Thank goodness I'm a Leo. I might have felt a little guilty if I happened to be a Scorpio.

I'm back from (ANOTHER!) family trip this past weekend to the mountains of Tennessee. We rented a cabin outside of the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area. I think the Great Smokey Mountains are incredibly beautiful. I don't think the masses of rednecks that vacation there are all that cute though. And apparently it is also the main gathering place for the Old and Wrinkly Slow Walkers. We were all sitting in a cafe at a place called The Apple Barn eating apple dumplings and ice cream Saturday afternoon when I leaned over and whispered in my Mom's ear that each person seemed to walk slower than the one before. She started watching people and we cracked up. It was like their feet were weighted down or something. Even the younger ones (and I am referring to people my age which, sadly, was young). The average age of Apple Barn cafe customers was approximately 138.

My Mom and I left Atlanta around 10:00 on Friday morning. We were supposed to leave at 9:00 but my Mom was running late and then we had to stop at the W almart approximately 1/4 mile from my house because on her drive to my house she remembered a few thing she forgot to pack. And then she wanted to stop at the Starbucks in the same shopping center because it's like a magnet that she's incapable of resisting every time she sees one.

We drove a few hours and stopped in Cherokee, N.C. for lunch and ate outside on a deck over the river where I proceeded to knock over my entire glass of iced tea all over the table and into my lap. Then I continued driving to Pigeon Forge in my wet pants.

My Mom had brought enough groceries for us to stay in the cabin for a month even though we were only going to be there from late Friday afternoon until Sunday morning. But we still had to stop and get refrigerated stuff: milk, cheese, butter, etc. when we were near the cabin. Then we made approximately eleventy hundred turns and went up hills, down hills, around bends, and finally made it up to our cabin. The cabin was gorgeous but it was nothing compared to the view. We were way up in the mountains. I took photos but haven't downloaded them yet so I'll try to post them later this week. Maybe.

We arrived a couple of hours before my brother, his girlfriend and her two daughters arrived from Kentucky. We decided to check out the entire three-story cabin and we had bought a few magazines when we stopped at the grocery store so we could sit out on the deck and relax for a little while before my brother's group arrived. This is when the adventure started.

The first bedroom we checked out was the master bedroom and then we walked into the master bathroom. It had a huge jacuzzi tub - with a scorpion in it. Mom had never seen a scorpion before and she was sort of freaking the hell out. I told her I would get it out and flush it down the toilet. This was kind of a big deal because I am a total girly girl when it comes to bugs - even the non-dangerous kind - but I could tell my Mom was not up for dealing with a scorpion. It was on the far side of the tub and the tub was really deep so I couldn't reach it from outside the tub. I climbed in. I first leaned over close to it and blew on it to see if it was alive or not. It did not move so I was not quite as creeped out by scooping it up in a wad of toilet tissue as I had been a few seconds before. I scooped it up.

Turns out it wasn't dead after all. It ran (VERY quickly) up my hand and was almost up my arm before I could fully fathom what was happening. That's when I began freaking the hell out. My Mom was screaming her head off, "BEVERLY! GET OUT! GET OUT NOW!" I was screaming my head off, "AAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!" I flung the scorpion off of me and sort of ran up the side of the bathtub trying to get out as fast as I possibly could. And then my Mom and I almost peed our pants laughing. Which would not have been as big of a deal for me since I already had iced tea all over my pants. She was gasping for air as she told me she had no idea I could even move that fast. The situation was now this: the scorpion was still in the bathtub and its tail was completely straightened out. I don't know a lot about scorpions, but I kind of assumed this must mean it was good and pissed off at this point.

My Mom was still freaking: "Beverly, what are we going to do now?" I told her I was going to try again to get the scorpion in a wad of tissue and flush it down the toilet and she was worried about it running up my arm again and stinging me. It just so happens I was a little worried about that myself. I told her either I had to try again or she had to try. She wished me luck and told me to be careful.

I climbed back into the deep jacuzzi tub. I bent over and made sure I grabbed the scorpion a little tighter this time and then yelled for my Mom to get out of the way. I quickly climbed back out of the tub, ran to the toilet and threw the tissue paper into the toilet. Unfortunately, I threw the scorpion into the corner on the floor beside the trash can.

My Mom continued screaming like a little girl. If I'm being honest, so did I. I grabbed another wad of tissue, bent down, grabbed the scorpion for the third time and finally managed to throw the scorpion into the toilet and flushed that sucker down. Yay me!

Then I turned around and looked at the tub. I had on a pair of black flip flops and when I ran up the side of the tub screaming like the scorpion was going to eat my head off after it ran up my arm the first time I grabbed it, I had left giant black streaks all over the inside and top of the jacuzzi tub. My Mom decided she would clean up my shoe marks since I had (finally) successfully gotten rid of the scorpion.

Then we had to go sit down for a while.

We only told my brother later about the scorpion story because we didn't want to scare his girlfriend or her little girls. He told his girlfriend because it turns out one of her daughters is deathly allergic to stuff like bees and scorpions. They told the girls they wanted to check their bed since we were in the woods. Thankfully they found nothing in the bed and we saw no more scorpions for the remainder of the weekend.

I was feeling kind of proud of my scorpion fighting until my brother's girlfriend told a story about the time her brother came to the Smokey Mountains and stayed in a cabin.

He and his friends decided to get in the hot tub their first night in their cabin. When they got in, they found quite a bit of brown hair. They thought it was pretty gross, but figured the chemicals would kill any germs of the people who left their brown hair behind and scooped out the hair and climbed in.

The following morning, her brother woke up kind of early and decided he would begin the day out on the porch in the hot tub alone looking out at the mountains. He opened up the door and started to walk out onto the porch towards the hot tub. He quickly changed his mind when he found a bear sitting in the hot tub chilling out.

Needless to say, none of us used the hot tub at our cabin this weekend.

This is a long enough post already, so I'll save the story of some other stuff that happened until later this week. I was telling the attorney across the hall the story about the scorpion and, after he stopped laughing at me, he asked me why I didn't just take my shoe off and squish it. Well duh, because then it would have been a pretty boring story. Or perhaps because neither my Mom nor I thought of doing that.

My week. Let me tell you about it.

I'm having a pretty normal week so far with the exception of A KIND OF BIG DEAL that happened yesterday which I will go into detail below - complete with photographic evidence. I have that evidence because I'm a huge blogging dork and whipped out my camera to take pictures so I would have something exciting to show you when I write about the event on here while some other people were, you know, running in the opposite direction out of fear for their very lives. I am not kidding about that.

I'm going to recap my life since Saturday. This is a very typical week (with A KIND OF BIG DEAL thrown in to shake things up a little bit) and it will show you why I don't blog every single day because it would basically be like the movie Groundhog Day for all of you reading it. And there is nothing exciting about my life on a normal day-to-day basis and you would not want to read crap like this every single day on here:

Saturday, I woke up early and did a few things around my house, left around 10:00 a.m., ran a few errands and arrived at the studio at 11:45. I opened up the studio, set up stuff I needed for my class, taught class from 1:00 until 4:00, had two of my regulars who stayed until 4:45 playing around with their paintings, cleaned the studio, set up for the private party I was going to teach the next day, left the studio around 5:15, drove almost two hours to the location of my niece's birthday party, stayed there until 8:15, and got home at 9:30 p.m.

Sunday, I chilled at home in the morning, left my house around 10:00 a.m., arrived at the studio at 10:45, opened up the studio, set up paints and brushes for the private birthday party, one of the party throwers arrived at 11:00 to set up food, etc., taught class from 12:00 to 2:00, cleaned the studio (painting messes and food messes), set up for the class on Monday, stayed at the studio until 5:00 practicing a few other paintings I have to teach in the near future, went to the spa and had a massage, got home around 7:30, ate a ham sandwich and fell asleep early on my sofa. Then the studio owner called me around 10:00 p.m. and we talked for about 45 minutes. Went to bed around 11:00.

Monday I came to work at the law firm and caught one boss up who had been out on vacation last week, found out one of my other bosses left the office while I was at lunch and jumped on a plane to Ireland for the week and didn't bother to tell me, printed out labels and stuffed 110 overnight packages (fun!), put marketing pitch packages together for one boss, managed to get all three of my bosses' time entered on time, and somehow also managed to get all 80+ prebills processed and to accounting by the 6:00 p.m. deadline. I left the office at 6:00 and went to the studio and took a class, cleaned the studio, and got home around 10:30 p.m. On my way home, an ex-boyfriend called me and we chatted for a bit (he calls me every couple of months to see if I'm still with Hot Brazilian and, if not, can he come to town and see me. Obviously he cannot come and see me because yes, I'm still happily with Hot Brazilian if only emotionally at this current point in time. Physically, I haven't been with Hot Brazilian in a year. Yes, he's now been officially in Brazil for an entire year.)

But internets, yesterday was one crazy event after another. I had in my head that the day would be smooth and as boring as always: I would come to work, do my work, and then go to my scheduled hair appointment straight from the office to get my hair cut and colored because I'm leaving on Friday morning to go on (ANOTHER!) family road trip - this time to the mountains of Tennessee rather than the deep woods of Mississippi - and I look like a big ol' shaggy mess. My younger brother who lives in Kentucky is meeting us in Tennesee (this sounds more and more redneck southern by the minute doesn't it?) and he's bringing his girlfriend who I have never met and I didn't want her to think I have just escaped from the half-way house for mental patients I live next door to when she sees what a mess my hair is. So yes, that is the kind of day I expected. It is not the kind of day that I had though. And for those of you who might be new here, I honestly do live next door to a half-way house for mental patients. I did not add that in for any sort of dramatic effect or as a joke of any kind.

I arrived at work and pretty early on I received a call from a friend of mine who said a friend of hers wanted to bring a group of people to the studio to paint but when he went online to register, the Tuesday night class had been canceled. Yes, it had been canceled. We decided to have a few days this month when we celebrated "Christmas in July". In fact, I taught funky Christmas trees for my class this past Saturday. Well, apparently no one was interested in celebrating last night and only one person had registered for the Tuesday night Christmas painting so the owner canceled the class. Now 6 people wanted to come. I contacted the owner to ask her if there was any chance she would open it back up. She was in the middle of meetings at her full-time job and so I played phone tag and e-mail tag with her and my friend who originally contacted me for about the first 2 hours of the day.

Then I started hearing many, many, many sirens way down on the street below. We hear sirens all day so I didn't think much about it, but it did seem to be an especially large number of sirens yesterday morning around 10:30. Around 11:45, one of the attorneys on my hall came around the corner and I heard him tell another attorney that he was supposed to be leaving for a lunch meeting but that we would not be able to get out of our building because of the "suspicious package" that had been found. Hmmmmm. This did not sound like anything good.

I walked across the hall to an attorney's office and we all looked out the window to discover the street was completely closed down right in front of our office and there were police cars and fire trucks everywhere. We also saw a bunch of people standing around on a corner/sidewalk about a block or two away. If any of you are familiar with Atlanta, I'm now about to basically give away the location of the building I work in. This is probably stupid, but oh well. The train system in Atlanta is called "Marta". And their corny slogan is "Take Marta. It's smarta." I couldn't make this shit up if I tried people. Way to teach proper grammar to Atlantans, Marta!

Anyway, there is a tunnel under my building and under the road from the train station to my building. And someone left a "suspicious package" in the tunnel. I walked into one of my bosses' offices and said "did you hear __________ Street is closed because there is a suspicious package in the tunnel?" And he responded with "well, I did hear sirens earlier but I didn't think much about it". As I said, we hear sirens all day every day. About that time, we heard the crackle of the building-wide loudspeaker system start up and my boss said something along the lines of, "awwww shit." The security guy came on and said we were to evacuate the building and that this was not a drill, it was the real thing.

I walked to my office and grabbed my purse because if we were going to be outside for a while, I wanted my sunglasses, my camera, and my wallet in case we decided to just go to lunch while we were out there. I was lucky enough to get on an elevator before they were shut down. I work on a fairly high up floor and from fire drill experience, I know how sore I am after walking down all of those steps.

My building is a few blocks from a mall and we were instructed and directed by security to walk to the mall. I saw a couple of co-workers in the parking lot of a hotel right next to the mall so I went and hung out with them. Other co-workers came by and said we should really walk further away because if it was a bomb we would still get hit by flying glass and they kept walking further. I, instead, walked back closer to my building and took pictures for y'all to see all of the chaos. Because I'm crazy, that's why.

Many, many buildings in the immediate area were evacuated along with us so there were tons of people standing around.

We stood outside for approximately 30 - 45 minutes and we saw a "Tactical Rescue" truck and an ambulance go zooming away from the scene. A few minutes later, the police gave us the all clear to return to our buildings.

I later found out one of the firefighters told an attorney in my office that it was a bomb that they found but that it was a "dud". Thank goodness.

Here are the photos I risked my life to take:

People standing around. (I blacked out the sign because it has the street name and street number of a building very close to mine and even though anyone familiar with Atlanta probably knows where I work now, I decided to try and not be totally out there with the info.)

Here is a photo of all of the police cars in front of the train station. Also, on a normal day if you were walking around in the middle of this particular street like these people, you would be squashed by a car within seconds. It's a very major road.

The red brick building with the columns is a restaurant. You can see all of the cooks and waiters in their black and white uniforms walking back towards the restaurant when we were given the all clear.
Here is a mob of people returning to our buildings.

Another photo of the police cars. Apparently I thought y'all have never seen a bunch of police cars at a bomb scare.

Another photo of the crowds of people who were evacuated.

More firefighters and police officers:

A couple of cameramen recording the excitement.

Oooooh, exciting. A firetruck.

Some more of the crowd:

Here are a couple of the crowd returning to my building:

After we were allowed to return to our office, they kept the train station closed down for an additional hour or so. Here are a couple of photos from the window of my office. Well, I don't actually have a window so these are from the window of the office of an attorney across the hall from me:

After we got back to the office, I learned one of my friends had taken the stairs down when were evacuated and her legs didn't fare too well. She collapsed three times outside and had to have people help her up. I ran around the building doing stuff for her the rest of the afternoon - for example I went down to the cafe to get her lunch and luckily I didn't wipe out and fall down the stairs again like I did a couple of weeks ago. I helped her out to her car. That kind of stuff. (She's not at work today because she's too sore to walk.)

At some point after the bomb and evacuation, my friend emailed me again and asked me if I would come in to the studio and teach a special class to her friend and his group. I told the owner that despite looking like I am insane, I would reschedule my hair appointment for next week if she wanted me to go teach. She decided to keep the studio closed for the night. I was secretly happy because I really needed my hair to get some serious help.

About two hours later, my hair guy called and said he had to reschedule me because they had a water leak at the salon and the plumber was turning the water off at the exact time my appointment was scheduled. Blast it!

So I still look like I have a gigantic bird's nest on top of my head and instead I went out and bought three pairs of shoes and a new purse after work. When I fell down the stairs into the cafe a couple of weeks ago and almost killed myself, I was wearing my favorite pair of shoes in the universe - my super comfortable brown sandals with the thong between my toe. The thong piece on my left shoe is now hanging by a thread so I knew I needed to go buy a new pair of brown sandals. I found some really good deals so I bought three pairs of sandals (only one of them is brown). Then I saw a really cute purse and the sign said "Up to 70% Off" so I asked the girl to scan it and tell me how much it would be. The price tag said it was $24. I paid $7 for it. Score! The total for three pairs of shoes and a purse was $48.

Like I said, this is all a pretty typical week with a bomb thrown in to shake things up a bit. Thankfully I don't mean that literally.

Wow! You're going to be so glad you stopped by to read about all of this excitement!

I've been extremely busy over the past couple of weeks. Here is a list of things I've done during all of that busy-ness that are blog worthy:

1.

.....crickets......

The only remotely interesting thing I have to tell you about (interesting in an odd way) is that for the past two days I've noticed an unusual odor in the parking deck at my office. It smells just like horse manure which is odd since I've never seen a horse in Buckhead and I've lived in Atlanta for (gulp) 41 years as of next month. Yes, Atlanta does have horse and carriage rides but they are done miles away from Buckhead.

What can I say people....my life really is that boring.

I will never again think, "I really wish I had something to blog about"

I was going to blog about my July 4th weekend but then I figured y'all didn't want to hear about my mom asking me tons of questions about my dad's finances (which I know nothing about, nor do I really want to know) or about visiting my dying aunt and how sad that was or about my dad's completely unnecessary and rude comment to me on Sunday when he had us over for dinner or about how his girlfriend told me I'm fat (but in the nicest way possible - ahem. She actually said to me "my mom was a large woman too but she had beautiful hands just like you do" and my sister-in-law almost spit her coffee out when she said it).

So instead I've been quiet all week because I've done very little for the past week other than work and teach a painting class or two and contemplate the complete dysfunction of my family. And just this morning I made the mistake of thinking to myself, "I really wish I had something to blog about". It was a mistake because then I did something worth blogging about. At least it's worth it to me but perhaps you'll read the remainder of this post and think I really should not have blogged about this either. Too bad.

Around 1:20, I decided to go down to the cafe in my building to get something to eat for lunch (even though I was told 4 days ago by my dad's girlfriend that I'm fat). One of my co-workers goes down with me sometimes and she decided to join me. There is a very long spiral staircase leading down to the cafe from the lobby level of our building (I would guess it's close to 40 steps) and my co-worker says it makes her nervous so she always takes the elevator. I always take the stairs. You can see where this is leading, right?

About half-way down, my left foot slipped on the edge of a step and I fell on my ass with a thud and then proceeded to bounce down about 6 or 7 (concrete) steps. As I was falling, I tried to catch myself on the handrail with my right hand so my right thumb began throbbing, and I twisted my left ankle, and landed with my left hand flat on the ground which caused my left wrist to immediately begin throbbing. I yelled "FUCK!" kind of loudly when it happened but no one heard me or saw me fall.

It is now almost 4 hours later. My ass feels like someone beat me. My right knee is throbbing. My left ankle is killing me. My left wrist still hurts and the entire left side of my back is hurting pretty bad. And I feel like my upper left thigh is bruised even though it didn't hit anything at all. About 10 minutes ago, I happened to notice the toenail on my freshly pedicured foot (yes, as usual there were weird people in the nail salon with me on Monday night) was almost torn off halfway down my toe. I decided to go ahead and rip it off and there is a good bit of dried up blood under it. I guess everything else was hurting so much worse earlier that I didn't even notice my toe was bleeding.

When I returned to my desk, I could not really sit down without wanting to scream so I decided to stand up. At my desk. While typing documents. I look like an idiot all bent over while standing and typing. Our firm does not provide printers for the attorneys so if they don't buy their own printer for their office, they all have to print at one of the staff members' printers. That means that I have 5 attorneys who are constantly in and out of my office getting documents off the printer. Also, I have one of the few scanners at my desk so I have even more people than that coming in here all day to scan. (Annoying much? Why yes. Yes it is.) All three of my bosses have brought me work and come in multiple times to retrieve their printed documents. Not one person has asked me if I'm okay or why I'm standing at my desk bent over typing and grimacing in pain. Of course they know that I have crazy stuff happen to me all of the time so they might simply be too afraid to ask what's wrong with me.

In other news, I have 3 more weekends full of family events (and no doubt plenty of family drama) and I've informed my mom that after the weekend of July 25, I do not care to see any of them for quite a few weeks because I need a break. She laughed so I had to inform her that it's not a joke. That I need a break. Since I've had at least one family event every single weekend since Mother's Day I don't think it's asking too much to request a break, do y'all? Also, I have jury duty on August 6. This is the 5th time I've been summoned for jury duty in the past 8 or 9 years. Does this seem excessive to anyone else? And in case you need a gross out factor (you know, if my bloody toe wasn't enough) I got home at 11:30 last night after teaching a painting class to discover the "Largest Hairball in the History of the Universe" had been hacked up by Bailey. On my bed. Which means I slept on the sofa last night while my sheets were being washed (several times). It was approximately 4 inches long and very thick in diameter. I couldn't even be mad at her because I knew she must have been feeling pretty gross before getting rid of that thing. I just wish she had jumped down on the hardwood floor to make my job a lot easier. You're all very welcome for sharing that piece of news.

Happy Independence Day!

I decided to take down my post from yesterday. I got it off of my chest and I appreciate the comments of all of you, however, if certain people ever find my blog I really don't think I want them to read that post. It would not bring about anything good.

So instead.........

Happy July 4th to all of my American readers! I hope you all have a weekend full of joy, fun, and lots of good food and company!