bit normal.

He went on to tell me that my niece/his daughter (16-years-old) was in the hospital because she had run over herself with her own car.  For real.

They have two dogs which are of decent size and they are ill behaved and not trained.  They had both escaped from the house so my niece jumped in her car to go drive around their neighborhood to look for them.  She saw a neighbor out walking her tiny dog on a leash.  My niece stopped to speak with her to see if she had seen the dogs running around.  As they were talking, her two dogs came running up towards them.  My niece was afraid her dogs would attack the neighbor's smaller dog so she jumped out of the car to try and grab them, but forgot she had not put her car in park.  As the car started rolling, she tried to get back in but the door hit her, knocked her down, she was dragged down the street, she finally had to let go and the back tire rolled all the way over her down the left side of her body.  The car kept going, went through two yards where it eventually rammed through someone's garage and into a closet where it finally stopped.

The neighbor called 9-1-1 and apparently it is normal procedure when a minor is involved in a serious car accident that they get air lifted to the hospital so they flew her by helicopter to a hospital in Atlanta.  She has a very deep puncture wound to her ankle, severe road rash down both legs and on her bottom, a liver laceration, and a partially collapsed lung.  They took her into an operating room but I don't know that you'd call what she had an actual surgery.  The wound on her ankle was cut roughly so they put her under, had to cut it a little more to have clean lines so they could get it to heal properly, they irrigated the wound so it would be clean and hopefully not get infected, and then put staples in it.  Both legs are bandaged because of road rash, and they put a chest tube in to re-inflate her lung.  Her liver seems to be doing okay at this point but they still don't have the lung where they want it to be.  Right now we're waiting to see if she will be released this evening.

So instead of going to the Margaret Mitchell House or the art festival we had thought about going to, Amanda got to go to the hospital on Saturday afternoon and meet part of my family. 

While we were there, they decided to take the chest tube out so we stepped out into the hall while they were working on that.  Her room is the last room at the end of the hall so there was a big window there and we stood in front of it.  About 30 seconds after walking out in the hall, a gun battle broke out in a park across the street from the hospital.  We saw about 20 people running from the scene.  Nurses, doctors, etc. came down to watch out the window with us.  My brother came out of my niece's room when he heard the gunshots and because he's a cop he told us we might want to not stand in front of the window while people are shooting at each other.  Good point.

After we left, Amanda wanted to stop in Trader Joe's so we did that and it was 6:00 p.m. and all I had eaten all day was four M&Ms because I'm the healthiest eater that ever was.  I was starving so we stopped at Roasters because I was about to pass out and I ate chicken fingers, a sweet potato, and some green beans because I'm sort of healthy but not all the way.  I scarfed it down.  We were both exhausted so we decided to go back to my house and just chill.

And as we sat out on my front porch in the middle of Atlanta, we heard a monkey at a neighbor's house.  I have no idea what neighbor around me has a monkey because I've never heard it before, but we both heard it plain as day.

So yes, Amanda thought we would have good tours, good art and good food.  Instead she experienced contractors, a grocery store, visiting someone in the hospital, and Roasters.

Tomorrow I will tell y'all about the party and how One Fabulous Mama almost ran over my feet with her mini-van and she slightly damaged a part of my house.  Apparently we were trying to be like my niece.  On a much smaller scale.