Freedom Ride and a Rock Star

I needed to take a break from Special for a while so I decided to share part of my Saturday with you. I woke up about 6am which is entirely too early for a Saturday to start. I finally decided to just get up when my mind kept racing with things that needed to get done, so I got up, showered and dressed, and left the house by 7:15. Can you guess who went with me?

NO ONE!

I CAN STILL HARDLY BELIEVE IT! Empty car seats. WHAT?

Everyone was still asleep when I left, including The Chef, so I struck out on my own. It was unbelievably quiet in my "swagger wagon." I could even hear my own thoughts! AND I got to listen to whatever music I wanted to listen to!

So I listened to nothing at all because keeping company with my own thoughts was so enjoyable that I couldn't bear to give it up.

After a quick trip for an egg mcmuffin, I was on my way. Might I add its ridiculously cheap to order fast food for only one person and when ordering for just one, you don't have to pull ahead and wait for your gigantic order to be completed! Double bonus!!

The next stop on my freedom ride was gonna be to get some large storage containers to pack away extra comforters, flannel sheets and thermal blankets for the summer, but as I approached the bypass I remembered that it was Saturday. There's only one place to go on a very early Saturday morning, especially when you already have cash in your purse. So my next stop was here!

We make at least 2, usually 3 trips a week to the Farmer's Market during the summer. We're able to buy locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables to eat all summer long and to also put away for the winter. The Chef and I love to make trips to the Farmer's Market in the early mornings and bring home vegetables to eat for lunch that very day. My favorite is fresh fried okra! The Chef and Peanut have spent many hours together, shelling peas and butterbeans and snapping green beans while watching baseball. It tickles me pink to see them working together, building memories. As a child, I was spoiled rotten when it came to fresh vegetables. My Mimi and Pop had a huge garden that kept the whole family supplied with enough fresh vegetables for the entire summer and winter. Many of my fondest and most vivid childhood memories were the hours I spent working in the garden with them at "the lake." I remember them teaching me how to choose very carefully which carrot I wanted to pull and which potato plant I wanted to dig. I got such joy out of sticking that shovel in the soil and turning the plant over to see how many and what size potatoes were attached. We would eat those potatoes for supper that night as well as whatever corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and beans we'd picked. The process of carefully choosing which vegetables to pick, cleaning them, preparing them to be cooked, cooking them, and then enjoying them at dinnertime with family taught me so much. The Chef and his sister had a very similar experience. Grandmother and Grandaddy had an unbelievable garden. The Chef has shared memories of mowing their lawn on Saturday mornings and then enjoying a huge vegetable lunch that Grandmother had prepared. We hope to be able to have our own large garden one day and to share those experiences with our grandchildren.

This is Mr. Mitchell. His booth is at the entrance. He is a character. A very colorful character to say the least and it's probably best that I leave it at that! He saw me taking a picture of the Farmer's Market sign and hollered at me that I was taking a picture of the wrong thing. He said I needed to come take a picture of him because "Honey, ain't nothing else 'round here better looking than me!" So here he is. You be the judge!

I took a quick tour through to see what was there. It's so early in the summer season that there wasn't much yet but I was so happy to find our favorite Tomato Lady. This sweet lady and her sweet husband grow the very best tomatoes I've ever had, (second only to my Mimi and Pop's, of course!) Several years ago I was at the Farmer's Market looking for tomatoes. At the time every vendor had a metric ton of tomatoes to offer. It gets overwhelming when trying to make choices sometimes so in order to make my decision I decided to go with a completely and totally judgemental and stereotypical manner of making my decision. I decided that only a grandma/grandpa type of either caucasian or African-American race would do. Nothing against other nationalities or age ranges but I had to narrow it down some way and I had to draw from my own experiences. Turns out I've only ever had vegetables grown by folks that fit that description! Tomato Lady was the only one that fit my extremely discriminatory criteria that day and she and her husband did not disappoint. They are the only folks we buy tomatoes from and we shop for any other vegetables from them first. Yesterday I got zucchini and leaf lettuce from her. She said that she expects their tomatoes to start coming in by June 15th.

Isn't she cute? I just love her.

After I left the Farmer's Market and picked up my daughter from a slumber party, (I should say non-slumber party) we went to get our large containers and I spent the rest of the morning packing up winter stuff, shuffling clothes around and clearing up clutter.

During the afternoon, we started sanding the floors in the dining room and living room. After the Flood of 2010 we had the rest of the carpet removed upstairs to free the beautiful unfinished oak from its padded prison. It's a lot of floor space, but The Chef thinks that only light sanding will need to be done.

See this man? Can you believe that only a few short months ago he was bed-ridden in a nursing home after a hospital stay? He came to help sand the floors yesterday.

This is Jr., my amazing father-in-law. He has Parkinson's and dementia. He was hospitalized twice starting the week of Christmas and spent a few months in the nursing home. He was so weak that we feared he'd never return home. My brilliant mother-in-law finally decided that enough was enough. No way he'd ever get better or stronger stuck in a place where he wasn't able to practice walking often enough to regain his strength and balance. The nursing home was great, but he needed more than what they were able to offer so she hired some helpers, signed him out, and brought him home. Hallelujah! If you'd told any of us in mid-January that Jr. would be helping to sand our floors today, none of us would've believed you. He wasn't able to sand for nearly as long as he would've liked, but the fact that he could sand anything at all is a total victory! This man is tough as nails, a true gentleman in every sense of the word, and a total ROCK STAR in his grandchildrens' eyes. Especially his youngest two granddaughters. I had to send them off with our La-La in order to give him enough peace to work. They think he exists only to entertain them.

So that's my Saturday. What about you?


(I apologize for the poor quality of these photos. I really need to quit taking pictures with my Blackberry and start taking pictures with our little digital camera! They wouldn't be great, but they'd be a whole lot better than the ones I've been posting so far! I'm so UNtechnologically savvy its ridiculous. In fact, its miraculous that I've figured out how to post pictures of any sort at all!)