Happy New Year!

Wow, where do I even begin???? This weekend actually started the week before Christmas. My stepson, CJ (from my 1st marriage), has always wanted to find his mother. See, when I married his dad, he was 8 years old and had no memories of her. I was told that she had not been around CJ since he was maybe a year old, and was told horrible things about her (par for the course, considering the source, being my ex-husband).

Anyways, the week before Christmas, I sent letters out to 6 different address in the town I was told she was from, and addressed these letters to her mother. On Christmas Eve, I received an email from her sister, saying she (CJ's mother) had often prayed that someone would find her for CJ, or that CJ would find her on his own. She was very happy and was anxious to talk and meet him. The only problem now was that we were having trouble getting in touch with CJ.

Long story short - I'm at the lake house this weekend, and get a text message and phone call from CJ, and he is delighted that I've found his mother. I am taking him to meet her next weekend! I am so excited for them both, and they are both so glad that I made the effort to find her for him. I cannot even begin to imagine what emotions they are both experiencing, other than great joy in knowing they've found each other.

Being able to reunite these two, on the phone at least to start, has made a great New Year's weekend absolutely fantastic! Now on to the more mundane, less exciting part of my weekend.

Steven and I came down to the lake early Friday evening, and let me tell you I learned the very hard way that Gabriel and Benadryl don't mix! We'd given him one once when he was a puppy and we were returning from the lake and it seemed to work - had the absolute opposite effect on Friday night. He was hyper as hell, pain in the ass in the car, managed to get Steven's hair tangled in his collar, and at the house, he was like a crackhead, running around, sniffing everything over and over and over. Then when it was bedtime, he was jumping on and off the bed, over and over, and going to the door and scratching and whining, and starting all over again. Made for a very restless evening for me.

Saturday, I got Steven up early and we headed to the Andersonville Prison and POW Museum. That was an interesting place, and I think we both learned a lot about the POW situation for not just the civil war, but WWII as well. We toured the museum, the prison grounds area, and the cemetary. Then we drove to Plains, GA, to go to the Jimmy Carter museum at the old Plains High School.

On route to Plains, we were driving through Americus, and there was a car that had an interesting custom paint job. Of course it also had a very loud dual exhaust system, and the driver would rev the engine as he would drive through this old country town. We got beside the car, and Steven realized the guy had the car painted like Lightning McQueen from Cars! He even had Tomater painted on the trunk lid! And I noticed he had a real shitty home-done spoiler attached to the trunk - uneven bottom edge, and just screwed into the trunk with random black and silver screws.

While we were at a red light next to this car, a drunk or stoned man was in the middle of the road ahead of us, doing some kind of jig and dance. It was quite funny, and then he moved to the sidewalk. He started to cross the street, coming closer to where we were waiting for the light change, and he started doing his hands like "right this way", waiting for us to pass by him. I told Steven - "make sure the windows are up, the doors are locked, and if he runs out in front of us I'd as soon shoot him as run over him!" I know, that's not very nice, but he was obviously either illegally medicated, or possibly mentally ill (or a combination of the two).

Got us some Church's fried chicken for dinner Saturday, as well as fried okra and mashed potatoes and gravy. Yummy!!!! A little while after we ate, we headed over to Buddy and Cynthia's to bring in the new year. It was just Buddy, Cynthia, their grandson, Gavin, Steven and me. I fell asleep before 10pm, and woke up just before midnight. Buddy lit the bonfire pit, and they shot some fireworks off at midnight. Steven and I headed back to mom's place a little after midnight, watched another episode or 2 of NCIS, and I crashed sometime after 2am.

Yesterday, I was awakened by the phone call from my stepson, regarding me finding his mom. Got up, talked to him, started some laundry, and drove over to Meme's for a few minutes. Had to listen to a bunch of crap that I've already heard ad nauseum, then I headed on back to the house to finish the laundry and get Steven up. Steven and I rode into town and ate at a Chinese buffet - I had eaten there a few years ago and it was good. Definitely NOT worth the money yesterday, and we won't be wasting our time or money there again.

We finally got on the road yesterday around 5pm and headed home. I decided not to drug either dog, and they were no worse coming home than they were on the ride down. And Gabriel wasn't so crazy hyper, either. I would like to find something safe to give both of them that would help them relax - I don't think Dominion sat down for the entire ride - which is about a 2 hour or a little longer ride.

The dogs got me up this morning around 7:30am, and I've been moving around ever since. Haven't accomplished much, but I've been active. Dominion has his first ever grooming appointment at 3pm, so we're about to head out for that. Hopefully they'll get all that shedding hair off him and it will be easier to deal with around here. Maybe while he's being groomed I can vacuum and dust and get rid of the extra hair?! Gabriel isn't shedding much at all, I imagine because he's only 7 months old. I need to get him in the habit of being brushed - right now when I brush him he wants to bite and chew at my hands. That must stop! LOL

Anyways, I hope everyone had a great weekend - mine was very good, although somewhat boring at times, but I'm thankful we had a safe weekend with some downtime. Steven and I enjoyed our country ride on Saturday, and visiting Andersonville and Plains. There are so many more places I want to take him, and I will be getting him to different places in Georgia to see different historical places. Y'all have a great week!