Visiting My Peeps

last sunday we returned from a week-long visit with my peeps in wv. we had a great time seeing everyone and nursing my mother back to health. there was something so cleansing and theraputic about this particular visit. the older i get the more i realize what a great family i have. it sounds so trite but there is so much love in my family. in short the barry family is simply good people, and i feel blessed to have them in my life. they are far from perfect, and sometimes annoy the hell out of me, but all in all, i could have had it a lot worse. highlights from my trip:

1. meeting and adopting smith, a fabulous dog discovered in my neighbor's yard. read a's blog for more info.

2. eating meal after meal of southern cooking. it's bad for you, i know, but so damn delicious. what can i say my love for cornbread, sausage gravy, chicken and dumplings etc etc is in my wiring.

3. hugs from my sisters. since we have gotten older we have become much more affectionate, parting company with "i love yous, and hugs." i'm a person who used to be so uncomfortable with such expressions of familiarity and love, but now it seems as natural as a drink of water.

4. getting this great picture of my mom and anne together. for some reason my mother rarely smiles in photographs but i got a picture of her with a. where she seems so loose and carefree, and she's smiling. anne is one of the few people who has this effect on my mom and it's so good to see. and i got it on record.

5. seeing zach and aaron (2 great nephews) prance around in their new tennis shoes. it took me back to being 11 years old and getting new sneakers that you just couldn't wait to go public with. thye definitely had that "new shoe" vibe going on that evening.

6. seeing elliott (aka easy e., aka elroy) my nephew who i have been crazy about since his birth in 1990. we have always been close, and i love seeing how he is transforming into this lanky, mature and interesting 16 year old who looks like my father! he's always been special - so damn smart. he's in the 10 grade now and has been receiving all kinds of college applications from MIT, Duke, Cornell etc because he took the ACT as a practice run and scored really high. in two more years he should be able to get a perfect score on the damn thing. he's got it going on.

7. being rescued by my sister, cheryl, who drove 2 hours from parkersburg to see us. she rescued us by bringing her laptop to my mother's house, where we were living all week without a computer and web access. oh the horror and madness of it all. cheryl was god that day.

8. smelling that clean, mountain air. god, i love the way the appalachian mountains smell. that, too, is in my wiring.

okay, that's it for now. gotta get back to my reading.