5 Minutes: Selective amnesia

Prompt: 5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010.

2010 was a bad year. If I could wipe it out of my mind I'd do so. Even so, my entire five minutes would be made up of images of our vacation in Banner Elk, NC. We had done the touristy stuff the year before. This year was just hiking the trails. It had apparently rained quite well right before we arrived and there were water falls everywhere. Every fissure in the great slabs of rock that lined the road ways were weeping. Having left our area that was deep in the clutches of a hot, baking drought, the intense green of the Blue Ridge Parkway took my breath away. Every surface was cool and moist, emerald green moss and delicate ferns were everywhere. The difference was like night and day. I remember one morning we hiked up to a lookout and to get there we had to walk through a fairly thin woods. It was so quiet. The clouds were low, around my ankles low. The swirling mist felt good against my face. I felt like I was the only one on the mountain that morning. When we finally got to the lookout we could see nothing but dense cloud cover. You could barely make out the shapes of trees below us. My husband and my daughter and I decided to have our lunch early, sitting on the cool stones, waiting for the sun to burn off the morning mist. A lady from Ohio stopped by, we chatted for a bit, and then the fog swallowed her up. Once again we were alone. It was an odd feeling. I rather liked it. I imagined myself living in the area and taking walks like that every day. Having a small farm with a horse, chickens, a big garden. A creek running through it. It sounds like heaven to me. I swear if school wasn't an issue I'd start looking for a piece of property right now. On the desktop of my computer I have our local weather listed as well as Banner Elk. Plus, I can pull up the weather cam, http://www.highcountrywebcams.com/hwy184/livecam.html, and see what's going on downtown. They've decorated for Christmas. That's another thing about the area...Christmas trees...everywhere you look. I believe it must be one of the main sources of income for the area.
Well, I'm sure that my five minutes is up and there's much more that I want to remember about that week. It was wonderful. Kind of offset the rest of the 2010 suckfest to make it bearable. I bet they have snow up to their ass by morning.

School is canceled tomorrow on threat of snow. The kidlet is happy. I'm looking forward to a nice lie in. I've got to make cookies tomorrow. I bought a ham today and I might just throw that bad boy in the oven, too. No formal Christmas ham here. That will be at Jim's grandfather's house. Ham biscuits the size of postage stamps and every sweet known to man. This weekend is the white elephant party. woohoo. Small woo. Let's just say, it's not my thing. I usually have to leave the party at some point just to wander around and check out the artwork. It's at the clubhouse in the gated community where Jim's mom and new husband live. Unfortunately, there's not that much artwork. It'll be too freaking cold to take off outside.
I guess the impending weather is what brought every crazy in Chesterfield out to the supermarket. Kroger was slammed packed to the gills with people who acted as if they were the only ones shopping. Wall to wall. I helped one lady wrestle 150 pounds of dogfood into her cart. She was very pleasant. And joked around with an older lady about the run on cheese. The shelves were bare! Most every one else was in a foul mood it seemed. I guess Christmas means something different to them than it does to me.
Picked up some stocking stuffers for my kidlet. No giant box of nerds this year. I think she still has the box from last year. She has candy stashed all over the place. Halloween candy, christmas candy, and even valentines candy. And not just crap candy either. The kid has CHOCOLATE BARS for pete's sake. It's all I can do to keep myself from flipping her room in search of a kitkat. Hopefully she'll keep that willpower until she's old and gray.
Candy hoarder. I guess there are worse things to be.