Mini Vacation in Attala County

**Editor’s Note:  I have recently found a love for gifs.  You can expect them to be used gratuitously throughout future posts — Today I am feeling It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia**

We took a break from home renovations lately.

Right before Labor Day, we both got sick (I’ve evidently got allergies and Danny’s got a GI issue) and that paused the projects for the long weekend. However, we were still feeling the residual effects of our respective sicknesses.

Friday morning, I woke up to the sound of Chance chewing up the only bra I own.  I had to use my seamstress abilities to fashion a bra to get me through “casual Friday”.  Wouldn’t have been too casual if I had shown up to work without a bra.  I definitely failed the “Pencil Test“.  I felt a tad guilty that we wouldn’t get any projects done this weekend, but once the whole bra thing happened, it was like “F*ck it – I gotta get outta here.”

Enter Kosciusko, Attala County, Mississippi.

We decided to visit Danny’s dad, Chuck, in Kosciusko.  He is about to sell his house and it holds many memories for Danny and me.

That’s the place we met almost ten years ago.  It’s the place where Danny spent endless nights on the phone talking to me when I was 500 miles away in Dallas.  That’s where we lived when we were trying to get on our feet as young adults.  It is still the place we go when we need a quick getaway.

I remember years ago when we lived in the house, Danny drove us to Wal-Mart and we picked out rain suits.  I’ve never owned (or even worn) rain boots, but we bought a pair, rain pants and a rain jacket.  Then we bundled up (because it was December), put on our rain suits, grabbed sticks and went hiking through the backwoods of Attala County…at night.  It was loads of fun, although I distinctly remember bitching about losing body parts from walking around in the coldness.

There’s not much to do in Kosciusko, generally.  It’s not a place for youngsters.  Beautiful retirement place, though.  Or if you already own most of the town.

It’s full of dirt roads.  And these roads, I believe, are all referred to as “Attala Road”.  They just have different numbers (Attala Road 5210) and that’s what you see on the road signs.  It can get confusing if you’re not from there.  But, getting lost on back roads is what I wanted.  Just load myself, Danny and our dogs in the car and figure everything out.  We had a blast!

I wanted a place away from home this weekend.  Just be able to relax.  No phones or internet.  Just the beautiful country.

We took our boys for a walk Saturday morning.  They loved it!  We walked around the square and just appreciated.  I’ve never stopped just to hear the music.  It was beautiful – you could hear the birds chirping, locals talking over coffee in the shops (who all kept their doors open) and music was played over the speakers around the courthouse.

We walked through a neighborhood, trying to maintain three dogs, and spoke to people sitting on their front porch.  It’s really a lovely place.  People waving and saying hello is not so common where we live — or maybe it is and I just don’t realize it.

We stopped by a friend’s house and the kids were out front running a lemonade stand.  It looked like so much fun!  They had the whole setup.  We stood around and talked for a while, enjoying a glass of lemonade and munching on chocolate chip cookies.

They sent us on our way with another glass of lemonade.  We began walking back to our car and the heat got the better of us.  It was miserable!  I will take the December hikes any day over walking around in the Mississippi sun.

After the sun drained most of our energy, we went back to my father-in-law’s house with the intention of taking a nap.  Instead, we decided to take some pics:

A second wind caught me when I got there and I decided I wasn’t wasting a minute of my mini-vacation.  We went outside and this is what we found:

Chance peeing on these beautiful plants.

And then this:

There’s also a goldfish pond (can’t believe I didn’t get a picture of that) and acres of land surrounding us.

I could have been running around the yard butt-naked and no one would have ever known (sans Danny and my father-in-law).

That didn’t happen.  Instead, we went to the grocery store, got some food and I cooked food on the grill. I never do that.  I wasn’t sure I even knew how to cook food on the grill.  Not that I was incapable, just lacked grill confidence.  Well, I found it Saturday.  I cooked some badass food: steaks, hamburgers, shrimp, hotdogs (ok, Danny cooked the hotdogs, but we can share credit because I turned them a few times).

While eating, Danny asked, “Do you want to ride back roads tonight?”  HELL YEAH!  Chuck wanted us to drop him off at a friend’s house.  Because I like to keep a low-profile when not on the Internet and I’m pretty weird about new people, I wondered what kind of people we would encounter while dropping him off.

See, gratuitous use.

Anyway, once that was all over, we rode the back roads.  I am not even sure where we went.  Hell, we could have circled one block and I would have never known the difference.  We could have also gone two counties away and I would have been clueless.  The fact that I killed a six pack of Michelob may have had something to do with that, though.

The beer brain also led me to doing this:

More selfies, incorporating Stewie this time.

Poor Tom.  Getting picked on by Mom & Dad when he is so

tired/sun-drained/dehydrated.

Sunday morning arrives.  I wake up feeling like shit.  Surely it’s like 6:30, right.  Nope, it was almost 9 a.m.  I convinced Danny to cook me breakfast and just wanted to go back to bed.  Perhaps Michelob played too much of a role on that “back roads” trip.  We loaded up the car, including one of the Canna Lillies Chance peed on, and drove home.  Doesn’t take me long to get homesick.

Our ferret was running about all weekend.  Thankfully, he didn’t destroy anything.  And, he was pretty happy to see us return.  We hopped in the bed and watched several episodes of Lie to Me.  I got up and cooked up some spaghetti and chocolate chip muffins from scratch.  I made plates and drinks for Danny and myself only to find out that Danny’s stomach wasn’t in a place to enjoy spaghetti.  I took one for the team and finished both our plates.  Then, I enjoyed some muffins.  They were fantastic.

In summation, we didn’t do too much this weekend, and it was perfect.  Danny got a break from the projects and I got a break from stressing about projects.  It was nice to take a step back and appreciate.  I need to do that more often.

We are less than a month away from our South Dakota vacation!

Hop on over to OHNblog to see what kind of shenanigans they’re up to!

— Lauren

Tagged: Dogs, Kosciusko, Mississippi, Rednecks, Travel, Vacation