Our Christmas Day flight from Germany to DC was smooth sailing, we quickly got our luggage and made it through customs and caught a cab to my mother-in-law’s house where both girls had parked their cars before leaving. I drove Jillian’s car and Mike drove Amelia’s car back to Fredericksburg where Mike and I were staying, at our friend’s AirBnB. Jillian helped us unload our luggage and then she was back on the road to her place in Richmond, but not before opening her gift that was under the tree that my friend and hostess with the absolute mostest, Bobbi put up for us.
It didn’t take us long to get back into the swing of things. We walked the Rappahannock River Heritage Trail/Canal Path in the mornings, went to breakfast at our favorite places, drove by our house, got some shopping done for things that we needed to bring back to Amman, chilled out and relaxed a little because we had a few low key visits planned. First was a lovely get-together at our friend Caroline‘s house, lots of fun, yummy food and drinks; I couldn’t wait for the blue bowl to be filled with bread before I got this picture of her festive and beautiful blue dining room.
One of the most important trips was back to our neighborhood so we could look at our house again LOL and visit with our neighbors and hope that we’d get to see our darling kitty, Gracie. You might remember her from previous blog posts where I bought a litter box in anticipation of her coming with us, (she didn’t (second picture)) and another (she’s way down at the end) where I mention that my next door neighbors were caring for her. Her backstory: she moved to our neighborhood in 2011 and I discovered this as I was outside doing yard work and taking pictures of these cool mushrooms that were growing around an old stump.
As you can tell from the vantage point of the photo, I had to crouch down to get a good shot and this little gray kitty came out of nowhere and ran right up to me.
I hadn’t seen her before and she was the friendliest outdoor cat I’d ever encountered. Every time I knelt down, she would rub up against me, practically knocking me down. I kept waiting for one of the girls to come out so they could see her before she ran away. When no one came out, I just kept trying to take as many pictures of her that I could – which was difficult because as you can see from the pictures below, she kept rubbing against me!
So this day – June 18, 2011 is the first day that we met our next door neighbor’s ‘shop cat’ Gracie! He brought him with her to their new house where she lived outside and visited our house often – eventually she started having occasional sleepovers! We got Finn in December of 2012 and though Gracie wasn’t crazy about him, she tolerated him because she loved visiting with us. We made sure to have a bag of cat food around in case she visited for a while, but otherwise – her care was the responsibility of our neighbor. That is until 2013 when he moved and she became ours, I took her to the vet and made it official! She remained the most affectionate cat, she would play with Finn sometimes, she was my buddy when Amelia went off to college, when Mike worked overseas and when Jillian went to college. She liked to have coffee with me on the front porch while I watered the plants, have a beer on the back deck while I read a book, she’d roam the neighborhood then sleep for hours in one of her many spots inside the house so when it turned out that I was going to move overseas, too, I just assumed she was going with me.
Turns out that my cat people friends didn’t assume she was going with me and when I started to worry that maybe I was making the wrong decision, my friend Judy told me that they wanted to keep her so she wouldn’t have to experience such a stark environment change. Good thing I have those smart cat people in my life because it would have been a disaster for her here, it broke my heart because I was going to miss her but we decided to leave her with Judy who is our left side next door neighbor. So now Gracie has gone from one house, to mine, now to Judy’s.
Except there’s one more chapter to the story, while Judy was on vacation she asked one of our other animal loving neighbors to feed the cats (she has a cat, too), enter George – the grandpa of our cul-de-sac, who (before his dog passed away last year) could be seen taking one to two LONG walks everyday with his senior Golden Retriever. Well, much like how she adopted me and my family – she decided that she was going to move in with George, another person who had never had a cat and now those two are in love. George and Gracie, isn’t that great? I happen to be best neighbor buddies with George’s daughter who ALSO lives on the court, so when we visited with her on New Years Eve – we went over to Gracie’s and it took her a minute to realize what was going on but once she knew it was me and Mike, she purred and let us love on her. I know she is bringing George such joy, he belongs to her now, she goes where she is needed and with George she will stay. ❤️
I needed a beer after all of that and headed to Red Dragon and met up with friends, then I took my beer buzz to Dragonfly Yoga for an amazing evening Restorative Yoga class. A quiet New Years Eve was just what we needed as the next few days were going to be delightfully busy!
HAPPY NEW YEAR! We had 5 full days left to visit before we were scheduled to fly back to Amman. I am not one to shy away from driving all over so we hopped into Amelia’s little Nissan and got on with it!
January 1 2020 – Mike, Amelia and I drove down to Richmond to visit with Jillian and meet her boyfriend and enjoy some delicious pizza at Pupatella https://pupatellarva.com . We got to see some of our Richmond family as well. No better way to start the new year than with my three.
We went to Carytown so I could get a few things from Ashby the resale clothing store where Jillian works. Since I started practicing minimalism in 2016 I have purchased very few newly created items of clothing and since moving to Amman in 2018, just about everything has been recycled. For this trip I had a list and some photo ideas of what I was looking for and told my personal shopper, Jillian what I needed. She searched and brought pieces to me to try while Mike and Amelia sat in the lounge on a comfy couch and people watched. If you go to Richmond you really have to visit Ashby and Clementine (more upscale consignment (sister) shop) you can get up to date items to freshen up your existing wardrobe!
January 2 2020 – I woke up extra early so I could carpool to DC with two of the best KM/Intranet systems analysts ever, where we joined the other best analyst ever, so we could all be together with the best engineers as a whole team for just one day! Being back at the GEICO HQ felt like no time had passed, seeing familiar faces, chatting with old colleagues and of course lunch at Clyde’s, we had so much fun!
Just like a year prior for my going away/retirement party, Estee came down from Buffalo for the day and since her flight wasn’t scheduled til later in the evening we went to Lia’s for dinner and more laughing before we headed off to National Airport to drop her off for the flight back.
January 3 2020 – let’s go somewhere! My classic mom tribe (plus the classic dads) took a scenic drive out west to Sperryville, Virginia to have some pizza and beer at Rappahannock Pizza Kitchen and browse the artwork at Haley Fine Art, a gallery that I found a few weeks before moving to Jordan when the girls and I took a Sunday drive. There’s also a brewery in Sperryville Hopkins Ordinary Bed Breakfast Aleworks, but they were closed so we went to Copper Fox Distillery and had some whiskey hot toddies before heading back to the ‘Burg.
January 4 2020 – let’s go see my sisters! The girls and I drove north to New Castle, Delaware for a meet up. My two sisters and I have been doing these road trips for the last few years as a way to make time for us to see each other for a day to talk, laugh and to check a place out. We strive to find a good halfway point between Fredericksburg and mid Long Island, scope out a place to eat ahead of time so we know where to meet and then we free from the rest of the day in the hopes we find cool places and meet nice people. We thought we would meet and have lunch at Wheely’s… well that didn’t happen! The only sign on the side of this big red building was:
After our brunch we headed towards the river which had so much fog that we could not see across, but we could hear boats passing and then experienced the wake hitting the shore moments later, it was a pretty cool sensory experience.
We checked out some of the shops on the way back to our cars, gave big hugs and away we went with another roadtrip under our belts.
Our last full day in the States was spent kicking around our town, meeting my dad and Shirley for brunch, picking up any last minute items we wanted to bring back to Amman with us, cleaning up the apartment and doing laundry. We had a nice dinner out, got a good night’s sleep and the next morning we packed and Amelia drove us to the airport. I feel like I took full advantage of the rest and relaxation of both legs of our trip, (my mother will appreciate this) but I can’t help but hear Elmer Fudd say “west and wewaxation at wast” from Wabbit Twouble whenever someone says R&R.
Thank you for reading, bye for now! xxoo.
DiForYou 