Yes, the week­end pre­vi­ous con­tained many amus­ing ele­ments. Oliver and yours truly loaded the Enter­prise rental (*upgraded due to lack of vehi­cles, amen thank you) Chrysler Town & Coun­try and took off for points north and west. First stop — Car­rboro and Chapel Hill to a woodsy retreat, a tree house stu­dio apart­ment made even more lovely by the com­pany we kept. A pleas­ant evening repast fol­lowed by serene sleep then a *BLAMMO* wake-​up call as the Sat­ur­day Frenzy Began In Earnest. No, not Earnest, Arkansas, earnest as in truly so in a mean­ing­ful man­ner.

Sat­ur­day began with a brisk walk­ing tour of stores not yet open but which, when unlocked and wel­com­ing, promised to con­tain many old books, art parts, and deli­cious food items. From there, a food co-​op for break­fast and to also pad our larder. Oliver received good­ness juices, fresh straw­ber­ries, some fruit smoothie type drinks and Nana slipped in an ice cream sand­wich or two for later in the visit. Then we were off to the Uncom­mon Gar­den once-​a-​year tour and it was.… fab­u­lous. From there to the Whim­si­cal Women Art show and sale at Rock Quarry Farm. Lovely piece of land that and the art was gen­uine and real. Oliver chose some fine Mother’s Day gifts to bring back for next Sun­day and I learned from a three year old sprite that it is

“dif­fi­cult to use a porta-​potty when play­ing princess.”

She wore a lovely chif­fon dress with a train, car­ried a magic wand, and wore a tiara.

Next on tap for the day — the obvious — a Nap!

From nap to night sky as Oliver and I headed out to More­head Plan­e­tar­ium. First show involved Black Holes. It fas­ci­nated O-​Boy greatly so we paid the price to watch “Car­olina Night Sky” brought to us by nar­ra­tor Meteor Mike. Big hit, we’ll go again as soon as pos­si­ble. Nana likes to lean back in a com­fort­able chair and con­tem­plate stars while O-​Boy sits cross-​legged, eyes wide with won­der as Meteor Mike makes a comet explode — just for him.

Sun­day? Oh, now that’s a whole dif­fer­ent ket­tle of fish. Miz Phoebe Kate and I (and O-​Boy) took off from Durham to Jack Astor’s for a mid-​afternoon lunch. Sounds sim­ple but alas and alack — when plot­ting one’s course with a GPS, one must remem­ber to insert the EXACT address. Turns out, the Olive Gar­den and Olive Place are TWO DIFFERENT AREAS of town. Olive Place is a lovely lit­tle, tucked-​away, wind­ing road, a mere lane one might say, directly in the cen­ter of a … mobile home park. No mari­nara sauce or fresh pizza pie to be had there, the food choices would seem to be more fajita-​style judg­ing by the occupants.

We did even­tu­ally locate Jack Astor’s and mighty man Dave tended bar and demon­strated bottle-​tossing and bal­anc­ing finesse for O-​Boy.

O-​Boy slept all the way back to the Lesser Dis­mal, dream­ing to Sir­ius radio’s Clas­sic Vinyl sta­tion… let’s just hope the lyrics didn’t embed them­selves into his sub­con­scious. Yall– the 60s– 70s rock lyrics make most rap beeey­atch rhymes look pale in comparison.

Pho­tos soon… mean­while, back at the ranch, Roxie, Linus, and Thomp­son are reserv­ing energy for evening walks, they’ve informed me that the pave­ment is much to warm for their del­i­cate paws.