Christmas in Virginia

Extremely late holiday post, ahoy!  I apologize for the belatedness of it, I do.  My only excuse is that the holidays ended on a serious down note, so I've been living vicariously through other people (which has shown up on this other blog), rather than dwelling on my own life.  Case in point: all of my clothes from the holiday trip home are still packed.  I've been back in WV since the 4th.  I leave this afternoon for a trip to NY.  Serious avoidance issues over here.

Anyway: Holidays!  Much was accomplished.

 Vista destroyed her crate once and for all, so we are now operating as a kennel-free state.  So far, it's going pretty well.  Se chills in my room when I'm gone, and only makes a few horrendous, godawful noises.

 I smacked the lid shut on my not-so-short story (it came in at just over 40,000 words) and began another.  Sam helped, sort of.

 Vista got toys.

 So many toys.

 My Chinese family educated me in the ways of Rock Band.  Here are my sisters, totally schooling me.  Seeing this troupe (all 5 siblings) all together for the first time in forever was so amazingly great.  The gaming was totally the icing.

 My lovely mother insisted my hair be cut, and friend Sam (non-feline Sam) gave me the glasses that went with his Halloween costume (which I discovered back in October).  My love of plaid shirts and sweater vests knows no bounds.

At the beginning of the holidays, there were 4 dogs and one cat in the house, and man, was that cat unhappy.  By the new year, we were down to two dogs, and the cat decided the interloper wasn't so bad.  Which is great, since he'll be living here with us for a little while.  Here is the video that goes with the photo, taken the night before we drove back to WV.  Warning: it's epically adorable.  Hold onto your hats.

Overall, the holidays were fun.  I saw six, count'em, SIX movies, hung out with basically every single person I love (notably absent was my little bro, who was trapped out west this Christmas), and it even snowed on Christmas (before going back to being 60 degrees a few days later).  The downer at the end was the sudden death of my Great-Aunt Dinny.  She was 96 years old, so it wasn't exactly a shocker, but  a week before her death, she was in excellent health for a 96-year-old, so yes, it was sudden.

Vista and I drove down to Winston-Salem, NC for the burial before turning around and heading back to Marlinton.  It was a long, emotional day.  Dinny was the last of my grandmother's sisters (my grandmother passed away 4 years ago), and it felt like the end of an era.  I was left with the haunting knowledge of all of the things I never asked them, all of the stories which will go untold.  They were some amazing ladies, the Maslin girls were.  The world was better for them, and poorer for their absence.

So far, 2011 has been pretty disappointing, but I'm holding out hope.  It can only go up from here, right?

The Story of Santa's Beer

This is a story I posted on my other blog last Christmas, and it remains the quintessential Williams family Christmas tradition, so I'm posting it here this year.  Hope you enjoy it!

I find that Christmas is the best time to reminisce. It's so full of traditions that there's always something to look back on. So, indulge me, will you, as I stroll a bit down memory lane.

I have to say that my absolute favourite thing to look back on are the years we still left cookies out for Santa. In the beginning, we left him cookies and milk, as most kids do. However, after a few years of disappointment upon discovering that Santa had completely ignored the milk, my dad suggested an alternative. All the other kids leave Santa milk, he explained, but you know what Santa really wants on his busiest night of the year? A nice, cold beer. And it made a strange sort of sense. My dad loved beer, so why wouldn't Santa? Plus, if we were the only ones leaving it for him, he'd probably like our house more than the others, which couldn't be a bad thing, either.

And so it came to pass that every Christmas Eve, the Williams children carefully placed out where he was sure to see them a plate of homemade cookies and a nice, cold beer. And you know what? Santa didn't always eat the cookies, but damn if he didn't down that beer every year.

Vista and Gigi

I promised you doggie videos, and never let it be said I don't keep my promises.  This is very obviously not at the beach, and was actually taken the day I left to drive down.  I went to Lewisburg first, where I met up with Long-Lost Cousin Lilly and her dog Gigi.  We drove over to the Greenbrier State Forest, picked a trail, and--after seeing how deserted the whole place was--let our beasties off their leashes.  Gigi's about twice Vista's size (though they're moving so fast you can hardly tell), which means that she can actually match her for speed.  That is a rare, rare thing indeed.  If you can make out my comment at then end, I can assure you that she did sleep all the way to the beach and it was fantastic.

In Which I Am Alive

So, we did it.  We drove from DC to Denver, crossing nine states, in two days.  To simplify things, we camped in Illinois, sleeping a few hours, and then getting up and chugging back along.  On Sunday, the day after we arrived in Denver, I had a flight back, so we spent the day poking around nearby Boulder.  Here's what Denver and back in 3 days looks like:

Our most important cargo.  She held up well, despite being bored out of her mind 99% of the trip.

We hit Wheeling, WV around lunch time on the first day, and having sampled some of the wares while at the conference, I encouraged Casey to stop so we could get crepes at Later Alligator.  We both had savory crepes, and Casey also had a cup of unbelievably fantastic cheddar and beer soup.  I am not a soup person, but this stuff was incredible.

Here is Indianapolis, taken with Casey's iPhone.

Watching the sun set on the first day.  This was, um, Illinois, probably.

Saturday morning was gray and dreary.  The sun didn't really peek through until around nine, so it felt like we drove through the night, even though we'd slept.

Kansas City from Casey's iPhone.  Wish I could have snapped the Royal's stadium, but I missed it.  It's impressive.

After KC, Kansas was pretty uninteresting.  It was a tie beween Kansas and Ohio for Least Interesting State to See from Interstate 70.

Kansas did have wind farms, though.  I'd never seen one before, but was driving, so Casey snapped these.  I love the little old windmill in the foreground--such a contrast!

Those black dots are cows.  For scale.  They are HUGE!

The point at which I understood why they call it "Big Sky Country."  The clouds go on, and on, and on.

We made it to Denver!  Sadly, there are no photos until we made it to this bookshop that night.  I think I had largely ceased to be human at that point.  The Tattered Cover is HUGE, by the way, and carried new and used books.  I grabbed a couple to read on the plane.

Casey and Lani on a pretty chilly summit in Boulder.

And there we all are.  There was a rescue climber training thing setting up to our right, which is what Lani was so interested in.

There you have it!  To Denver and back, and still alive.  Casey made his way the rest of the way to Jackson Hole the next day, where he was promptly caught in a blizzard.  Fortunately Lani loves the snow, so she's pretty happy.

To Denver And Back In 3 Days

After graduating from UVA in May, my little brother moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Because he was working at a ranch and living in a bunkhouse, he left most of his things behind, including his dog.  Now, he's ready to move those things out, but the DC-to-WY drive is a doozie.

So I'm coming along.

We'll only be going so far as Denver together.  We leave today, and hope to get there in two days, with some time so I can see the city (I've never been, but Case spent a year in school there) before I fly back to Washington and Casey heads to Jackson.  So that's MY weekend, anyway.

Sadly, this means the end of Leilani's time with our family.  She's become an integral part of the crew in Vienna, and saying goodbye won't be easy.  I'm glad to have two extra days with her, but it's comforting to know that they'll be fine on their own.  They make a good team.

All photos taken by Marley Withrow.

Here's Your Blog Post, Ma

My phone rang yesterday while I was watching a movie about the music of Appalachia.  It was my mother, worried because she hadn't heard from me.  Now to understand the oddness of this call, you have to understand that my mother is not the sort of parent who wants her children permanently tangled in her apron strings.  My mom is all about my independence, probably even more than I am.  When I first went away to college, I called home fairly often.  I love my mom, and wanted to hear her voice.  Her response to one such call was, "What are you calling me for?  You're in college, go to a party, get into trouble!"  That's my mom.

I still call her, but nowhere near as often as I did in those days.  I assumed this was a system that worked for both of us, so I was startled by the reason for her call, especially considering I'm driving home tonight for the weekend.  "I haven't heard anything from you!" she exclaimed.  I was still trying to puzzle out why this was unusual.  "And you haven't updated your blog!"

Ahhhhhhhh.  Well, here, Mama.  Here's the most interesting this I did this weekend:

The lovely Miss Jamie, Opera House VISTA and today's birthday girl, suggested an impromptu drive up the Scenic Highway.  So we did.

And it's forever as beautiful as I remember it.

(And if I'm been silent here and you're missing me, for some reason, chances are I've piped up one way or another on my other blog, or my tumblr.)

In Which I Escape

My goodness, I've been neglecting you, blog.  To be honest, I haven't done a ton of exploring for a bit, mostly because I was feeling suffocated by the mountains.  I had a yen for the ocean, so last weekend I escaped to North Carolina.

There were endless beaches.

Ice cold surf.

Scrubby dunes.

Gorgeous little girls.

Gorgeous bigger girls.

Fiddler.

Baxter and Howard.

Spencer.

Oh, my heart, Tripp.

Markets.

And Mama.

Just like that, my soul was restored.

Also helpful:
Beloved bookshops
Familiar thifting stomping grounds
A salt water pool in the back yard
Ice cream shops on the waterfront

I thought that it would be hard, this trip, because my dad, brother, and our dogs wouldn't be there.  I almost didn't go.  But I needed an escape, and the result surprised me.  I lived in my aunt's beach home all last summer, and somehow being back felt more like coming home than my last actual visit home did.  My heart laid claim to this place, in an odd and wonderful way.

Pearl, Droop, and Beartown, Oh My!

I had big plans for Saturday the 3rd.  We were going to go all the way up Droop Mountain and back, all before lunch.  We did it, but then again, lunch was at 3 pm.  Still!  The first challenge of the day was rousing my roommates in order to meet my parents for breakfast.  Emily and Kat are more averse to looking like a bum than I am (spend some time as a dog-walker and you'll feel the same), but fortunately they agreed that a Saturday morning at the Greenbrier Grille didn't warrant dressing to the nines (at least as compared to my daily -4) and we were there plenty early.  Bellies full, we went our separate ways for the day.

First up for the parents, dogs, and me was the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace in Hillsboro, which happens to also be where Emily is a VISTA.  We had a lovely tour of the house (one which I'll happily recommend, and not just because Emily pays a third of the rent), then trundled on through Hillsboro.  We made a quick stop at the newly opened "Brier Patch," where I picked up a plate made by Eric Stahl, a local potter.  I've taken to eating off of it almost exclusively, which certainly cuts down on the number of dishes in the sink!

From Hillsboro, we continued up Droop to the Battlefield, where we checked out the museum and lookout tower, than paused for some family photos with the view.

Next stop: Beartown!

I had a feeling I would like Beartown, and it turned out that I adored it.  For some reason, I love boulders.  I can't even begin to explain it, but my favourite hike to take whenever we visited the Blue Ridge Mountains as a kid was FULL of boulders to climb over or navigate around, and I adored it.  But on to Beartown.

If you're interested in a tough hike, Beartown will not provide one.  It's about a 20 minute walk along the boardwalk to see it all, but it's a heavenly 20 minutes.  I'd love to go back some day when it could just be me and the rocks.  Having to flatten yourself and your dogs to the side railing every few minutes to let a family of 8 pass is irritating, to say the least.

View down to the boardwalk below us.  There's a photo of the very place the fellow in the orange is standing further down this post.

I LOVED the rocks.  The holes, the moss, I loved it all.

This gives you a better idea of the way Beartown is navigated.

Here's where the man in orange was standing in the earlier photo.  This little pass here reminded me of Rock City more than any other part.

One thing I love about the sepia tone of this film is how it automatically dates things in a way color film doesn't.  I see this and could easily believe it was taken 100 years ago, in a jungle somewhere.  Love it.

So that was our Saturday!  After lunch, which was sandwiches on my porch, I started a book, then fell asleep and accidentally slept for 3 hours, dogs lying all over me in bed.  It was a pretty full morning!  In the evening, Mom and Dad drove up to Snowshoe to watch the fireworks, but I wimped out and fell back to sleep.  They left Sunday morning, taking their dogs and greatly reducing the chaos level in the house.  You've already heard about our Sunday evening activities!

For my first official stint as a Pocahontas County hostess, I feel I did pretty well!  I kept everyone fed, exercised, and entertained, and didn't collapse from exhaustion until almost the end of the visit.  Thanks for coming, Mom and Dad!  It was great having you and the pups!