Homecoming and Baseball

For those of you who may have had your suspicions...No, I'm not dead.  I have actually found myself wondering that about people from time to time when I've been reading a blog for a long period of time and the person suddenly up and stops posting. I really hope she's okay.  I mean, what if she died.  It's not like I'd ever know.  Should I send her an email asking if she's okay?  But then if she is okay and just hasn't posted then she'll probably think I'm some sort of crazy stalker person. I really hope she didn't die...

Or is it just me who thinks of stuff like that? 

Because I do tend to over think EVERYTHING.  Charlie and I got on that subject when we were on our way to Georgia last Friday.  He knows about my irrational (though I don't really see it as irrational) fear of tractor trailer trucks on the highway.  I just don't trust that the driver won't up and decide to come over at the last second and flatten us like a pancake.

The conversation then turned to the depths of my worries when I confessed to him that I'm pretty much always worried about something. He said that you'd never know I was always worrying and I said that's because if I did express every worry I had no one could stand to be around me.  

But enough about my worries.  I want to talk about the very long overdue trip to my hometown of Rome, Georgia.  I'm not even sure how it happened but that was the first time I'd visited in fifteen years.  My dad lives there but he comes to visit us a few times a year and after I had kids, I just somehow got out of the habit of going. 

I thought the boys would be interested in seeing where it all started out for me, their mother, but it turns out they didn't exactly share in my excitement over riding the nostalgia train.  They were forced aboard, nonetheless...

Look, boys!  There's the hospital where I was born though it's a lot bigger now.  And this downtown area is where we used to come on Saturdays before they built the mall...We called it "going to town".  And here's the little house I lived in until I was two....There's the house my babysitter lived.  You know, she was just like a grandmother to me...And you see that big Magnolia tree there in the front yard?  That tree is the reason I love Magnolias so much. And there it is...the house I grew up in...lived there from the time I was two until we moved to North Carolina when I was fifteen.  Wow!  Does anyone even live here?  The grass is like three feet tall!  And what happened to all the big pine trees?  Oh look, it has a metal roof now.   Oh over there's where the Sears used to be. I loved going there on Saturdays and getting a new 45 for my record player.  They were one dollar...

And that's pretty much how the whole weekend went.  I somehow could not prevent myself from pointing out every single landmark I remembered from my childhood. I've always been a sucker for nostalgia.  

But the boys didn't really perk up until we rolled onto the spacious campus of Berry College where the deer are aplenty.  They could not believe their eyes and were all, "Wait 'til Popaw hears about this!"  They were referring to their paternal popaw who is a hunter, just like Darin was and just like they aspire to be.  I, for one, will never understand how anyone could shoot Bambi's relatives but I long ago accepted the fact that hunting is in their blood and it is what it is.  

I was more excited about seeing my long lost family members, Lynne (my second mother) and Stephanye (my step, and only, sister) and all of her family.  The boys found an out of the way place and got lost in their Ipods until we tortured them by making them go outside for a photo shoot.

Sunday we headed to Atlanta where they (and Charlie) saw their first major league baseball game ever.  And it couldn't have been a more perfect game had I special ordered it.  The Braves got off to a rocky start but came back to win it at the bottom.of.the.ninth. and  Chipper Jones, who is retiring after this season, hit a three run homer to win it! 

It was like being right smack dab in the middle of some feel good Disney movie, I kid you not.  The crowd (well all except for my two boys, who also each received a healthy dose of my genes, and me)  were going CRAZY!  I was behind the camera snapping pictures like a fool which was no easy feat what with all the jumping, high-fiving, and flip-cutting that was taking place all around me.

Seriously, I'm not even a huge sports fan (though baseball is by far my favorite) but it was one of those unforgettable, chill bump-inducing moments.  Straight up awesome sauce. And I'm not sure my dad and brother Nate, both die hard Braves fans, have stopped smiling yet.  

Then Monday came and it was time to fight the rain, the traffic (and the tractor trailer trucks) on I-85 North.  And the boys somehow managed to get us to stop at a ginormous fireworks store in South Carolina where they pushed around a buggy until we finally forced them to checkout so we could make it home before school on Tuesday morning.  

A Tuesday morning in which I had a dental checkup and our coffeemaker decided to die. Well, actually I think it died sometime over the weekend because that sucker was completely void of life.  Just like that.  It was dead.  No warning or anything.  So in between my dental appointment and grocery shopping I had to buy a new coffeemaker too. 

According to my first blood pressure reading at the dentist (what my blood pressure has to do with my teeth, I'll never know) I actually was dead because (as I warned her it might), it came up as an error.  The second time it said I was alive, but only barely.  The reading was something like 87 over 50.  Well, at least I don't need to add the possibility of having a heart attack to my list of worries...