Nashville

Baby Sis and I after the St. Jude's Country Music Half Marathon

First things first.

I am relieved to announce that Baby Sis and I survived the half marathon in Nashville, however our time was terrible. Given that neither one of us had trained, we're lucky to have survived it could have been much worse.  Baby Sis was clearly more prepared than I, but she hung back with me the whole race.

At one point I thought I was going to require medical assistance not from a cardiac event but from the pain and agony shooting down the backs of my legs. It felt like every major nerve was being individually tortured. I'll probably have to get that checked out at some point, since I have the same pain in my elbows on a daily basis, usually while sitting down. So it has nothing to do with running. (My inner hypochondriac--aided and abetted by Web MD--is convinced it's either fibromyalgia, MS or nerve damage due to too much sitting at the computer.)

Anyway.

Baby Sis didn't want me to mention our actual time, since it was our worst ever.  However, I told her she was looking at it all wrong. This so-called bad time also represents the longest either one of us has exercised without stopping: two hours and forty five minutes.

So almost three hours of movement!

Sounds better when put that way, I think.

Some nights I'm lucky if I get three hours of sleep, so three hours of physical activity is pretty good!

(That's my story and I'm sticking with it.)

Aside from the torture of running a race I wasn't prepared for, I thoroughly enjoyed the course, which took us through downtown Nashville, Music Row and some very lovely neighborhoods.  Last year when we did this, we couldn't take in any of the sights because of the horizontal rain. (Click here for that story.)

This year the weather was simply spectacular.

Our friend and hostess Lauren took us to some fabulous places.

The first day we drank wine hung out downtown.

Me and Lauren

We drank wine had lunch at a place called Merchants.

The deviled eggs were outstanding.

As were the deviled eggs and sugar bacon at Brick Top's in Franklin, 

where we sat next to one of the most beautiful men I've ever seen

none other than Carrie Underwood's husband, Mike Fisher--

who is also beautiful! a hockey player.

Lauren lives in a resort-like apartment complex in Franklin.  

We spent many hours enjoying wine lounging by her pool.

Did I mention the wine? 

We had some.

We even had some boxed wine.  Here Lauren and Baby Sis appear
to be fighting for the right to pour.

Lauren's daughter Emnma joined us Sunday evening on a last-minute excursion through miles and miles of beautiful horse country to Arrington Vineyards.   Guess what they serve there?

We arrived just before it started raining, so we only stayed briefly.

After the vineyard, we traveled back to Lauren's apartment, watched movies and enjoyed more wine and laughs in complete denial that our adventure was coming to a close.  Monday morning we flew back to Virginia.

Baby Sis and I would like to thank Lauren for once again providing us with a perfect getaway.  We relaxed, we laughed, we frolicked up and down the streets of Nashville, we ran a half marathon, we ate lots of good food, we enjoyed lots of good wine, we met new people, we sat next to a beautiful!! quasi-celebrity named Mike Fisher, and we basked by the pool in 80-degree weather.

Unlike what the sign above says, looking back on this weekend, I didn't miss a thing*, and the good time was all around me no matter where we were.

The End.


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p.s. There are more stories to tell about traveling with Baby Sis--such as when I confidently walked off with some very nice man's carry-on bag (he stopped me before I got too far, we had the exact same blue bag), and the time she thought the announcement over the public address system in the Richmond airport asked for Nashville passengers to please approach the counter to verify passports.   In fact, they were asking international passengers to please provide passports. When I looked her dead in the eyes and confidently told her Nashville didn't require a passport, she still wanted to go up to the counter--even though she didn't have a passport and even though nobody said anything about Nashville and even though anybody in their right mind would know passports aren't needed to cross state lines.

Serenity now.

* I did miss my children a little, but I sure didn't miss cooking or cleaning or laundry or cutting grass or driving hundreds of miles to work/soccer games or ant infestations or gutters that need cleaning or ....I want to go back to Nashville now!