Going Batty

I always sleep really well at my parents house. I think it's a combination of being home and being in the country. But, last night I didn't sleep well at all. I had a bad dream and then I kept reaching out for Samantha because I thought she was going to roll out of the bed. (She did that on one visit and thunked on the floor, it was kind of funny.) I also think I didn't sleep well because mom had the radio on all night. She listens to NPR in the wee hours and last night it was about dogs tracking aliens through the woods. And, no, that is really what it was about and not my bad dream. Although it may have contributed to my bad dream.

This morning Dad and I went to the Farmer's Market. The market was beautiful, much larger than ours at home. I got too see most of it but some of it is a blur because Dad was walking so darned fast. I kept asking him to slow down but I don't know if he eared me or not. On the way home we stopped at a garage sale. I went, Dad complained. I got: (everything for Samantha) a pair of clogs, a hamster ball and a Cheetah Girls CD.

We all went to the Scottish Highland Festival and Games. It was so much fun, well, except for the part where I got lost. Right when we got there Samantha and Mom went off somewhere. I had to go to the bathroom and Dad said he would wait for me. Well, he didn't. I came out of the bathroom and they were all gone. It was a big festival too. I walked around and around. I even called John to keep from crying. Finally about 30 minutes later I found them in the silent auction area. Who knew. There were awesome bagpipes and Scottie dogs. There were men in kilts throwing big iron balls and men in masks fencing. We had a wonderful time. When it was time to go Dad was lost this time. He got mad that he got lost too. He blamed us but we told him that we weren't lost, we were all together.

After the festival we went to lunch on the lake. As we were leaving I sort of forgot Dad's rule: when you get to the car you get in. Right away. I wasn't in the car, I was standing next to it leaning in and Dad started to drive away. I yelled and then he yelled and then Mom yelled. Samantha laughed.

Since Dad was mad we left him at home and Mom, Samantha and I went back out. We took Mom Geocaching. We went to locations but only found 2. Mom was hooked after her first find. The one location was in a wooded area surrounded by poison ivy. Mom and Samantha waited out in the clearing while I went in for the find. Mom was funny, she said, "don't come out until you find it!" The last one we searched for was a riddle and it drove us crazy that we couldn't figure it out.

We went to a used book store in town. Samantha got the very first in the series of "The Baby Sitter's Club" and the first in the "Goosebumps" series. Then on the way home we went to several more garage sales. Samantha got a stuffed animal whom she named Elly. I got a purse. And Mom got a picture of a dog exactly like Dandy and a Jade plant.

Before dinner we went to the creek. Samantha played with her stuffed dog, Spot. She played "animal rescue." Spot even fell in the creek. Poor Spot. The water was only up to Samantha's knees which is quite low. I sat on the bank and watched her play. I thought about how the creek has changed over the years. It is one of the most beautiful places and it took my moving away to really appreciate it's beauty. Now I try to remember to always note the beauty in things I see every day.

Dad made BBQ chicken on the grill. It was a Greek marinade that was really good. He used his 35 year old charcoal grill which sits right next to the $1,200.00 gas grill Mom bought last summer which Dad refuses to use. Those 2 crack me up. I had a beer with dinner, the only alcohol they had, in hopes that it will help me sleep better tonight. For dessert we had the orange cranberry scone type cookies Mom got at the festival. They were so very yummy. All during dinner we watched a plethora of wood peckers fly from the trees to the bird feeder. It was amazing how many there were and the variety. We saw Downy's, Red Headed and Hairy's. The dogs sat with us and the evening was so beautiful. We reminisced about such things as, Disney World when I was 4, going to see the Byrds, when I set fire in a tree and drinking creek water from old whiskey bottles.

When my parents took me to Disney we saw a show about birds. I remember Mom being upset because they were not real birds. And, they say a song that sticks in our heads to this day. It went like this: "let's all sing like the birdies sing, tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet."

Mom told about this family they are friends with named the Byrds. She told me once that we were going to see them and how disappointed I was when we got there and I discovered that they were just people and not birds.

Samantha thought the fire in the tree was a good one. My friend Beth and I had found a tree by the creek that had a hollowed out area at it's base. We thought it looked like a fire place. We were playing house and thought a fire in the fire place would be a lovely idea. Dad did not think it was.

Mom and Dad did not know about the whiskey bottles. When my good friend Kate came over and we played in the creek we would pretend we were drunk. We would find old whiskey and beer bottles that littered the creek, fill them with creek water and then drink it. Gross!

Once it became dusk we all headed for the bridge to watch the bats come out again. We were slightly late and missed them coming out of the bat house but we did get to watch them flying around catching insects. Mom and Samantha threw acorns into the creek from a bag of them Mom had collected for Samantha's visit. We could hear Zonie the African Grey yelling: "BOB" all the way on the bridge. He cracks me up how he calls Dad. It's hard to distinguish between his voice and Mom's. As we sat on the bench on the bridge and Mom said to Samantha, "I'm glad you're here." We are too.