Keeping up with the Joneses: 07/01/2013

There were soooo many wonderful details of this years reunion, that I don't have enough space (or desire) to write and include everything. I've decided to take the most memorable and interesting events and include them. First let me say that every year, George's family has a reunion held in Utica, MS. We have not made it to a single one in the past 7 years, but on the 8th one we made sure not to miss it, as his grandmother (lovingly referred to as Big Mama) is aging and we didn't make our annual Thanksgiving trip in 2012. George was on a training exercise in New Orleans, and being his cheapness has rubbed off on me, I refused to spend $1,300 for Dorian and I to fly to MS. I decided to rent a convertible mustang and drive. Well that plan quickly went out the door and so did being the only driver. I opted to coerce my BFF, Shayla, into going with me to help me drive, in exchange I would cover her hotel room and expenses. Forgetting she vowed to never drive to MS ever again, she agreed to go.
Once there we checked into the Battlefield Inn in Vicksburg. We'd stayed there in 2008 when George and I had our wedding. They had a free all you can eat breakfast buffet and free drinks in their bar along with karaoke nightly that made it a fun place to stay. My cousin Tanisha refers to it as the "Good Grits Inn." We received our room keys and decided to settle Shayla in first. After getting the room door opened, someone sat up in the bed, prompting Shayla to scream and the elderly lady who was awkwardly awaken at 5:something in the morning to apologize. We returned to the front desk for another room. The second room smelled heavily of cat pee and had black mold in the fridge. We thought perhaps the third time was a charm, so we asked the young man working alone to find us a room closer to the one I was given. Aside from the 13" TV which seemed to be missing it's remote, Shayla's room had seemed okay. The place had quickly gone down, and we decided we'd put up with it just for the bountiful breakfast in the morning. It was now 5:45am, and breakfast began at 6:00am, so we decided to stay awake and eat then hit the bed. We were told about the new location for breakfast, and once 6:00am rolled around we stepped outside our rooms to look down into the lobby from our indoor balcony rooms to see they were only serving cold cereal and biscuits that appeared to have some grayish colored meat in between them (which we decided must have been sausage) sitting on a counter. We passed on the breakfast and went to our rooms to get some sleep. After we awoke for real, we showered and discovered there was no hot water. Too tired to complain we got dressed and went to find the closest Cracker Barrel. We decided it was not worth staying at the Battlefield Inn, and went to check into the nearest Holiday Inn Express. We went back to collect our things and check out of the B.I and had a challenge with that. They attempted to charge the credit card twice, the manager wanted to charge us for two nights (even though we had only been there 6 hours) and they refused to compensate us for the problems we had encountered there. We finally were able to leave, confident they had been paid for only one night, and relaxed comfortably at the HIE. George arrived at the Jackson airport the following day.
During our road trip we stopped at Matt's Big Breakfast in Phoenix, AZ. It was alright, but not really note worthy. I'd eat there again simply for the portions they gave, but I'd probably order something that couldn't possibly be messed up. Like pancakes. We did enjoy our time in AZ, although it was 118 while we were driving through, which caused a small computer glitch in the Civic that delayed us about an hour and two mechanics to find that everything was working fine even though we had a small overheating problem. We turned off the AC while in the middle of nowhere, but the cooler temperature (115 degrees) in Tucson was still too hot, so we turned the AC back on.
Thursday was the family reunion. We arrived later than most of the family, but there were enough members there to have had the whole place set up. Instead they all sat around a fan waiting for my sister-in-law (who is highly productive) to set up everything by herself. Shayla and I, although we said we wouldn't help with anything, decided to give her a hand. We were greeted by my mother-in-law with hugs and unintelligible ranting. This is always the case when she hasn't seen us in a long while, but her shirt had seen better days. There were more holes than material, and the contents of her breast pockets did not cover all the flesh we could see. George and his sister yelled at her to go put something else on, which she did after she was good and ready. Once the PA system was set up, she returned with her reunion T-shirt on and began singing "Amen" over the mic. As family members began to yell at George to go get his mother, he simply lowered his head and covered his face and shook his head. I leaned into him understandingly, gently touched his arm and quietly said "you better not ever say anything else about how crazy my mother is!" Everything went off smoothly, well that is if you consider a loud ignorant family member yelling and cursing at her daughter, bad toddlers pulling down the volleyball net, and George and his three aunts holding their own private church service as they played The Williams Bros. over the PA system smooth. The day did not disappoint.
On the ride home, we decided to just rush back so we could have at least one day of total rest before going back to work. At some point we probably had white-line fever, as we relied on singing loudly and playing hangman to keep us awake. We stopped only when necessary, slept overnight in Van Horn, TX (the midpoint between home and Vicksburg) and got home in time to give us an entire day of rest. George stayed in Utica an extra 10 days.
I'll admit, I actually wished we had more time to stay there. Not necessarily to visit, but it had been so long since we had been there in the summer time, that the fields of corn and soybeans were nice to see. I love everything country, and the green down south is not just green it's GUREEN!!!!!! We're planning a trip to Pittsburgh later in the year, but we may just have to go back to MS. George said he didn't get a chance to take us fishing and hunting. Not sure about shooting an animal, but if I get to fire a gun, I'm all for aiming to miss.
I realized when we walked in our house, that there is no place like home. And even though I love the country, I like our little slice of country...that is still only 10 minutes away from my nail shop.