A Blow By Blow Account of the Weekend

I drove down on Friday afternoon - straight to Folly Beach, where I walked for about 2 miles down perfect sand, got my feet wet and took way too many pictures. Then I drove into Charleston to my friend L's beautiful house over by Hampton Park, took a shower, and sat there with her drinking wine and talking about the many evils of males and, of course, everything else under the sun. It was fabulous. We got dressed up all glamourous and went downtown, where we realized that a) it was the weekend of the Cooper River bridge run and downtown was crowded and b) our dear old friend H had disappointed us by not working Friday night, since we had had a plan to surprise him by eating at the restaurant where he works. How dare you take a night off, H? We went to ACs to see if perchance he might be there, but alas he was not, and while we have aged, and ACs has aged, the clientele of ACs has not for the most part aged, so they are all as young as we were when we used to hang out there. So we went across the street a bit and signed up for a table at a great Thai place and had drinks next door in a bar full of scarily good looking people while we waited. Then we went to a party in one of those fabulous old Charleston houses which L says nobody lives in anymore, which is sad to hear, but at least L's friends have managed it. Very cool people, very fun evening.

Saturday morning we drank great coffee in L's sumptous bedroom, then went downtown, where we had a nice & mellow breakfast near the College of Knowledge and met L's roommate the adorable P. Walked down King Street, had a brief moment of madness and tried on a whole bunch of truly, truly hideous clothes. I mean these clothes were beyond awful - we are talking sequinned black spaghetti strap tunics. Which I almost bought, because, clearly, we had been subliminally drugged in the dressing room or something. Fortunately the next things we tried on were so awful that the laughter reflex was triggered and we manged to escape. Onwards to Urban Outfitters (do you believe that there is an Urban Outfitters on King Street now? The world has changed in deep and intense ways.) where I bought a hoodie which would later prove to be a godsend, and then we had a bloody mary at the Rue de John with L's friends W & C. Big fun. I hated to leave but it was time, so I got into the car and went over the new Cooper River bridge, which, I am happy to report, is almost as scary as the old bridge, although for somewhat different reasons, like, you don't think it's about to fall down, but it is very, very high up and there are unholy numbers of tourists doing 90 all around you. Eeep.

Got to Mclellanville eventually despite atrocious creeping traffic (atrocious creeping traffic was a problem all weekend) and found any number of my old friends drinking beer & playing music, which is funnily enough exactly what they were doing the last time I saw them, and, I think, might be what they do all the time. Yeah. Some things do not and should not change. K in a top hat playing Friend of the Devil is one of those things. L & E were there with their kids who get bigger & cuter every year, ditto for M's kids. Pitched the tent, blew up the air mattress, swatted innumerable gnats, drank many beers my own self, marveled at M's many new inventions and creations (I hereby christen them bontraptions) cuddled a 14 week old Great Dane puppy who is already bigger than Theo and had a great, great time. I ate fantastic unbelievable food: M built a tandoori oven, and in this oven went two chickens and a whole bunch of I think pork wrapped up with venison bacon. There was tons of venison, two whole Boston butts that had been smoked/grilled for 24 hours and three bushels of oysters that E handily roasted, as well as of course slaw and potato salad and devilled egss (god, I love devilled eggs.) I did not do a blessed thing to help, except peel & grind some ginger & garlic; mostly, I watched everyone else work. Lovely, lovely - there's just nothing like watching other people run around. Much laughter, much fun.

It got damn cold on Saturday night and I had weird, weird vivid snake dreams as is related in an audio post below. I got up around 4 am and put on every piece of clothing I had with me; 5 hours later it was 85 and I was dying of heat. Sunday morning: amazing how the party cleared out. By the time I got up around 9:30 there was only me & M, L & E and T left. We cleaned up a bit and swatted more gnats, talked & laughed. Then, sigh, I hit the road for five hours of creeping noxious traffic back to Asheville, where the house was not as chaotic as I had feared but worse than I had hoped, and young M my son had to go back to school. That was my weekend, and a good one it was indeed.

R, I'm sorry I didn't make it into Mt. Pleasant to see you, man, it was another visit where it seemed like every single minute was scheduled and there just weren't enough hours in the days.