laura jean

If there’s any sort of internet in Heaven, Laura Jean will be expecting me to write something about her now.  She represented about half of my readers on my blog and she always made comments to me about things she read here.  Hey Laura Jean!

Laura Jean was my aunt but I’ve never been happy with just that as a descriptor.  Every time I’ve ever had to try to describe Laura Jean to a new person in my life, I’ve always said, “but not like your aunt”.  Laura Jean was my dad’s older sister, born in the 1930s and as a result of the times, she became a leader and protector for her younger sister and three younger brothers.  She lived next door to my family and since she lived alone from the time her mother died in the 1970s, she was more or less a part of our immediate family.  Sunday lunches, holiday gatherings, birthdays…Laura Jean was invited to them all.  In addition to that, I had this job for a while that took me past her house in the afternoons and I got to spend several afternoons each week hanging out with her.  So yes, Laura Jean was my aunt but she was also my neighbor, my third parent, and she was my friend.

When I was little, Laura Jean’s house was just an extension of my house.  There was a very worn trail through the grass between our houses and I’m sure I walked that path at least once a day.  I’m not a person who remembers a lot from being very young, but I do have a vivid memory of drawing on notebook paper on an end table in Laura Jean’s house when I was tiny.  My first drawing memory.  Her open carport was a regular place to play when I was younger and a regular stop on our bike adventures when I was older.  There was always a refrigerator in the utility room or in the carport and she kept it stocked with soft drinks and popsicles so she could offer us treats.  Actually, most of the cousins or friends with me at the moment would enjoy a fresh cut watermelon she would crack open for us on a hot summer day.  I hate watermelon so she’d get me a popsicle.  

She worked second shift at Spartanburg General Hospital (now Spartanburg Regional Medical Center) where she worked in the Emergency Room.  She was the head nurse and though I know she would object to such language, she was the epitome of a badass.  We always heard her friends tell us stories about how some crazy, drunk person came into the ER wanting to fight everyone and she would walk over and grab the crazy person by the arm and drag them out of the hospital like a rag doll.  She was a fierce leader and by all accounts, a wonderful boss.  She made lifelong friends in the ER among nurses and doctors.  

I was embarrassingly older when I realized everyone in the world didn’t call her Laura Jean.  I kept hearing people refer to “Laura” and I didn’t understand why they didn’t use her whole name.  Turns out only her family called her Laura Jean, spoken in one breath with no pause so that it sounds like “Larjean” if you’re from South Carolina.  

She loved dogs and ALWAYS had a dog until the final years of her life.  When I was little it was two big Dobermans that she kept in the fence behind her house.  She would come home from work around 11:30 pm, unlock her door, and send “Lady” inside to inspect the house.  Once it was all clear, she’d feed both dogs and go to bed.  I went with her to pick out a few dogs in my life and I got to watch those dogs get absolutely spoiled with treats.  Laura Jean treated dogs as well as she treated people and she loved to shower them both with treats.  One of those happy dogs had a belly that almost dragged the ground because of those treats.  

Laura Jean loved to shop, especially for groceries and oh my goodness she loved her a coupon.  One of her greatest quirks was that she would get a coupon for something or see something on sale, something that she had zero interest in, but if it was a really good deal, she would buy it.  If she had 40 of them already in her pantry, she would buy 5 more to get 5 free.  The thing was, she never bought this stuff for herself.  She was always thinking of who she could give these great deals to.  She was always thinking of who might need them.  She was always thinking of others.  When I went to college, Laura Jean would send me a large paper grocery bag filled with groceries every single Sunday when I drove back to school.  She would also send things like toasters, plates, bowls, cleaning supplies, and whatever else she thought I could use.  

She did the same for everyone she knew.  She grew tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash and I’m sure she ate one or two but mostly she grew them to give them away.  She was constantly taking a bag of produce to her friends.  From the many apple trees between our houses, she provided apples to the majority of Spartanburg county.  

Her generosity went far beyond produce.  She was fond of baking banana bread and zucchini bread.  (If zucchini bread sounds gross to you, give it a try.  I liked it long before I started eating green things.)  She would bake several loaves when she had things in season and she’d freeze them.  When people would come to visit or when she would go see an old friend, she always provided a loaf of bread as a gift.  It was very tough to leave her house empty handed.  And Laura Jean was also very generous with money.  She would loan large sums of money to her family and it was common for her to wait a while and then tell them to not worry about ever paying her back.  Other times she would just slip family members a check as a gift during hard times.  She loved to ask me to come “work” for her, which meant cleaning out her gutters or pruning some things with a chainsaw for a couple of hours.  She did this basically just so she could give me money without me fussing about it.  When she decided to give her car to someone several years ago, she just did it and didn’t care what people thought about it.  She knew she couldn’t give everyone a car and she knew people might think it was unfair but she knew she could give a car to this person, so she did.  Laura Jean did what she wanted.  Usually what she wanted was to be the most generous person anyone knew.

About 25 years ago Laura Jean was diagnosed with breast cancer.  It was pretty bad and she needed a double mastectomy, lots of chemotherapy, and radiation treatment.  She lost all of her hair and bought a wig.  She got fake breasts that she would wear if she was going out of the house and after a very tough year or so, her hair grew back and she was back to her old tricks again.  She was so tough and it was so impressive how she fought through such a terrible sickness.  The cancer would come back periodically and each time Laura Jean would beat it down.  Each time it came back in a different location and I remember talking with her one day in her living room when she explained that no matter where it was located, it would still be considered breast cancer.  She told me that a patient is never really “cancer free” after having cancer the first time.  She said her cancer doctor told her that she would keep having new bouts with cancer and that eventually it would kill her.  This is how Laura Jean talked.  Very straight-forward and very honest.  More and more as she grew older, if she thought it, she said it.

“It looks like you’ve put on some weight” was one of my favorite ones to hear at family gatherings.  I would bust out laughing and hope the person she was talking to didn’t see me.  If she thought your kid was weird or you were making bad choices, guess what?  She would tell you.  She had no filter and I loved that about her.  I talked to her with the same honesty and she appreciated that.  I told her she had “old people disease”.  She asked what that meant and I told her that it meant that she said everything she thought.  She laughed.  

Laura Jean always looked much younger than she was.  While she was the oldest in the McAbee family, she never looked it.  If you ever saw her going to eat lunch with her friends, you’d think she was far younger than the other ladies in the group.  Then you’d find out they were classmates in nursing school.  Even with cancer, she seemed healthier than most of her friends and as she moved into her 80s, she outlived most of them.  

Her sense of humor was pretty great and that was one of my favorite things about her.  We would sit and laugh most of the time we were together.  While we discussed some major things and some heavy things, we would always find a way to make light of tough situations.  She found humor in her cancer treatments and told me funny stories about going to funerals.  She loved a funeral.  I think she started planning her own funeral about 20 years ago.  She would go to the funeral of a friend and come home with ideas of what she wanted and didn’t want for her funeral.  I hate funerals and I don’t go to them.  She would always tell me that I should go and I would always make fun of her for going to so many.  Each time she traded for a new car over the last decade she would tell me that this might be her last new car.  Each time she got a new photo taken she would tell me she was having obituary photos taken.  She was laughing, but she was serious too.  When her beloved little dog Shugah died a couple of years ago, she told me she wasn’t going to get another dog because she didn’t want to die and leave a dog for someone to have to take in.  When she started having mystery pains in her chest about a year ago she told me that her cancer was back and that she wasn’t going to do any treatments.  She said she was tired.  She said it was just her time.  Again, always direct and honest.  She said whatever she thought.

She would have told you that she was not a tech-savvy person, but for an 86 year old, she navigated the iPhone, iPad, her laptop, Facebook, and Instagram very well.  She might lose an app icon or forget how to unsilence her phone every once in a while, but she was pretty good otherwise.  She checked Facebook and Instagram very regularly and if I didn’t post anything on Instagram for a day, she would text me to check in.  She was perhaps the most dedicated liker of my butt drawings each Monday.  She may have also been the most regular submitter of butt photos which I still think is hilarious.  For an old-fashioned Southern Baptist lady, she seemed to find more than her share of funny butt photos online.  It always made my day when she would send me one.  Even when her health declined rapidly over the last month, she managed to send me two new ones.  

Because of my antics on Instagram during quarantine, she would also make fun of me for dressing up in female roles for my Art Remix photos.  She loved to take a verbal shot at me at a Sunday lunch and it was always pretty funny.  Last Christmas she gave me a mysterious gift to unwrap in front of everyone.  After tearing off the paper I opened a special case that held her two fake breasts that she used to wear after surgery.  There was a note that indicated these may come in handy for me since I dressed as a woman so often.  Do I have these gifts and this note in the special case in a special place in my studio?  You know I do and you know I will treasure them for many years.  

Laura Jean loved her people.  She was the most kind and the most generous.  Lucky was the person who knew her and luckier was the person who was loved by her.  Luckier still was me, her nephew, her neighbor, and her friend.

the boogie man

 

So I have this cool friend Dan.  Dan had the idea of creating a music festival for musicians that would be all about doing good and giving back.  He found a state park in his area that needed more accessibility, musicians who wanted to play the songs they wrote instead of just a bunch of overplayed covers, and he found some local businesses that he wanted to support.  He jumped through the hoops of asking permission, applying for grants, and organizing a team of people and he made this dream a real thing.  This is year three of Dan's festival and this year he wanted to find a way to include some visual art so he invited me to think about how I could participate.  We discussed some ideas and eventually settled on me doing some live drawing on site during the festival weekend.

I put this on my calendar and and shelved it on one of those back shelves in my brain.  You know how you have the idea about how something will work or what something will look like in your head?  Is that just me?  I had an image of the festival layout where the bands were way up there with lights and attention and the vendors were back in the back just kinda hanging out.  I saw myself back there with the vendors, not taking any attention away from the music.  I saw myself cruising in with some vague ideas, drawing some fun stuff while listening to music and then driving home.  The fun thing about these mental pictures is that they're always wrong.

Violet loves Dan and his music...and music in general...and she didn't have a Cross Country meet that weekend.  She volunteered to sacrifice a day of school to be my assistant for the weekend.  So on Friday morning after my run, we hopped in the truck and drove towards the coast.

Since the festival was just a little bit inland of Charleston and I needed to deliver a drawing to Charleston, we did the two birds, one stone thing and drove to Charleston first.  After dropping off the drawing, we parked on King Street and enjoyed the beautiful morning and that gorgeous Charleston light. 

Then we found a cool little Cuban place called Cafecito for lunch.  Dude, this place was great.  Great coffee and great food.  Highly recommend.

After a quick drive along the waterfront in Charleston, we headed to Summerville and got checked in to this beautiful place.  South Porch Artists Residency is a cool, historic home that offers gorgeous accommodations and studio space for artists throughout the year (southporchartists.org).  We dropped our bags and headed out to Givhans Ferry State Park to get set up at the festival.

This is where things got interesting.  After checking in at the guard gate, we drove into the park and Violet opened the map to figure out where we were going.  She's calling out the things we're driving past and she finds my name on the map with a location.  She says, it looks like we're going to be between the main stage and the side stage.  I figured this was a general location she was indicating until she held the map up and showed me.  Fear started rising.

Then I saw this.  My name was printed in the map.

And then I saw this...

So, there on the right is the main stage.  And on the left is the side stage.  Right there in the middle?  That's my spot.  Fear was immediately replaced by anxiety.  What did I just get myself into?  Violet was laughing.  I was repeating, "oh no, oh no, oh no".  The week leading up to the festival was one of critiques and grading and introducing new projects.  I wanted to put together some ideas for what I might draw but I just never got to sit down and do that.  Now I was sitting in my truck while Violet laughed, wishing I was more prepared.  

Soon Violet shifted into cheerleader mode and started hyping me up.  She told me I could do this with no problem and that it would be fine.  This is the stuff I say to my students when I'm not sure they can do this and I know that it may not actually be fine.  (Please don't tell my students that.)

The whole place is buzzing.  We carry our stuff over to the tent and I'm immediately tackle-hugged by Jana, Dan's wife.  Once I recovered from that, everything in the tent looked great.  I tried desperately to NOT think about how all these people were going to be forced to watch me draw and I had no idea what I was going to be drawing.  I tied my new banner up while Violet alternated between giggling at me and encouraging me.

After the banner was up and everything was situated I needed to do that thing that creative people do.  Procrastinate.  This is difficult to explain to non-creatives but if you are a creative person you'll get it.  I had a lot to do and a quick deadline.  It would have been smart to get started on the task at hand right away.  Knowing that, I still would have done literally anything other than getting started on the task at hand.  Violet and I walked around, we looked at vendor tents, we got some food, we ate, we chatted, I panicked a little more and then she started telling me I needed to get to work.  The music started.  I watched a cool duo sing about 20 feet beside us.  I thought about drawing but I didn't draw.  5:00 pm came.  Then 5:15. 

With great hesitancy, I got up, shook my first paint marker, and fearfully put the marker to the surface. Once I made the first mark, I was fine.  The panic left.  Most of the fear subsided and soon I was in my own world.

The sun went behind the trees without much notice from me.  I was in my groove now.  Still, there were many directions I could go with these drawings and I was making decisions on the fly.  This is a terrifying feeling when you're creating and that terror is amplified when there's a few hundred people watching.  I brought some new color markers to try out and I decided to go for it.

Just a little while longer and it was too dark for my old eyes to see what I was doing.  The plan was to finish 2 drawings each day.  Drawing one was not finished at the end of Friday.  Clearly I had a terrible plan.  I mean, starting after 5:00 wasn't very good planning and at that point my plan was very unrealistic.  This is what the first drawing looked like at the end of Friday.  Violet and I had a little clubhouse set up behind the large easels and I joined her back there to rest a little before we drove back to town.  We had been up since 6:00 am going strong and when we arrived at South Porch Artists Residency around 9:00 pm, we were already talking about going to bed.  I had no cell service at the festival and so I flopped on my bed and checked messages, emails and opened Instagram and Violet said she was out.  Our two rooms adjoined and I saw her light go out and heard her put her phone down.  I decided to follow her example and we were both asleep by 10:00 pm.

We're in the thick of Cross Country season so we were up early the next morning to go for our run.  Violet joined me and we took a nice, cool run through Summerville.  I was reminded of all the fun I had there a couple of summers ago doing a week-long installation and then doing a weekend mural painting.  It's a beautiful little town.  Violet had joined me for an overnight trip there during my exhibit and I took her to this amazing coffee shop called Coastal Coffee.  They have a really good breakfast menu but their coffee is as good as my coffee.  Almost no one makes coffee as good as my coffee.  After our run we showered and packed up before stopping by Coastal Coffee for fuel.  

We drove to the festival with a lot more confidence and two very positive attitudes.  One of us also had a bit of a coffee high because he insisted on having a second coffee to go.  It's that good.  This is my mural box.  I love it.  It makes me happy and it really sets the mood for creating.  Once the box was open, I was rolling.

The music had started, alternating between the two stages on either side of us.  By the time I finished the first drawing, it was after noon and the place was really starting to fill up.  There were already more bodies on the lawn and it was only going to get more crowded through the day.  This is what it looked like over my shoulder during the morning.  

Soon it was time to put the first mark on the second panel.  I could feel people watching as I moved to the blank piece of wood and stood before it with my marker.  I felt all their weight as I drew that first line.  But I did it and I felt confident.  I tried not to look at people or even notice when they walked up to watch more closely.  I smiled, I tried to speak if I was spoken to, but most of the day I was in the zone.  The music from the main stage was loud enough to shake my chest but I really didn't notice it.  I couldn't tell you who played until Dan took the stage around 4:00 pm.  

I forget when I took this photo.  Maybe when we stopped to get Violet dinner?  The Fed Up truck was her favorite vendor aside from the Pourly Grounded Coffee dude.  After the good breakfast, I didn't really think to eat the rest of the day.  I picked up a big cup of boiled peanuts but quickly realized I couldn't eat them without getting the brine all over my hands and that wouldn't be good for the drawings.  

Oh this was very cool.  The Edisto Natchez-Kusso tribe is indigenous to the Edisto blackwater area of South Carolina.  This land was their land before the westerners took it.  Dan invited the tribe to perform several dances with drummers during the afternoon.  It was so cool to see the handmade outfits and to watch the various dances.  At the end of their time, they led everyone in a group dance of unity and it was a great moment.

And then it was time to see Dan play.  

This was something Violet and I were looking forward to.  Dan is a really great singer and songwriter and we got to see him sing and play with his kids at a thing a couple of summers ago, but we had never seen him do his own stuff.  He released an EP of original songs the day the festival began but he was too overwhelmed with things to even remember.  I tried to keep drawing because I had to, but I stopped every now and then to just watch.  So good.

Then it was back to work for me.  When they print the number of drawings you're going to make on the official signs, you kinda have to make all four don't you?  I actually just now noticed the number was printed on the signs.  That would have been even more pressure if I had noticed earlier!  The whole idea of me being at the festival was to make drawings that I would donate to be auctioned off for charity.  By early afternoon, festival goers were coming by to write their bids on a clipboard at our table.  We had some shirts, buttons and stickers out for sale and Violet was doing her best to sell the merch.  I felt so much better when I saw people were actually bidding on the art.  I had that secret doubt voice telling me how embarrassing it would be to make these drawings and no one want them.

Drawing number 3 went very fast and with drawing number 4 I really didn't know what I was doing when I started.  It was important to get that first mark down so I did and then I had to just make up a narrative and a composition on the fly.  It was great!  People who were bidding started asking questions and I got one lady to tell me what she thought was happening in the drawing.  I drew steadily as the sun slipped behind the trees again.  The place was packed.  People were everywhere.  I put the finishing touches on the final drawing and I walked around the easels to where Violet was and announced I was probably finished.  

One of Violet's jobs was to title the work. One less thing for me to have to think about.  She did a really good job.  Here's the result of our work:

"When It Rains"

drawing 1

"Pelican's Playground"

drawing 2

"Storm of Magic"

drawing 3

"Love Takes Flight"

drawing 4

The sun was setting and it was getting dark.  My legs were tired and a little sore from standing in awkward positions for the last day and a half.  We were both over-stimulated and as Violet started talking about what we could eat for dinner, I started to realize that I was hungry.  

We walked around a little to speak to a few people and we sat in our clubhouse and just rested.  We kept talking about food and soon we were packing up and heading to the truck.  We hugged Dan and thanked him for making this beautiful thing and we drove back to Summerville with no music playing.

We thought of a place to eat and when we drove by it was packed out.  Then we remembered Poogan's Kitchen a short drive away.  They were preparing to close but we got in and got our food before they closed.  We both got chicken and waffles and it was delicious.  We were full and happy.  We were also tired.  I think we were a little later than 10:00 pm getting to sleep but we were still in bed early.

The next morning Violet stayed in bed while I ran through town alone.  I didn't get to visit the inside of Public Works Art Center, but I did say hello to the exterior.  It was cool out and the sun was rising over the town.  It was a nice little run.

This was a travel day for us but we were in no hurry so we had a nice breakfast at Vicious Biscuit and then stopped by a few stores before heading out of town.  We were hoping for some Crumbl cookies but we found out they were closed on Sunday.  We needed cookies so we quickly made a new plan.

We decided to stop off in Columbia on the way back and hit up Insomnia Cookies instead.  Not as good but still a cookie.  

Ok, I got a little distracted from the story by food and running, but the point is, we did it.  We said yes to a potentially scary opportunity.  We put ourselves out there.  We were terrified of all the things that could happen but we did it anyway.  We did it afraid.  And when we did all that, it worked.  We didn't fall on our faces (even when standing precariously on a folding plastic chair to reach the tops of the drawings) and we didn't fail.  We met some new people, made some new contacts and we helped a really good cause.  We also had a lot of fun.  

the last hurrah of summer

In recent years, we've tried to take one last family vacation before school begins.  Typically we take a cheap week at "the beach", which for us means Garden City Beach or Surfside Beach on the SC coast.  We lay low, eat in as often as possible and just try to have an actual vacation, the kind where you rest.  

It was looking like we were going to skip out on this vacation this year but in the final moments we decided to just look and see what was available.  We found absolutely nothing on the Grand Strand and didn't really want to go as far as Florida.  Then we considered Hilton Head Island and found a few deals there.  We decided to go for a half week and booked it.  

Here's a general disclaimer about the beach for me: 

I am a beach person.  I am the best version of myself with salty air and sand nearby.  I have traveled to many coasts and beaches along the east coast, the Caribbean, and now a couple in Europe.  I know that beach snobbery exists and that while everyone and their mother regularly travels to Myrtle Beach (also on the Grand Strand), it is popular to hate it, put it down, and refer to it as "Dirty Myrtle" or the "Redneck Riviera".  It's popular to say that the Charleston area beaches are the best and that you're likely to get stuck by a dirty needle walking on Myrtle Beach.  Hogwash.  All of it.  The entire strip of the Grand Strand of SC offers easy access to the beach, beautiful, wide beaches, and easy access to a multitude of restaurants and attractions.  I've personally seen dirty needles and tossed band-aids on the Isle of Palms and I do not believe it should be a burden to park near, walk to, or access the beach.  I also understand that I have a nostalgic bias toward the Myrtle Beach area dating back to the first time I ever saw an ocean in my childhood.  Either way, I'm right, snobs are wrong and you can usually find me along the Redneck Riviera.

That said, I got up well before the sun, ran, had coffee, and pointed my truck toward the fancier Hilton Head Island.

The early start put us ahead of coastal vacation turnover traffic, especially along I-95 where for some ridiculous reason, traffic engineers still think two lanes is enough through most of my entire state.  So we arrived early to the island area and stopped at the outlets for some shopping that my kids love to call "back to school shopping".  This is how kids talk parents into buying things they don't need during summer.  Alas, we were in the Vans store because 14 pair of shoes per human is not quite enough in our house and we saw this guy hanging out on a box.  I scooped him up and set him free in a bush as we exited without buying any shoes.

  

As soon as we arrived on the island we realized it was too hot.  Too hot for anything.  We still had an hour before we could check in so the family drove to the grocery store and I walked the long walk out to the beach.

I was drenched in sweat when I finally arrived on the sand but I was lucky enough to get this funny photo.  They were posing for the people behind them but I thought it was a funny pose.  Laughing made me sweat even more.  It was hot.

But I do love the coast.  All of it.  I love the horizontal landscape, the lush green marsh grasses, and the constant presence of water.  I do not love the .63 mile walk from the Hilton Head condo to the beach.  Our room had a nice view of tennis courts and I immediately missed the ocean front balconies of Dirty Myrtle. 

But again, I love the coast so fine.  I'll walk a bit.  The wildlife was nice too.

And the visual payoff when you finally make it to the beach is worth it.  Most of the time.  We got settled and took a slightly cooler evening stroll on the beach to explore.

The next morning I headed out for my run.  More cool birds and a long run down the boardwalk but I got a couple of miles on the beach as well.  It was already hot.  The nice breeze while running south turned to a deathly still sun bath on the run back north.  

I noticed this osprey in a tree by the boardwalk and as I got closer I also found a cool shorebird skull.  

While I showered, G and Violet started their pilgrimage to the beach.  As they passed the little pond, they texted and said they saw an alligator.  There were signs around all the ponds but I wasn't falling for this again.  I know we have alligators in SC and I love seeing them but I NEVER get to see one.  Outside of Huntington Beach State park, I always get promised gators but I never get to see one.  We've been to Florida several times, driving clear across the state and not one alligator sighting.  We eventually had to pay to go to the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine.  They saw one on their trek to the beach?  Right.  I won't be fooled again.

Then it was time to sit.  On August vacations, I do not sand sculpt.  I sit.  Sometimes I read, sometimes I draw, but always I sit.  Blue sat with me while G and Violet sat in the water.  It was so hot they could only stand to be out if they were in the water.  When the family went inside, I moved under the umbrella and watched as 14 people got stung by jellyfish and went to seek help from a very unsympathetic life guard.  She would tell them, "Sorry, there's nothing you can do.  It will go away eventually."  I found her response profound and applicable in so many different scenarios.  Deep thoughts on the beach.

I had some not so deep thoughts too.  Mostly about this guy.  Around noon he and his wife came out and set up their little wind-blown tent nonsense directly in front of me.  Seriously, like 10 feet away, blocking my entire view.  There wasn't enough wind to use the ridiculous tent so they spent most of the afternoon sitting in their chairs, yelling at their kids, talking into their phones with the nylon curtain drooped flat against their heads.  It was funny, but also very irritating.  When I finally tired of seeing him all afternoon, I packed it in and left.

We found a grouping of shops and restaurants on the island and thought that would be a cool place to hang out for the evening.  All of the shops were just different addresses of the exact same touristy store.  We had a good dinner, I left a drawing for someone to find, and we headed in for the night.

The next day we split up for separate adventures.  Violet and I kayaked Broad Creek most of the day.

And Blue and G drove to Savannah under the guise of more "back to school shopping".  They found the Weiner-mobile!

I will climb a lighthouse.  If it's open to the public and not crazy expensive, I'll walk every step to the top for a better view, even though I'm scared of heights.  I hadn't been to the Harbor Town lighthouse since I was a little kid so we drove there to check it out.  It's a stubby little lighthouse and apparently you have to pay a toll just to drive there, which I'm still a little bitter about, but it was fun. 

The view was nice and it was sort of a museum experience too, so we saw some cool things.  There were some shops there too but again with the same cheap stuff in every building.  We gave it a chance and then left.

Since we didn't see a restaurant that looked great in Harbor Town, we decided to drive up to the Old Oyster Factory.  Violet and I spotted it when we were kayaking and it looked cool.  We arrived pretty late an it was still very crowded but this was the right choice.  The food was really good and the creme brûlée was even better.  (That may not be how you actually spell it but I really like how autocorrect made it look)

The next morning I was running to the boardwalk and what do you know?  A lady yelled at me from a balcony and said I might want to stop because there was an alligator coming.  I slowed.  Then I saw him alligator-jogging towards me.  I stopped.  I watched him cross my path and slip into the pond.  Turns out they really did see an alligator in the pond.  My bad.

So it was hot and it was a very long walk to the beach, but there was a cool little restaurant right on the beach.  Bathrooms, drinks and food.  Very convenient.  

We decided to so some thrifting while we were there.  We mapped the thrift stores on the island and visited them all.  We didn't find anything to buy but we saw some really cool things.  Some scary dolls, this awesome baby carriage, and a basket full of plastic lobsters.  

We took one more evening walk on the beach and caught a little bit of the sunset.  We also watched a little TV.  This summer I've cultured Violet by getting her to watch some comedy movies with me.  We also did a couple of Netflix series things and we started the weird show "Alone" just before leaving home for this vacation.  The condo was pretty small so we also forcefully added Blue and G to the TV mix a couple of nights.  

The next morning we planned to just leave and pick up some food on the way to Charleston but we ended up stopping by Bad Biscuit for some breakfast.  It was a very cool little restaurant.

We decided to sit and eat and look at all of the art and oddities in the dining room.

The food was really good.  Would recommend.

We made it to Charleston for a quick visit.  Violet and I picked up some macarons and dropped another drawing downtown.  I do love Charleston, just not the beaches nearby.  Or actually, I just don't enjoy the drive to the beaches or the hassle of trying to find parking.  On the drive home, Blue and I were almost struck by lightning, so that was fun.  

Hilton Head isn't our first choice of vacation spots but it served us a nice little adventure.  A very hot, very sweaty adventure.

And now, I guess summer is over.  Boo.