Parades

3:30am – Can’t sleep. For a couple of hours now I’ve been an unwilling spectator in a paradoxical parade filled with participants and floats from my yesterday and of my anticipated anxieties of the coming day. Parade line up is as follows:

• A float filled with folks donning orange & white vests and gleaming gold rapper necklaces with large diamond studded money symbols. The Home Depot employees are cheering on the crowds while tossing 40% off pre-Black Friday Appliance sale coupons and wooden paint stirrers. There’s James, the paint guy, Linda from customer service, and man bun fella who advised me wrongly about a mop for a floor project.
• Synchronized tradesman marchers – think shriners minus fezzes. They’ve all got the same perfectly timed responses including audible intake of oxygen before delivering their “best price”, accompanied by one or more of these responses learned at tradesman marching camp: “If this was a ‘regular’ situation I could do it for x amount (a number considerably less than quoted)”, or “I’m not gonna lie to you, this is going to be a difficult job”, or “You’re not gonna like this, but…”.
• A haggard raft filled with wet, starving, homeless and hopeless Syrian moms, dads, and children. Their float is followed by a pickup truck filled with ‘Murican self-righteous, self-proclaimed religious fundamentalists sporting their flags, their misinterpreted hand manuals, and their guns. The Syrian’s are not phased – same hate, different extremists.
• A potbelly pig float….an 18 wheeler bed sporting my Doodaru (my brown Subaru), a $200 pet ramp, and a 200lb potbelly pig who refuses to walk the slight incline and instead opts to be chased ’round and ’round the car and ramp. It’s HILARIOUS to all except the exhausted woman (me) trying to get the pig in the car.
• Then there’s the Chinese foot massage float that is offering one hour foot massages for $10 (this is what we actually paid when we lived in Shanghai), but no matter how fast I run I can never manage to catch the float!
• And lastly is the Shucks Pearls (my business) float rolling unattended down the road filled with beautiful pearls and crickets. I have sadly neglected my business for the past two months.

And all Southern head parades must end with the clippity-clop of the hooves of the horses…WAIT – that’s actually Shucks coming down the hall ready for his early morning feeding – that means it’s 4:30am. So, here’s to our last day on Long John Mountain.

This quaint ridge and the 1980’s cedar raised ranch have served us well, and while we have enjoyed wonderful times here, we have endured many excruciating moments of madness and loss. We endured our son’s horrific first years of his sudden onset of debilitating mental digression. But I will not dwell here (yes, literally and figuratively). Thankfully that parade has marched itself on down the road.

On to new parades, on to Yonderways.

Many more “after photos” of the Acorn coming next week – but here’s a view of the “library” all new and shiny. It’s amazing what a LOT of scrubbing, several coats of paint, and some floor finish can accomplish, right?

Just for a reminder – here’s a “before” photo: