Jaime and I drove into Anderson around midnight on Friday night. The dogs and I were exhausted and went to bed by 1am. Jaime, on a recent stunt to drink caffeine again, stayed up later with Mom and talked. Speaking of talking, it's been a more fulfilling joy than expected to hear Jaime stay up and talk with my Mother, also to hear him relating stories to my family of his point of view on some joint family memory. I never thought that I would take pleasure in those things, never thought they would mean so much to me but they do. Jaime is beginning the long process of becoming as much my family in memory as my own family I grew up with.

The dogs woke me up at 7:15 this morning and they are still wide awake. I went to bed last night with a migraine and dreamed of ways to get rid of it including drinking water that my dogs poured for me in these long tall glasses. I just woke up and took some medicine which I'm sure is what my dream intended for me to do.

Last night I went on a walk with Dad around the new neighborhood. Floods of homesickness came rushing back to me only this time it wasn't for people or places or even things. It was for how Anderson "feels". We walked around and talked about houses and Dad told me who lived where etc. I suddenly realized that walking around Birmingham would have been sitfling in the humidity. Walking around Anderson, however, was like walking in a dream. I'm not even kidding here so don't laugh! It was the perfect temperature outside, plus!, there were like.. NO bugs. It was my favorite time of the day, when the sun gets ready to go down but it's not quite dark yet. Everything glows in that light you know. Everything is surrounded by a halo, a southern halo. In that moment I really missed what Anderson offered me my entire childhood. I began to remember running through my old neighborhood playing with friends. We stopped to talk to some friends and a grandfather said to his grandson, "Tonight I'm gonna build a big fire and we're gonna sit up and watch for fireflies". I forgot all about that, but as I walked around outside with my Dad I remembered. I don't wish I could move back to Anderson, I've really and truly begun to enjoy Birmingham, but I miss those summer nights in the upstate. Not to throw back to Grease or anything but I do miss them.

So today we're packing up and getting ready to drive down to Charleston. I wish I could say that the forecast looks better today than it did yesterday but that wouldn't be true either. I really REALLY hope that it doesn't rain every day that we're there. And that if it does it would at least give us a few hours of sunshine. It's not a lot to ask. It really isn't, I mean, we are sacrificing hours of saved vacation time here to the vacation gods (so to speak, no this has nothing to do with my "faith" talks) the least they could do is give us some quality sunshine by which we can go crabbing. That's all I'm asking for really.

Oh and I forgot to tell you, I found my bikini at Target after all and no I don't look like a whore, I look like a respectable fashionable hot person.