I come to you today from a hotel bed in Nashville, Tennessee. The Pudding family normally takes a cold weather trip before Christmas, but that trip didn’t happen this year. (The cold weather didn’t happen this year, either. Perhaps the cold weather relies on our plan to leave town. Next month I’ll be apologizing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.) Anyway. Because we were all itching to hit the road, we chose to spend the girls’ spring break in the town where, in 2001, Jeff and I decided to seal the deal and make some babies. It’s been entirely too long.
We spent part of our afternoon in Franklin, Tennessee, and WHOOSH! So many memories. This is the street where I used to work. This is the ice cream shop that my co-worker and I often visited when we were feeling disgruntled. This is the road where that co-worker told me how he knew he was gay. This is the old stove factory where I held a door for Naomi Judd, and she stared right at me as if it was my JOB to hold the door for her, and then she passed on through without thanking me. (She has porcelain skin and a cactus where her heart should be.) This is the Starbucks I once visited less than ten minutes after Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman visited it! This is the art store where I bought the supplies to make our wedding invitations!
The afternoon ended with “This is the steakhouse where you can throw peanuts on the floor.” AND, because God tends to high five me at least once a day, the steakhouse now has veggie skewers! My dinner consisted of a veggie skewer and one of my very favorite Nashvillian combinations: A baked sweet potato and sweet tea.
Keep being Nashville, Nashville.
I wouldn’t have you any other way. ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>
Sounds like you are having a great time. Enjoy!!!
Um hello, HOW DID I NOT KNOW THAT YOU WERE FROM NASHVILLE/FRANKLIN? My brother lives in Nashville! And he has scouted out some ancestral graves (sounds creepier than it is!) in Franklin! My people! Are from there! From a long way back! We are going to have to leave our husbands and get married now! I bake a mean sweet potato, you know.
Veggie skewers at a steakhouse! Nashville sounds awesome!
do you have a southern accent? Because I’ve never pictured that. : )
Don’t you just love family trips to places you went when single or at least without kid(s)? I think it serves a dual purpose of making you appreciate what you experienced pre-babies and makes you wistful about sharing it with said babies. Hope your trip is perfect. What about the dogs though?!
Umm, I might be just a wee bit excited that you’re in my town. I love the veggie skewers at Logan’s (I’m assuming that is the peanut throwing steakhouse of which you speak :)).
I’ve been to Nashville on 2 occasions in my life. The first was when I was about 9 years old. We stayed at the Grand Ol’ Opry Hotel and went to the theme park a couple of days and did various excursions/day trips (my dad was at a convention there and us kids got the perks). The second time was on a road trip with my husband just prior to the birth of our first child–so about 5 – 1/2 years ago–and it poured rain the whole time we were there–we basically drove through it–stopped at a store where he bought a watch and then kept on motoring. I still love Nashville and would go back again.
I would love a nice veggie skewer right now, mind you it would be even better with a couple of hunks of steak inbetween (there is a carnivourous baby in my belly!) :) Happy Thursday!
I think Naomi was just having a bad day. Didn’t she have some kind of horrible disease or something?
Veggie skewers!
Does God really high five you once a day? I believe it and that sounds cool.
I know you don’t now, but you used to, I think, eat Barbeque. What was your favorite place?
What fun for the Puddings….. glad you had such a good time! I would like to go to Nashville – mostly because I love Marc Cohn.
I visited Nashville for the first time two summers ago, and I think our visit at the Bluebird Cafe was one of the most sublime experiences ever. (And I’m not even a country music fan!)