You've waited long enough!

Here's part 3 of my trip to Gainesville, GA:


Let's just go ahead and get to the heart of the matter (in other words, what matters most to me)
Remember the ongoing saga of my Bailey-induced black eye?

I developed excruciating, basically debilitating headaches shortly after this incident, and since I have a long history of migraines, I ignored them at first. But it soon became obvious that these were not my "normal" headaches, and I eventually wound up at at the ER, and had a CT scan, and evidently Bailey managed to give me a concussion, so now I have post-concussive headaches, and one day I will be better. Or not.


This picture was taken on Day 20 after the head-butting.


I would sue Bailey for all he's worth, but that is only a few slobber-coated dog toys, so I'll pass.






The Gainesville hospital is gorgeous, and I discovered these incredible malted milk balls (called "Outtakes") in the food court, as was instantly hooked. They are at least 3/4 again the size of a regular malted milk ball, and twice as good - I highly recommend them!



I had 2 of these gorgeous beside reading lamps in my hotel room (rock on, Gainesville Days Inn!).

I deemed them to be trimmed with Gen-u-Ine Swarovski crystals, and told my friend Kathy (who's husband was our patient undergoing bypass surgery at the Gainesville hospital) that I would be slipping both of these lamps into my suitcase and taking them home with me (I did not). Kathy firmly believed that I believed that these were Swarovski lamps - and kept trying to convince me they were just Czech crystals. Doesn't everything look better with Crystal Embellishment??

This is a home visible from our deck at the Gainesville Days Inn - the snow had been on the ground for AT LEAST 4 days -and the laundry remained (stiffly) on the lines.











This "car" was parked on the floor below ours at the Days Inn - several tires missing, and no back window.

Nice ride!

Train parked next to Poultry Park.

My concussion and Vicodin are now going to bed!

See you next time.

Poultry Capital of the World!!

Part 2 of the "vacation" Bailey and I took a couple of weeks ago.

Of course, it really wasn't a vacation - we were there (Gainesville, GA) because our friend was having bypass surgery in the Northeast Georgia Medical Center.

The post-op CCU had extremely limited visiting hours, so we had a lot of time to kill in between our treks to the hospital, and I'll tell you how we filled up our time in my next post.

John was moved from CCU to the Step-Down Unit on Wednesday morning, so we left the hospital around 10:15 AM, hurrying back to the hotel to check out, and then we were off to grab some brunch.

As we stepped out of the hospital, we both noticed immediately that the whole town smelled like fried chicken - it was very strange, but it was a great smell! But we wondered why Gainesville would smell like Fried Chicken....

And then we remembered this strange little monument that we passed on our way to the hospital everyday (and it is conveniently located next to the IHoP!)

All we had really noticed everyday was there there seemed to be a statue with a rooster on top of it.

We didn't give it a whole lot of thought until that day we smelled chicken wafting through the town...

so I stopped at this little park on my way out of town.

Yep, that's a rooster all right.

And can you tell by that brilliantly blue sky that it was about 11 degrees outside?

I had stumbled upon Georgia Poultry Park!

Sorry kids, there are no rides at this park...

Georgia Poultry Park.... Who knew?

No chickens running around, either - so this isn't the poultry equivalent of a dog park.

Apparently, Gainesville is the cradle of Georgia's Poultry Industry.

At this point, I was revising my opinion of what we had smelled earlier at the hospital. Probably NOT fried chicken.

We passed this sign everyday on our trips to the hospital - apparently in Gainesville, if you are DUI, this is where you go.

This is good info for the rest of us who are out driving around. - at least they collect 'em all in one place!

More fascinating Gainesville tourism info in my next exciting post!

We took a short trip...

Bailey and I are both a little behind on blogging, and we humbly apologize to our massive readership.

We have been experiencing a little additional drama - more than our everyday stuff, and will be trying to catch you up, 'cause we know you can't wait to hear the details ;)


Bailey had just started to tell you about his Christmas activities, and I was still trying to catch up, when we had to suddenly take a little trip.

We had gone to North Georgia for the holidays, to visit our good friends Kathy and John, and their babies (Tai and Nummy), and less than 10 days after returning, John started to feel bad, and within days wound up in the ICU. A week later he learned he needed open heart surgery, and so Bailey and I packed up and hustled up to Gainesville, Georgia, where John had been transferred for the surgery (his home-town hospital was too small for this type of surgery).

When we had been at John and Kathy's mountain home for Christmas, we missed out on seeing snow, but when we arrived at the hotel in Gainesville, this is what we found:



It was unbelievably cold (for us - we are used to 50-60 degree weather this time of year - and it was single digit weather here!) And there was a tiny bit of snow on the ground.
As you can see - the hotel pool was frozen over (and members of the University of Virginia Rowing Team thought it was the height of hilarity to slide this pool chair out into the middle of the ice) and there was a little bit of snow on the ground. (PS - the UVA Men's Rowing Team contains a bunch of rude, cocky assholes. Further details withheld, but suffice to say they are poor representatives of their school.)
Bailey had never seen a pool, and as we were walking around inside the pool enclosure, casually chatting with Kathy's family while killing time before the next visiting hours at the hospital CCU, Bailey decided to step right onto the ice - right there at the corner where it says 8.5 ft - and he found himself over his head, treading water, and confused.
But he got himself right out of the pool, looking like a drowned rat, and right thoroughly pleased with himself.
Since it was about 28 degrees outside, I hustled him into our room, cranked up the heat, and proceeded to try to dry him off. However - he had already plopped himself into the middle of the bed, and was just rolling around drying his own self off - and completely soaking the entire bed all the way through to the mattress.
Housekeeping came and changed the bed, and brought me more towels, and I got him as dry as I could, while keeping him off the freshly changed bed.
Then I took my 2 remaining dry towels, and tried to lay them out on the bed for him to finish drying on, because I know my dog well, and there was no way he was staying off that bed. And we had only 10 minutes before we had to leave to get back to the hospital for our 1 hour window of visiting time.
So Bailey gets it in his head that there is no way he is lying on the fluffy towels, and he wants to lie and roll on the slick polyester bedspread.
He and I tussled for about 5 minutes - I'm on top of the bed, on my hands and knees, trying to pin him between my arms and my knees, and pull the towels up under him, and he is frisking around, trying to escape. So thrilled with himself, and just a-grinning at me. This was all a big game to him.

And that is when my right frontal bone - specifically, my right eyebrow area, met this pointy little crest on the top of Bailey's head: I was leaning down, trying to pin him on the towels, and he reared up to escape, and bone met bone.
I saw stars. Seriously.

And because I am a little bit weird, I decided to take some photos of my black eye. The impact was to the brow line, but gravity made the blood and swelling pool into my eyelid area.



This is Day 2 - the day after the injury.










This is Day 3 - a little less swollen, but a little more bruising.

This is Day 4 - more pretty colors, as the yellow (signs of a healing bruise) sets in.

This is Day 7 (today) - still lots of pretty colors.

And I am pretty certain I actually fractured the bone, since the point of impact is still exceedingly tender, and I still can't sleep on my right side, because the blood starts to pool in the injured area, and throbs. And it throbs every time I put my right foot down when walking, or when I cough, etc.

But it's not like they would do anything for this medically, so I'm just waiting it out, and sharing the gory details with whomever is reading.

Enough about me.

More information about our trip, and some Christmas stuff later.

Edited to Add: I finally had to go to the ER because the Headache I had ever since the head-bonking just kept getting worse and worse. And yes, slight fracture of the orbital bone, and bad concussion. Lots of pain meds were prescribed, and about 4 days later, the headache finally went away.

Uhm...No thanks.....?!?

Free? Really?

I wouldn't take 'em even if they paid ME!

What kind of weird stuff is going on at Movie Gallery, anyway?

It's been a really exciting week for me, Etsy-wise.

I've had 3 sales in the past 2 weeks!

And I just realized, as I was grabbing the pics for this post, that each sale was from a different medium, so that is pretty cool, in my book.

This pair of cold connections copper earrings, with loads of beaded embellishment, sold yesterday.

The buyer is a great lady who I actually met 2 years ago at the William Holland Lapidary School when we both happened to take the same class - so it's a pretty small world, after all. We had e-mailed each other a couple of times after that class, talking about our mutual Etsy shops, but this it was the first time I'd heard from her in about 2 years (or more), so that is pretty neat.

This wire-wrapped pendant sold over the past weekend. I also made the dichroic glass cabochon, so that's like 2 jewelry-making mediums wrapped up in one. Pun unintended, but apropos.

This beadwoven spiral sold right before Christmas - it features a gorgeous handmade lampwork starfish (certainly not handmade by me, however - lampworking is one area I do not claim world-domination in, lol)

Bailey and I did not encounter any snow when we were up in the mountains 2 weeks ago, but we are actually supposed to get some snow HERE tonight (but not much) - but he and I will get up extra early tomorrow just in case, so we can play if anything does fall and accumulate.

Hope everyone is having a great New Year!