never be anything but loud
Rare Jewel
The Smoky Mountains are a rare jewel. … Why not have a place where you can still see the stars? There is a value to keeping things primitive. – James Dawson
Today’s joy is only this: in October, Steve and I are packing up the pups and taking a road trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee where we plan to spend an entire week enjoying the Great Smoky Mountains in the Autumn and each other’s company.
Finding the Joy
Remember how in my last entry I mentioned that I needed a good rainy day or weekend to sort of justify my grouchiness and grumpiness? Then I hit publish thinking that wasn’t going to happen because you don’t get multiple rainy days here in Charleston – you get oppressively hot and bright days where the sun beats down on you and the humidity smothers your entire being then in the evening, you might get a really really good thunderstorm as the weather breaks but it’s always back to the same thing the next morning.
Except that following morning, I was startled awake by the sound of Baxter freaking out and of course, being the mama bear I am when it comes to the fur babies, I shot out of bed and ran through the house looking for him only to find him having a literal shit fit at the patio door because he had been caught in a torrential downpour. This is all fairly uncommon for him as not only has he NOT figured out to bark at the door when he’s ready to come in but he also seemed no where near as affected by thunderstorms and rain as Sammy, who cowers in fear if he hears a storm on TV.
Grim
Every time I turned around this weekend, there was death. It was in Norway and London. It was all over the local news, with bodies found behind grocery stores and boaters driving into piers. And it was a bit closer to home than I preferred, as a friend of mine lost someone to a drunk driver and a former coworker was gunned down in a murder suicide while leaving work on Friday evening.
For the most part, I wasn’t personally connected to any of these, with maybe the former coworker being the exception, but our acquaintance was rather vague since she worked at a different branch than I did and most of our interactions were over the phone and through help desk tickets. Regardless, all of these events just seemed to mushroom into this huge black cloud of darkness and grimness that has plagued my mood throughout the past few days.
It’s strange because I can’t exactly explain how I feel or necessarily justify why all of this should affect me. It’s certainly not something that I could use as an excuse to, say, call off of work or stay in bed and pull the covers over my head. It’s not personal.
But it’s a grim look into a really crappy state of human affairs and that could have it’s toll on anyone. Sure, we all go on with our lives because they weren’t people we knew but every once in awhile, that reminder of what happened or the thought that there are people suffering because of senseless violence or stupid decisions creeps back into the recesses of your brain and that sadness just settles into a small part of the heart.
It is sad and painful to think of how far that kind of suffering reaches and most of the time, you just don’t let it get to you but then you remember that people are out there grieving and you remember that it wasn’t so long ago that you grieved and you really don’t wish that kind of pain on anyone.
If Machines Can’t Eat It …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc7WRjU5G-E&feature=relmfu
… then machines shouldn’t make it!
This commercial is a current favorite in our house. LOVE IT! We always feel kind of bad for the poor guy.
(I can imagine the fist pumping that accompanied that brilliant slogan around the Hardee’s marketing table)
Things I Love Right Now
(Note: you might have seen a very very rough draft of this pop up in my RSS feed the other day. Apologies for that – I accidentally hit publish when I meant to just update my draft. Here is the real post.)
It has been hot, hot, HOT here in Charleston the past few days. I’m talking the kind of oppressive heat and humidity where you can’t catch your breath, the air feels like you’re walking through think pea soup and the only sound you want to hear is the constant running of the A/C and whirring of the fan blades. Needless to say, when it’s this hot out, there’s not a lot of things that make me happy. Except these:
