American By Birth. Southern By The Grace Of God.

That, from an actual bumper sticker, and this photo, are proof that I went to Tennessee. You never know when you might need an alibi, so it's always good to have proof. Like when the ASPCA comes a-knockin' on my door, asking if I consider myself to be a competant cat mother when my cats have fleas for the second time in a year. I'll be fine! I have proof. I'll just show them this photo as evidence that I was out of town that weekend. (And then I can go to jail for sure, because I don't think the ASPCA is very pro-coon skin cap.)

The thing about my cats having fleas? That's true. I'm not too worried, because I am basically a professional exterminator at this point. In college I lived in a house where the infestation was so bad that the university paid to put us all up in a schmancy hotel. While we enjoyed the heated pool and complained about the long walk to campus, they built a tent over the entire building and flea-bombed repeatedly. Last year I freaked out when a friend's pet brought fleas into our apartment. Poor kittens. They were more annoyed by incessant searching through their fur for fleas than they were by the fleas. Also, we vacuumed constantly (ah-ha!), and they hate the vacuum. This time, I'm handling the situation like a seasoned professional. (This means that I threw down everything I was doing when Abe found the first flea in order to run to the vet for flea/tick/heartworm drops that cost almost as much as two nights in Tennessee.)

The thing about two nights in Tennessee is Can I Have Them, Please? Because the only thing I didn't like about our mini-vacation to Gatlinburg was the fact that it ended. It was a-maz-ing, and I took pictures of our meals like food blogging's my job. Lucky for the internet, food blogging is not my job, because we ate mostly unoriginal things like pizza biscuits and pecan pancakes and grilled chicken/grilled vegetables. But it was delicious, and I can't spoil Christmas by posting about my Christmas crafts, so you can look forward to reading about it anyway.

I also have pictures of nearly everything else we did - nearly - so you can look forward to some scenic vistas, since I have given up entirely on posting photos on facebook. More like, I-want-to-hit-you-in-the-face-book, because you keep loading all my pictures over and over again like everything's fine, and then telling me "upload failed!" after twenty minutes. Facebook, you are fired.

(I may overdone it with the coffee today. Is it that obvious?)