Phew! What a vacation!!

I had a GREAT time away with Valerie!! I had 2 nights out (more than I've had in the last 2 years!!!) and we had a blast! I was able to meet Valerie's friends, and possible new boyfriend (she won't like me saying that!) It was so good to see her again! I was also able to see an old friend Bernice. She was my old supervisor in grad school(even through she is only 4 years older) and we've kept in touch all these years. We went to Charleston for the day and did a lot of shopping!! We even bought matching pendants and spent a lot of quality time together. The only difficult part of the vacation was being too naive that going back to SC after being gone for over 6 years wasn't going to affect me at all. Boy was I wrong!! It was much harder than I thought it would be to go back to where Keith and I began our married life. Stupid me asked Valerie to take me to see our old neighborhood. We drove right by our old house and it was truly like time had stood still. The garage doors were open and a man was doing something in the garage. I closed my eyes and saw Keith sitting on the front porch. I saw Hayle and Daisy running around the yard. I saw both of us running through the woods chasing after Bubba when he escaped the house. It was surreal and very emotional. I'm so glad I went, but I was definitely unprepared for the emotions it created. Par for the course, I guess.

I'm waiting (patiently) for Valerie to send me the pictures she took over the weekend. Once she does that, I'll weed out the inappropriate (I mean silly...yeah, silly) ones and post a few of us here.