One of my good friends from college and her husband are both in the Army and are currently stationed at Fort Gordon in Augusta. Augusta is not a very easy city to get to from Baltimore, so I decided to take advantage of the fact that it’s only a 4.5 hour drive from my parents house in Florida to drive up and visit them for the weekend.

I do love a good road trip. I rarely get the opportunity to take road trips these days as despite all the hassles it is so much quicker to fly most of the places I’m trying to get. With limited time off work I hate to spend half of my vacation driving. I did enjoy getting to head out on the road for this trip.

I also had a nice visit with my friends. I got to see their new lake house, although sadly the lake part was kind of missing. The drought plus work on a dam that creates the lake left their little inlet pretty much waterless. It is a really nice house though and I’m jealous. I want a lake house.

They’ve also gotten two new dogs since the last time I visited them bringing their total up to three, which is a little crazy. Their dogs are all really sweet though, and I am totally not a dog person. Their newest dog is an approximately 6 month old black lab that that they took in after finding it wandering around their house very hungry and covered in ticks. Even though I dislike dogs I might have run off with Spike if there was a way to keep him puppy sized. He was so sweet and funny. He was totally the little brother following around the older dogs and mimicking what they were doing. And I love the gangliness of puppy sized versions of big dogs.

Now I’m back in Florida and enjoying the last few days of my vacation before I have to head back to the real world.

One of my good friends from college and her husband are both in the Army and are currently stationed at Fort Gordon in Augusta. Augusta is not a very easy city to get to from Baltimore, so I decided to take advantage of the fact that it’s only a 4.5 hour drive from my parents house in Florida to drive up and visit them for the weekend.

I do love a good road trip. I rarely get the opportunity to take road trips these days as despite all the hassles it is so much quicker to fly most of the places I’m trying to get. With limited time off work I hate to spend half of my vacation driving. I did enjoy getting to head out on the road for this trip.

I also had a nice visit with my friends. I got to see their new lake house, although sadly the lake part was kind of missing. The drought plus work on a dam that creates the lake left their little inlet pretty much waterless. It is a really nice house though and I’m jealous. I want a lake house.

They’ve also gotten two new dogs since the last time I visited them bringing their total up to three, which is a little crazy. Their dogs are all really sweet though, and I am totally not a dog person. Their newest dog is an approximately 6 month old black lab that that they took in after finding it wandering around their house very hungry and covered in ticks. Even though I dislike dogs I might have run off with Spike if there was a way to keep him puppy sized. He was so sweet and funny. He was totally the little brother following around the older dogs and mimicking what they were doing. And I love the gangliness of puppy sized versions of big dogs.

Now I’m back in Florida and enjoying the last few days of my vacation before I have to head back to the real world.

My parents and my grandmother live in Amelia Island, Florida, which is in northern Florida outside of Jacksonville and about 30 miles south of the Georgia border. They live within walking distance of the beach, so coming to visit them is like taking a little beach vacation. Of course since it is far northern Florida they do have seasonal weather, so when I come for the holidays it’s not beach appropriate sadly. I usually try to make it down for a week in the summer though, and here I am.

I adore walking on the beach. I love the waves washing up over my feet while I’m walking barefoot on the sand. It’s a lovely way to get your exercise in. I of course also enjoying getting to see my family (except when they’re trying to berate me into becoming a Republican). In addition to my parents and grandmother I’m also getting to visit with my Uncle Dan and his girlfriend Connie and my great-Aunt Ann and her son Jim. I actually won’t get a chance to see the latter two until Sunday evening when I return from my weekend trip to Georgia as the are driving up from West Palm Beach today and probably won’t get here before I leave.

I also get to enjoy playing cards while I’m here. If you grow up in my family you learn to play cards at an early age. When we’re together there is almost always a card game going on. My husband and friends don’t seem to be much into card games. We play board games from time to time, but never cards. So it’s always nice to get some card playing while I’m down here even when they’re taking all my money. Trust me there are no friends at this card table.

What are your favorite things to do when you’re visiting your family?

Believe me when I say I never thought I would be one of those people who enjoys exercising. I have always been prone to a more sedentary lifestyle. I am not athletic. I have never been a fan of team sports and all the years of playing tennis as a child resulted in me being a mediocre tennis player at best. I haven’t picked up a racket since high school, so you can tell how much I loved playing tennis. I was fairly decent at getting to the gym during my latter college years, but crazy schedules and lack of money during graduate school let me get out of the habit of exercising quite easily.

After I started working at the library I joined the university’s gym, but as I was in graduate school and working full time I would only manage to make it for about 30 minutes a handful of times each week. Once I finished graduate school that all changed. I started hitting the gym every day after work for about an hour and a half and somehow managed to fall in love with it. Now I hate the days I have to miss it, which is definitely not something that I thought would ever happen. I always thought I would be one of those people who had to force myself to exercise aside from the times I have the pleasure of enjoying a walk on the beach during vacation or something like that.

Don’t get me wrong I am still not an exercise fanatic. I am still not athletically inclined and do not push myself near as hard as I probably should. I’m probably getting by on the bare minimum, but at least I’m getting by. I have lots of friends that are crazy runners and bikers and who are constantly training for some race or other. I am not one of those people and doubt I ever will be partially because I’m lazy and partially because my poor body can’t take the strain.

One of the reasons I have learned to love exercise and not take it for granted is because due to being blessed with not one, but two autoimmune disorders there have been significant periods in the past 6 years that I have barely been able to walk let alone think about getting in any kind of exercise. Unfortunately I am more prone to tendonitis and haven’t been able to lift weights without resulting in long lasting pain for at least a year and half. I still miss being able to do that, but recent attempts based on exercises I got from my physical therapist immediately reminded me it was still no longer an option. So I try to never take for granted when I am healthy enough to exercise.

I also found one of the keys for me is to do something while exercising that helps pass the time. What this thing is varies from listening to a good music playlist or podcasts I enjoy or watching episodes of old television shows on my iPod Touch while I work out. I have made my way through a number of series I missed for whatever reason when they were originally airing. I am currently watching The West Wing. In the past I’ve gone through Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Battlestar Galactica, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Terriers, Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place, Sports Night, Dead Like Me, Tru Calling, and Everwood. I also watched about 5 episodes of Felicity before deciding that show made me want to shoot myself in the head and moved onto something else.

This morning I had the pleasure of having the gym to myself for a significant part of my workout, which never happens. By the time I get back from my vacation it will be crawling with students who will have returned for the Fall semester, and I will once again be back to fighting for a cardio machine. So I’m relishing its emptiness while I still can and already looking forward to their next break.

My mother has requested a post on the other cats I’ve owned throughout my life. I’m not sure why because she is the one other person who is already familiar with all of these cats, and I think she’s probably overestimating anyone else’s desire to read about them. Also I don’t think her request really falls under the purview of this blog since it’s supposed to be a blog about things that are currently making me happy. However, it is my blog so technically I can write about whatever I want. So for you sticklers out there we’ll just say that what is making me happy is making my mother happy by writing this post. For those of you already bored by the cat posts I promise they won’t make another appearance any time soon.

I got my first cats when I was either 2 or 3. I’m a little fuzzy on the math there. We lived in Ohio on 4 acres of land at the time. We had a barn, and my parents got the cats to help keep down the rodent population. My sister and I each got to name one. My cat was named Friend and my sister’s cat was named Baby. If I recall correctly, which I might not, I believe Baby escaped from the car as we were attempting to bring him home from the vet after getting neutered and was never seen again. Even if that’s not how it went down, Baby was gone before we moved from Ohio to Georgia. Friend made the trip with us, but didn’t stick around very long. When I was in preschool we had some sort of pet show where everyone brought in their pets. Thinking back on it, it seems like a really bad idea. At any rate we were standing outside on the preschool grounds that were surrounded by woods. My sister begged to hold the leash that the cat was on but let go of it when she was tired of holding it and of course the cat took off. We never saw Friend again after that. A fun little side note about Friend and Baby is that my mother used to make us cat shaped pancakes when we were little and I remember that my sister always got the fatter pancake because Baby was the fatter cat.

We didn’t get another cat for a number of years after Friend ran away. I have always been a cat person, so I always wanted another one. We had a dog though and apparently that was enough to deal with on the pet front. When I was in third grade though my dad with the help of some friends was turning our deck into a sunroom and sent my mom to the hardware store to pick up something for him. She also stopped at the grocery store nearest to the hardware store instead of where she normally shopped to pick up some food. Someone was trying to give away free kittens in front of the store and that is how we wound up with Mittens. I remember being over at a friend’s house and my sister calling to tell me my mom brought home a kitten. I didn’t believe her, especially since my mom was telling the story and saying it was fate that she wound up at that grocery store. I kept thinking my sister was telling me the cat was fake. I’m not really sure I knew what fate was at that age. Mittens was kind of a mean cat, but he was my cat and I loved him.

I’m not sure how old I was when we got Licorice. I’m also not 100% sure I remember how we got her. If I’m remembering correctly someone dropped off a box filled with a litter of kittens at the intersection by our house and we wound up adopting one of them. I remember the kittens being left there, I just can’t remember for sure if that’s where we got Licorice. Mittens hated Licorice and since they were indoor/outdoor cats he started staying away for days at a time. Sadly Licorice got hit by a car and did not survive. I’m not sure exactly when that was. As you can tell my ownership of this cat is a little fuzzy.

When I was in 7th grade we moved from Georgia to Massachusetts. Mittens was traumatized by the whole moving experience. He hate the car ride during the move and having to be kept on a leash during our travels. We also stayed in a hotel when we first got up there and had to board our pets. Mittens had never been boarded before so that was further trauma for the poor cat. He was back at the house and locked away in some room on the day the movers brought our furniture. Someone opened the door and he bolted. The doors to the outside were open because of the movers and Mittens escaped. We never saw him again after that.

To placate their children after uprooting them and losing their cat, my dad took us to pick out kittens from a litter he saw someone giving away on his way to golf. That’s when we got Allie and B.J. Allie was my cat. I had already decided if my cat was a girl she was going to be named Allie (like an alley cat) or Tom if it was a boy (like tom cat). My 7th grade year old self was obviously insanely clever. B.J. was my sister’s cat. His full name was Bubba Joe. I don’t know where she came up with that and no one ever called him by his full name except the vet. Allie and B.J. were with us for quite some time. They both made the move to Texas with us and also the move to Illinois. B.J. died one summer when I was home from college. He had been in failing health for awhile and my mom was doing her best to keep him alive with medicine and IVs. Apparently his potassium levels got off though and his heart failed. My mom said he was just walking and fell over. There wasn’t much they could do to save him, so my mom had him put down. Allie made another move down to Florida where my parents now currently live. They bought a house down there a few years before they actually moved, but my sister wound up living in the house while she went to school at the University of North Florida. At some point my mom took Allie down there to live with my sister and then inherited the cat back after my sister moved to Boston. My parents also inherited Nomar (named after former Red Sox player Nomar Garciaparra), which is the cat my sister adopted because she thought Allie was lonely after B.J. died. Allie died at a ripe old age. She was a little sad there at the end. She lost one of her eyes due to an infection and eventually died though I can’t remember exactly from what. My parents still have Nomar, and that is the story of all the cats I’ve ever owned.