In sickness and health, if he snores, you'll still love him....

When my husband I returned from our honeymoon in Italy, it was a time of true excitement. We were married and settling into our house and things were really looking up for us.

After a week and half out of the country I purposely took a day or two off to get our lives in some kind of order.  I spent our whole first day unpacking our wedding gifts and cleaning the living room of shreds of wrapping paper. Wrapping paper that had been thrown around the room in a "I'm going to unwrap all of our gifts" wedding night frenzy. I have some serious problems....

As the day went on I managed to find almost every shred of paper and a place for every gift. Finding a place for every gift was a miracle and I had to be inventive. Like, under the sofa, concealed under the coffee table, and my favorite -- under the kitchen table stacked in a tubberware box. In our sweet little 900 square foot home, storage is tricky, very tricky. And one day when we have a big home, It will be exciting to use all the cool things we're storing.

By the end of the day, it was finally looking more like our home.

I trusted that with all the hard work I did that day,  I would be exhausted enough to overcome jetlag and I would be back to my American schedule in no time flat.

But of course, as usual, I was wrong.

That night as my eyes drifted off into the lovely R.E.M. state of blissful sleep, my ears where jolted by a loud rattling noise.

Snake? You ask?

Nope.

Chainsaw?

Not ah.

No, the noise that persisted in a rhythmic consistency, was the lovely sound of earthshattering snores.

I gasped.

Jason snores?

I married someone who snores?

How could this be?

You are probably shaking your head. Saying to yourself, "She knew this. How could she not?"

I didn't. I swear.

So the real question is.....how did this happen. And is it that bad?

It is that bad. And I have no idea how it happened.

As I lay there counting sheeping, smacking my husband in the arm, and praying to God this was a one time thing. I ransacked my brain to come up with a solution to the problem. Because with every shove and every sheep and every prayer, there was no improvement.

Solution?

The Couch.

Off to the couch, I went. Dragging my pillow, my blanket, and Murphy. Because she shouldn't have to suffer through this either. Poor thing.

The next day as I was getting ready for work, Jason asked me what my problem was waking him up every five seconds the night before. 

I growled....something that sounded alot like, You SNORE.

Jason stood there shocked, "No I don't."

He didn't believe me. So it sounded a lot like I was crazy. And I was wondering if maybe I was.

But I wasn't because that night it happened again. And the next night and the night after that.

I googled. I was desperate. And do you know what I found?

Women who divorce their husbands over snoring.

Considering we had literally just taken our wedding vows. And even though I was sure snoring wasn't included in the "in sickness and health". I couldn't bring myself to do it.

So I bought some breathe right strips. 

Someone told me about them at the supermarket. Let's face it, I needed a remedy or I would never sleep again. And my back was sad from sleeping on the sofa.

That night I went home with my new solution to the problem.

"You are going to have to put this on your nose." I said, handing him the box of strips.

Jason rolled his eyes. "Carrie, I don't snore." 

I shot him a look like I haven't slept in a week and you better or else.

So we rigged his nose up with a breathe right strip.

And as I drifted off to sleep...all I could hear was him breathing.....

and a whistle that took the place of the snore. Like he was whistling a tune out of his nose.

And I thought, I can deal with a whistle. A whistle instead of a snore is good.

And as I thought that very thought...the whistle burst into a full fledged snore and it was over.

The next day I threw the strips away.

A few days later while at my parents house. I mentioned my lack of sleep and the snoring problem. And just as I had finished telling my dad that I was running out of solutions, he scurried into his room and in minutes produced a giant bag of ear plugs.

I realize now that this was for fear that I might return home.

I went home with my giant bag of those squishy ear plugs they give you in the airport. And decided to give it a try.

It worked for a few days. But the thing about those earplugs is that expand in your ear to insure that no sound gets in.

Great idea, for those people that designed them. But for me, this always happened at three in the morning and it made my ear feel like it was exploding. 

I was running out of options.

And then one day as I was wondering around in Wal-greens. My eyes locked on some plastic wax earplugs. Part of me knew those might work. But I couldn't bring myself to buy them. So many bad memories with those things.

You see, I was that kid with the tubes in her ears that had to wear those earplugs when I went swimming. And it might not have been bad if it were when I was a baby but I wore them until I was almost 12. And if that wasn't bad enough I wore a zoo printed yellow plastic swim cap that made me look like an alien. And might have been cool in the twenties but so not cool in the eighties......sigh.

I shuddered. 

I bought them.

and you know what? They worked.

I may be passed the zoo print swim cap, but I would be lying if I told you I don't feel a twinge of embarrassment jamming those earplugs in my ears every night.

But I know it's worth it. I know it's something I could live with, because I can't trade my husband in. 

Maybe snoring was part of the vows after all. :)

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Several months before summer started, I had high hopes for a garden with all of the fixings. I wanted herbs. I wanted spices and I wanted flowers. What is it about plants that just make me so happy?

I feel like they are my pets. Or my kids. Since I don't have any. I have Murphy. But I don't think she thinks I own her, it's more like she owns me, so that doesn't really count. I guess.

I want to mark my plants height. And that's weird. But they just grow up so fast.

I squeal with delight when they make tomatoes or they make cucumbers. I fuss at them when they try to overcrowd each other. (even weirder)

My mint doesn't want to share a pot with my parsley and my cilantro. 

My cucumbers are trying to kill my tomatoes and vice versa. The tendrils of the cucumber wrap around every stem of my tomato plant and try to choke the very life out of it. My defensive tomato plant tries to block the cucumber's sun.

Can't they all just get along?

Sheesh.

You think I'm weird? My husband is too. Thank God. 

He loves our garden just as much as I do. It's all we talk about. 

(Not really.) Okay maybe really.

Everyday I come home from work, he's watering the garden. That's his job. 

Me?

I sit on the deck and get the update on our plants. I don't sit long because I need to check it out for myself.

"How many tomatos do we have now?" I ask. I don't want to sound like it really matters to me that my tomato plants succeeds in life. But it does.

You see for all the height it has, its just not producing like it should. Like it's a C student when it has such potential to be an A student.

Jason thinks it would have done better if we had made more room for it. Maybe seperated it from the Cucumber plant? Don't even get me started on the Cucumber plant. 

It's taking over the yard. Like it owns the whole garden. It's just not statisfied with the room we gave it. It crawls halfway under our house and I won't be surpised if it makes its way entirely to the front of the house and takes over the garden there. It's a bad influence on my poor tomato plant.

Tsk. Tsk.

And for all of its crazy growing skills, it doesn't make cucumbers. Or at least it didn't until yesterday when I stepped on a giant cucumber with my bare feet and screamed.My friend Elizabeth who was with me, screamed when I screamed. And when my eyes shot down to my feet, I saw it. A gigantic cucumber. 

I beamed with pride. 

My cucumber. A real one. 

Why can't my tomato plant get with the program? 


Maybe it could learn a little something from the cucumber.

And like a bunch of crazy people, Elizabeth and I proceeded to lifted up every cucumber leaf, in search for more. 

"Look at that one!" *Scream*

"OMG, this one!!!"  *Laughter*

"Take my picture with it!!"

I couldn't wait to call Jason.

And just like that. I picked up the phone to tell Jason the good news. There is hope. There are cucumbers. Yes, they must have grown over night, but they are here and they are big. We laughed and we marveled over our plant. "We should frame it." I almost said. But I didn't. 

Thank God.

Who frames a cucumber?

Me. I would. Because I'm so proud.

And because I'm so proud, I'm going to leave you with these pictures.

This is the cucumber I stepped on, screamed, and then hugged it.

Chives in one pot, Mint, Parsley, and Oregano in another, and Thyme, Basal, and  'I can't remember what the other spice is' in another pot. 

Did I mention Indiana Jones from my husband's grooms cake lives in one of the potted plants?

 

Preparing for a vegetable garden. So much exitement, we can hardly stand it. :)

Wait a minute...... 
 

I guess I need to do some work too.....

 Doing his job. :)

 The war between our tomato plant and our cucumber plant.  :(

I missed you, paintbrushes.

After a six month sabbatical, I've finally picked up my paintbrushes again! I can't believe it's been so long. I told Jason a few days ago that I might not even remember how to paint. He said he bets its a lot like riding a bike, or something along those lines. 


It was. 


On Sunday morning, while my man cooked me breakfast, I sat down to finish a painting I started last year. Murphy sat on the table and watched ready to slurp up my paint water when I wasn't looking or pounce on my paintbrush as it flickered across the painting. I got a good bit done, but I may make more adjustments later.


If you want to see the picture I am painting from. Click here.

I'm explaining to Murphy that "no she can not drink my paint water, and no she can not eat my paintbrush. thanks."

Now we're starting to see where I'm going with this.

Some hair, hooray!

Let me know what you think. This painting and other new work will be available on Etsy. I'll post when I get my Etsy store going. 


Also, could someone explain to me why I'm getting double paragraph breaks in between my paragraphs, it's so odd.

Nothin' Beats the Creek

So we got lost.

Yes, incredibly lost on this year's annual trip to Clark Creek.

What should have taken two and a half hours turned into five hours. I cringe when I say five, because I have trouble admitting it. Five hours.

FIVE.

I know exactly how it happened. At least now I do, now that I've had a few days to stew on it.
 

We missed our exit. Plain an simple. 

Do you know how it happened? Well let me explain.

We met up at eight a.m. We took two cars.

In Jason's truck- Jason, Sally, Anna, and me. 

In Keever's car- Keever and Bobby.

We set out toward Baton Rouge....with no directions. Because I was certain I could simply google them on Jason's phone and Sally was certain that there was an exit that said "St. Francisville". Easy enough.

As we started to drive, we started the usual non-stop chatter about life. Jason chimed in a few times but he had little to offer on topics of the Bachelor and Reality Steve. So he settled in and focused on the road.

We were all sipping on these really horrible smoothies I made that morning that I had accidentally added too much cinnamon to. It was supposed to be a dash of cinnamon, but half the jar spilled into the blender. I never told anyone until now. And I appreciate that everyone pretended they were good, or spilled them in the grass when I wasn't looking. At any rate, it's the thought that counts.

Anyway so between sipping on smoothies and chatter, we ignored all exits in Baton Rouge. ALL EXITS. Before long we saw a sign that said Lafayette 3 miles and that's when we knew we are in a bad spot. That's when I started to panic. We turned on the GPS and let it recalculate for us. Why wasn't the GPS on when we started. I have no idea......no idea.

The next thing I know we are turning around to an exit we had just passed and taking it through a part of Louisiana I've never seen before. 

But that's not true, because I had seen it before.

"This looks really familiar," Anna said. "Yeah it does." Sally agreed.

How could this look familiar? We were looking at farms and tiny gas stations, we were traveling down a winding road that looked like any country road.

"I think this is the way we went last time...." says my Anna.

She was right. The last time we got lost. My stomach does a flip flop, because this is the moment that I realize we'll be taking a boat again. Most likely. Like we did the last time. And it may take longer to get there.

And it would be one thing if it were just us. Because they expect that from me. But it's not just us. It's Keever and Bobby following behind us.....Trusting me to know where to go.

So after a long time of driving through winding roads and many confirmations from the peanut gallery in the backseat (Anna and Sally) that this is in fact the same route we took when we were lost last year, we ended up in New Roads, Louisiana.

It's a beautiful little town, if you get a chance to go there. (You might if you ever go to Clark Creek with me) A quaint little town built completely around a lake with bookshops, baby shops, and florists on every street. I think that it must be where people go to retire, buzz around the lake several times in their pontoon boat, buy flowers for each other, baby gifts for their grandkids, and books to read in their spare time.

We drove over to the levee to where our ferry to St. Francisville would be and pulled behind a thirty car line.

* Now let me just insert here that it would have been a three hour trip if the line for the ferry hadn't been three ferry trips long. We wouldn't find out why this was until we actually got to St. Francisville.

We finally got a hint that the ferry doesn't zip across the Mississippi in 5 minutes, it was more like 30, and we got out our vehicles. We set up lunch in the back of the truck, we munched on sandwichs and told Sally it wasn't a good idea to roll down the levee, because there might be ants.

Two ferry trips later we had made it to the top of the levee. That's when we decided we should walk down to the river and skip rocks while we waited.

Bobby skipped 8 rocks in a row and Anna did almost six skips. I did one. I did one skip about twenty times and then Sally patted me on the back and said that I was so great at other things that it is was okay that rock skipping wasn't one of them. I sat down on the a tree stump, rested my chin on my hand, and studied the hand movements of all the naturally gifted rock skippers in our group. I still have no idea.

When the ferry came back we got on board and had our picture taken just like we did last time. Just like we will do next year when this happens. Because I don't think this is the last time we will take a boat to Clark Creek.
 

We zipped across the Mississippi to St. Francisville. It seems so much faster when you're on it then when your watching it from the levee.

I recalculated our arrival time at thirty minutes. Its about that much from St. Francisville. We drove through the town towards the winding road that takes you there. When we got to the big road that takes you to the winding road, it wasn't pretty. The entire road was jam packed with bumper to bumper traffic for........

the Angola Prison Rodeo. (the reason for the thirty-car ferry line)

Yes what a weekend to pick for a Clark Creek adventure!

Thirty minutes later we finally made it to the winding road past Angola prison. The road that takes you to Clark Creek. :)

We made it to Clark Creek at 2:00 pm.

I'm embarrassed.

But is was worth it. It really was. It always is.

We had a great time. The weather was perfect not to hot, not to cool. The leaves for so green, they were almost neon. The Creek was real low, so the hike was not so tough. It was really, really great.

Next year on our trip to Clark Creek, we'll bring directions. On second thought maybe not, I'm not sure it would be much of an "adventure" if it were so planned.

Here's some great pictures from our trip!

Boat (Ferry) to St Francisville, after an hour or so of lunch and rock skipping.

Hooray, we made it! This is taken on top of the waterfall. Normally the creek is so high that you can't stand here, but we lucked out.

My sister and me, just your average everyday explorers. Nothing Fancy.


Big giant boulders with snakes in between, I'm kidding, but's it's possible!


Putting our heads together for a solution on how to get to Clark Creek faster next year.


Wiping my face on Jason's sleeve. He doesn't yet realize it.


Waterfall fun!


Let's try to flip over this thing.


Jason might be stuck!


"...And this is Clark Creek."


Bother and Kid Sister in Laws



Let's take a breather.


Dr. Peppers mean we are done with our hike!


Dinner at the Mrytles Plantation (most haunted plantation in America)
We're planning to stay there if anyone wants in on it. Comment below.


Just hanging out on the porch with some ghosts. :)

Up a Clark Creek, With No Paddle

Hey.


It's me.


You know, the one who never blogs anymore.


Here I am ready to blog. I'm ready to blog in full force.


Here I go....


So we're planning our annual trip to Clark Creek tomorrow.


It's a birthday thing for me. And I love it, I really do.

I realize this is three weeks after the fact. But Jason couldn't be there for my actual B-Day and so it had to be pushed back several weeks. So we waited till all the stars could align and three people who made it so awesome last year could be there again (Sally, Anna, and Jason) and we could add new people to the mix (Keever and Bobby).


I'm always really excited the day before. This is natural. It's a big deal this trip we take.

Three hours to get there if we remember to bring the directions this time. We never do. Last year, we ended up on a ferry to St. Francisville and still can't for the life of me figure out how we ended up on a boat. I've never taken a boat to Clark Creek. Ever. But I did, last year.


The year before that, Jason and I were halfway to Baton Rouge before he asked me for the directions. Naturally I should know. He had never been there and I had been several times. All I could give him was a shrug of the shoulders as I sunk down slowly in my seat. Quickly turned my eyes to my window so I couldn't catch his "Oh my God, you forgot the directions" face. I guess you can sense how that went over.


We almost killed each other.

Then, we called every person we knew who would be up at eight a.m on a Saturday morning. I know I wouldn't, if it weren't a Clark Creek day.


We begged them to turn their computers on and google, please google Clark Creek for us.


It was tough. But we made it there. Alive. Still together. In one piece.

And this is just getting there. What happens when your there?


 








Well the first time I brought Jason to Clark Creek, he was exhausted after the first five minutes. You might laugh. But it's pretty intense. I felt the same way. You're trekking across boulders. You're swinging from ropes. I'm sure Indiana Jones trained here before he was Indiana Jones.


You get attacked by sand flies. Prime example, Anna, one year ago. Went out there with freshly shampooed wet hair. The kind of hair that sand flies go gagas for. She was tough, my Anna Marie, fought them off like a trooper.

And the snakes?


Yes they're everywhere. Sleeping peacefully between rocks. Waiting for you to slip and step on them. : )


And the waterfalls?




If you're not careful, you could become part of the waterfall, or slip into the ice cold water miniature lake it makes when it hits the ground .....or be pushed into the ice cold water...prime example, Anna, needed her sister's help. Received a push down, not a pull up and fell right in. Hey, it's survival. 
 Yes, survival.

Am I nervous for our newcomers? (Keever and Bobby) 


Yes :)










Do they know what they signed up for? 


Probably not. :)


Will there be war wounds? 

Hopefully not! but this is nature we are dealing with! See these pictures off to the side?


See Sally with her foot jammed into the quick sand like mud? Yep. It happens every time. It took us ten minutes to retrieve her leg.

And see this picture of Sally, Anna, and me, arm and arm, happily skipping through Clark Creek like it's the yellow brick road. See the excitement on my face. My happy smile. My over enthusiastic expression. Then see Sally's leg and the position its in? This is moments before it comes smashing down on my leg with its cleat-like shoe bottom. I don't have a picture of the agony. But I tell you it was bruised for weeks. 


But it was worth. Worth it for Clark Creek.


I let you know how it goes. :)