the women we are

a(nother) week without internet access finds me catching up (again) after enjoying an all-too-short week-long mother/daughter trip to the beaches of hilton head island in south carolina. one of our most favorite spots on earth.

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while there, we enjoyed a sunset supper and the full moon from the beach on nearby sea pines:

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another night we took a sunset walk on the beach. okay, folks, i admit it: though i love being AT the beach, i do not like being ON the beach. don’t like it AT ALL. i just can’t STAND the feel of salt and sand. (imagine a long involuntary shudder here brought on just by writing about it.) looking at the beach, listening to beach sounds = beyond fabulous. feeling it on my person = not the teensiest bit of fun. if i did every negatively-inclined word in this paragraph in all caps, it wouldn’t be enough to convey just how much i DO NOT LIKE being ON the beach. that’s why this picture of my size 5.5’s ON THE BEACH will undoubtedly prove how much i love my daughter and doing things mother/daughter style. i mean, really.

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sometimes it was hard to tell algae from sea critters, and thus we have another reason i do not like being ON the beach (did i mention that before?). though fun to look at something i just don’t see every day, i figure that’s what the zoom lens on the camera is for.

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another day we boarded a boat and cruised to nearby savannah. don’t these grasses just BEG to be stitched?

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at night we’d sit and stitch: alison knitting a purse to hold her money and key at the upcoming civil war reenactment she will attend, while i worked on alison’s deep dish, a piece that took a decided turn (partly of necessity = scarcity of resources/materials), detouring from the image that appeared to me several months ago into something related-but-different. sitting there stitching with alison those nights in hilton head, i felt compelled to stitch the names of our matriarchial lineage:

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(since my freestyle stitched handwriting is barely readable, i opted to do a stitch-over. the marker i used is a fabric marker but not of the erasable variety, so those occasional pen marks that peep out from under the thread? we’ll just consider them “shadows”.)

all too soon, our mother/daughter week at the beach was over, and it was time to head home, a trip that took a mere 14 hours because my car threw a hissy fit on I-95 which meant waiting in front of the convenience-and-liquor store for 2 hours and 17 minutes on a tow truck. temperature in the mid 90s, lovebugs swarmed and proved (once again) their preference for silver cars and our hot, sweaty skin. (can anybody tell me exactly how those disgusting gelanous bugs benefit the big world of nature? i mean, really: what is their role?)

the tow truck driver got there (finally) and despite having been told twice that there would be 2 passengers accompanying the car, still seemed (unpleasantly) surprised to hear that we would be riding with him. he loaded miss T2 (my car) (stands for Miss T’EyeWanda, the word uttered by kathy bates’ character in the movie fried green tomatoes as she repeatedly rams the car belonging to the 2 rude, self-obsessed girls in the walmart packing lot), we hoisted ourselves up the two stories to the cab of his truck, and off we went. we’d scarcely left the parking lot when he announced that he had to go pick up another car. it was near the hospice, he said, but he had no idea where the hospice was. didn’t even know there was one.

because it was now 4:28 and knowing that the dealership and car rental place closed at 6 pm, i took charge: got him to get the address from his dispatcher, googled it on my phone, retrieved the phone number, and called for directions. because the driver seemed decidedly uninterested in the impending possibility that we would be stranded in the parking lot outside a locked car dealership for the next 18 or so hours, i became chatty cathy, encouraging him to talk about his (apparent) favorite topic: his 7 drag racing cars. chevrolets all, one has a $60,000.00 engine and 3 parachutes. all have 1-3 guns (best i can tell, each gun makes the car go faster), and, except for the block, which he subs-out, mike builds the cars all by himself.

he shows more than a bit of his propensity for speed on the ride to first the mechanic’s shop where he delivered the other vehicle then onto the dealership, where we squeaked in with about 27 minutes to spare.

which would have been enough if the young woman – the very one i’d talked to on the phone 4 times that very afternoon – hadn’t been on her way out for a smoking break as we entered. now i don’t know if (a) there was some memory-sucking agent in her cigarette, (b) it was almost quitting time on friday, (c) the end of a long, hard week or (d) all of the above, but in the 12 minutes that expired between her pointing to a table and assuring us that she’d be with us in just a few minutes and her coming back in (looking at us like she’d never seen us before in her life) to inquire if we’d been helped, she had obviously totally forgotten us. and the 9 other people who were clothes in dealership insignia are either blind or big on ignoring customers, because not a single one said so much as “howdoyoudo” as they swarmed around us, filling the “hospitality center” refrigerator (no, he didn’t offer us anything as he good-naturedly endured the ribbing of his coworkers who apparently have had to fill the fridge before); answering the phone: chatting about weekend plans; and (my personal favorite): watching the golf tournament on the big screen tv in the customer hospitality center.

breathe.

the main thing is: we are safe. no small thing given what ailed miss t2. another adventure fetching miss t2: we got home around 12:30 a.m. (after seeing Les Miserables), napped till 2 a.m, then up and on the road for the 6 hour drive to get my 4-wheeled girl. turned in the rental car, picked up miss t2, and were home by 3 p.m. in time for alison’s voice students.

so that’s enough catching up for now. not much stitching going on this week or in the foreseeable future, really, given that daughter and i are renovating a house, but am hoping to stitch my way through this evening. or maybe i’ll spend my sitting time traipsing through my favorite stitching blogs, reconnecting with e-friends i’ve missed so much. if no stitching to share over the next few weeks, perhaps i’ll post snaps of freshly painted walls or newly-installed light fixtures . . .

glad to be back, i am. so very glad to be back.

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7 Responses to the women we are

  1. jude says:

    well, i was wondering and now i know and glad you are back too. stitching or no stitching…

  2. Miss 376 says:

    I used to love those times with my mum, now they are some of my most precious memories. Glad you got home safe

  3. Acey says:

    the recounting brought back vivid memories of a road trip mis-adventure on a totally different stretch of I-95. I like the addition of the names. Previous memory preservation just like the beach walks …

  4. Judith says:

    So many of the thoughts and incidents you wrote about resonated with me, especially the mother/daughter element.It’s so good to have those moments with your own precious child to hold in your heart.
    And renovating a house together…doesn’t come much better.
    Glad you are back.

  5. Cathie says:

    Couldn’t have guessed you don’t like ‘being’ at the beach – by the looks of those gorgeous photographs!!

  6. glennis says:

    the shots of the beach are lovely. so different from our beaches here, it’s good to be reminded of those east coast beaches. yes, one does have to get in the mood sometimes for the beach, be prepared for the wind, the sand, the creatures. i just find the sound of the waves soooo restorative it cancels out any of the annoyances for me.

    and car problems are ever so annoying. glad you made it back and enjoyed your mother daughter trip.

  7. Karin says:

    you were down in my locale! it took me a while to love the marshes (especially the stink), but now I just can’t get enough of them.

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