Rachel Callahan

How to Eat Steak, Fickle Photography, and Hippy Dogs.

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories I embarrass myself just for your amusement., The Blissfulness of Life, Yes I'm a beach bum. What of it?

I’m sitting here after having eaten too much, with no witty words to start out this post. Hopefully as I start writing my wit will find me. Or I will find it. Or something.

Last night, we went to visit Barkley, Jeremy and Woods in Charleston (20 minutes from where we are staying), and they fixed us this amazingly delicious and gourmet meal:
I seriously thought I would eat maybe a third of that steak. Nope. I ate about 83% of it. AND didn’t feel stuffed. It was a magic steak.

Actually, being the overanalytical people we are, Chris and I discussed the baffling un-overwhelmingness of our humongous steaks, and decided that serving salad and onions with steak is MUCH wiser than serving potatoes. We always feel compelled to make potatoes with our steaks, which are much more filling, and so never REALLY appreciate our steaks. But these – oh we SAVORED them.

I think I’m going to remember this steak-eating tip.

Oh, and I’ll remember that Jeremy and Barkley make an amazing steak meal. Maybe we just need them to make all our steak meals from now on.

And, since we didn’t get a postable picture of ourselves from our Atlanta trip, we tried again last night:
The guys, of course, got lucky and stayed behind the camera.

This morning, Chris and I loaded up our rented bikes,
and drove to Charleston to ride around and enjoy the old city. I’m not sure if we were allowed to do that with our rental bikes, but considering we never signed a single thing and our bikes just showed up at our condo from a phone conversation and a mailed check, we decided that if we don’t know the rules, we’re not responsible for following them.

Now. I have to share a bit of girl pride here.

Chris wanted to take a water bottle with us on our Charleston treks, but our rental bikes didn’t have drink holders. We were at Target the night before, and he was looking all around for some sort of bungee cord.

I saw a pack of Goody’s ponytail holders and told him that they would do just the trick. He looked at me very doubtfully and asked how that could be. I made girlish handmotions and poorly explained how they loop through each other and hold tight.

After unsuccessfully looking a bit longer for the bungees, he agreed to buy my ponytail holders, but told me that “he didn’t have much hope that it would work”.

However, a girl knows her hair products. It worked exactly as I planned, and perfectly:
That’s right. I think I might have impressed my engineer husband with my creative engineering. Maybe a little, anyway.

We started out our bike ride on the most amazing street. This was on one side of the road:

And this on the other side:

We ogled houses like this:
and gazed at parks like this.
Here are a few more of the amazing houses we saw. I’m telling you – if you’ve never visited a city in the Old South, it is an amazing experience.

Here is the customs house, which was also quite impressive:

And, because I’m all about the cultural quirks, right in the middle of the most cultural district (and across the street from that most impressive and official customs house), there was this one (and only one) very interesting utility pole:
What is that, you ask? Look closer:
Yes. Bubble gum. In all colors, and I’m sure, flavors. I found it fascinatingly photogenic, so I’m going to make you suffer through one more germ-filled picture:

Chris and I found some amazing stairs and got another nice stranger to take our picture:
Which absolutely drove me crazy. Photography is so cruel. I was feeling so good about myself after the last stranger took a photo that made me feel very good about myself:
and then that ivy-staired one made me look 50 pounds heavier. Why, oh why does photography have to be so fickle? Doesn’t it know that us women can’t take that kind of self-esteem roller-coaster?!?!

As another completely unimportant aside, I really hate the look of bulky tennishoes on me. Other people look great in them. Me, not so much. However, I have recently noticed that a sleeker, “track-style” tennishoe is coming in style. I think I may buy a pair of these for tennnishoe-needing-outdoor-activities very soon:Yes, Dad and Chris, I realize that this blog post has vain and girly asides. I’m on vacation and so am allowed to think about frivolous and shallow stuff. But I apologize. I promise I am done now.

So anyway.

We took a walk on the beach this afternoon and found a colony of some squirmy looking sea creatures:
Chris, being the more conservative one of the two of us, highly suggested that I not touch them in case they were some sort of stinging creatures.

However, curiosity finally got the best of me and I nudged one with my toe a couple of times. I was not stung. But they were oddly normal feeling and in general not satisfying. I mean, they looked cool, so I just assumed they would feel cool too.

We took our last bike ride at sunset tonight, which was glorious:
Last pic of the day. This one was just too good. Apparently Miss Emily and Barney aren’t the only quirky people in this town. There is at least one quirky Veterinarian and enough quirky pet owners to keep him/her in business:
That’s right. If you have a hippy dog, now you know where to take them.

Follies at the Beach

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Quirky quirky quirkiness, The Bliss-fulness of Life, Yes I'm a beach bum. What of it?

We are in Folly Beach, SC, enjoying ourselves immensely on our anniversary celebration.

We have found that Folly Beach is a great mixture of beautiful beaches and quirky people. And since you know that I LOOOOVE me some quirkiness, Let’s start with the people:

When we arrived yesterday, I read some of our condo’s guest book, and everyone kept talking about meeting Miss Emily. I kept wondering who in the world Miss Emily was.

I soon found out.

Within a minute of us walking out onto our deck for the first time, along the corner came Miss Emily.She informed us to let her know immediately if the guys above us were being too loud, and she would be glad to take care of it. She has lived here for 45 years and was 81 years old, and you don’t get to be 81 for nothing, so she tells people what to do around here.

She can be found peeking around every bannister, making sure that the whole city is behaving.
We also noticed a very overly excited cop: He may be THE Folly Beach police force. But that doesn’t keep him from his duties. No way. We have already seen ticketing at least half a dozen separate people.

Between Emily and Barney, this ‘hood is safe.

As for our upstairs neighbors that Miss Emily was all-too-anxious to boss around for us, here are a couple of them walking down to the beach:I bet Miss Emily snatches that thing right off of his head.

Okay – so onto the beach pics.

Last night, we walked out onto the pier. It was raining and lightning and quite adventurous. There’s a restaurant on the beach called “BLU”, and they have some really high-powered neon blue lights shining onto the beach and surf, which was magnificent looking. I tried to catch it, but of course this sort of thing is hard to capture in a photo:While I was trying to photograph the blue beach, the first super lightning hit, and I got this picture:
Today, Chris and I took our bikes and rode the whole island. We rode with the wind down the beach (the reason we love East Coast beaches – for the biking), and against the wind on the streets on the way home. We learned last year at Kiawah that riding INTO the wind on the beach is horrendously painful.

We got a nice guy to take our picture partially through our bike ride:
The sand had this amazing effect of blowing down the beach in a marbly pattern down the beach:
There were also a lot of old pier ruins:

And standing under the gigantor city pier was amazing:

We finally got hungry around 11am (we ate WAY too much yesterday), but still not ready for solid foods, I turned this
into this:

Which we enjoyed immensely here:
I brought my juicer with us for breakfasts. I have never experimented with making smoothies with it because my blender is terrible and who wants to get out two appliances for one drink? However, when we arrived at our Condo, one of the first things I noticed was a nice blender already out on the counter, so I decided that we would be having smoothies this weekend rather than fruit juice.

And it was amazing.

And no, there was nothing in there but fruit juice, sugar, and ice.

Which was probably the first time that blender has been used so innocently.

Part two of our bike ride: We started down the beach again and decided that we would go to the lighthouse and then get back on the main roads. However, we had to have a bit of change of plans when we got here:
Hm. I guess that’s not going to work so well after all.

We didn’t, however, miss the opportunity to set our camera in the wind on a pier, set the self timer, and run on the rocks to get our picture taken:
Luckily, all three of us survived the photo op.

Our ride back consisted of these lovely tree-lined streets:
We are currently sitting on that amazingly comfortable deck lounger, and I’m about put this computer up and dive into my copy of the John Grisham novel that Chris has already started.

Yes, we have two copies.

Of the same book.

That’s what vacation is all about.

Conquer The Caption: Week Three

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Conquer The Caption
Conquer the Caption

So no wonder I’m terrible at starting memes! I TOTALLY forgot to do it last week!! Don’t ask me how. I even had it on my blog schedule!!

ahem. Yes, I have a blog schedule. And yes, I still forgot it. Yes, I am also the world’s biggest dork. Now can we please move on?!

Okay – so first of all – “last” week’s winner:

Conquer The Caption Week 2

I had several that I liked a whole lot, and really went back and forth between my top two favorites, but I finally decided on 3Carnations: “Somehow I thought swimming would involve…water.” Congrats! I’ll send you my useless prize button posthaste!!

And now for this week’s picture:

Photobucket

Here’s how to play:

  1. Write a caption for the above picture and post it in the comments of THIS POST.
    AND/OR:
  2. Put up your OWN photo (not mine) on your own blog and link it here (using a permalink – let me know if you don’t know how) with the mister linky below. Then other people (like me) can come to your blog and write captions for YOUR photo, too!

HAZMAT: The Best Way to Start a Romantic Getaway.

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories I'm a Glutton for Adventure

The plan yesterday was to leave around 2pm for our anniversary trip.

So while I was dropping Ali off at my parent’s house (aka grandbaby heaven) and hanging around long enough to see her introduced to the new baby chicks,

And feed the normal old chickens,

Chris was having an adventure of his own.

Here’s the story of his morning, in his words:

It was a normal day at the office, at least as normal as a day that you’re leaving at 2 o’clock to go out of town for the rest of the week can be. I’d wrapped up the last thing I had to accomplish before leaving at 11:15 the night before (while Rachel dozed on the couch) to make sure I could leave on time and leave room for last minute stuff to pop up (I’m paranoid/conservative like that), so it should have been a fairly routine day.

So I come downstairs, and one of the guys says, “Hey, do you smell that?”

Now, being that my office is a 100% male office, that sentence alone wouldn’t be that unusual. However, he finished it with what is usually too obvious, so it must have meant something else:

“It smells like gas.”

He didn’t mean natural gas, or the more frequent human variety, but GASOLINE.

To answer the question, yeah, I kinda did.

The faint odor of gasoline was inside the building. Kind of like when the grass is being mowed outside the door and you get that faint gassy smell.

So we walked outside around the building to check it out, and there was no one cutting the grass. And the smell of it was completely overwhelming at times.

We went back inside, and it was stronger, especially in the office kitchen, for some reason. The reeking kitchen made no sense, as it was a completely interior room.

The girls from the lawyer’s office next door came over, as their office was smelling it too (and, I suppose, they were probably confused as to what type of gas they were smelling and assumed where it was coming from). However, we thought that there might be gas in the creek running behind the office.

Our immediate assumption is that the gas station next door might have a broken tank leaking into the creek, so we walk up there and ask, and they inform us that they have already gotten multiple complaints and questions.

The lawyer next door calls his buddy at the fire department, and casually tells him, “Hey, not a big deal, but you might want to come down and check this out. No need to make a fuss, though.”

A few minutes later, a firetruck shows up at full blare, COMPLETELY making a fuss.

The firemen go around and start checking things out. We assume that it’s no big deal, and keep working.

Second fire engine shows up on the scene, wailing.

A fireman comes in the office and tells us that we need to evacuate.

I ask, “Excuse me, are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, you need to go.”

“Okay…. It will take me about 5 or 10 minutes to shut everything down.”

“No sir, you need to get out of here right now.”

The fireman goes around the corner, so I ran back inside, grabbed what I needed, shut a few computers down anyway, gathered the last employees and we beat a hasty retreat half a block away to another business’ parking lot where we could watch the action.

The firemen swept through ours and the lawyer’s buildings and made sure they were empty, then sealed off the doors with bright yellow caution tape.

Within a few minutes, there are three firetrucks, two police cars, a HAZMAT vehicle, and a few random official looking cars.

Tests are begun, readings are taken. Meanwhile, we are having a tailgate party, enjoying the sunshine, cracking jokes, and waiting to be allowed to return to work.

Family members and former employees join us to hang out and watch the scene.

After about an hour, three news crews show up.

The lawyer next door (who originally made the call) gave the news crews some very professional interviews that ran on all of the local news and published on the news websites.

The piece de resistance of the whole publicity craze was the NEWS HELICOPTER that made about 10 circles around the premises. In stark contrast to our respectable lawyer next door, one of our guys couldn’t resist the opportunity to yell at, and lift his shirt, AND shake his belly at the hanging-out-of-the-helicopter cameraman.

The bottom line was that the gas station had nothing to do with it, AND there was no gas in the creek. Some dillweed apparently illegally dumped gas into the SEWER via a sink, drain, toilet, etc, and the fumes from the sewer were coming into several businesses and homes through the plumbing.

It had been about three hours since the firemen came – about 1pm, when the Captain of the fire department came to talk to me and the lawyer and said, “Listen. I know that you have businesses to run, so here are your two options. You can either:

a) fill all the sinks with standing water, make sure that the air conditioners are off, lock the
door and leave for the day, or

b) fill all the sinks with standing water, make sure that the air conditioners are off, and go back to work and HOPE that the concentration of gasoline fumes would not reach the level where ignition was possible.”

We chose option a.

I Have Something to Show You. . .

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Newsflash
TWINS at 10 weeks!!!

So I would normally be telling you about how that Chris and I are leaving today to go off for our anniversary and how wonderful and relaxing it is going to be, and that Ali will be headed to Gramamma and Pop’s to get to do things like this:

But obviously, I have other stuff on my mind. . . .

. . .like, for instance. . . did you happen to remember that today is April Fools Day? ;)

If I Had Her Power of Association, I Would Have Done MUCH Better on Analogies on the ACT Test. . .

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Quirky quirky quirkiness, Toddlers: The Experience, Weird Strange and True

I’ve told you about Ali’s odd, yet “creative” ability to see somebody she knows in every picture. And I have also told you about how she asks to go look at our friend’s blogs by name.

A few days ago, these two habits (or more likely “quirks”) converged.

We were eating breakfast at the table together, and Ali was having her juice in an Iowa Hawkeyes cup.

She kept pointing to the Hawk Mascot and saying, “Kinda like Jarrod, Mommy.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, and saw no correlation to the cartooney hawk and Jarrod Jones. She of course sensed my lack of understanding in my response of “yes, honey, now drink your juice.”, and so felt the need to keep telling me over and over with increasing urgency, “Kinda Like Jarrod, Mommy!!”, and pointing to the hawk.

Finally, she realized that I was thick-headed and she was going to have to spell it out for me if she wanted me to understand. She said, “Kinda Like Jarrod’s hand, Mommy.”

And I finally saw what she was talking about. The hawk had his fist over his head, and when I thought about it, I vaguely remembered that there was a picture of Jarrod preaching on his blog (which she has seen maybe three or four times) where he had his hand over his head.

So I immediately went to his blog to find it, but to make it all the weirder, the pic wasn’t even on his blog anymore!! However, Jarrod was nice enough to hunt it down and send it to me for your comparison to the preachin’ hawk:


Of course once I realized what she was talking about, I excitedly told her so. She was so very thrilled and proud when I finally understood – as if she had taught me something very, very valuable.

I’m sure that from now on, every time we have juice out of that cup, we will end up talking about Jarrod.

And Jarrod, I’m sorry that you’re a cartoon mascot – I think Kirk got the better end of the association deal. I mean – which would you rather be – Tom Cruise, or the Iowa Hawkeye?

But hey – it’s the thought that counts. And she’s obviously thinking A LOT about you.

In Which Thomas the Tank Engine Drowns in a Puddle.

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Just My Luck, Toddlers: The Experience

We bought tickets months ago to the “A Day With Thomas” event that comes to Calera once a year (although it is next weekend as well, if you want to head on over for yourself). Ali has never been, and with her unbelievable love obsession with Thomas, we knew that it would be a dream come true for her.

We’ve hyped it for weeks, and this week it has been a constant source of conversation. Every day we talk about the Thomas countdown, and she has been elated with the upcoming event.

I’m not going to lie. . . when we were walking up, just thinking about how unbelievable this must be for Ali, I got a bit choked up.

I know.

Totally cheesy.

But you know – I get all into living life through Ali’s eyes, and then I start to feel what it must feel like to see a “celebrity” whom you adore with all your being.

So we got up to Thomas, and. . .

Who are you and what have you done with my child??!!!?!? Let’s try again. . . aren’t you excited??

No smiles, AND she didn’t want to go up to him, AND wanted to move away as fast as she could, Thankyouverymuch.

In fact, she was acting rather “I woke up on the wrong side of the crib” all around.

IN FACT, she wasn’t too excited at all. Until she found a PUDDLE to splash in.

Oh yes, and a “balance beam”.

And this is one of those moments that you have to accept the fact that you are a parent of a two year old, and two year olds don’t always do what you expect them to. I mean, I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed that she seemed moody on the day that we had been anticipating for months, but I really tried to get over it and try and help her get out of her funk.

And, of course, in the back of my mind, I also over-analyzed what in the world caused this odd streak of moodiness.

Was it because we woke her up to get here in time? I mean, it WAS 9:20 – how sleepy could she have been??

Was she cold? It was chillier than I expected. . . maybe I should have put her in long sleeves.

Oh, the constantly spinning mind of a mother.

At any rate, she managed to rise above her mood after a while and settled into having a good time (although STILL insisting that splashing in all of the puddles was much more fun than any of the countless fun Thomas options). So here was the rest of our Day with Thomas:

She enjoyed playing “old timey railroad”. . .

And of course, so did Daddy:

The “big top” of Thomas merchandise really excited her. It was crazy:

But she loved it. And, thank goodness for two years old, she doesn’t quite yet get the concept of asking us to buy everything for her. She just likes looking.

We waited expectantly in line for our 30 minute train ride. She declared that we would be riding on Annie.

She didn’t let go of her ticket the whole ride.

And, of course, the heating vents with the “CAUTION: VERY HOT. DO NOT TOUCH” signs on them were MUCH more fun to sit on than the seats.

So we rode on the seats, and she rode on the heater vent. Where she couldn’t see anything. Go figure.

The conductor came around and handed out Junior Engineer Certificates. She couldn’t have been prouder of her accomplishments:

Daddy “Fell Asleep”, which bothered her. She decided that he must need a kiss to wake up. So she laboriously climbed up and stood up while the train rocked back and forth and took her time trying to figure out how to get over to Daddy. . .

And then only to be surprise-attack-kissed by Daddy right before waking him up!
That helped the moodiness too.

As did taking Mommy and Daddy’s umbrella and sitting on the OTHER heating vent across the aisle (apparently we were unattractive people to sit next to – we had 10 seats to ourselves)

She was a bit suspicious of the conductor. I think that she, like her Mommy, was confused as to why he had a hairnet over his Conductor’s hat:

We waited in line to meet Sir Topham Hatt. I was a bit put off that he only came out once an hour. I mean, why can’t the man sit there and see children? How hard could it be? THEN I realized why. Out came this lumbering, cartoonish, apparently-completely-blinded-by-his-outfit character (because he had to be escorted and stood where he was supposed to stand by THREE people). It was quite shocking. As it was to Ali also:
Yeah. She would NOT stand near, touch, hug, or in general take her eyes off of that suspicious character.

And this was as close of a photo-op that she was going to give us, as she was quickly running away from him:
And then, of course, we ended our Day with Thomas by . . .

splashing in puddles.

Always Count on Toddler for a Real-Time Opportunity to Practice What You Preach.

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories Just My Luck, Toddlers: The Experience

Reading back over this before I post it, I am realizing that this is a very hyper post. Lots of run-on sentences and parenthetical asides. Maybe those cookies are having an affect after all. So be sure to read this post in a hyper-active, way-too-fast, I’ve-had-too-many-espresso-beans fashion.

Ali and I went to lunch with Beth, a bloggy friend that I have never met in person, although we have many ties (like the fact that she went to school with my husband, and TAUGHT school to my sister-in-law).

We met so that I could deliver to her the last of my Giveaway Jubilee prizes, which you can see her excitedly holding to the left (Oh, Carol, don’t get mad that I didn’t hand-deliver your earrings to England. I just didn’t want to mail the pottery – I wasn’t brave enough to trust my precious, breakable prize to the USPS).

We had a wonderfully fun lunch (if you’re all as much fun as Beth, I want to meet more of you bloggy friends in person!! So come have lunch with me! – um – but only if you’re fun, of course, because I need you to be able to make up for the fact that I am NOT, unfortunately, all that much fun in person), during which we talked, among many, many other things, about all of the amazing benefits of blogging.

I was raving about how much it has done for my state of mind and enjoyment of life. . .”it has just made me appreciate my life so much more and see the humor in the mundane and everyday – ACK!”

As Ali, who was sitting in my lap, dumped (or more like SLUNG) her large cup of ketchup all over both of us:So, while I cleaned it up, thanks to blogging, I was (get ready to digest all of this really quickly) able to see the humor in the moment and see the humor in seeing the humor in saying I could see the humor then immediately have an opportunity to see the humor.

Too bad Ali doesn’t look like she saw the humor. Maybe it’s time that I get her started blogging.

I boldly went where no one BUT mothers have gone before. . .

Posted on Posted by Rachel Callahan Categories I embarrass myself just for your amusement., Toddlers: The Experience

Caution: The following post might make you ill, nauseous, or otherwise queasy. At the very least, it will make you not want to shake hands with me ever, ever again.

You have been warned.

Ali is feeling much better from her stomach virus on the top end, but on the bottom end, she is still, erm, struggling. And to make matters much, much worse, she will, ahem, struggle in the middle of the night but not wake up (since it kind of lets itself out, thankyouverymuch), and so in the morning, she is very, very uncomfortable.

So, in an attempt to prevent this happening during the night on Wednesday, I checked on her before I went to bed.

But it was very dark.

And I couldn’t see, nor did I smell anything.

However, this stuff has been sneaky, so I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to save her from certain discomfort.

But I also didn’t want to wake her up.

SO.

I stuck my finger down into the bottom of her diaper. . .

rubbed it around. . .

. . .then pulled it out and smelled it.

Oh yes, I did.

She passed the smell test.

Unfortunately, sometime later in the night, much past my bedtime, she would NOT have passed the smell test, so she was quite uncomfortable Thursday morning.

Which means my finger testing was all for naught.

During her nap, she woke up crying, and so, again, I went where only Mothers have gone before.

Thank goodness, she passed the smell test again. And that she is feeling better(-ish).

And yes, I did wash, scrub, and sanitize my hands before making cookies.

Oh, and in case you didn’t make the farfetched connection between this post and the picture, it is Lady Macbeth, trying to scrub that “darn” spot off of her hands.