I saw my first Charlottesville mullet today! At Kroger, in case you’re wondering. I find this impressive since I’ve been here now for seven months and two weeks. Just try having a mullet-free day in St. Louis.

Months I haven’t lived in C’ville: September, October, November.

I’m finding myself really looking forward to Halloween; more than I have in several years, in fact. My bet is that this is a fun Halloween town.

I had a particularly rough week this week and I’m welcoming the weekend with open arms. I have no exciting plans, unless housecleaning and school supply shopping thrill you. I need to buckle down and find a dining room table. Ideas? I’m also wondering if Charlottesville has a “paint it pottery” type of place, where you go in, select your unfinished piece, pay some studio time and paint. They fire the piece and you pick it up in a week. There are tons of these places in St. Louis but I haven’t seen any here. Little help for the newcomer?

The boy has band camp every day from 1pm till 10pm. We’ve done a variety of things to get him there and back, including dropping off a car at the high school after we’re done working for the day. Last night he called on the dinner break to see if we’d left a car. We hadn’t. They were having Subway sandwiches, as usual. It’s a pretty good deal; the kids bring $2.50 each and can get a sub for dinner.

“Will you bring me some mayonnaise?” he asked. “All the mayo is gone.”

Uh, no.

Get on down to the Grand Opening of the new Goodwill boutique on 29 South at Albemarle Square Ct! They’re raffling off a Brand New TV! Get a handbag for $2! Pick up a bargain wedding gown, ’cause you never know when Sam the butcher’s going to pop the question, Alice!

An important tip if you plan to join the throng visiting the store this week: enter the parking lot and drive straight to the back of the building, take a left, cross yourself and pray for a parking spot.

Let me know about the treasures you find!

Here are the two guys with whom I spent most of my freshman year of college. I married one of them.

I thought I’d share scenes from the very successful, first ever Beer-B-Q. If you want the full effect, view the slideshow.

We had a great afternoon with friends and our families in St. Louis. We even had a surprise visit from Danielle and her family.

One more photo, and then you’re just going to have to follow the slideshow link for more. This little darlin’ is Daniel, our godson.

It was so much fun to see all the kids together — they all got along great — the big ones and the little ones!

We’re not sure when we’ll do this again — it’s a tough event to pull off annually with people spread all over the U.S.

Special thanks to Barry for excellence in site selection and helping plan the whole extravaganza.

It was good to see all of you guys. Please stay in touch!

I was crabby this morning.

So crabby I cursed at the woman applying eye makeup in the fast lane going north on 29 this morning. Does she want to die with a mascara wand wedged into her eye socket?! Crabby enough to scowl at the person walking in the street in Forest Lakes (hello! walking trails; use them!).

My husband laughed at me, but not too much, this morning as I changed outfits four times. He must have seen the dark cloud over my head, noticed the white hot aura of rage and decided against laughing overtly, pointing a finger.

Why so crabby? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the dieting and exercising. That would do it. Why the wardrobe insecurity for the work-at-home woman? Because today I had a lunch date with the lovely Jennifer! (It is true that women dress for the descriminating eyes of other women, you know.) The brain cloud lifted and we had a delightful time getting to know one another. For those of you who read her blog, but do not know her personally, she has the most amazing long, red, curly hair.

Jennifer and I discussed planning a Charlottesville blogger gathering this fall, date and location TBD. Watch this space, or this one!

We spent some time with the G-parents, as the kidz call them. There were my parents, George and Jean; Mark’s parents, Dave and Jonet; and the G-G-parents, John and Ruby. Remember when you were a kid, and you weren’t sure what relative went with which parent? If you were lucky enough to have full sets of grandparents, lucky enough to have aunts and uncles and cousins, it was sometimes hard to tell who went with who.

My last grandparent passed away about 10 years ago. My dad’s dad died seven years before I was born. Grandma, my dad’s mom, died when I was five. My Granny, the grandparent that made up for the lack of all other grandparents in my life, was still around when I was in my twenties. The last thing I did with her was paint her nails bright red. She never met my daughter.

When Grandad died (we were all estranged from him for most of our lives) Mark said I could have his grandma Ruby. In his thirties, Mark still had all four of his grandparents. He still has John and Ruby, who live in Creve Coeur, Missouri and have been a big part of our lives. Grandma is now mine. That oughta confuse the kids.

Grandpa (John) took me to the airport on 9/11, when I couldn’t board my plane to fly to New York for my uncle’s funeral. He came back to pick me up. We talked about that this week. Grandma sent us home with stuff (cookbooks and beer steins from Germany) that they don’t want to move to the retirement home, where they’ll go someday soon. They’ve lived in the same place for 25 years and now they’re getting ready to pack up and move out.

Lucky for us, the G-G-parents are going to come visit in November! They haven’t been here yet, and it’s a long, tough trip for them. I should really start cleaning now. Grandma’s got a tough white glove.

I woke up in someone else’s body.

Well, I guess it generally looks like me, only heavier and somewhat doughy. On vacation, we all gained a few pounds. We arrived in St. Louis at dinner time, going straight to the Hill, getting the first seating at Cunetto House of Pasta. Because we were in St. Louis, and haven’t discovered good Italian in C’ville, we ate Italian food a lot. We then went to Ted Drewe’s for dessert. We continued to eat our way through our vacation with milkshakes at Steak n’ Shake, birthday cake (the girl is 10!) and burgers. Oh, and someone brought gooey butter cake to the picnic! Sigh. I’m wearing birthday cake on my thighs, pasta on my hips.

So this morning I got up early and went for a run. OK, so I walked a lot on my run, but I got out and did it again this afternoon. I felt heavier with every step. Gravity noticed my overindulgence and mocked me as I plodded along.

A friend told me about her 30lb. weight loss — she swears by the food journal. I found a free one here that helps count calories in food and activity. It looks pretty good so I’m going to give it a try.

So our food obsessed holiday ended last night when we, at last, after 12 hours in the car, arrived in Charlottesville. We noticed the odd smell the minute we opened the door. A walk to the fridge revealed the freezer door propped slightly ajar, stuck open with the ice tray which had not been completely pushed back into place. Can I even describe to you how disgusting the thawed food not only smelled, but looked? I like to freeze bananas at their ripest so I can use them when I’m ready to bake. Bananas, chopped in half, frozen, then thawed and hanging out in a ziploc bag for a week in an open freezer are the most disgusting things I’ve ever witnessed. I wasn’t sure what they were at first; fat, dark fingers floating in liquid, bloated earthworms covered in dirt or rancid breakfast sausages, swollen in the heat.

I Hefty bagged the entire contents of the freezer and Lady MacBethed my hands for the rest of the evening. This, my friends, is the way to start a diet.

Blackbird wrote about how not to embarrass a 15-year-old. It reminded me of a story:

Yesterday, we took the boy (16.5 years of age, 6′6″ in height) to Best Buy to buy the girl a birthday present. He was mortifyingly embarrassed to be shopping for his sister with his parents. In a Best Buy. He’s lucky I didn’t drag him to Limited Too. He was dying a social death being forced to buy a present with is own money for his younger sister (10 tomorrow, 5′3″).

Later the same day . . . buying supplies for the BBQ at the Party Store, the same teenager donned a Viking helmet, making him 7′2″, grabbed an air horn from the clearance box, and roamed the store playing the horn. Guess who was embarrassed then (35.5, 5′11.75″)?

For 13 years in a row, a certain group of friends joined for one long weekend each summer, to float on the Current River. We called it the Beer Float. I wrote about the Beer Float for The Commonspace in 2002, convinced that we’d still be floating until we were old, gray and wrinkly. This group of friends has been connected since college, a few since high school; some of us are a bit gray, and a little wrinkly, but I sure thought we’d be old and brittle before we went a year without the BF. We’ve persisted in the tradition through marriage, kids and beer bellies. Why stop now?

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently ran a feature about the downfall of the uh, moral turpitude on the river. I’m not sure any of the information is new, or that anything has changed in the behavior of hoosiers floating on the river. I’m just pretty sure nobody ever reported on it before. It never bothered us. We came armed with Super Soakers, bolstered with beer. Sometimes, the hoosiers were us.

This year, ending a 13 year streak, there will be no Beer Float.

Instead, we’ve planned the Beer-B-Q, a picnic in a park that is BYO just about everything, including the kids (who were never invited to the Beer Float, due to the declining moral turpitude, of course.)

Today we’ll come together for several hours of kickball, food, songs and beer.

The main reason the Beer Float is skipping a year is this: we’ve all scattered to the winds. Well, a lot of us, anyway. Today original floaters will join us from California, Colorado, Kansas and Virginia. Several still reside in Missouri, where the BBQ will take place. Other floaters have moved to Arizona too recently to make the trip back. They’ll be missed. We’ll be “singin’ one for Jen, drinkin’ one for Pete.”

There will be, naturally, less drinking, no midnight swims in the river, less “pulling,” (an activity that involved a cold bottle of Jack and the command to take a swig, or PULL, as we float downriver), less bikini-clad hoosiers, less hoosiers in general, many more kids (where did all these kids come from?) and fortunately, less recovery time on the other side.

Denny’s glad we’re doing something “fresh” this year. For the last several years he’s complained that the BF was getting stale. This is going to mix it up a bit for sure.

We’re gonna have a blast.

I’m bloghappy!

I’ve joined the moms blogging on Work It: A Blog for Working Moms. It’s a formidable group of women who are funny, entertaining and helpful and I’m pleased to be part of the gang.