Edited 9/10/05: Sorry, they’ve been taken down), for you to admire. Sizing and naming those damn things was a job in and of itself. But I did it even though it took for-fucking-ever, because I love you. We left home around 10:30 Thursday morning, and with only a few stops on the way – Subway for lunch, a pee stop or two – we were in Gatlinburg by – I think – around 5. We hauled our bags up to the room – on the third freakin’ floor. Gah – admired the view from the room, and then walked down into town. I don’t remember which stores we hit, because that was on Friday and this is Tuesday and I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night. I do know that we ate at Blaine’s Bar and Grill for dinner. After that, we wandered around the town some more, stopped to buy junk at the candy store (mmmmm), and then headed back to the room, where we ate some of that candy we’d bought, watched TV, and looked at maps of the area, trying to decide how to get to Abrams Falls, which we were planning to hike first thing Friday morning. Fred bitched several times about how he couldn’t believe I was "making" him hike, and I told him he could drop the spud and I off and come back for us, which he wasn’t willing to do, and as I was looking at the map, I realized that there was a shorter hike – 2.6 miles round trip – to a different waterfall, and I offered to hike that one instead, which His Majesty agreed to. We didn’t get to sleep until late, and neither of us slept very well, because we’re not used to sleeping in the same bed, and I move around an awful lot, which was bothering Fred. Fred got up at some point and went for a walk/ run through the town. What kind of person actually exercises while on vacation, I ask you? Freak. Then he came back to the room, settled into the chair in our room, and let me sleep until about 8. We finally found the beginning of the trail to Laurel Falls sometime around (I think) 9:15 or so, and began walking. I was thrilled – THRILLED, I tell you! – to find that the path was practically vertical the entire way. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. It was, however, hillier than I’d expected, especially for a walk rated "easy." We finally made it to the top, however, and took 25,000 pictures of the waterfall. I love waterfalls, have I mentioned? We wandered around, checked out to view, and a few minutes later, we headed back from whence we’d come. We stopped to look over the vertical drop to the side of the path, and the spud kept edging closer and closer to the edge, which I responded to by grabbing her wrist, lest she trip and fall. She’s as graceful as her mother, y’know. I finally yelled "Stay away from the edge, damnit!" at her, and she did, for the most part. At one point on our trip back down the mountain, I had stopped to take a picture of something. Fred, who was slightly ahead of me, stopped as well, and turned to say something snotty, I’m sure. As he turned, he overbalanced and his arms started windmilling, his leg flailed about in the air, and he leaned toward the vertical drop. We were so high up that you couldn’t see the bottom of the drop. So I gasped in horror. With half his body hanging over the side of the mountain, his arms still flying about in the air, his right leg still trying to find purchase, and the foot on the ground halfway off the path, and his entire body about to plunge off the mountain, to be ripped and broken to shreds as he rolled to the bottom, Fred’s response when I gasped was to laugh at me. Yeah, laugh it up, dead boy. He finally found his footing again, and except for a few bitchy comments he made about all the picture I stopped and took, we made it back to the bottom without anything else happening. It took us a little over an hour to hike there and back, instead of the 2 1/2 hours the map suggested we allow. Ha! Next time, we’re definitely going to head for Abrams Falls. After our morning excursion, we went back to the hotel and cooled off and snoozed for a little while, then headed out for lunch. The last few times we went to Gatlinburg, we’d wanted to try out a restaurant called The Alamo, but it always seemed too busy, and we don’t like to have to wait around for seats, because we’re the impatient sort. So, we decided to show up for lunch, right after they open at 11. Not only was there no waiting, but we were practically the only people there for the first half hour or so. And the food, though expensive, was worth every penny. The sourdough rolls were so good that we bought a dozen of them to bring back to the room with us, and the side salads were excellent as well. Fred had steak, and the spud and I had hamburgers, and they were all very good. Two thumbs up for The Alamo! In fact, it was so good that we went back there for lunch on Saturday. Once we left The Alamo, we decided to drive into Pigeon Forge to check out our usual shops. We got back to Gatlinburg around 3, and I headed up to the room to take a nap, while Fred and the spud walked down into town again. They got back to the room sometime after 5, and we ordered pizza for dinner.
And it sucked. Really, really sucked. It was like our punishment for having a really good lunch.
I slept well Friday night, until 3 am, when Fred started snoring like a madman, and there was nothing I could do to get him to stop. The bastard. After an hour of laying awake, listening to him snore, and hating him, I did a double-somersault with a half-twist, making the bed shake like hell, which stopped his snoring long enough so that I could get back to sleep.
We got up, I dunno, at some point later that morning, and headed out to drive around the Arts and Crafts Community. I was in need of a trunk – preferably cedar – to put in my bedroom for storing stuff – and I thought perhaps one of the many arts and crafts places would have one. We drove up and around the loop, stopping at several places, with no luck. Looking at the map, I thought that perhaps a store called The Chair Place (or something like that) would have trunks, so we stopped there. It turned out that it was a custom furniture place, and the lady running the front desk went out back to get the guy who makes the furniture, so that he could give us some idea of what it would cost to have a custom trunk made.
He and Fred chatted for several minutes – a trunk this big, made out of cherry, lined with cedar – and then he thought about it for a few minutes, scribbled down some figures, and told us it would cost around $600.
I thought Fred was going to swallow his teeth, but he covered nicely, thanking the guy and taking his card.
We finished out the loop, not finding anything like what I wanted, and I shrugged, said "Guess we’ll have to wait and check out the stores when we get home", and turned to head for The Alamo for lunch. As we turned onto the main road, I glanced to my left to look at a small string of stores.
"Hey!" I said. "’Cedar chests made here’!", and we decided to drive back and check it out once we’d eaten lunch.
Unlike the day before, we had to wait for about fifteen minutes to be seated, because they’d just seated several very large parties – one of which appeared to be a wedding reception – and they were caught by surprise and understaffed. A man in a tuxedo jacket and jeans, wearing a cowboy hat and boots, looking very much like a groom.
We got tired of waiting, but since we knew how good the food was, we kept our mouths shut and just waited. See, that’s how restaurants do it – they suck you in with the good food, and then keep you waiting, because you know it’s worth it.
After lunch, we drove back to the store, bought a cedar trunk, put it in the back of the Jeep, and drove back to the hotel. Fred bitched the entire way about how our room was going to smell like cedar all the time, and it would smell like a hamster cage, yadda yadda yadda.
Of course, he complained about it AFTER we’d bought it, so he was shit out of luck. I figured if it got really bothersome, we could stick it in the guest bedroom. Actually, either the smell has faded a little, or we’ve gotten used to it, so it’s all good.
Oh, let’s see. What did we do for the rest of Saturday? We parked the car at the hotel and walked downtown, is what we did. We poked through some of the shops, we played some skeeball, and we took the ski-lift ride to the top of the mountain, which was really pretty cool. Make sure you check out the pictures, because the view from the top of the mountain is awesome. I told Fred that next time we go to Gatlinburg, we’ll have to do the ski lift to the top at night, because I’m sure Gatlinburg at night is a pretty awesome sight.
Then we ate dinner at Blaine’s Bar and Grill, wherein I got very bitchy and annoyed, because we had to wait forEVER for our waitress to mosey over and take our drink order, and I was dying of thirst. She brought my Diet Coke, we placed our order, and two seconds later my glass was empty, and I was still dying of thirst. She didn’t come back and didn’t come back, and I was slowly drying into a mummy, and frantically sucking on ice cubes to slake the thirst. "I can actually FEEL her tip going down," I snarked to Fred. When it had been forever and a day, I had a flash of inspiration. We’d gotten bottles of water at some point earlier in the day, and Fred and I had finished ours, but the spud hadn’t. I grabbed her mostly full bottle of water and dumped it in my glass of ice, and began guzzling.
Of course, as soon as I’d done that, the waitress showed up to refill our glasses. She left the pitcher with us, and after I finished my water, I slurped down another glass of Diet Coke. Our food eventually showed up, and by then I was in better spirits. We ate and then booked out of there. After a bit more of wandering the town, we headed back to the room, where we stayed for the rest of the evening, watching crappy TV and eating fudge and pecan turtles (mmmmm!).
We left around 9:30 Sunday morning and made excellent time home, arriving here around 1ish. We ate lunch, and spent the rest of the day hanging out, watching TV, and reading.
All in all, a really good vacation. Though we couldn’t wait to get home, we both wished that we’d had one more day – which is a good sign. A bad sign would be driving home as fast as you could muttering "I’m NEVER going back to that hellhole ever AGAIN!"
And now is the part where I show you pictures of everything I bought while on vacation (you can see Fred’s entry to see all the t-shirts he bought for himself):
A little kitty sculpture. Y’all know how much I like those orange tiger kitties, right?
An addition to my Quarry Cats collection. This one is Calypso.
And this one is Caz. The goofy grin is a little creepy, yet somehow cute at the same time, no?
There’s a store that sells nothing but magnets in Gatlinburg. I LOVE magnets. I also love kitties. Whee!
Fred chose this one for me.
Fred pointed this one out to me, as well.
I found this one on my own.
This one’s in honor of the Tubman.
img src=”http://bitchypoo.com/2002/May/May28New09Sm.jpg” width=”250″ height=”206″ border=”0″/>
The cedar chest. It holds a lot more than you’d think. The cats are a little freaked out by it, but I imagine that soon enough they’ll take turns sitting on it so they can look out the window it’s sitting under.
We bought this picture during our tour of the Arts and Crafts Community.
To hang on the laundry room wall above the litter box.
A set of kitty-paw-print coasters.
The dresses have a very definite similarity, don’tcha think? And it looks like Rosie and I both had been smacked upside the head by the Perm Fairy.
And while I’m sharing pictures, here’s one the spud took with her I-Zone camera. It came out pretty well, considering.
I like the way you can’t really see anything but his big, green eyes, and part of his red collar. It’s cooler looking in person, but this was the best I could get it to scan.
Speaking of the spud, I made her an appointment to have her hair cut, at her request. "But spud," I said sternly. "If grammy wants to have your hair cut short this summer, you need to tell her NO if you don’t want to!" Because my mother ALWAYS tries to have the spud’s hair cut short while she’s in Maine for the summer (while the spud’s in Maine for the summer, that is. My mother’s in Maine during all seasons), and then the spud spends the rest of the year growing it out.
I also need to see if I can’t get the spud in for a dental checkup and cleaning, which I noticed – while we were eating lunch at Applebee’s – she really needs. It’s been a while since her last dental visit, and I need to get us back into the routine of regular appointments.
Yes. We had lunch at Applebee’s. I did NOT, this time, have the oriental chicken salad, but the fried (shhhh…) chicken salad. Hey! At least it was the half salad and not the big one! And I only used about a third of the dressing they brought out with my salad.
I consider that pretty good.
I also had apple chimicheesecakes for dessert. Shhh. And damn it was good.
It was about thirty below zero in that damn restaurant, so I was glad I’d brought a jacket with me, and told the spud to do the same. And even though we were bundled in our jackets, it was still so cold that I was sitting with my arms crossed, trying to warm up. I hate it when restaurants not only have air conditioning, but are aggressively cold to the point where the tip of your nose about freezes off. When I’m queen of the world, having a restaurant too cold will be punishable by death.
You’ve been warned.
Okay, that’s it. I really am out of here now, off to finish vacuuming and packing, and checking to make sure that Fancypants hasn’t left a big pile of shit anywhere for Fred’s dad to find when he comes to feed the cats.
See you on the flip side!
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Tell me. Does this look like my dream house, or what? Big covered porches, and painted a bright yellow. If this baby ever goes up for sale, Fred’s going to be sorry!
The dollar store! That’s a definite plus in Hartselle’s favor. Actually, is there a town in existence that DOESN’T have a dollar store or two? LOVE the dollar store.
There’s a story behind this one (isn’t there always?). We were sitting at a red light, and sitting in a truck at a red light on a street perpendicular to the one we were on was a total bubba-in-training. With a ‘do rag on his head. He saw the camera in my hand – I was looking to see if there were primroses on the side of the road – and thought I was going to take his picture. I hadn’t noticed him until he started giving me the eye and looking all pleased, so when he looked away, I DID aim the camera in his direction, but before I could take his picture, he looked back at me, and since I was too much of a wimp to actually snap his pic, I pointed the camera up into the trees, and just the light turned green and Fred took off, I clicked this picture. The more I look at it, the more I like it, to the point where I made it my wallpaper.
What an unfortunate last name. And what a brave man for running for Commissioner anyway.
Dude, pigs! Little baby piglets! The pink one (I said "He’s almost as big as Tubby!") stopped and rubbed up against the fence to scratch his back right after I took this picture.
The rest of the herd. Or is it a pack? A pack o’ pigs? The one in the middle of the pack had quite an itch, apparently, because he kept rubbing up against the other piglets to scratch it.
The dawg.
Cows!
These are the buildings where the chickens roost when they’re not busy running around in the pasture eating bugs and grain.
Fred was driving pretty fast and didn’t want to slow down, so I snapped the picture too quickly, and only got part of a horse. One of these days I’ll perfect the art of snapping pictures from a moving vehicle.
Primroses! One of these days I’ll get Fred to actually stop so I can get out and take pictures of them.
I forgot to take the camera into the gas station bathroom with me this time, so here’s one taken in the mirror in the Jeep while I was waiting for Fred to come out.
Downtown Hartselle. LOVE this town!
What a cute little red Mustang convertible, isn’t it? And for sale! Too bad it’s not yellow. Note in the background that there’s an old-style Kentucky Fried Chicken sign, from back in the day before they started calling themselves "KFC", in hopes that people would forget that it’s fried food. Mmmm.. heart attack in a bucket!
That’s it for today, but there’s an entry up for tomorrow – just click the "next" button at the bottom. You can read it now, or wait ’til tomorrow. Hell, it’ll practically be like I’m still here!
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The pictures aren’t that great because the camera we had at the time wasn’t the greatest, but you get the idea of what he looked like. He was but a slip of a kitten! Who’d have ever thought he’d turn out to be the size he is today? And while I’m sharing pictures, here’s one where he’s a little older that always cracks me up.
A fly had gotten into the house and was buzzing around the light, and he was doing his best to figure out how to catch it.
Ah, Tubby. Gotta love him!
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A cat toy, a bunch of cat hair, and a couple of earplugs. I’d store stuff under the bed, but the cats like to hang out under there and would probably trash anything that got in their way.
I’m sitting here waiting for the guy to come fix the dishwasher. We’re coming up on a month since it stopped working, and it’s getting REALLY old.
I’m sure those of you without a dishwasher are reallllly feeling sorry for me, aren’t you?
I know that when I wash the dishes, they get clean, because I use the hottest possible water (and protect my hands with big yellow rubber gloves), but the spud lacks a little in the elbow grease department. I grabbed a plate the other day, and the top part – the part you eat off of – was clean, but the bottom part was greasy from who knows what.
Bleh.
Anyway, the dishwasher man is supposed to show up between noon and 3:30, and despite my hopes, it doesn’t appear that he’ll be showing up early the way he did before. This, of course, is because we have plans for this afternoon – time to go pick up this month’s supply of free-range chickens – and no doubt he’ll show up exactly at 3:30 and then spend two hours fixing the dishwasher, putting a wrench in our plans to leave as soon as Fred gets off work.
Grrr.
I spent about an hour this morning cleaning the kitchen – which doesn’t get cleaned often enough, believe you me – and dusting the entire downstairs. Fred’s parents will be feeding the cats while we’re gone, and I’d like the house to look at least halfway decent. Possibly even three-quarters decent. I was going to vacuum the entire downstairs this morning as well, but I think I’m going to wait until Thursday morning and do it last thing before we leave. The queen of procrastination, that’s me.
Today’s the spud’s last day of school, and it’s a half day for her. She should be home any minute now, and I’d take her out to lunch to celebrate, except for the whole waiting-for-the-repairman thing. When she got home from school yesterday, she said "Do I have to go to school tomorrow?", with the hopes that I’d say "Oh, it’s the last day of school. Just sleep in!" But I made her go anyway.
Something on the floor? Sit on it.
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Fred went fishing Saturday afternoon, and when he came home, he had a bucket o’ crickets as bait, which was left over from what he’d bought.
Does that sentence make any sense at all? I fear not, but I’m succumbing to cold-related fuzzy-headedness, so I’m going to let it stand as it is.
Anyway, he came home with a bucket o’ crickets, and left it on the living room floor for the cats to sniff at. Miz Poo was the most interested, and kept sticking her paw in the bucket, while the other cats (except for 
And since you’ve now had your daily fill of cat pictures, I’m going to retire to the couch with a large cup of Diet Coke, a good 
"Hey! You! You can’t have that camera in here! This meeting is closed to the public! It’s a private kitty meeting!"
Miz Poo: "Hey! Can you hear me? Turn it off or I’ll turn it off myself!"
Cameraman: "Dude! Don’t touch the camera unless you want to pay for it! DUDE!"
Tubby: "Man. I’m glad it’s not MY ass she’s kicking…"
Tubby: "So, while she’s busy. You want to kill her after we kill the Momma, or should we have Spot do it?"
Spanky: "Duhr?"
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and this is the strip from whence it came:
The reason I wanted to see the picture so badly is because one morning a few weeks ago, Fred came to wake me up to say goodbye before he left for work, and I was sound asleep with, as he put it, "A big, goony grin" on my face. And then he mentioned that Calvin picture, and for some reason, I just HAD to see it. Now I can rest easy. Thanks, Lisbeth!
Okay, let me check. Cute picture of Miz Poo? Check. Cat stories? Check. Cool comic strip? Check. Okay then, that’s it for today, y’all!
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