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?

In Which I Have A Redhead On My Arm

This past weekend, I hosted my first non-family visitor!  My friend Laura, who grew up 2 blocks from where my parents live now but herself resides in New York City, flew in for a long weekend in the mountains. We had a fairly boring few days, at least as compared to my parents' visit, because of the storms and my own oddly somber mood, but we hit The Pretty Penny for some DELICIOUS homemade-from-scratch lasagna and berry cobbler and adventured to Lake Moomaw the next day.  These photos are mostly from that excursion.

Perks of flying into an itty-bitty airport: they let you sit on the ground with your dog while you wait.

Sorry for the slanted, taken-from-the-car shot.  Lake Moomaw is actually in Virginia, surrounded on all sides by the George Washington National Forest.

The lake was gorgeous and HUGE.  It's formed by the Jackson River and Gathright Dam, and has plenty of room for swimming, fishing, and boating.

It's a little beach, but it does the trick!

We'd gone wading in the Greenbrier the day before, but it was so nice to actually be able to swim!  Here's my redhead.

The sky was incredible.  We'd had ominous clouds all day, but we managed to find our own little pocket of beautiful.

Yes, I was there, too.  Sadly, we weren't able to stay terribly long, as dogs aren't permitted on the beach (boooooo), and I was worried about Vista in the car.

Laura came bearing gifts, including a pair of sandals from Greece (identical to a pair I bought in Athens years ago which fell during Leilani's initial reign of terror) and a pretty little coat hook for me.  For Vista, there was a gigantic bone, which she is alternately enthralled and baffled by.  It's a little too much for her to carry, but she keeps trying anyway!

Aside from our trip to Moomaw, Miss Laur and I mostly lay about and read.  Laura works for HarperCollins, and is singlehandedly responsible for my current love of romance novels.  Most of the books I own (and there are quite a few), she's read before, but she still is constantly picking them up and flipping through.  Once she's done, she leaves them in little stacks scattered through the house.  I spent last evening tripping over unexpected piles of books.

Laur and I both grew up on the outskirts of Washington, DC, but we developed into very different people.  I'm from Northern Virginia by way of the South (Tennessee and North Carolina), while Laura is from NOVA by way of the North.  So while I consider myself a Southerner and have always felt hemmed in by urban areas, Laura is undoubtably a Northerner and, after going to high school and college in urban areas, feels right at home in the big, bad city.  While country living is new to me, the country itself is not.  For Laura, it was ALL new.  Case in point (taken from an actual conversation):

Laura: Oh my God, that guy is on a tractor!  How cool!
Kelly: Um, yes.
Laura: What, it isn't cool?  Am I making a fool of myself?
Kelly: I mean, I guess it's cool.  But mostly it's...normal.

(For the record I should state that I learned to drive on a John Deere tractor.)  The weekend was peppered with conversations like that one, and the occasional observation that our green was "so much better than Central Park."  An opinion I certainly don't disagree with!