It's ba-yack!

Family vacation is here again!

We are back in southern costal Georgia, where the Spanish moss waves in what breezes come in off the ocean and people drive a bit... Different... And strange things happen to your hair.

(I need you to know that I would only post the photo of myself in order to fully impress upon you the severity of the situation. I am not proud, simply trying to be an honest, faithful reporter who will go to great lengths – or short lengths, ha ha! - to bring you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.)

(Have you ever noticed how easy it would be to write “turtle” instead of “truth”? Just a thought.)

Mia and I have lost several inches of length to our hair. I have been taking pictures of her hair because I just can’t believe the tightness of her corkscrew curls. Then this morning I actually looked in the mirror before pulling my hair back into a ponytail and realized that Mia is not the only victim to the Medusa-honoring hair-do!

It’s a cryin’ shame to be kin to a poodle dog.

Our trip driving from Oklahoma to Georgia was amazingly uneventful. All 17 hours of it. We made it to somewhere in either Arkansas or Tennessee the first day (maybe Little Rock? That’s where I discovered that L’oreal and Maybelline share a factor building. That amazed me, I never knew!). I was obviously not driving.

I was busy fulfilling my duties as co-pilot, chief dvd changer, and dairy queen, hopping from my front passenger seat to the back of our vehicle with the grace of a leprechaun on crack.

I now have a backache but that’s beside the point.

The second day of driving we were going to try to just stop in Atlanta and then go on to Waynesboro the next morning but when I called I discovered that Travelocity had taken our hotel money and was not in any mood to give it back, so we arrived in Waynesboro around midnight.

The most exciting aspects of the drive besides the scenery and my gymnastic ability was that we discovered there were a WHOLE LOT of black Suburbans manufactured with the same body style between 2002 and 2005 that are still on the road. This made my parent's job of following us quite challenging, particularly since my dad is claiming that his cruise control won’t work. We painted a flower on the back window with window chalk and put some reflective tape on the bumper, but there were still some times when he lost track of us.

Such as on the journey from Waynesboro to Valona.

Our vehicle pointed toward backwoods and boonies in coastal Georgia following the trusty GPS. Mind you, the GPS can’t actually find the place we’re staying but last year we sat in the driveway and programmed the location into the little box. With the slight problem that if we followed its direction the last few hundred feet we’d end up on a shrimp boat, it now directs like a charm.

However, my dad has acquired a distrust of the GPS directions because it doesn’t tell us to go the same roads that he has been traveling to get from one place to another for three-quarters of a century.

That’s understandable. But it has caused a wee bit of tension.

When we turned off of the main two-lane road we discovered that he wasn’t following us anymore. When I asked Isaiah if we had been separated by any other cars, he told me a black Tahoe had pulled into the gap between us. And when I heard that, I knew there was a story a-brewin’.

My dad wouldn’t tell me the story. But my mom did.

My dad followed that black Tahoe all the way up a private drive and practically into the driveway of a house, muttering about the GPS the whole way. Then the lady got out. She looked remarkably unlike Isaiah. She was not even of the same ethnicity of Isaiah or myself and had bleached blonde hair. We are not blondes.

There was no mistaking that a mistake had been made.

And she was curious about why she had been followed home by a guy in a little white Lexus sedan with Arizona plates.

My dad apologized profusely and got back into his car, turned around and met us at the Valona turn off ten minutes later. (He’s going to be so happy I’ve shared the story with everyone.)

We giggled.

When we arrived at Valona we were greeted by our cousins, the ocean air, and the promise of shrimp and fish. The fish haven’t materialized yet, but we still have high hopes.

Our children are behaving like hooligans, have the crazy hair to match their dispositions, and we are in a place that feels like home. There is much more to report, but I feel the need to pull my hair into a ponytail before getting started on that again.

And maybe a little snack. Be back in awhile, y’all.

JJ