We spent Thanksgiving in Savannah, visiting my parents and my sister and brother-in-law, who all live there. It rained almost the entire time that we were there. When it wasn’t raining, the kids were riding around on my parents’ golf cart, which is always a big highlight of our trips down south. I went to a hot yoga class with my sister and just barely managed to not pass out: yay, me!
One day our little family of four went exploring downtown, where Cute W had us follow the Yelp reviews to Zunzi’s for sandwiches. It was super-yummy. We all ordered different things and shared around, because we are good at sharing. The two favorites were both chicken, the Conquistador sandwich, drowning in special sauce that made it a mess to eat
and Gabriella’s Zesty Chicken, which had just the right amount of zest.
Even though I’m occasionally bummed out that the girls don’t love all vegetables more and that they’d always, always, choose fried meat options around the house, I have to admit that they pretty much rock at trying new things at restaurants. It’s like dining with grown-ups: you don’t have to pick the chicken fingers or something to ensure that they’ll survive, and I appreciate that.
The rest of the time we walked around, it was mostly Cute W walking very quickly down the sidewalk, M at his side, until they’d pause and double back to find J and me poking along. He’s all about efficiency, which can be wonderful, but tourists aren’t efficient. As people who have been residents of a tourist-heavy city (New York), especially one that can be a bit hostile to tourists, I think it takes a bit of self-discipline to force yourself to stop and look around. It feels vaguely embarrassing. It was easy for me, in part, because I wanted to defend J’s right to look around, so I tended to go just slightly slower than her. And then I’d say things like, “Come on, honey! Let’s embrace our inner tourist!”
One of the stores that called out to J was the Savannah Bee Company:
We love samples, and there were plenty of honeys to sample. By the time J and I had chosen our favorites, Cute W and M wandered back, and we all decided that we needed the rich and creamy Winter White Honey, which tastes a bit line honey frosting. There was also a cute little beehive-style fort, which I tried to take pictures of for you, but it proved impossible to get it properly without including random children.
We had a fun week, and it wasn’t even too bad to say goodbye since we know that we’ll be seeing the family again at Christmas.
What else is going on? Well. . .
M just said that she thought that perhaps she should get a belly button ring.
“Huh. You really wanted your ears pierced long ago, but now your ears are pierced and you never, ever wear earrings. I don’t think that you really need to acquire another empty hole.”
“But Mom,” she countered. “Belly button rings are much cooler than earrings. I mean, who doesn’t want a belly ring?”
“I don’t.”
“Well, that’s because you’re an oldster instead of a hipster. I love you, Mom, but you’re not the hipster in this family anymore.”
I’m pretty sure that she thinks that hipster is the same as hip, so I choose to take this as a compliment, that perhaps, once, I was hip.
Also, the girls have opened up a stand on in the upstairs hall. They’re reaching outside their windows to break off icicles and scoop up what they’re calling “purified snow” and charging money for it. And I’m so pleased that they’re playing together happily that I plunked down 35 cents for a medium-length icicle. I also asked about the purification process for the snow. “Oh, I’m afraid that that’s a company secret. It’s a very complicated, secret process,” was the answer. I guess that means that they check for debris. They’ve also got two jars, once for charitable donations and another “to help our employees go to college and keep them off the streets and off drugs.” A worthy endeavor. I threw in an extra dime.
