they’ve got catfish on the table, they’ve got gospel in the air

January 29, 2009 | Filed Under Children & Babies, Lifestyle PJ, Personal | Leave a Comment

We arrived in Memphis on my daughter’s birthday. She spent the day swimming at the Marriott, and that evening we took her out for a trolley ride and a special birthday dinner at Blues City Cafe, because… well, can you possibly think of a more appropriate place to celebrate your last single-digit birthday than on Beale Street? Yeah, that’s right. I thought not.

We walked around town, picked up a few more birthday goodies for her (a Billie Holiday CD and t-shirt), then headed back to the hotel room where we had room service deliver cake and ice cream.

The next day was New Year’s Eve; we’d planned to visit Graceland and then ring in 2009 somewhere fun in town, but those plans were shot when my son came down with a really painful earache. My husband drove to Arkansas to pick up some garlic oil (or, as my son called them, “magic drops”) and some children’s motrin while I tried to keep him calm and quiet with all the methods I could think of- hot compresses, hair dryer, etc.; thankfully when my husband arrived with the goods they seemed to do the trick fairly quickly, and the combination of the drops and the motrin really helped keep him pretty happy throughout the day. My husband and daughter did some swimming, we enjoyed some drinks and got in the hot tub for a bit while our garlicky little lad- we’d taken to nicknaming him “Angelo”, which didn’t seem to amuse him as much as it did the rest of us- sat on the edge, dipping his feet in and chatting away. He seemed well enough that night to venture out for one last trolley ride and some seafood, then it was back to the hotel where we rang in the New Year in our room. Despite his desire to stay up and “blow the horns” with us, poor Angelo didn’t last until midnight.

goin’ places that I’ve never been

January 25, 2009 | Filed Under Children & Babies, Fine Art, Lifestyle PJ, Personal | Leave a Comment

One of the best aspects of this vacation was the kind of whimsical way we charted our route; “Hey, we’ve never been there before. Let’s check it out!” So it was that we chose Little Rock, Arkansas as a stopping point on the journey.