Tybee time!

It's all you need.

Larry and I spent a wonderful, restful weekend in Tybee to celebrate my 50th birthday.  We left on Friday and laughed our butts off to some good old Southern humor on Pandora -- Jerry Clower, Andy Griffith, Jeff Foxworthy, Lewis Grizzard and James Gregory -- on the way to Savannah.  We had planned to stop at a couple of Army surplus stores so Larry could shop for patches and there were two estate sales we wanted to check out, too.

I get so excited when I see signs like this!

This was at the second house, an afternoon sale that started at 1:00.  The first one ended at noon, was out near the beach and we got there at 11:30.  Whew!  The same company was having both sales so we went back to Savannah, hit the Army stores and then came back out to the beach for this one.

I am so glad, too!  I found the most beautiful Fenton vase there!  I have never seen anything like it.  I paid $15 for it, which is pretty much my limit for Fenton, but it's listed on eBay and Etsy right now for $65!  Jack In The Pulpit, they call it.  I literally gasped when I saw it. 

Just gawjus!

At the first house, an adorable little beach cottage, we found this in in the laundry room and Larry borrowed a screwdriver and took it right off the wall.  It's PERFECT for Banjo!  Larry put it up in our mudroom yesterday to hold Banjo's leashes and harness and things. 
 

I found this wall thingy hanging in a bedroom there, too, and I loved it.  The swirly things looked like S's to me and I had to have it.  And for three bucks??  Come here to me.

I think it looks nice on our bedroom wall.

We got out to the beach and found our condo.  If you go to Tybee a lot and are tired of hotels (like we were), I highly recommend the Savannah Beach and Racquet Club on Bay Street!  I bet we never stay in a hotel ever again.  We got SO spoiled!

It was such an adorable little condo!

Super clean, had private beach access to a very secluded beach, fully-equipped kitchen and balcony with a beautiful view of the pool and ocean.  And kitties!  It even came with two sweet kitties.  They showed up Saturday evening and although they looked like they were very well fed, we fed 'em anyway.  Turkey.  Tossed it down from the balcony to them.  They loved us.  

The beach was perfect, the weather was perfect.  Blue skies, lots of sunshine and that cool breeze that can only come from the ocean.  You can't get that from a fan!  Speaking of a fan, I have to have fan noise to go to sleep.  It's a childhood thing done carried over to my old age.  Gotta have my box fan!  Well, we didn't have no box fan.  We had AC and a ceiling fan, a very quiet ceiling fan.  So what did Larry do?  He found a box fan sleep sounds MP3 online and played it for me.  How sweet was that??

We played in the ocean for hours, got nibbled on a bunch of times by fish and crabs, we collected some really pretty sea shells and even found some abalone!  I read a little bit and played with sand toys a little bit and got sunburned a little bit.  It was a wonderful day!  I was at the beach ON my birthday and Larry made the whole day so special.  Sniff.

 

The prettiest shell we found had a critter still living inside.  So back into the ocean it went!

We went to the famous T.S. Chu's Department Store late Saturday afternoon and then to Bernie's Oyster House for supper.  I love love love Chu's!  It opened in the 30's and still has that old department store feel.  You can find anything there, too, from beach towels to PVC pieces for plumbing.  It's awesome.  

I went there looking for another shell wind chime to replace the one we got at Jekyll that the weather has just beat to death but when Larry found this, I changed my mind!!  Who wants another wind chime that'll just get beat to death??

And it's staying in the house, in our beachy master bathroom.

We picked up some saltwater taffy, a puzzle, two shell necklaces, a pair of fishy earrings for me and two shell plant hangers, that hopefully will hold up to the weather on the porch and not get beat to death.  :)

We saw a beautiful sunset and a gorgeous sunrise on the beach.  We left early yesterday morning and went exploring further up the beach to the lighthouse and Fort Screven.

Larry walked all 178 steps to the top of the lighthouse!  I sure wanted to go with him but with two torn ligaments in my ankle and a torn Achilles tendon in that same blankety-blank foot, I passed this time.  We'll be back!

He waved at me at every window on the way up.  It only took him about fifteen minutes to get up there and back down again.  He's fast!

 

 Somebody took his picture at the very top.

 And he took mine.

We walked around and toured the lightkeepers' house and all the buildings around the lighthouse, including the little cottage they moved over from the other side of the island and restored several years ago.

Baby toys in the house that the lightkeepers have lived in over the years.

One of the lightkeepers and his wife on the steps.  I just loved this picture.  They look so happy.

 

This is the cottage.  Sooooo lovely.  

That gorgeous wraparound porch!

And these amazing heart pine floors almost stopped my heart.

The museum at Fort Screven is so interesting!  That's the first time we've actually gone in and walked around.  And it was such a good idea, too!  It was air conditioned!  We walked around and looked at everything.  Ha!

Such wonderful Tybee Island history.  If you haven't been, you need to GO!

 

 

It had been a while since Larry'd been in a tank!

 

I was looking at the ocean through one of those coin-operated viewfinders and I put my phone up there and took a pic through the lens.

Here we are in the truck! We had such a great time.  I'm ready to make reservations for the next time we go. 

You can live forever inside a goodbye...

Galadrielle Allman has.  All of her life.

I just finished Please Be With Me, Galadrielle's extremely intimate and, oh my goodness, incredibly moving (how many times did I cry reading this book?!) story of her father, Duane Allman.  

Duane died at the age of 24, when Galadrielle was two.  So, of course, she has no memory of her father.  All she has are stories told to her by family and friends and the precious photos and recordings that she's been able to get her hands on.  I was so impressed by this girl!  Her story, their story, contains so much love, humor, wisdom and this almost unbearable, heartbreaking longing for her daddy.  I felt so sorry for her so many times.  I can't even imagine the loss, how she grew up with her daddy's face looking back at her in the mirror and how she had to tiptoe around her mother when she had questions of their brief time together, when she needed details about her father.  There was a deep hunger to know and the only way she could was to ask questions and they were sometimes painful ones.  Her Uncle Gregg helped her as did other members of the Allman Brothers Band, her grandmother (Jerry!  Such a wonderful, strong woman she was!) and people like Boz Scaggs and Eric Clapton, who were there and worked with Duane.  I didn't know that Duane does the guitar riff in Clapton's "Layla" and I certainly didn't know that the royalties for Duane's contribution abruptly ceased in the 80's and Galadrielle had to fight Clapton for twenty years in court to get what is rightfully hers.  She's a tough little cookie, that Gragri, as her daddy called her.

The story flows so smoothly and begins, well, at the Allman Brothers' beginning, with their parents, and follows the boys through their childhoods, raised at Daytona Beach by their single mother after their father was killed in 1950, through the long years of struggling to "make it big", the ups and downs of stardom, the good, the bad and the really, really ugly.

The story of her parents, Duane and Donna, is a bittersweet one.  There was no doubt to me that he adored her but the road, drugs, other women and his music consumed him.  He was a little burned-out star in no time.  Donna lived at The Big House with Berry Oakley's wife, Linda and their baby girl, Brittany and Berry's sister, Candy, while the guys were on the road.  I loved the descriptions Galadrielle gave of the beautiful tapestries and rugs and second hand furniture they collected around Macon and the pride those little hippie girls took in making a happy home for their guys.

But when he brought his road girlfriend, Dixie, to The Big House with Donna and two-year-old Galadrielle RIGHT THERE, I was like, "Now, Duane, that is too much!".  Donna thought so, too, but instead of kickin' that girl's tail, she took her baby and left.  It was as though Duane was driving her away, as though he knew something bad was about to happen and he wanted to get his wife and baby away from it.

Heartbreaking.

He died nine months later, after having an accident on Hillcrest Avenue in Macon, when his motorcycle clipped a truck. 

Galadrielle tells a beautiful story of love and loss, love for a daddy she never really had and an almost haunting longing for what should have been.

I loved it.  I didn't want to put it down.  I hardly did.

If you want your own copy, you can get it here.   

Included in the book are a bunch of family photos and this one gets me every time I look at it.

A very young daddy holding his baby girl.  It's the only photo she has of the two of them together.

A Day in HOTLanta!

Larry and I drove up to Atlanta this morning to go to Scott Antique Market.  We'd been wanting to get up there for years and we finally made time and went!  We had the best time!  That place is huge.  So huge that they have shuttle buses to take you from the North building to the South building and then back again.  

Before we went to the antique market, though, we hit an estate sale over in the Virginia-Highland neighborhood, in a tiny little 1,200 square foot bungalow, built in 1935, in desperate need of some TLC, but is STILL selling for $555,000!  Location, location, location, I reckon.  I'm guessing by my HGTV-watching experience, that it'll take about $50,000 to fix it up and that's just the cosmetic stuff that I can see.  I have no idea what's behind the walls and under the floor.  Anyway, it was an adorable little house and we got some cool stuff there.  We got a whole basket full of stuff for FREE because Larry climbed up into the attic and pulled down an old WWII footlocker for them.  In that basket were 43 Keurig coffee, tea and hot chocolate cups, some diabetic testing strips, a bottle of Sun-Ripened Raspberry shower gel from Bath and Body Works, a 1981 kitchen tea towel calendar (I love those!), a small Pyrex flamingo pink casserole dish with the lid (!!) and a cute little striped glass pitcher just perfect for lemonade.  I got all that and Larry picked up a vintage Navy peacoat, an old Georgia flag and an old Army/Navy helmet.  Oh!  And we found an old General Electric clock radio, one like I've wanted forever.  That sale was definitely worth the stop!  The neighborhood was beautiful, everybody was walking their dogs and babies and there were little shops everywhere.  We joked that we need to live in a neighborhood like that, if for nothing else but the diversity.  $600-$700K houses, though?  Naaaah.

Here are all those Keurig cups!  It's really funny how God works sometimes.  I had JUST YESTERDAY said I was going to get some coffee cups and bring them to work for our Keurig in the office and then, boom, the Lord brings me to these. 43 for FREE. 

This is the peacoat.  Oh, Larry looks sooooo handsome in it.  It fits him perfectly and there were even two other ladies there eyeing him at the estate sale when he tried it on.  Down, girls.

How amazing is this old clock???  And it works!

 

Here's the helmet and Santana's very first album.  We picked it up at Scott's for $2.

We got to Scott's about noon and we went to the North building first, not knowing any better, bless our hearts.  Don't go to the North building.  It's full of expensive carpets and expensive art and stuff you can't afford.  It's all pretty to look at but you'll leave it there.  I promise. 

See, pretty to look at.  $2,500 to $4,000.  We left 'em there.

 Freddy-the-Frog Mercury, as Larry called him.  $395

We're always looking for globes for Ami.  We looked at this one.  

 

I really did LOVE this vintage counter and stool set, though!!  $4,800 and they coulda been MINE.  Sigh.  We don't have anywhere to put it anyway.  Sigh.

 

Thanks to my good buddy, Erika, who on Facebook told me to get the heck outta there and get down to the South building, we hopped a ride on the shuttle bus and went down there.

MUCH more our speed! 

We walked around outside until we were about to burn slap up (oh, Lordy, it was HOTTTTT) and then we walked around inside, where it was nice and air-conditioned and they had fried catfish.  I found a Pyrex Daisy bowl, some political pins and oh my goodness, two sets of clackers!!!  I've been looking for clackers everywhere.  I found 'em outside, in a box, just sitting there waiting for me.  The whole clacking thing came back to me immediately and I'm proud to say that I remain the reigning clacking queen!  Larry was quite impressed.  Kinda like he is when I recite the Preamble to the Constitution to him.  What can I say?  I am a child of the 70's and I loved me some Schoolhouse Rock.

Here are the three pins I got.  Michael Dukakis was the very first person I ever voted for, in 1988, when I was 21.  I was so proud.  Been votin' Democrat ever since.

Larry actually found a lot of stuff he liked today!  Patches and pins and helmets and peacoats.  He racked up!

Here are my Pyrex bowls and that sweet little pitcher. I already had the largest Daisy mixing bowl but not the one that's this size.  Larry said I was not leaving Scott's without a piece of Pyrex.  So I didn't.

And the best part about our day??

Atlanta has NO gnats.

Li'l Bit

Our baby bird saga continues...

Yesterday a fledgling fell out of its nest and Tabbie Hoffman made a playmate out of him.  Luckily, I was able to separate the two before Tabbie killed the poor thing but by then, the little birdie had blood on his leg and wasn't flying.  He may not have been flying well to begin with and Tabbie just made things worse. He just hopped around in the grass, flapping his wings.  I freaked out, crying because it was misting rain and we couldn't find the nest and he was going to drown OMG and Larry, being the sane one in our household, gently picked him up and put him in the pretty gourd birdhouse we got at the Cherry Blossom Festival three years ago.  Just as the bottom FELL OUT.

We put a little water in there and some mealworms and hoped for the best.

Today he was still alive!  And kicking!  And not bleeding!  He just wasn't flying very well, just kinda flailing.  So we brought him inside and put him in a box.  Larry took some chicken wire and made a top for the box and he's in our mudroom, with more mealworms and a little water.  And a nice soft table napkin to lay on.  He's not bleeding at all anymore and he's pooped already so I think he just needs a few days' rest and quiet.  He had quite a traumatic encounter with Mr. Hoffman!  We're going to take him out every morning and the first morning he flies out of the box and into the trees, he's a free bird!

But until then, ain't he sweet??

I've had my heart broken already this spring with a nest full of eggs that fell in a rainstorm so I am so happy to have found this little one.  Somehow he grew in a nest in our yard that I knew nothing about. 

We're calling him Li'l Bit.  :)
  
***Update:  MORE heartbreak.  Li'l Bit died that night.  Larry buried him in a flower bed the next morning after I left for work.  I was very, very sad.

It's JUNE!!!

And my birthday month!!!  And I'll be FIFTY!!!  

Whoa.  I'll be FIFTY  BOLD UNDERLINE ITALIC

Most days, I don't feel anywhere near 50 and I'm still getting told that I don't look 50 but there were a few days in the past two weeks that I felt every day of it and then some.

First, I had a nerve die in a top molar on the weekend and couldn't get in to see my dentist until Monday.  She did call me in some medication and I got through it.  I had a root canal that next week and toofie is fine and dandy now.  I still have to get the crown and yet another crown on another tooth, but that's another day.  

As soon as I was over the root canal, I was vacuuming last Sunday and I hurt my back some kind of way.  I was in horrible pain until Tuesday when I saw the doctor.  Larry and I had planned to go back to Andersonville to visit Gus but I just couldn't do it.  I stayed in bed for three days.  I couldn't sit up, I couldn't lay down, I couldn't stand up and couldn't walk.  It was misery.  Poor Larry, he did all he could for me, to include not even sleeping so he could watch over me.  He did all the housework and laundry and took care of Banjo and Tabbie, too. I've said it before, he's a keeper.  And I'm keepin' him!  I got some steroids and muscle relaxers Tuesday and by yesterday, I was SO MUCH BETTER OMG.  Today, I'm nearly back to normal. 

I went to an estate sale after work today over in the Eagle Springs neighborhood (we love 'em over there!  $300,000+ houses and they get rid of the best stuff!!) and I saw a few things that caught my eye and then jumped into my bag.

I couldn't leave this pretty little milk glass bottle behind.  I added a hydrangea from our yard and I think it's perfect.

I have a plan to have my own "summer reading club" and read this summer.  More books, less Facebook!  Facebook is driving me crazy lately.  Anyway, so I've been collecting Lewis Grizzard hardbacks whenever I can find them.  I got this one today.  My plan is to read as many of his books this summer as I can and remind myself of a time when the world made sense to me.  I adored Lewis and I think it'll do me good to get reacquainted with him.

Speaking of the world not making sense to me, I also found this book.  Ha!

At least in 1964, it was a no-no to be friends with the (Communist) enemy.  These days, it's no big deal.  But it is.  It's still a big deal and these folks in control in Washington are going to pay for the wrong they've done.  The lies, the "fake news" they've created or allowed to be created, the outright corruptness of it all.  There will come a Judgement Day for them.  I'll call it.  I'll call it treason and I believe our Lady Liberty will, too.

But I got me one of these just in case it takes her a while.

Kevin update!

We got our first letter from Kevin today!  He's only four so the letter was written by his daddy, his papa, but it gave us a little view into his life and what he likes.  

He said:

My name is Kevin Alejandro Resendiz Rios.  I am 4 years old.  I have one sister named Danna Sherlyn.  I really like toys that have lights and make noises.  I really like going out for a walk.  I like to play in the water and I particularly like petting animals, such as chickens and dogs.

See you soon!

And he drew and colored his little hand!  We were so excited to get it!!