There’s No Predicting Dogs

I like to think that we know Emma and Duke pretty well.  I’ve had Emma for eleven years, we spent a lot of time together when I took real estate pictures for work (she rode with me nearly everywhere I went), and I’m generally pretty tuned it to what’s going on with her.  We’ve had Duke for a little over a year now.  A lot of that time (about the first six months or so) was spent cuddling on the couch with him while he went through heart worm treatment and a leg amputation.  Again, I feel like we’re pretty tuned in to what’s going on with him.

Most of the time we’re very good at predicting how and Emma and Duke will react to situations, what they’ll like, what they won’t like, when to break out the thundershirts, etc.  But, every now and then, they like to surprise us.

We took Emma (it was about a month before Duke entered our lives) on vacation to the beach for the first time last year.  We didn’t expect Emma to go in the water.  She assures us every time it rains that she will most definitely melt if she gets wet.  She has no interest in streams or rivers whenever we take her hiking, and let’s not even talk about bath time. 

So we really didn’t expect Emma to go into the water.  At all.  But it turned out that she loved it.  She didn’t go in very deep, but she waded and had a great time running through the waves.  Surprise, surprise! 

When this year’s vacation finally rolled around last week, we just knew that Duke was going to love the ocean.  He frolics in the rain, and drags us into any stream or river he finds while hiking.  He’ll even just flop down into the water and lay there to cool off. 

We thought he’d love the ocean.  Once again, we were wrong.  Duke wanted no part of the ocean.  He didn’t like the waves coming at him.  He loved the sand, loved running on the beach, loved chasing birds and crabs, and unfortunately loved trying to eat any trash he found on the beach.  He just wasn’t having the water.  Surprise, surprise!  Again. 

I guess we can’t always predict dogs, no matter how well we may know them.  Has your dog, or any other fur kid, surprised you lately?

The Best Vacation(s) Ever

Carrie at The Slow-Dripped Life is having an incredible give-away.  You can read more about it here.  I am definitely participating in this one!

This week’s question is “What was one of your most cherished travel memories/trips?”

I’m going to answer this in two parts; my best travel memory as a kid, and my best travel memory as an adult.

Pandas at Zoo Atlanta

As a kid it was definitely when we went to Disney World.  Somehow, when I was thirteen years old, I won a free trip for four to Disney World.  The closest we came to figuring out how I managed this was that I must have been trying to enter to win a stuffed animal or something (I used to fill out tons of the entry forms for all of that stuff in the grocery store while my mom shopped) and just hadn’t paid attention to the fine print.  I was thirteen; fine print didn’t really matter to me!

It was a rainy Sunday afternoon and we were baking cookies the day the letter informing me I’d won came in the mail.  My parents didn’t believe it, and very nearly threw it away.  I pitched the kind of fit that only a thirteen year old girl can, and convinced them to at least call the number and make sure it wasn’t real before getting rid of it.

Tiger at Zoo Atlanta

It was one hundred percent legitimate.  It was five day, four night, all-inclusive trip for four to Disney World.  It included air fare, all meals, accommodations, and more passes to parks than we could possibly use. 

It was truly an amazing experience.  We didn’t take very many vacations when I was a kid; my mom was a stay at home mom, and my dad worked all of the time just to make ends meet, so vacations didn’t happen much.  When we did go on vacation there was always concern about how expensive it might be, but not this time. 

This place was interesting!

We went to all of the Disney parks, ate in fabulous restaurants, and stayed out until we are practically dead on our feet.  It was also the first time my sister and I ever flew.  We had so much fun, and we were able to see our parents kick back and have a wonderful time too, without worrying about paying for anything.   I think it’s probably the best vacation we ever took as a family.

My favorite vacation as an adult has been this year’s anniversary vacation.  My husband and I haven’t been on very many vacations together, but this year we went to Atlanta for our anniversary.  I had always wanted to see panda bears, and he really wanted to see the Jimmy Carter Museum.  We also went to Coca-Cola World, and the Margaret Mitchell House.

The highlight of the trip for me was the zoo.  I finally saw panda bears!!!  They are such beautiful and amazing creatures.  We spent hours at the panda bear exhibit.  They sleep a lot, so we came and went from the exhibit quite a bit though out the day.  We also had some wonderful conversations with some of the volunteers at the zoo who were fellow panda bear fanatics. 

This was also the first trip where we went to places that only one of us was seriously interested in; the Margaret Mitchell House was pretty much my pick and the Jimmy Carter Museum was pretty much Nick’s pick.  It turned out that we both had an excellent time at both of them and learned a lot of new things.

We take this kind of picture every year.

I thought an anniversary trip was the perfect time for learning that we were more interested in some of each other’s interests than we thought we were.  It was also just nice to get away.  We weren’t able to take a trip on our anniversary last year, so it was wonderful to get away this year.

I was also reminded on this trip how lucky I am to be married to my husband.  At the Margaret Mitchell House there was a lot of information about how much her husband helped and supported her in her writing.  I’m not sure if she ever would have written Gone With The Wind without him.  My husband is very supportive of my desire to write, and encourages me to keep going, even when I think we need to have a big bonfire.  I think I sort of took that for granted before. 

Also, when we checked out of our hotel, everyone at the front desk said they were so sad to see my husband go because he was so nice and pleasant.  A few people even said that he made their day a few times when he came in and smiled and said hello.  I’m lucky to be married to the person people hate to see go, but sometimes in the course of daily life that’s easy to forget.  This trip reminded me of that.

Home Sweet Home

I think this is the longest stretch I've gone without posting anything since I started this blog.  But, we were on vacation most of last week, and spent most of the time before that getting everything ready and taken care of for us to be on vacation.  I think that’s a good
enough excuse.

We went to Atlanta September 25 – 29th for our anniversary, which was on the 28th.  We had a great trip, and it was especially nice because we hadn’t been able to manage an anniversary trip since our first anniversary.  (This year was our fourth.)

We went to the World of Coca-Cola, the zoo, the Jimmy Carter Museum, and the Margaret Mitchell House, and had an epic fail with our attempt to use the public transportation system there.

The World of Coca-Cola was interesting, though it was a little more geared toward kids than we expected.  The bottling part was closed for renovation, so we didn’t get to see that.  We both enjoyed the history parts, and I really enjoyed the part about the public outcry when they introduced “New Coke” in the early 80s.  I’m a purist when it comes to Coke.  I believe they will never improve on Coca-Cola Classic, so I enjoyed watching videos of demonstrators who felt the same way.

The tasting room was fun.  It was interesting to see how different the sodas available other places are from what we’re used to here.  My husband tried all (I think it was 65) flavors.  He liked most of them.  I probably tried about 30 – 35, and didn’t really care for most of them.  Like I said, I’m a purist.  I like the Coca-Cola Classic.

Zoo Atlanta, my favorite part of the trip, has got to be one of the happiest places on earth.  They have Giant Pandas; four of them.  I have loved Giant Pandas pretty much all of my life.  I can remember my panda bear obsession as far back as when I was seven.  My mom says it started before then, though she’s not sure of an exact age.  It’s safe to say I’ve loved them for a very long time.  I have always wanted to go see them, but it just never worked out before now.

We arrived at Zoo Atlanta when the gates opened, snagged a map, and made a beeline for the Panda Bear Exhibit.  Seeing photos and videos of them just doesn’t do them justice.  Seeing them just a few feet (or inches, depending on the enclosure) away was a trulyamazing experience.

Giant Pandas spend a large part of their day sleeping, so we came and went from the exhibit all day long.  We’d go watch them eat and play,
and then go move on to something else after they fell asleep.  We were
also able to chat with a few very knowledgeable volunteers about the
pandas, and how things worked with breeding them, conservation
efforts, etc.  These people know their panda bears!

We also saw tigers, gorillas, went to the petting farm (where I found
a fat goat I wanted to adopt), and went through a living tree house
(that was really neat) with various birds and monkeys.  Quite a few of
the exhibits had volunteers just kind of hanging out around them
talking to people about the animals, their habits, status in the wild,
etc.  It was nice; they weren’t in your face forcing you to have a
learning experience, but would answer any questions and tell you as
much as you wanted to know.

The next day we attempted to ride the MARTA, which is Atlanta’s
public/mass transportation system.  At least that’s what they say.
They also say it’s convenient and easy.  They lie.  I could say a lot
more than that, but I try not to use profanity on my blog, and I
really don’t know how to share the full MARTA experience without
profanity.

After about four and a half hours of mostly walking, being approached by panhandlers, talking to two very nice police officers (I’m sure we were their “honey you won’t believe these yokels from NC” stories when they got home that night), riding two separate buses for about 15 minutes each, being dropped off on the side of a highway, getting really sweaty and cranky, using all of the dirty words we know, and walking several miles we arrived back at our motel still never having reached our destination of the Jimmy Carter Museum.  Yep, MARTA is that convenient.

We then decided to print out directions in the motel lobby and drive to the Jimmy Carter Museum.  Even with all of my missed and wrong turns we made it there in about a half an hour.  It was much more interesting than I thought it would be.  I didn’t really know what to expect, and I half-way thought it might be a little self-serving, or a blow your own horn kind of thing, but it wasn’t at all.  It was very,
very interesting.

There was a lot of focus on people who helped to shape his life and
ideas, and a lot of information about Rosalynn Carter and her work.  I
knew practically nothing about him and nothing about her, going in, so
it was a nice learning experience.  We left with a very long reading
list of books by and about them that we want to read now.

The Margaret Mitchell House was very interesting, though it was much
smaller than we expected.  It’s mostly a gift shop with tons of Gone
With the Wind items.  There’s also a gallery with magazine and
newspaper articles about the book and movie, and some information
about her career as a journalist.  There’s also information about the
charity and volunteer work she did.  I didn’t realize how much she had
done, and how many causes she quietly supported, including things that
weren’t necessarily very socially acceptable at that time.

The house was converted into apartments at the time that Margaret
Mitchell lived there and you tour the apartment she lived in while
writing Gone With the Wind.  It’s very small, but is cozy and cute.
It’s not furnished with any of the original furniture, but is
furnished with antiques from that time period, as close to what they
had as possible.  The history of the house, and the efforts made to
preserve it was also very interesting.  We left there with even more
books added to our reading list.

All in all, we had a really great trip; we went to some fun places,
and had some really great food.  It was also really nice to just get
way from everything for a few days.

However, we were very happy to come home.  We missed the fur kids and
were very happy to see them again.  And there’s just something about
being at home, in your own space.  It’s comforting and familiar.  The
sheets and towels smell like our laundry detergent, the lamps are in
familiar places, the bed cradles you just right, and it just feels
like where you belong.  There’s no place like home sweet home.