Friday, December 25, 2009, Days Inn – Room 101, Denham Springs, LA (written on January 22, 2010)

The last few days have been a flurry of activity. I stayed at Dad’s Sunday and Monday night and we went to eat Chinese and see Avatar on Tuesday. It was a great movie. Very visually spectacular, and the 3D effects were subtle, but added depth to the scenes.

After the movie, Dad dropped me off where Pasha was working, for an older couple who were really nice. She was baking a pecan pie and peach cobbler for them. Almost as soon as we pulled up, I ended up setting off Pasha’s car alarm because I opened the hatch to put my stuff in and then locked the doors, then unlocked them from the inside. Why that would set off the car alarm is beyond me. I guess to prevent people from breaking the window and then unlocking the door. My Dad disconnected the battery cable and Shannon had to come with the fob to turn off the alarm.

Pash and I hung out at the people’s house while the cobbler was baking and we wrote down a couple of recipes and chatted. After that, we went back to her house to pick up Shannon and they wanted to go for sushi. Sushi in Hattiesburg, MS is a bit of a weird combination, but we went to this place they like. I ordered some Miso soup and something called a Cowboy roll. It was basically barely seared beef, avocado and cream cheese. It sounded good at the time, but I found it a bit gross. I had a couple of pieces of tempura and ended up getting Pasha to drive me through the Wendy’s drive-thru because I was hungry after we’d left the restaurant and gone to see one of their friends at the hospital.

We hung out at their house and chatted and Pasha went to their storage to get the bed for the spare room. We set it up and ended up watching The Blind Side, which was a fantastic movie. Even better, it was based on a real story. Sandra Bullock kicks ass!  I tried to get my laptop online, but it wouldn’t work and I ended up talking to Laina for a while on the phone before I went to sleep.

My Dad had surgery on his foot on Wednesday and I hung out at the apartment with Shannon while Pasha had to go clean a house. Shannon bought a coffee table for Pasha for Christmas, so Shane and I helped her put the legs on it and move the old table out of the way so Pasha would see it when she got home. While Shannon was gone to pick up the table, I jogged around the apartment complex and went into the gym they have at the complex and did some weights. Man, it’d be awesome to live in a place that had a gym, indoor pool, hot tub, tennis courts, volleyball court, basketball court and even a car wash!  They’d never have something like that around here. If they did, it’d be a friggin fortune to live there! Pash came home and we went to Books-A-Million and I got Laina a signed copy of a recipe book by Robert St. John who is from Hattiesburg. When we were getting him to sign the books, Pasha told him if he needed a good web site, he should get in touch with me. I gave him my card. lol  We went to a shoe store and then dropped Shannon and Little Shane off at Shannon’s Mom’s house and Pasha drove me back to Laurel. We stopped at Piggly Wiggly to see Aunt Betty for a few minutes, then we went out to Uncle Dennis’ house for a while. He was telling us how his blood work had come back strangely three times, so they are concerned he might have the beginning stages of leukemia. That would totally suck. He’s the only uncle in my whole family that I actually like. Aunt Debbie’s been having hell with her left eye as well. She had some sort of really bad infection and the eye turned black and she can’t see out of it right now. She’s waiting for something they put on her cornea to fall off so she’ll know if they can do a corneal transplant. My god. Pash drove me back to Dad’s house and it was almost 11:00pm when I got there. Dad was waiting up for me and went to bed right after I got in. I talked to Laina for a good while online and then went to sleep.

On Christmas Eve, Marlene and I made some homemade candy – peanut cluster and pecan pralines. I’d never made pralines before and it’s surprisingly easy to do. We also made some cornbread for me to take back to Denham with me. We laid around watching TV and messing around on the computers and had a nice dinner. We opened presents after that. They gave me some slipper socks, a couple of tshirts and two framed art prints of cats by a local artist. We all went to bed pretty early because we had to get up the next day to drive me to Slidell to meet Will.

We met Will around 11:00am in Slidell and we headed back to Mrs. Lynnda’s house. We weren’t there long when Carol and Kevin and Brandon and Heather showed up to open presents. Mrs. Lynnda got me one of those blankets like the one I like at her house. It’s velour on one side and woolly stuff on the other side. Very cuddly!  Carol gave me a reusable shopping bag with a fleur de lis design on it. We all ate turkey dinner and it was awesome. Mrs. Lynnda’s broccoli casserole is to die for! Will and I went to lie down for a while and watch some episodes of Dexter until it was time to go get Laina at the airport.

It was just about time for us to leave to go to the airport when Laina called from Dallas and said her flight had been delayed due to mechanical issues. I hate waiting, so was frustrated I’d have to wait another hour and a half after having been anxious all day about her coming in. She ended up getting  into Baton Rouge around 11:30pm and the car rental place was closed, so Will had to drop us off at Days Inn in Denham.

We got into the room and commenced sucking face promptly! haha  We hadn’t seen each other in 11 days. Laina was exhausted and we fooled around, but when I was done with her, she was tired and we fell asleep.