Sweetwater Park

  This school season has proved to be extremely stressful.  I am constantly finding myself on the precipice of burn out, which makes me a really less-than-stellar mom.  We needed a day off.  Sweetwater Mill was lovely and almost entirely shaded.  Always my standard of enjoyment here in the deep south.

 

We walked a little further down because the kids saw something in the distance, and there was the mill ruins.  I looked up the history of the mill and read it to them while we were there.  What a tragic past this mill had.  During the Civil War, The Confederate Army was removed from the river leaving it open to the Union army, which proceeded to arrest all 500 or so mill workers (all of which were women and children), round them up and end up abandoning them in Indiana.  Many died from starvation and exposure.  Many of the fates remain unknown.  I look at my kids and I really cannot and do not want to imagine the lives so many have been forced to live.  

Out of our usual spots: Yellow River, Stone Mountain and all the playgrounds, this is my favorite so far.  That being said, I have yet, yet to get up to the Georgia Mountains.  We are very limited while my husband works so much and is too nervous for me to go with the kids alone.  One day. 

All Good Things Must.....

  Well, my favorite person at my church is moving.  That is how life works.  Funny, we both saw each other before officially meeting and had purposed in our minds that we were going to be instant, kindred spirits-Anne-of-Green-Gables-style.  So, in due fashion, the first time we hang out, she informs me that it is likely they will be moving to Massachusetts. Figures.  We are both misplaced hippies, married to the anti-hippies.  Both desiring to live off the land in a yurt while our husbands put new chrome hubcaps on their Beemers.  Well, if hubby could afford a Beemer.  Off to Massachusetts she goes.  Even our kids loved each other.  It was a cosmic friendship for those entire three months.   I wouldn't let our last meeting go without a picture.  I feel like I'm finally learning to make that happen.

She also loves hole-in-the-wall-Mexican Restaurants.  It was meant to be. 

Johnny Mac

     After attending one night of a reformation conference here at a local Baptist church, I noticed John Macarthur was going to be an upcoming featured speaker.   I jumped at the opportunity to hear him speak for the first time.
       We got to the beautiful (and rather formal) service complete with the teen that slept in, threw on a shirt, and managed to sneak his unkept, narly toes in sandals into the service.   It was the roughest night sleep he had had in a while, and he actually nodded off.  While listening to Johnny Mac in the most beautiful church I had been in in who-knows-how-long.   If he ever nodded off in church before, I would have been ready, but this was a first.   I simply had to let it slide..   His dad said I could go to this church alone and he would keep the kids, since we had all overslept- but, the teen wanted to go.   I couldn't fault him for trying.

   It's a funny thing about seeing a very well-known speaker.  You see other people you know only from the internet.  On one hand it was fantastic.  I got to see a woman I instantly recognized from her blog..   Unfortunately, when a regular reader, it's easier to remember the name of the blog.   And, that is what I shouted out when I saw her.   Not her name, her blog.  Embarrassing- She was great about it and very sweet.

     Now, being the awkward, social idiot I am- I of course had to reference my son's narly toes at least once, and the fact that I went to a school John Macarthur would deem heretical: The Brownsville Revival School.  I made sure I referenced this to any ear that would listen.  Because: socially awkward.

  I preferred to post this picture zoomed in to make it look like I got a front row seat.  No such luck. I am too low-tech for that.

Musings.

 Husband just got back from Florida.  Hurricane Irma, thankfully, turned out to be less devastating than everyone planned, and he was back sooner than expected.  Every time we chatted on the phone, he would remark how very, miserably hot it was there.  Several screen shots said 97 degrees.  No thank you.  I said to my kids a few times, "I will never step foot in Florida again."  Statements like that usually get me into trouble.  I remember back in the day remarking, "I could live anywhere again, except the south," and you see where that got me- to the heart of the deep south.   Both statements are purely climate related, however.  So, my heart sank a bit when he came home announcing that when we go on vacation, it will be to Florida.  No, everyone really is lying when they say, "it's hot, but a different hot because its near the water."  I call foul.  Been there, and still miserable and he said the same thing, but apparently, there was one island that got his adoration.   I have actually been stressed about it since.   This can't be normal.  It cannot be normal to obsess about weather all year long.   "It's so hot,"  "It's miserable,"  "I can't because there is no shade," "It's a bit cooler but it won't last,"  "Yep, it didn't last,"  "I can't believe I have to bring out the short sleeves again,"  "Cold weather is her..... NEVERMIND, it's summer again. "   Georgians have my respect.  I just can't do it.

  Lately, the fixation has been looking at properties in Maine.   It's just.... I've done New England, and I know what "nice" weather (that is good summers) can't buy.  It can't buy community, biblical churches, lax homeschool laws, and friendships.  I had a heck of a time finding a community up in Rhode Island as a married adult, and I don't kid myself to think that New Hampshire would have been any different.

   It's just easy here.  I'm not a networker, but I have a network.  I'm not gifted socially, but it's easy to be social.  I don't have extra money or resources but I have free stuff and people who do at my fingertips.  Homeschooling is popular enough, and if it isn't, Atlanta is a melting pot and a major city.  I have those conveniences with the benefit of being in a suburb within a 20 minute commute.   It's affordable.  I just don't see that option anywhere up north in the weather I prefer.  There is also my preference of hospitality.  I have in fact, found it so much friendlier and open.  That's after living in four states above the Mason Dixon line and four below it.

   I decided to start writing about my pipe dreams instead of talking to husband about it.  I can say he makes all the decisions, and ultimately the decisions are his to make- but I influence him more than I like to admit.  I know full well he never would have dreamed of moving to Atlanta, had I not mentioned it and been fully on board.  So, after a few nights of, "Wow! Look how cheap these properties in Maine are!"  I got a "You really inspired me with those properties in Maine."  He has mentioned a few times buying cheap property and building on it later.  Sometimes I wonder if I will look back on my life and say, "I said it was God's will, but was it really just mine?"  "If it was God's why did I have to hark on it?"  "What if I just sat back and waited, like what I should have done?"

    There are moments when life is so idyllic in Georgia I want to smack my ungrateful self in the face.. and then the 89 degree weather smacks me in my pale face when I step outside, the sun mockingly throwing some pre-mature-aging rays right at my freckled face and I go right back to Zillow.

     Today was a homeschool field trip to the Harvest Bread Company.  Just the drive alone was worth it.  We had to drive through a country town to get there-worth it.  I'm thankful to live in a suburb and even metro-Atlanta has lots of trees and grass and everyone isn't completely piled on top of each other (**cough**Rhode Island***), but to get out to a moral rural location, I'm always game.  Every farm house, cape cod, and cottage had my name on it.   My husband also informed me that our next house will be a ranch.. How are we married?  I don't think he knows that our house in Maine will not include internet while we are building that hut.   I'm pretty sure I can picture his dream home-  A floor plan so open, it doesn't even have walls; Every fixture: CHROME or something shiny; man cave with leather furniture; manicured bushes...    While he was in Florida, I managed to put one hole in the wall and TWO burn marks on the table.  I didn't even know about the second one until tonight. Yippee, can't wait until he sees it.   Now I have to go youtube how you even get that off.

   Harvest Bread Company is definitely a field trip I'd recommend.