Up and at ’em extra early! I did finally rest good, thankfully. It’s a relief that DST falls on the weekend I do manual labor! I wasn’t as sore as I was last night, but these old bones and muscles were reluctant to do their job without protesting this morning. But I’m good now, fortified after two cups of delicious creme brulee coffee. You may want to try it, it’s Walmart brand. I just put sugar in it, no creamer. It doesn’t need it. I don’t use a lot of creamer anyway. I got my sheets washed and dried but didn’t have time to get them on the bed AND eat breakfast, so of course breakfast took priority. And I was still 15 minutes late getting on location. I was inwardly dreading what I might find. Would the grout hold??

Wonder of wonders, the grout and pebble tile and fireplace were all one solid piece this fine morning! Everybody had their projects so I went back to mine.
The millions of mums.

It’s a never ending task. But the bumblebee? Well, she flew off (all honeybee workers are female, so it stands to reason bumblebees are, too. I just momentarily forgot) about the time I got settled. So I guess it was just her bedtime last night. Bless it. How long before they hibernate, anyway? It seems awfully late in the year to go around hunting flowers.
I clipped and I pruned and I sneezed and I sighed, and before long I had another big trash bag full. The shabby mums were in a sorrowful state indeed, but they looked better than they did last night and really that’s all we could hope for.
And then Kay came over and culled, culled, culled. I was hurt. I had done my best. I agreed, a few were beyond saving, but the majority could be salvaged. We’d just have to squish them up.
I was vetoed.
And so, like so many other mass market consumables, we trashed them and more would have to be bought. Starting over, instead of just making the best of what we had. And what we had wasn’t half bad. But this is the corporate world, and they wouldn’t settle. My argument was, they wouldn’t even KNOW.
But I’m just the labor, not the decorator. She doesn’t pay me for my opinion (although she would argue that she does, since she often asks for it, but when I disagree with something, she doesn’t listen, so we’re back to my original statement).

I finished algae bear inside. Here he is.

It was a constant tat! Tat! Tat! of the staple gun as Vern and John took turns attaching the shakes to three sides of the fireplace. It really looks great.
Kay directed placement of more pumpkins and got the centerpiece laid out on the table. Somehow she wound up with peace sign placemats instead of American Flags, but there were no more hiccups that I got wind of in Mum World, apart from no tiny pumpkins, like I told her yesterday but she insisted. All we lacked was mulching, the cornucopia, dressing the bears, and procuring the hot dog sticks and we’d be done with outside. We decided it was time for lunch (30 minutes after she mentioned she was starving, but this is typical). Lunch at Zaxby’s. Brentley couldn’t have been more thrilled. We were talking about other popular chicken establishments and he declared, “It ain’t as good as this heaven,” and I about fell out. That kid, I swear.

“Lookit them pigeons,” I pointed out as we sat on the bridge waiting for the light to turn. They reflected a purple iridescence from their feathers. Quite pretty, for a pigeon.
“Those are pigeons?” This, from Kay, peering around me.
“Yes, that’s why I said, ‘lookit them pigeons.’ If they were crows, I woulda said, ‘lookit them crows,’ or like yesterday, when we saw that hawk, and I said, ‘lookit that hawk’.”
She giggled, despite herself, and tried to cover it. “Well, I thought they might be doves.”
“They’re pigeons,” Amanda assured her.
“Why do you try to argue with me? Anybody else in this truck will let things go. You know I won’t.”
“You’re the only other redhead.”
Like that explained it.
We drove past three grocery stores and I don’t know how many gas stations to go get water from Dollar General on Chapman Highway. Why am I complaining? It pays the same. And, as a bonus, there was an entire display of Little Debbie Christmas Trees in the main thoroughfare. Kay has never had a LDCT, and today was initiation into the addiction of the working class. We bought two boxes, six gallons of water, and three cases of bottled water. $36 and a backache later, she and I had it loaded in the bed of the trusty blue Chevy and back to the convention center.
Where she promptly disappeared to put a fire out with her company who were attempting to set up a booth.
Vern blew the straw mess into a pile that we swept into garbage bags to use for filler.
I ate a Christmas tree cake.
John packed up his tools.
Amanda and I argued about the best way to do the mulch.
Brentley loaded it on the cart.
Kay didn’t show.
John and I came to agreement on how to spread the mulch.
We all spread the mulch and it worked out great, with a bag to spare.
John wanted to use it to fill in some thin spots.
I objected, we needed to save it for the cornucopia and the edges of the canoe.
Time stretched on with no Kay.
Vern and John chomped at the bit wanting to get at the letters to see if they had survived a year in storage.
I said we needed to free the crated bears.
The guys wanted to GOOOO.
I wouldn’t let them leave with all the pumpkins, because we still needed to build the cornucopia. So I selected the ones I thought would work best and sent Vern and Amanda on.
John and I went to the back to gather the bears. We saw Kay but didn’t disturb her, she had a clipboard and business face on, pointing. Danger.

We dropped the bears at different points we thought were close enough and went back for the big boy.

That was fun. John just wallowed him up on the cart while I stood there, useless. Just call me Jake Right Now.

That accomplished, we loaded the cart in the U-haul and waited.
And waited.
An hour and twenty minutes had passed since Kay abandoned us. He said this wasn’t nothing, one time it was ten of them and it was six hours in the holding pattern.
“She knows we’re out here. Just wait,” was his advice.
So we did.

Then here she blew, made no mention of the mulch, and thought we were waiting on her to load up and go to Pigeon Forge. Not hardly. She almost freaked out when I told her the pumpkins had left, until I showed her what I had kept. I reminded her of the cornucopia, and she reminded me of the display where the balloons were going. Dang.
But we had just enough.

The bears she deemed “perfect” (I winked at John) and we took pictures, tweaking here and there, and loaded up what was left. “Do we not need these pansies?” I asked her.
“No, there’s more at Pigeon Forge. Six flats.”
Okie dokie, sounds good to me.
The last things remaining were dressing the bears (pray the totes are at PF), spraying the straw with flame retardant, and the dang hot dog sticks.
But press on.
We took the new road, Jake Thomas, over to Teaster. It had been a long time comin’, and was hitherto untraveled by me. It was pretty exciting.
“So what’d this used to be?” Kay asked.
“Knobs,” I answered, at the same time Abby said, “Nothin’.”
It was good to have a straight road. Cattle hadn’t roamed here since the 80’s, to the best of my knowledge. I remember when my mother worked at Belz mall you could go out the back doors behind the food court and see some cows, sometimes. Of course I would have preferred horses.

There were no pansies at Pigeon Forge, apart from me, when I saw all the watering that needed to be done pronto tonto. Our consensus last night had been we wouldn’t worry about them, since goal was to be up there by 12, one at the latest.
Well, it was past four and a feels like 90 degree temperature in the sun. Everybody was looking a little droopy, including us.
I went to dumping water while everybody else went to see about the dreaded letters. Thanks guys, I got it. My best little soldier Brentley stuck by my side. I think he was crushing. I shall use this to my advantage, like any good Southern Lady. In other helpful news, the security guard inside the front door was much nicer and accommodating than the jerk manning the ones at Sevierville.
And the view is much better, too, as the Greenway runs right below the convention center and there were lots of people out, taking in the sunshine and walking dogs. Or, in one case, pushing a dog stroller with a Doodle mix panting happily. And people say Chester is spoiled. HA! The leaves were still pretty, and you know I’m happy to be near water of any kind.

After showering all the plants with six gallons of water, I went inside to see what fresh hell awaited us here. The Pigeon Forge Convention Center is a monstrosity. Like, almost Vegas caliber. You have to walk awhile, think you’re almost there, check your compass, and then walk some more. I finally located my crew just where I hoped they’d be, the same place our crap was piled up last year, miracle of miracles. They had just then managed to procure some staff with a pallet jack to move the letters to their temporary station. There didn’t seem to be any unwarranted excitement, so I returned to my rat killin’. Unfortunately there were no spigots here, either, and the sinks were too shallow to fill the gallon jugs. So we had to bust into the water bottles.
It wasn’t long before I was summoned. Kay wanted my opinion on the flowers in the letters. Well, she said she did, but she doesn’t, not really. Because I was for taking them out of their pots, giving them a substantial trim, and cramming them in there. Together with the ones she deemed unusable from Sevierville, I thought we’d have enough.
She put me in her stead, playing Twister with mums so she could decide what we needed, be it shims or new flowers or just a miracle from above. Probably all three, by the time it’s said and done. She counted and counted again and then Amanda counted behind her, getting a different number each time on the estimated amount of mums we’d need to complete the letters.
Hand on hip, she emitted a big sigh. I looked at Vern, who was contorted in a similar fashion opposite me. “Are you as uncomfortable as I am?”
“Yes,” came his immediate reply.
I stood, grasping my mum, grabbed his, and placed them on the cart. And went back for the rest of them while Kay puffed and blew and John adjusted his toolbelt. I had had my fill.
As I walked away, I could hear her say, “I think what we need to do is I need to take Amy to the Home Depot and we need to get about 60…but I can’t get that many in the truck…John, what about…”
And so it goes. I went back to my solitary task of deadheading. I envisioned a day I would not have to look at another mum. Which would be tomorrow, praise be.

I didn’t get much peace before here came Kay to collect me for our jaunt to Home Depot. It was approaching six. “Are they even open?” I wheedled, trying to get out of it.
“Till eight,” she supplied, sounding sure.
I checked the Google. Sure enough. I was stuck.
But then came the question of how to get Amanda and her minis back to her car, and then Kay decided to go to South Knoxville first and get what they had, and then picking up whatever she couldn’t haul tomorrow from Sevierville. I could already smell my freedom. I was gonna make it.
Amanda couldn’t look at me for cracking up. I don’t have much of a poker face.
We loaded up and just hit Dolly Parton when a dinging commenced.
“Oops, I need gas,” Kay said, like this was totally unexpected.
“Anytime you drive this thing, you need gas. And you never drive it, so do you have goblins?” I asked her, thinking of the night after the fair where I sat alone at Bluff’s for twenty minutes, wondering how I had managed to lose her in two miles at 10 o’clock at night.
We whip into Food City and guess who’s there, but good ol’ Vern and a half a load of pumpkins.
Kay manages to get the gas, even though she said it wasn’t happy she didn’t want to scan her Valucard, and we’re back on our way. I told them if my office had a shower, they could just drop me off there and I’d worry about my car tomorrow.
A few little accessories added to the bears in the canoe and we called it a night. I can’t say I am upset about going to my desk job tomorrow.

I am sure y’all have found this account of my weekend positively enthralling and made for the movies, but hey, we can’t all be jetsetters, sipping wine in the south of France. Some of us have to work to afford our dog and beer habits. Plus, I sit on my porch enough. I don’t mind helping a friend. It’s just a bonus she pays me. I’d help her anyway. She can’t help she’s crazy. Like I told Brentley, all the best ones are ♥️

Love from Appalachia, with all my 2000 aching parts,

~Amy