Oh, look, we’re now up to Memorial Day weekend.
Friday, I’d taken off, so didn’t have to worry about being available online. Good thing, it was a three-hour drive from Richmond to Durham. Liz, Drew and I had been eating pretty healthily for breakfast, so as soon as I was packed and out the door, I headed to McDonalds for an evil breakfast sandwich and a large coffee. Road trip traditions must be observed.
The drive down was easy, peaceful, and entirely away from the highway. I had no idea what I was doing, just followed the GPS. (It turned out, once I got down and discussed the whole thing with Dad, that I’d accidentally turned on the ‘avoid highways’ feature.) Saw almost no cars. And suddenly found myself on Carver Road, a road in Durham I knew well. Showed up at Dad’s place around 12:30, unpacked the car and took him to lunch at Bleu Olive, a really nice Mediterranean place down the street.
We spent the afternoon relaxing and catching up. I felt mildly guilty on this trip – when C and I would visit, C would spend a lot of time cleaning the kitchen and we’d go through the cabinets to throw out expired spices, and I’d help Dad with whatever projects he wanted. We did a little of that, but mostly I just did my own stuff. Dad really has the apartment well in hand, and there wasn’t anything urgent to do. Later, we watched the news, and Dad made us salmon and sweet potato fries, quite nice.
Saturday was fun and adventurous. My brother Sam comes over most mornings to powerwalk with my dad around the various (really nice) neighborhoods close by, so I get to be part of that.
One thing – I am as far away from ‘woo woo’ stuff like reincarnation as you can get, but if it looks like the universe is trying to tell me something, I try to listen. When I was visiting with Liz and Drew and we were enjoying the front porch, we enjoyed watching a rabbit exploring the front lawn, quite unconcerned. Then, when Dad and Sam and I were walking, we saw this other rabbit, who came out and parked quite close to us. But here’s the deal – one of my big pet names for Charles was “Mr. Bunny” or “Bunny”, due to a great greeting card he’d given me once, of two bunnies nibbling the same stalk – and not a day goes by where I don’t walk by a picture of him at home and say, “Hi, bunny.”. So… maybe C is an actual bunny now, or using actual bunnies to visit us here on earth? Let’s just say… can’t say that that’s not what’s happening.
Sam and I then headed into town to have our regularly scheduled bros-only breakfast. We went to Monuts, which is awesome, and after some failed attempts to order takeaway through the phone, ended up just ordering and eating there, which was fine. I got some egg dish, but also got some amazing pastry, because they had a lot of it.
Sam dropped me off back at Dad’s, where we putzed around. I’d had in mind going over to the nail place for a mani/pedi, and I also decided I wanted to mail my G&S books – both the scores I’d used in Baltimore and the new set that Drew and Liz gave me – to myself so I didn’t have to fly with them. After a discussion with Dad about where the post office was, he said, ‘are they packed yet? You could just take them to the UPS store’. ‘Where’s that?’, I cleverly asked. ‘Right next to the nail place.’ Oh. So that’s what I did, schlepped the books to the UPS store, shipped them to myself, and got my nails did.
Saturday afternoon (I think), Dad and I had been looking at his phone and thinking about getting him a new one. We went to Best Buy and looked at the various Jitterbug models -which would be a good choice, as he doesn’t really use his phone for much – but you had to sign up with their phone provider and that didn’t make sense. So then we went over to the Spectrum store (same shopping center) and waited around for quite a while before buying him a new Iphone SE.
We had dinner planned with Dad’s lady friend, Amanda. (fun fact for BHTers – Amanda is Ron R’s stepsister.) Sam, Amanda, Dad and I all met at Cheeni, a new Indian place which was really fun and quirky. I had two really interesting cocktails and a paneer appetizer. Everyone else got appetizers and cocktails (or beverages) as well. Dad and I ended up ordering the same entree, the “Raja”, a combination of fish cubes, a chicken preparation and a beef preparation. It was delicious, but a ton of food – Dad and I ended up taking a lot of it home and it also served as Sunday night’s dinner and Monday’s lunch.
Sam went home after that, but we went up to Amanda’s penthouse, where she has an amazing large balcony with great views of downtown Durham – and enjoyed dessert before heading home.
Sunday, we did another morning walk. Then after cleanup, Dad and I went over to the local outlet malls. It used to be a regular ritual with me and C, to go visit the outlet malls when visiting my parents. He was a far better shopper than I, generally having a list – particularly at Thanksgiving, picking up gifts for the little ones. There was always a nice lunch in there somewhere. The malls in Bluffton, SC were a hefty drive from my parents’ in Beaufort (would have been closer if we had flown there or taken a boat), but there were several different ones. In NC, there’s just one mall, but it’s closer and easy to get to.
I’d dragged Dad along at least once since C passed away and he likes it enough to go shopping at my speed (quickly). We ducked in various clothing stores. I actually made a big haul at, of all places, Banana Republic. I haven’t been a size that the NYC Bananas sell in decades, but apparently, the ones in the south know what an XXL is. I got a lot of button-down shirts, both short- and long-sleeved. Oh, a bit of confusion – Dad kept referring to ‘button-down shirts’, but obviously didn’t mean what I meant by that (simply, a shirt that you button all the way down, as opposed to a t-shirt or a polo shirt). He meant ‘button down collar’. OK, whatever.
There are chain-ish restaurants nearby for lunch, but we did what we did last time, which was stop in at the charming little town of Hillsborough for lunch, eating at the Wooden Nickel pub. I just had a burger, which was great, and either a cider or a white beer, I forget, but he had fish tacos and didn’t like them much, oh well.
The rest of the afternoon was lazy, I think. We had that leftover Indian food for dinner, with a salad. (I looked up the three dishes that they combined into the ‘Raja’ to see if my local Jackson Diner did the same thing. Turns out they do the fish and chicken dishes (separately), but no beef at all. Which, I guess, makes sense.)
I don’t remember what we did on Monday at all. Oh, yes, it was rainy, but then stopped and Sam got us to go for a walk later in the morning than we usually go. And that night, I took them to Blue Corn, which I remembered liking a few years ago. This time, not so much, actually – although it was certainly pricey. My entree was kinda gross, oh well.
And Tuesday morning, I got ready to leave while Dad went over to Sam’s house for some project that involved a contractor. Then leisurely off to the airport. I had enough time that I could have actually done some more sightseeing, like walking around the Duke campus or something, but I figured I’d get all sweaty and then be on an airplane. So, off, tank up the car, off to the airport (not far), and finally handed back the rental car I’d been driving for a week and a half. (It was a Kia Forte. Not a bad car.)
No issues coming home. And I went out to dinner, knowing that this would be a last hurrah before going on a concerted diet and alcohol curtailment for the summer.
Tada! It was a fun trip. Glad to see new places, visit beloved friends and so on. Also, I’ve now proven to myself that working on the road is possible, and will probably try to do that a little more, maybe in the fall.
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