Lovely, Lazy Days

About the third thing that happened in O-town, after hugs and champagne, was that Sling asked me to autograph his copy of Unbound Press, volume alpha and omega. I was inordinately giddy, what with no one having ever asked that of me before.Newt, as you can see, wasn't that impressed.

After a leisurely afternoon of laughing and talking and repeating the mantra, "I can't believe we're here", we tucked into a very fine dinner of grilled steaks, salad and garlic bread. The Lizzard King is the Wizazard King when it comes to grilling. And Sling was careful to point out that they eat like that all the time, it wasn't just for show for the visitors. Lucky.

As the smoke-hazed sun sank over O-town we found ourselves with glasses of wine, back on the porch, as Sling picked and strummed his ol' guitar. Was it magical? Yes. Was it fun? Yep.

Did certain people spill wine more than once? Uh huh. Was that person me? No.

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While in O-town we did more than sit on the porch. But you must understand that the only expectation Hat and I had was just to sit around with Sling. Every post he's ever written strikes us as something that would be said over a glass of something while shooting the breeze on the front porch. A kitchen table would also suffice, but with temperatures lurking around 90, the porch was a fine, cool thing.

But yes, we got up long enough to fulfill some other vacation hopes. Oh, we are simple, simple girls. Do you know what we wanted to do, besides sit around talking? We wanted to eat breakfast where there were good hash browns and we wanted to see the park and gazebo that are often features of Sling's Twainesque posts.

Thus, we had breakfast at Barb's House of Waffles and One Hour Martinizing. Delicious, perfect hash browns. Sling bogarted the ketchup.

Hat felt that Barb's had the best menu in all the land.

There was a quick visit to the Salvation Army so Hat and I could buy appropriate summer clothes. People in Seattle don't have summer wardrobes and the coolest things we brought weren't quite sufficient for the heat.

Then we explored the lush beauty of Sank Park, which surrounds the historic home of O-town's founding mayor and original concrete shoe manufacturer.

The Child said it reminded her of "Gilmore girls". It was all very pastoral and made me want to sing selections from "The Music Man".

But there was more. Sling, ever the consummate host, made sure that Hat and I were replete in baby toes and sugar kisses.

Oh, they were delicious. (Lizzard King has a brother. Those are his spawn, Baby Eft and her big brother, Salamander.)

And speaking of delicious, Saturday afternoon was cooled down by the never-ending margarita pitcher.

(I'll have you know that Sling was exceedingly put out when he discovered that his local wine and spirits emporium didn't have any Triple Sec. "By jove!" he all but thundered, "What sort of wine and spirits emporium doesn't carry Triple Sec? I say". He intended, you see, to make the margaritas from scratch. But when it is very hot and one is spending the afternoon on the porch, the stuff made with a mixer will do).

For dinner LK grilled up some of the most delicious, moist chicken I've ever eaten. Bobby Flay can kiss his prehensile tail.Entertainment on Saturday evening consisted of play Guitar Hero with LK and it brought about the only case of "sheesh" I had all weekend. You see, LK destroyed me. He was killing on the medium level while I couldn't even manage songs on easy. Songs, mind you, that at home I score 100%. What was the trouble? I blamed it on the calibration of the XBox guitar. Which was actually semi-legitimate as The Child had the same problem. For a second, though, I was totally afraid that with my much ballyhooed Guitar Hero skillz being called into question, so would the legitimacy of all my blogging. (Well, except for the stuff about Hillary Clinton. I was totally right about all that).

Hat said I was silly.

And speaking of silly, she should know. Sling, gentleman that he is, gave over his room to we girls for the weekend. The Child tried to sleep on the love seat (and then made a bed on the floor of the cushions...she's getting long) and Hat and I shared Sling's bed. The good news is that neither of us snore. The bad news is she claims that I am a sheet thief.

Now, the Hat and I have a long standing tradition of laughter and general giggltry. There were more than a few occasions on the drive down when I was tempted to pull over and compose myself, she had me going so hard. But that was nothing compared to what happened when the lights went out. All of a sudden, no matter how tired we were, we'd start whispering and the whispers would lead to giggles and the giggles would birth into full blown guffaws, which we tried very hard to bury in our pillows but to little avail. The first night Sling called from the living room, "You girls settle down in there!" The second night The Child had to do the same thing.

But it was very hard to do, you see. Because when you are full up to the brim with joy and delight, laughter has to bubble out. Otherwise you might explode and that would be very unpleasant for everyone.