Shuttle Service R Us

When John Mansfield, a PAB board member from Gainesville, offered Jimmy a ride in his Citation, it solved the problem of how Jimmy was going to get to the monthly bank meeting in Valdosta today. The 1 1/2 hour drive from Highlands still posed a bit of a dilemma, which we solved by my driving him down yesterday afternoon, with Andy of course, and our spending the night at the Gainesville Holiday Inn.

That way, I could have him at the airport at 9 this morning, comfortable and well-rested. I'll drive down again and pick him up late this afternoon and bring him back to Highlands.

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Andy was seized by an acute attack of separation anxiety when we left the room to go get a sandwich at the hotel restaurant last night. As we walked down the corridor, we heard Andy whining piteously, then a loud thud as he hurled himself against the door. More whining, then another thud.

"We can't go," I said, turning back. "He's not supposed to be here. Somebody will report him and we'll be evicted and have to spend the night in the car."

"He'll stop in a minute," soothed Jimmy. "Come on. He'll be okay."

Thirty minutes later we were back in the room: no Andy. "I knew this would happen!" I wailed. "He's probably been taken into custody by Animal Control or something!"

Suddenly Andy's head popped up out of the travel bag where he had been sleeping on top of Jimmy's shoes. Any port in a storm.

Bright spots on a cloudy day

On cool gray mountain mornings

the flowers welcome a little rain,

and Jimmy dons a sweater and lights a fire to stave off the chill.

At the Powells', George and Karen's houseguests Marvin and Vicky Ray, and neighbors Harrison and Cookie Jones, are great company on a July evening.

No send zone

It has recently come to our attention that the antiquated computer we have up here is receiving but not sending e-mail, and we haven't figured out yet how to remedy the problem. This old clunker was a cast-off from Jimmy's office several years ago and surely is one of the oldest of its kind in existence.

Just boys

One of Jimmy's favorite things about Highlands is that he gets to see a lot of his buddy Kenny Youmans, or KDY as he often calls him, and their conversation invariably turns to the good old days at the the University of Georgia. Some name or another always pops up, and out comes the 1963 Pandora yearbook.

"Do you remember so-and-so? Wasn't he a Phi Delt?" and "Look at what's-her-name. Boy, she was good looking!" and "Well, I saw her at a wedding last summer and she's STILL good looking!"

Some things never change.

Heat wave in Highlands

88 degrees, which is what it was today, is hot for Highlands, but nothing compared to that furnace in south Georgia. A thundershower late this afternoon has cooled things off nicely though.

The trip up this weekend took longer than usual, because around lunchtime, Jimmy got a big yen for a turkey sandwich from Subway. Everybody else on the road must have had the same craving, because we got off at four different Subways at four different exits before Jimmy deigned to place his order. They were all too crowded, but the line had shrunk by the fourth stop, if only because it was after two o'clock by then.

Sometimes we stop at the Holiday Inn in Forsyth, especially if it's Sunday, for fried chicken and vegetables, but that wasn't an option this time. We had Andy in tow.

The last couple of times we've taken Andy on a trip, he's whined and panted the whole way, so we gave him a little sedative before we left. He was much happier, and so were we. We woke him up in Tallulah Falls for a pit stop, and he was still so sleepy that when he lifted his leg on a post, he toppled over.

Awwwww....

This is an experiment: our first attempt at uploading a video. Girls may think it's pretty cute; guys probably won't. (Click on title below.) If the results are successful, Jimmy will live in terror that not only photos but MOVIES of him will begin to appear.


YouTube - Cat Adopts Rabbit

Jimmy and Kenny: like peas and rice

Jimmy and Kenny Scruggs have been like brothers since they were in grammar school. In the last several years, Kenny has been fighting Parkinson's and high blood pressure, and more lately diabetes, and recently has developed congestive heart failure.

Suenelle and the children are taking him to Emory, and next Monday he's getting a defibrillator and a pacemaker installed, which should make him feel much better. Suenelle says it's been hard getting all the medicine he's on regulated, and she's trying to get all the calories she can in him which is difficult since he can't have any salt, sugar, fat, or caffeine.

Kenny is an amazing person: always so good humoured and upbeat, and you never hear a word of complaint from him.

Trip to Barney

One of our favorite things about this time of year is the fresh produce: silver queen corn, acre peas, Elberta peaches, blueberries (Buddy Coleman grows the world's best) and local tomatoes. Yesterday Jimmy and I drove the fifteen or so miles to Barney, GA (population 902) where there are a couple of good farmers' markets.

On the way there, I tried to get Jimmy to play Twenty Questions and guess whom we know who came from Barney. Jimmy didn't want to play, so I eventually told him: Andy. Andy's American Kennel Club papers from the pet shop said he was from Barney. "That dog," grumped Jimmy,"is about as much a purebred Chihuahua as I am a full-blooded Arapaho Indian." But I digress.

Because of the salmonella scare, I've been nervous about feeding Jimmy uncooked vegetables, and I came across a recipe on the Internet the other day, so I decided to try it out on a basket of tomatoes I bought.

After dropping the tomatoes in boiling water for a minute to loosen the skin for easy peeling, you halve them a put them face down in a shallow dish. Sprinkle them with coarse sea salt, freshly ground pepper, finely chopped garlic, and drizzle them with olive oil. Then bake them all day in a 200 degree oven.

I cooked these for nine hours, and I think they could have cooked a few more because they were such large tomaoes, but I couldn't wait any longer.

They have a very intense flavor, and the article said they're great in pasta salads, in omelets, on hamburgers. I doubt we'll get too far with experimentation, because we like them so much we're eating them right out of the pan.

Oh, what a relief it is......

Jimmy had to pay the piper this week: he has been miserable since Sunday afternoon when we got home from the beach. He had entirely too much fun, and got way too tired, and I am convinced that in his debilitated condition he caught a virus. It's hard to believe that a little fatigue could make him this sick.

Anyway, he's much improved today, and now we're trying to get him back to the level of health he had attained two weeks ago.

A tiny bit of trivia

In today's mail, there was an envelope addressed to Jimmy's mother, but it had been sent to our house on Trotter's Way. This has happened before, and I tossed it on the kitchen counter, thinking that I'd take it by to Mrs. Dewar later on. As I did, I noticed a familiar return address on the back, and it dawned on me that it was my letter after all, so I opened it: I was right. It was from my old sorority on Milledge Avenue in Athens, soliciting contributions.

Sometimes I forget that my first name is Dorothy, so that makes me a Dorothy Dewar too, just like Jimmy's mother. And that makes Jimmy and me another James and Dorothy Dewar, just like his parents.

Fred and Ricky

Andy and I were out early for our first walk of the day when an older gentleman strode past us. I did a double take when I saw Fred and Ricky trotting along in his wake. Fred and Ricky are the neighborhood cats. When the man got to our driveway, the three of them stopped, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag, and put a handful of cat treats on the ground for them.

"Friends of yours?" I asked him curiously.

"Oh, yes, we've known each other for some time now. I started carrying a little cat food for them, and now they're always waiting for me. Are they yours?"

"One is," I told him, "sort of. The other one sort of lives across the street."

Fred began hanging around about seven years ago. "Don't you start feeding that cat," Jimmy cautioned, but of course I did. Eventually I took Fred to the vet for shots and things, and was asked, " Would you like to get him neutered while he's here?" I agreed that that was a good idea, but an hour later, I got a phone call. "This cat you brought in? It's a female, and she's already been spayed." But Fred she was and Fred she has remained.

Ricky is a large handsome Siamese-looking cat with crossed eyes, and hind legs that are about an inch longer than the front, giving him the look of a car whose rear tires are jacked up a little too far. Ricky's primary domicile is with Dick and Lori Campbell across the street, although he spends a lot of time on top of the Drumhellers' cars.

Ricky doesn't take any grief from anybody, and will sit in the middle of the road, giving you his peculiar cross-eyed glare and dare you to run over him. He has also boxed Andy's ears on several occasions, sending him yelping.

We don't know how old Fred and Ricky are, or where they came from, or what their past was. They're just a colorful part of the neighborhood.

A whole passel of Mackeys

The fig tree

You may recall an earlier blog about Mr. Dewar's camellias that Jimmy had transplanted to our backyard last summer. To date, some are thriving, a couple continue to struggle, and one died in the spring. I feel somewhat responsible for that one's loss, since it probably could have been saved; I fear that it didn't make it because it didn't get enough water: the sprinkler system just wasn't adequate for it, and it parched.

In March, Jimmy had a large fig tree transplanted from his old yard on Park Avenue to our house, and we were distressed when we got home from Atlanta last month to find that it hadn't survived. Jimmy and I take all of our transplants very seriously these days.

This morning, Eddie the yardman and I went over to inspect it and discuss cutting it down, but lo and behold, sprouting up around its base was a multitude of tiny figlets. Now we can happily chop off all the dead branches, knowing that healthy new plants are flourishing from the old roots.

Jake and his Papa

"What's your motto these days: 'I'm going to have fun, even if it kills me?' You've been out of he hospital barely a month now, and you've got to slow down," I scolded Jimmy. My scolding is always directly proportional to my worry, and I was worried.

Jimmy was so exhausted Sunday when we got home from the beach that he slept over twenty out of the next twenty-four hours, literally, and was too tired to eat. After I nagged him to eat a little something, he complied, but ten minutes later, he upchucked his whole breakfast. He'd worn himself down to a nub, and his whole system was in revolt.

He's recovering, slowly, but I do wish he'd pace himself a little better. If he keeps this up, it'll be one step forward and two steps back. He did have a wonderful time, being at the beach with the grandchildren though, and says he'd gladly do it all over again.

The grandfather-itis bug has bitten Jimmy with a vengeance, and he (actually, we) are so smitten with these three babies that we fear we have fallen into the category of insipid grandparents who get so goo-goo and ga-ga over their little angels that their friends all run for cover until a more palatable form of sanity returns.

It goes without saying that they are the most beautiful, most intelligent, charming, adorable children in the world. Jake, the younger boy, the almost-two-year-old, who looks and acts just like Jimmy, has become completely infatuated with his grandfather. Everything is "Papa! Papa! Papa!" He follows Jimmy around and wants his undivided attention, and when he can't find him, it's "Where's Papa? Where's Papa? Where's Papa?" He climbs all over him, showering him with hugs and kisses, and of course, Jimmy loves it.

Back to the beach

Susan and Jake

Anna Alvarado, wearing my hat: isn't she a beauty?

We spent a couple of nights at the beach last weekend, came home for a few days, and could hardly wait to get back this weekend. There's never a dull moment with three children under 3 1/2, and we've loved every minute.

Pat's mother, Susan Kerns, flew down from Maryland to help out; she's wonderful with the children, and they adore her. I'm in awe of her stamina: after a day or two Jimmy and I are so tired we can hardly go, but Susan is like the Eveready Bunny.